A bunch of minor things happened to put me in a foul mood, so I am going to write them down in order to help myself work out the emotions involved and calm myself down.

It’s all VRChat’s fault. Well, and one other thing.

So I decided to give VRChat another try. It’s a great big virtual environment kind of like a modern version of Second Life.

It’s something I want to get into partly for the huge furry community there (one that skews a lot younger than my group of fuzzy friends) but mostly because it seems like a safe-ish way for me to expand my social horizons while still being safe at home.

That reminds me. I should give Discord another try some day.

For like, the fifth time.

What can I say, I am high strung and easily overwhelmed.

Anyhow, I log in to VRChat and try to find the basic tutorial that I did when I first signed up for the thing. I need a refresher on the fundamentals because I took that tutorial a long time ago and I don’t remember any of it.

But I can’t get back to it. I typed “tutorial” into the Worlds search and go to what it says is a tutorial world only for it to tell me exactly one thing (use WSAD to move – um, yeah, thanks, that’s the one thing I already knew) and then presents me with five portals to other worlds, none of which offer any kind of tutorial.

What a way to run a railroad!

I go into one of the worlds, and that turned out to be a mistake, because now I am surrounded by other players and have no idea what to do or how to do anything and I can hear other people talking over the voice channel and I want to join in but can’t and I am feeling very conspicuous and so my social anxiety went kaboom and I had to GTFO.

None of that is rational. But all of that is very me.

I tried several other supposed “tutorial” worlds and got the same result. So in disgust and despair, I hit Alt-F4 to give up for a while.

I Was out of there.

Then I tried to Google a tutorial. But then I discovered that apparently literally nobody online understands what a basic tutorial is, because they all start off assuming I know a lot of things that I do not.

So I got disgusting with that and gave up and decided to take a nap in order to help myself come down from this highly agitated state.

But just as I am settling down, the phone rings, and I have to scramble to get it. Turns out it’s not even for me, it was someone looking for Joe.

Great. Now I am even more agitated than before.

Now that I am somewhat calmer, I can see that the whole thing was really a product of my high strung anxious nature. If I had been able to be calmer about the whole thing and to have a sense of humour about it instead of freaking out, I probably would have been able to figure things out via just messing around with stuff.

But that’s not me. Not yet, anyhow. I only wish I had that level of confidence and equanimity. Instead, I am an anxiety ridden mess who is far too prone to panicking and bolting through the nearest exit for my own good.

And I get the feeling that if I want to get out of this tomb of mine, I am doing to have to just get used to being that way until I learn to deal with it.

I won’t get anywhere trying to pretend to have a different personality than the one I’ve got. I can only get ahead if I learn to deal with who I really am.

And that means leaving my island of artificially imposed “peace” and “calm” behind in order to live like an actual human being for a while.

Should be quite the trip.

More after the break.

---

Living in the real world

It’s a scary idea.

It shouldn’t be, but it is.

Because the real world is so much more stimulating than the simulated safety of my sad little sepulcher.. In here, I can completely cut out all stimulation except for that which comes pre-modulated through this god damned screen in front of me.

My whole frigging life has been screens. TV screens, computer screens, portable device screens. I barely look at the real world at all.

No wonder I am so afraid of it.

But I will overcome that fear. I will get a grip on myself and hold my little hand to keep me from running away so I can experience the terrifying stimulation level and see that it is really not that big a deal once I get used to it.

That all it’s going to take. Hanging in there while the fear washes over me, knowing that it will rise, peak, then fade away while I will still be here.

It’s just fear, after all. People deal with it every day.

And after that, I will be okay. The fear won’t be gone completely, in fact it will just start lurking in the shadows of my mind waiting for a chance to strike again.

But its back will be broken, Once I prove that it can’t kill me, only scare me, and that being scared by it is only a temporary blip that will soon pass, fear will not have the power to rule me any more.

Because this fear is nothing but the meaningless phantom of a temporarily disordered neurochemistry. It is less substantial than a hallucination, more temporary than a nightmare, and less meaningful than a drunken rant.

And I am its superior. I know that now. I am much stronger than it, and it knows it, which is why it had to keep me scared of it.

But tonight you die, my friend. For I am the stronger dream.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Wait no…. i meant to say “cocky”. Stupid autocorrect.

This subject has been on my mind again lately. It feels like it’s the only solution to my tragically low self esteem that is available to me.

I can’t make a directly logical case for it. From an absurdly detached point of view, the “proper” form of self-esteem is based on a measured, balanced, reasonable, and above all objective assessment of one’s attributes and resources.

But fuck that. God, I can’t believe I used to think like that. Or rather think I thought like that, it was all bullshit anyhow. A way of stroking my ego about how reasonable and rational and logical a person I was, unlike all those irrational people out there.

Or something to that effect.

Well to hell and back on a Greyhound bus with that. It was delusional from top to bottom and ultimately quite toxic to my psychological wellbeing.

I am not logical. I am an angry, stubborn, unwise, irrational, and somewhat self-destructive and self-defeating bundle of neuroses in the shape of a man. ^[1]

Plus I am genuinely crazy. Diagnosed and under treatment. Any self-assessment has to include this extremely salient fact. Even apart from all the other factors, I am a crazy person and I do crazy things all the time because of that.

One irrational thing I am definitely going to stop doing is judging myself by this laughably wrongheaded notion of “logic”.

I am not a wise man and I accept that I will continue to do dumb shit until the day I die and I am under no delusion that I am some sort of atheistic angel who can or will always act in the most ethically spotless way.

I will do my best but I am merely flesh and bone like the rest of humanity, and thus I am fallible and illogical and quite often utterly clueless about life.

But what do you expect? I haven’t lived life at all. When would I have gotten good at it?

Some things you can only learn by doing. How to live your life is one of them.

All any of us can do is do our best and hope it’s enough. I will always struggle to see the truth of things and to be a rationally compassionate person who uses the tools of logic and analysis as ways to get the best outcomes for everybody.

Pragmatic utilitarianism is a highly demanding discipline in that way.

But I will do so with a full and rich understanding that no matter how high my ideals reach or how pure and selfless my reasoning, I will always been just another silent soul piloting a meat puppet around and trying not to soil the rug.

I hereby absolve myself of any and all responsibility to behave logically, make sense to myself, stay “in control”, and to act like I think I was made by Doctor Soong. .

Instead, I am going to try to life life like I’m on a rocket ride to hell and determined to get as many stamps on my passport as there are in the world.

I mean what the hell. I have given rational restraint a good long try.

Time to give enlightened lunacy a chance.

More after the break.

---

A pair pf khakis

Oh right. I was going to talk about being cocky but then I threadjacked myself into talking about something more important.

Let’s try again.

I know that I have the potential to be really smug and cocky, because that’s how I was when I was in my early 20’s, until a few things knocked me down a peg or two.

But now I think I took it too far. I vastly overcompensated, I think th forces that led to my being full of myself would have been a good thing if I had been less drastic and learned to harness them and modulate their excesses instead of cutting them out at the root.

Because quote honestly, I’m amazing. Intelligence, wit, charisma, etc. By most people’s reckoning, I have every reason to think highly of myself and to use that self-belief to be a confident and effective advocate for myself and really sell myself to potential employers as the miracle man who can solve their problems in a flash.

A nd maybe that would work. Maybe I would ride that rocket to the stars and end up rich and famous at long last.

More likely, I would fall flat on my ass. Hard. But that’s how we learn. We fuck up, fall down, whine about it a bit, then get back up amd try again, this time with the knowledge we gained by failing.

And to be frank, I am sick of pre-failing myself. Of assuming that I can only fail and therefore there is no use trying.

I am at the point where a spectacular failure seems a lot better than not trying at all. I would be proud to know I crashed and burned trying to better myself rather than just meekly keep my head low and stay out of trouble.

Fuck that, I want trouble.

Give me a fight and I’ll fight it. And I will love doing it. A deep and powerful part of me wants to keep challenging the world to fight me until I find a worthy goddamned opponent and face a real struggle for a change.

Think about it. Either I would achieve epic victory or go down in glorious flames knowing that I had really tried by best.

Or maybe I would fail a bunch then win. Also acceptable.

I know one thing : I am very hungry for challenge. Also money, of course. I have been living below the poverty line for a very long time now., Getting quite sick of it.

I deserve a better life than this. I’m an amazing creature, and I deserve to be living a successful middle class lifestyle at a minimum.

Guess I better get out there and get it!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

As I have mentioned, I seem to be extra sleepy lately.

And as usual, this bothers me. I don’t want to sleep all the damned time. I want to be awake and energetic so I can have lots of fun.

And I can’t help but wonder at what is causing this rise in somnolence. It could be something physical. I am not a healthy man and I have a number of conditions which might lead to my needing a lot of sleep.

Or at the very least, to my not having much choice but to get it.

But for me, there is always the psychological angle to consider. I have a long history of using sleep as a way to not have to cope with reality at all – hence my joke about sleep being death without the commitment.

Meaning being asleep is the closest thing you can get to being dead (and therefore not having to cope) without actually dying and thus no longer having being alive and awake as an option.

Because I don’t want to die. I just want to rest. I want to completely stop all the wheels spinning in my head and know the bliss of oblivion for a while so that I can do a cold fresh reboot my consciousness without all the bits and pieces of miscellaneous thoughts and emotions fogging up my mind.

Just like rebooting your computer, I want to defrag my mind, god dammit.

And I don’t get that from sleep. My sleep apnea probably plays a big part in that, but that’s a whole thing I don’t want to get into right now.

And I am positive my fractured psychology plays a big part in it too. I have so much going on in my massive mind at any one time that it is no wonder that my mind can’t ever truly catch up and thus let me truly rest.

And if I ever did catch up, my mind would likely generate a whole lot of new bullshit to process just so it can maintain a feeling of normalcy.

We instinctively want to keep things “normal” ever if normal is terrible. Sort of a “better the hell you know than this scary new ‘heaven’ thing that’s so damned weird.

Plus there’s my hypervigilance to contend with. You can never truly relax and rest when a very deep part of you feels like it constantly has to stay alert to handle the dangers it feels lurking all around you.

You can’t sleep if you don’t feel safe, is what I am saying.

And I do not feel safe. Ever. Even when I am all alone here in my bedroom and safely ensconced in the artificial world of my computer, that deep part of me feels hunted.

And I don’t know what to do about that. I try to send calm, soothing updates to that scared little animal inside me telling it that the danger is long gone and we are perfectly safe now so it can finally relax.

But it’s been in raw nerved paranoia for far too long for that. It treats any attempt to calm it down as if someone is trying to trick it into lowering its guard and therefore trying to bring it to harm, and rejects it.

It’s frustratingly self=sustaining like that.

Clearly no form of reason or logic can penetrate such a dee and primitive paranoia. It does not come from a place of reason, but from something far deeper and older that has been there since the rape that shattered me.

And I was four when that happened.

Only emotion can penetrate that deep. This part of me would need to feel safe before it can relax and let go and let me, at long last, get some real rest.

And I don’t think I can find an external source of that feeling of safety. Not with these mile high social barriers all around me.

So I think it is something I have to simply grant myself, arbitrarily, without the need for justification. Not everything needs to be logically contiguous. It is perfectly fine to throw out the rulebook and do what needs to be done regardless.

Or so I keep telling myself.

Repeat until believed.

More after the break.

---

The social world

You know what? I’m happier there.

And that’s a revelation I really need to put down in words and explore because I need to start overwriting my bad old socially broken tapes with new, fresh, socially functional tapes as soon as possible.

Not only do I not have any good reason to fear being in the social world, I have plenty of reason to think I could very well thrive there.

After all, I am a funny, charming, lovable, and very witty fellow. I am sensitive and very understanding and kind, and I genuinely care about people and want them to do well.

In other words,. I’m one heck of a guy.

And being social makes me happy. That’s why our Sunday dinner at Denny’s is the highlight of my week. For a couple of hours, I get to hang out with my friends and chat and relax and be sociable for a change.

Beats the hell out of being cooped up in this fucking bedroom and whiling away the hours playing video games all the god damned time.

No matter how good the game is, it’s still not as good as being with people

This brings me to a familiar pivot point : am I really introverted, or am I just a broken extrovert afraid to make the human connections I so desperately want and need?

And it’s not just Denny’s. Any time I am leaving the social world to return to my lonely little cell, I feel sad. I feel like I am leaving the warm, vibrant, living world to return to my musty sepulcher and go back to being one of the living dead.

The image that pops up regularly at that time is one of a ventriloquist’s dummy whom everybody loves at their shows but what nobody knows is how sad and broken he feels when he has to go back into his box every night and be all alone and scared when he wants to stay out and be with people.

“I don’t want to go back in the box. ” I think to myself as I part ways with Joe and Julian and go back to my bedroom.

And this confuses me because I have spent such a long time thinking of myself as this ,malfunctioning robot who hides away from the world and flees social situations.

So shouldn’t a release from being social make me happy?

And it does. But it also doesn’t.

It does make The Trog happy. That side of me is always happy to flee the light and go back to squatting in its deep dark dank cave away from everyone else.

But it doesn’t make the actually still healthy part of me happy at all. It wants to stay around people and continue to shine and sparkle and feel connected to the real world and all who live in it.

The important thing for me to remember and hang on to is that I am at my happiest when I am around the right kind of people, and there is no reason why I can’t be just as happy around “normal” people too.

I just need to be around them enough to stimulate me to do all that social development that I was supposed to do back when I was a teen.

Turns out, this road ends where they all end : with me needing to grow the hell up.

And I want to, But I am scared.

Boy, does that sound familiar.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Also, my computer has been upgraded. Woohoo!

In fact, it’s not really the same computer any more. The only things from my old computer are my HD (with all my precious porn files) and my expensive^[1] Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 ti graphics card (GPU).

Everything else : case, motherboard (ASRock A520M-HDV) , RAM (32 gig DDR4) , CPU (Ryzen 7 5080x3D), and cooler (ARCTIC something), is brand new and that is a pretty good feeling.

I guess for a reclusive shut-in like me, it’s a rite of renewal of sorts.

I haven’t had a chance to really put my new hardware to the test. That will probably have to wait till I get a chance to buy a brand new AAA game, and those tend to be around $60-$80, so… not any time real soon. 🙂

Still, I tried to do the next best thing : re-install Baldur’s Gate 3 and see what it’s like to play it when it’s actually running properly.

The fact that some wonderful person recently made a sex mod for it is purely coincidental, I swear.

But nothing is ever simple or easy, is it? I downloaded the game (which went faster than before, by a lot) and now it crashes instantly when I try to run it.

Well I guess I should be grateful that at least it’s not leading me on before dumping me and hard crashing my entire computer like before.

This pisses me off in particular because it was BG3 and the many, many issues I was having while playing it that inspired me to finally get around to upgrading my machine in the first place.

But all is far from lost. I have many tricks to make the fucking thing work that I learned while getting it to run on my previous machine. I will bend it to my will, I swear.

Yesterday’s upgrading was a bit of an adventure. Mostly for spuug, as installing practically everything into the new case was a bit tricky, but also for me because even when all the hardware was installed, included my old HD and GPU, the damned thing did not want to boot up properly.

So then we ended up tackling this technical issue together. And you know what? That felt good. I think that is the closest I have ever come to working in IT. 😉

I think we made a good team. He has the knowledge and expertise. I have an aggressively analytical and incisive mind.

Eventually, we figure out that the problem was a file called asio.sys that only worked on my previous motherboard and crashed on the new one.

We found our way to using a command prompt to find and get to the damned file and rename it, and behold, the frigging thing worked.

Then there was a bunch of downloading drivers for the various bits and pieces, and now my system works more or less the same as it did before the upgrade.

So voila, we have fought our way back to where we started. We’re at net zero, baby!

If I can’t get BG3 working, I will have to scroll through my list of Steam games to find something else that might benefit from the extra oomph.

But mostly, it’s a relief to know that I am good to go on whatever the new hotness is for at least a couple of years.

More after the break.

---

---

And now, a dilemma

Though not a very serious one.

I got Baldur’s Gate 3 working, Did the same thing as I did before : bypassed the game’s stupid launcher and ran it straight from the executables in its Steam directory.

Works just fine that. And the launcher is useless, so nothing is lost.

The dilemma is as follows : now that I have BG3, what’s to become of my game of Dragon Age 2?

That’s the game I’ve actually been playing for the last month or so, and I am quite close to finishing it (I think), so it would be a shame if I gafiated from in in favour of the new (ish) shiny, BG3.

This problem is further complicated by the fact that I am stuck on a REALLY hard fight in Dragon Age 2, and thus the temptation to be a total decadent and fuck up to play another game is strong.

But then I will end up never finishing DA2, and I hate that. I am still kicking myself for never finishing Final Fantasy 7, and that was decades ago.

But that last fight against Sephiroth is so long and you have to go through the same number of his forms over and over every time you lose to him and that shit defeats me.

I hate repetition.
I hate repetition.
I HATE REPETITION.

Anyhow, so I am going to do my best to alternate between the games. I doubt DA2 will run any different with the new hardware, but god damn it, I am going to get past that really tough fight and finish the fucking thing.

Even if I have to take a massive wound to my pride and lower the difficulty level in order to do it.

But boy, do I want to avoid that! That would not only wound my pride, but it would also feel like cheating, and I would hate that too.

So I will keep trying until I find a way to kill all those god damned Shades that start coming at me out of nowhere.

If I can eliminate them, then I can probably handle the Pride Demon that tags along with them. Single enemies, even very powerful ones, are way easier to handle than the big gangs of low level enemies.

Oh right. One further complication. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT.

Here at the end of the game, my boyfriend Anders betrays me. Turns out he was using me all along so he could commit a major act of magical terrorism that kills a whole lot of people and turns everyone else against all mages.

And I am a mage. God dammit.

That is also a factor in not wanting to play. My just and merciful nature precludes my just straight up killing him for his massive act of unspeakable violence, but the pain of his betrayal still lingers with me.

I really feel like I took him into my heart, and he then stabbed me in it.

Pretty heavy stakes for a fantasy RPG, n’est-ce pas?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’m still trying to figure out how to balance all of this.

Today was Therapy Thursday, and as part of today’s session, I vented a lot of my fears, frustrations, doubts, despair, and so on to Doctor Costin.

And as a result, I actually felt a lot better afterwards.

This is not new. In fact, the “innovation” that I feel a hell of a lot better if I get all the nasty negatives out of my system has surfaced so many times in this space that at this point it’s practically its own genre.

The tricky bit is figuring out what to do with this information.

The long term goal is fairly clear : integrating my emotions well enough into my personality that the negatives don’t build up to the point of needing me to vent them at high pressure now and then any more.

A lofty and noble goal, to be sure, but the devil’s in the details.

I haven’t the foggiest idea where to start that process. I am getting better at letting my anger rise to the surface of my mind and be felt, but I don’t know how to do with same with things like my depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and so on.

I guess part of the problem is that these are emotions I don’t like to admit to having, even to myself.

What is worse, at least in a surface sense, these are the very emotions I am trying to fight in order to free myself from my chronic depression in the first place.

Perhaps that’s entirely the wrong approach, though. Perhaps I need to embrace all of y emotions and worry more about handling the negative cognitive processes.

After all, on another level and in another way, I have been trying to unlearn a lifetime of emotional suppression by learning to embrace my emotions and feel them to their fullest, warts and all.

And that goes double for the really dark and warty emotions like despair, self-loathing, dread, and the desire to self-harm.

But as usual, I’m scared. I don’t want to fall down the deep dark hole of depression. I want to stay in the light until I get used to it.

I don’t know how to be a dark person.

Dramatic, maybe. Poetic, definitely. Maybe even kind of emo.

But dark? Me? The cute little floof of a fox? All funny and silly and sensitive and sweet? That lovely and lovable fellow?

Surely, if I got dark (or at least darker), nobody would want anything to do with me any more. I mean, why would they?

I am only as worthwhile as I am fun to be around, right? If I let the dark stuff show, my magic spell will be broken and people will realize what a nightmare I really am.

My charisma and charm can only mesmerize people so much, ya know.

Don’t worry. I know how wrong all that is. I know that’s not how the world sees me at all, and I know all about imposter syndrome and feeling like you have people fooled.

Doesn’t make me immune to it, though. I know that on some level, I would rather think I have everyone fooled than accept that there is something genuinely wonderful and good about me that other people can see.

But why? What de fuck is up with that? Perhaps it’s a simple matter of identity stability. I have thought of myself as something truly awful for so long that accepting that I might actually be something good would be too much of a change.

But I feel like there’s something more going on there. Fear of hope, perhaps. Or maybe a loss of detached cynicism and the feeling of master and control it gives.

After all, if I accept the praise, I risk losing it again in the future, don’t I?

Better to stay in safe and cozy self-loathing.

More after the break.

---

Yo gaba gaba

Gabapentin, to be precise.

You see, I haven’t had any in a couple of days, and my pain is getting worse. But it’s my own fault that I ran out and could not get more.

See, I did a dumb. I switched from taking 200 mg of Gabapentin once a day to taking it twice a day without telling anyone.

And there’s people who really should have been told. Like my pharmacist Simon and my GP Doctor Chao, for instance.

Because I never told them, they never changed what it says in their files so according to the province’s records, I should not be out of Gabapentin yet.

In fact, I should have around a month left. Oops.

Because of this very “me” mistake, when I called my pharmacy on Tuesday, the pharmacist was unable to give me an emergency supply to last me until I saw my GP next Monday. It is just way too early. The province would have pitched a fit.

They would probably have thought I was selling my meds on the black market. Not that I imagine there’s a big secondary market for Gabapentin. It’s not exactly a party drug.

I’d probably get a lot more money for my Ozempic.

Besides, it’s not like I would know how to find the black market. I don’t even known where to find an off-white market.

Really run down malls in bad neighborhoods?

Anyhow, luckily, I was able to get a phone appointment to talk with Doc Chao tomorrow and, god willin’ and the crick don’t rise. we will be able to sort this whole thing out.

And not a moment too soon, because my pain is getting pretty bad. Luckily it is remaining at a background level when I am lying down, and it’s not too bad when I am sitting here at Mister Computer, but standing and moving around really hurts.

I have a backup plan, though. If Chao is all, “Nothing I can do, my hands are tied” and so on, I will simply pivot and ask him to give me a prescription for just enough of something else with a similar effect to last me till I once more align with the government’s expectations of my usage level.

At least I have Aleve. It helps a little.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

He screwed up, and he wants you to know how bad he feels about it.

Yes, LOL. That was hilarious. I am especially impressed by his ability to maintain that contrite tone and demeanor even when the gun is like an inch from his head. He doesn’t flinch, laugh, or look to the side at whoever’s arm is in that fuzzy glove.

Very well done, and very funny. See? We have a sense of humor about ourselves!

Well, I do, at least. I’m sure there are furries who will get their tails in a knot over it.

Then the joke is on you, fellow fuzzies. Relax!

---

The dry run

No really. They do.

Seriously though. Today, as it turns out, was a dry run for when spuug REALLY comes over to put my new computer together.

He came over, which was very sweet of him. He took my computer apart. He took my new motherboard out of its box.

And he quickly determined that there was no way said motherboard would fit in my weirdly small computer case.

Turns out the motherboard is “Micro ATX” and the case is “Micro ITX”, the I in this case apparently standing for “ittybitty”.

Well, that put the kibosh on that. And at first, I thought I was going to have to wait until next Deposit Day, Feb 14, to get the case. Sad face. 🙁

But then I thought, I might have enough left in the deposit I made on Joe’s credit card for a really cheap case.

So I poked around online to see if there were cases I could afford.

Turns out there was. On Amazon. But it would take more than a week to get to me and cost me $17 for shipping.

But then I thought, why not buy it from a dealer here? Like an actual brick and mortar store located right here in Richmond?

Hey, remember those?

So I looked it up on the website of Canada Computer and lo and behold, there was a plain black case on sale for $60, no shipping, just PST.

So I ordered it, and when it’s ready for pickup, Julian is going to pick it up for me. Then I will email spuug to tell him I’m ready for real now, and he will come over again and this time we will get the job done.

Hopefully, that will happen Friday.

Oh well. At least one thing went right today : I got my new keyboard.

Yay, I can type the letters W, S, and X once more!

I can finally continue my correspondence with my friend in Wessex.

And my friend at Windex, come to think of it.

The new keyboard is smaller than the one it’s replacing, though, so it is going to take some time to re-learn to type with my big fat fingers.

I am already starting to get used to it, though, so no worried.

*sigh* Nothing is ever easy, is it? Nothing is ever simple.

But whatever comes up, I’ll deal with it.

I always do.

---

I messed up

When spuug came over, I totally forgot to eat lunch.

D’oh! I should never miss a meal. And the worst part of it is that by the time I realized what I had done, it was practically time for supper, and therefore way too late to fix it.

All I can do now is resume my usual routine and hope it works out.

Oh, and I am afraid you lovely folks won’t be getting the full 1K words today. By the time spuug finished putting my computer back together and left, it was 7:30 pm, and I knew I would not have the time for two writing sessions.

If only typing on the tablet didn’t suck so bad, I could blog there.

Ah well. Things will go back to normal soon, and I will have a lovely new computer that runs zippy quick to play with, and things will be better.

Just have to make it through the usual turbulence first.

See you on the other side of it!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I.e., I had a lot of great ideas about what to write about today earlier, and I remember none of them right now.

I can only hope that one of them will come back to me as I blather on today.

Oh well. Guess it’s time to post some smut.

We will start out with proof that some rhinos have TWO horns.

Gotta love it when two big, butch, impressively masculine species are getting down and dirty with the gay buttsex.

And I love the smug look on the rhino’s face. He knows how awesome he is, and judging by the look on the tiger’s face, he knows it too.

Damn do I need to get laid.

Let’s see. Right now I am waiting for tomorrow’s visit from spuug. He’s going ot come over to put my new-ish computer together.

That reminds me, I have to make sure I know where that DDR4 RAM I bought before is, because we’re going to need it.

I know it’s on the bed somewhere….

I am trying to keep my expectations for life with the new CPU et al reasonable. I know that my enthusiastic and excitable nature can lead me to have absurdly high expectations for things I am looking forward to, and that, for obvious reasons, only leads to a big crash of depression and disappointment when the thing actually happens.

So I am doing what I can to keep a grip on myself and keep my expectations reasonable and realistic.

My new computer setup will not unlock a golden paradise where everything will be wonderful all the time forever. It will not transform my gaming experience into nonstop bliss. It will not even make things all THAT different.

It will just make things run somewhat faster and smoother, and make playing the latest games possible for me for at least a couple years.

It’ll be fun. But it won’t be heaven.

OK, time for more smut!

Let’s stick with the tiger but this time, offer a more intimate portrait.

I can’t get enough of that “all the goodies” shot. Cock, balls, and that beautiful butthole all in one delectable shot.

I bet I could make him purr.

Other than computer related stuff, my life is quite calm. For now at least, my health seems to be stable, knock on wood, and I have been taking it easy.

Well, I always take it easy when I should be taking it hard. Real hard.

Damn I need to get laid.

One more pic. Hmm, have I done anything shareable with the ladies lately?

Yup! Pee warning! Dragons pee large amounts.

In my mind, Linda works HR in a very accommodating workplace that has everything their rather diverse group of employees needs in order to feel safe and be comfortable.

Including a ladies’ room built for large female quadrupeds like Linda. .

Not shown : Floor drains. Really, really good floor drains.

More after the break.

---

The thirst trap

Well, so much for peace on the health front. Dmmit, I knew I shouldn’t have said anything about it. I jinxed it.

I have noticed myself becoming increasingly thirsty over the last few days. To the point where I fill my 1.2 liter cup with water and it is empty again a few minutes later.

This has me very, very worried. Extreme thirst is a classic sign that your diabetes is way out of whack, and that’s a pretty bad thing.

It’s simple, really. Blood sugar being too high leads to your body desperately needing to dump that excess sugar into your urine. So it manufactures a whole lot of urine to take it away. That depletes your body’s water supply, leading to thirst.

And I am guessing Jardiance, with its ketonic action, makes that all the more efficient.

I wonder if the brownie cookies from McD’s I had on Friday have something to do with this?^[1] Granted, that was four days ago, but still.

But Fru, wouldn’t that mean you’ve been peeing a lot too?

Yup, and I have been. I mean, it’s hard to tell when you pee a lot anyway, but I definitely feel like I have been peeing more than usual lately.

I have also been sleepier than usual. No idea if that’s related or not, but it’s nevertheless worth noting. It feels like I am sleepy all the time and can only stay awake if I keep myself constantly busy. The minute I take a breather, I conk out.

But I dunno. Maybe it’s been that way for a long time and I never noticed it before now. That would be very on brand of me.

Regardless, I will be keeping my eye on my thirst/pee levels over the next few days. This could be just some transient thing that will pass in a few days, like many other bouts of health weirdness, but for someone with my fragile health, it pays to exercise an abundance of caution.

Oh. And my nose is running too. Maybe I am coming down with something, and this urine/hydration thing is just the first signs of it.

Wouldn’t that just be dandy.

God damn it. I was in such a good mood earlier, and now I feel all grumpy and depressed and pissed off at the world.

And this, when I have spuug coming over some time tomorrow. What a lovely time to be sick. Ain’t life grand.

Oh well, I can take it. Whatever happens, I’ll just deal with it.

Wish I’d gotten that case, though.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/19d29y5/13_year_old_boy_schools_adults_on_national_tv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

That’s the kind of angry atheism I can get behind.

Religion has its legitimate uses. Solace in a time of pain and chaos. Guidance towards a moral life and a higher state of being. A place to go where you feel included and welcome and like you are part of a community. A way to deal with the fundamental loneliness of being an over-brained monkey lost on the ocean of being. A way to give thanks… and complain. A way for people to formulate their intentions and desires and release them into the world via praying. A way to make sense of the world and your place in it. And a regular gathering with like-minded people where through rituals, song, and teachings you synchronize your mood and your mind with your fellow believers and get the deep pleasure of human connection so necessary for us to thrive.

Or so I’ve been told.

All those things, and doubtless many many more, can safely and legitimately be in the wheelhouse of religion. They are vitally important spiritual and emotional functions that help billions of people cope whether or not they are “true”.

But religion can’t feed you, or clothe you, or shelter you, or give you a job. Only people can do that. And while religion might inspire someone to do that for others, it will still be people, and not god(s), who do it.

Real, live, human people who are down here on Earth with the rest of us. People who are not all that different from us. People with no special role in divinity or permission to lead or powers unavailable to all of us.

Just your fellow human beings trying to do the right thing, just like you.

What religion should not ever be allowed to do is to be an impediment to action on the things we human beings can do for ourselves. Don’t pray for relief from disease when you can go the dang doctor. Don’t use prayer as a balm to soothe the aches and pains of cruel poverty when you can advocate for change. Don’t go to your astrologer for business advice, go to an accountant.

The boy is quite right to say these things come from human beings, not Ram or God or Ronald McFucking Donald. All the important and pragmatic things need to be ruled by the people and things we know to be real.

Things like this life, in this world, right now. Maybe there’s an afterlife, and maybe there isn’t. But we know for sure we have this life and it is ours to live and experience and enjoy as much as we can.

So why live your life denying yourself all the pleasures your God put here on Earth for you in favour of some post-life stage that might not even be real?

God, if He exists, wants you to be happy. Like any good Father, he wants to see his children grown and thrive and prosper. Anyone who says otherwise in favour of an angry, punishing, anti-joy and anti-fun and anti-pleasure God needs to ask themselves whose voice they have really been listening to?

Hint : It ain’t God’s.

Man, I would be an amazing preacher.

More after the break.

---

When I withdraw….

…things fall apart.

I’ve only just realized how big a pattern this is for me. I put a few tentative, tender, timid tentacles out into the world for a little while and maybe even start to feel a little bold and confident, but at the slightest sign of trouble, scariness, or challenge, those things spool back into me like a retracting measuring tape and I completely withdraw from reality and leave everything to go to hell out there while I stay “safe”.

Ehehehe. Some fuckin’ safety. The dude from The Life of Pi was safer than I am, and he was stuck on a rowboat with a tiger.

But hey, it was the same tiger for months on end. He had plenty of time to get used to it being there. And after that, it probably felt just as “safe”.

Anyhow, where was I?

Hell, many times it has only been after everything goes to hell in the world outside my mind than I feel like it’s “safe” for me to emerge again.

After all, the new scary or hard or troubling thing is gone now so it must be “safe”. Sure, I have done harm to myself by giving up on doing something I should be doing or could be doing to improve my lot in life but none of that matters.

Because when that far too sensitive alarm system goes off, all that matter is escape, and to hell with the consequences. That’s how the adrenal response works.

And it doesn’t bother me that I am sabotaging myself in horrible ways because I am not there to experience it. I am locked away in the stuffy little safe room in the crawlspace of my mind, “safe”.

The things falling apart and the ways in which I am failing are the outside world’s problem, not mine.

That’s why I give up on things so easily, whether it’s a new video game, an attempt at self-improvement, or a goddamned expensive sex toy.

New things are inherently highly stimulating and therefore prime me for freaking out at the merest hint of trouble. The potential for overwhelm is high and my threshold for overwhelm is low, and so it’s amazing that anything new can ever enter my life.

A game’s got to be pretty good to survive that, I guess.

And that’s how the “wall of fear’ I described to my therapist as holding me captive last week works. It doesn’t matter what my desires, intentions, or best interests are, once that alarm goes off, I retract,. everything falls apart, and I get absolutely nowhere.

In order to escape, therefore, I need to calm that god damned alarm down, and the only way I can think of to do that is a variation on the exposure therapy used for phobias.

But even that would require a certain steadiness of resolve precluded by the very problem I am trying to solve.

What I need is for someone to hold my hand and anchor me and help me to stay calm and not be triggered so easily.

My lonely childhood did not include anyone like that. Not once I went to school.

And I don’t feel capable of making that for myself, either. Whatever it would take to be able to do something like that, I ain’t got it.

So I guess I’ll be a fugitive from nothing rotting on my lonely island till I die.

But anyhow, how about you?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’m worried about it.

Noticed on Friday that I limp now. That’s because my right knee keeps buckling. Not all the way, thank God, but enough to cause me to lose my balance if I am not ready for it and to make me “dip” on the right hand side.

It’s at its worst when I have just gotten out of bed after laying down a while. I guess the transition from “no strain” to “full fat guy strain” is a bit much for it.

And it’s at its best if I have walked enough to work out the knots in my leg muscles and gotten the blood flowing through them and warmed them up.

I still risk a fall, but it’s more manageable.

For now, I am keeping a close eye on the situation. If I feel like it is getting better on its own, I will leave it alone.

But if it stays the same or gets worse, I’m going to have to take it to Doctor Chao or maybe even the dreaded Urgent Care.

I am growing quite sus of that place. Last time I went there, I went to take a number like the sign says but lo and behold, the numbers were not there.

I ended up standing there completely confused. And it was up to a kind fellow waiting in the waiting room (ergo, another sick person, not any facility employee) to explain to me that this meant they were at capacity and not taking on more patients at that time.

Not that there was a sign telling people that or anything. No, they apparently thought just taking the numbers away was enough.

After all, it kept patients from bugging the receptionists, and that’s the only important thing, right? What an atrocious clusterfuck.

Hey near. Clusterfuck is in the Windows dictionary. Under “Fuck, cluster”, no doubt.

And then recently, when my roomie Joe went there after having had a cold/flu/whatever hang on for more than a week, he found their doors shut tight because some kind of very loud alarm was going off and nobody knew how to turn it off.

You’re right, I would hate to have to endure a very loud alarm. Way better to just die.

As an adjunct to the ER at Richmond Hospital for the less-urgent cases, the place is failing. The fact that they turn people away when they are at capacity is proof of that.

You know who doesn’t turn people away when they are at capacity? The ER. You know what they do? They manage. They improvise. They work it out.

At this point, personally, it is only a thin thread of wanting to do my civic duty and use the system like I am supposed to use it that would keep me from saying “fuck Urgent Care” and taking my bum leg straight to the ER.

Better still to take it to Doctor Chao, but the probability that he is all booked up till Groundhog Day is high so I have to consider other measures.

This is the Boomer Medical Apocalypse that has been coming for a long time and that we knew would happen but had no idea what to do about it.

The largest demographic in modern history is hitting their most medically demanding age and us smaller generations are left with a medical system where all the Boomer doctors are retiring or dying and we are stuck with way too many patients with way too few doctors, nurses and so on to treat them all.

Leave it to the Boomers to save being the biggest pain in the ass to everyone who is not them till the last.

More after the break.

---

Somehow I have to fly

This song has come to be a hell of a lot to me.

And it means that much to me because I feel like it expresses exactly where I am in my spiritual journey right now, albeit from the other side.

The singer of that song is an ephemeral, delicate creature of the mind and the imagination trying to cope with having to deal with drab, boring, indelicate reality in order to survive.

But me, I’m a Taurus. We live in the “real world”. We are grounded in it. We are inherently drawn to the real, the stable, the lasting, and the solid and tend to ignore the more diaphanous realities in which the singer lives as being too soft to be reliable.

And we need things to be reliable.

And yet, the singer and I have reached the same place in our lives, albeit from the opposite sides : somehow, we have to fly.

I need to be more like him, and learn that there are worse things than leaving reality’s limitations behind in order to become what you need to become.

To a stolid Taurus type, leaving reality behind is the definition of insanity. We try to be one with the limitations of the world in order to exert mastery over it.

But I’m a Taurus with Venus in Gemini. And that song feels very Gemini to me. Geminis tend to be tender little butterflies it seems like a drop of dew could destroy.

And me, I am a very old caterpillar who is just now, at the age of 50, starting to seriously wonder if those butterflies know something I don’t.

Maybe their world of thought and imagination and inspiration unbound by mundane reality contains the things I long for the most and is therefore not the blind alley trap that I think it is, necessarily.

Maybe part of my particular nature demands release from the chains of the “true” and the “real” so it can spread its wings and fly.

Maybe I have to leave the roads of logic and the “sensible” world behind so I can stop looking for the exit to where I want to go and just go there anyway, without justification.

Maybe that’s what learning to fly really means.

And therefore maybe I can escape the logic trap after all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

That is such an excellent response to a nosy and invasive question.

My reply would be, “Only if you tell me yours first! ” That way, they know what it is like to be asked that question and might just get some insight on why it would be offensive to someone to be asked that question.

As for me, you lovely readers know that I am gender ambivalent. I feel that I am both male and female and feel absolutely no pressure to “choose”.

I am both genders, dialed up to 11. If you can’t handle that, that’s your problem. I will just keep on being fabulous and amazing without you. Your loss.

I think I will start referring to myself as “megasexual”. That kind of gets the idea across.

Or maybe “metasexual”, just to fuck with people’s minds in a very Gen X, post modern, ouroboros kind of way.

Go ahead. Ask what it means. My answer will astound and confuse you, as befits my status as a trickster.

We’re here to make you think.

---

Meanwhile, in my other world

One of my computer components arrived today : the motherboard. So that, at least, is taken care of.

That means the CPU and the cooler have yet to arrive. The cooler shipped today, so I am confident it will be here soon.

That leaves the CPU, which is the one component coming to me from the USA and therefore is the wildcard.

Amazon says my guaranteed delivery date is this Tuesday, the 23rd, and I hope it makes it on time as I have asked spuug to come visit on Wednesday and things would get rather awkward if the CPU does not show up to the party.

It is, after all, the guest of honor.

I still can’t seem to make up my mind and pull the trigger on a case that I want, though. For someone reason, ordering it feels like a far bigger deal than ordering components.

Well, I was just ordering the components my fuzzy friends told me to order, so… not exactly a lot of decision making involved.

And as we know, I might have a really hard time with decisions sometimes. Especially the decision to take action.

Aw, but doing things means leaving the stinking, septic shelter of the world inside my head, and that’s scary and hard!

I keep circling back to the idea that in order to grow and change and escape my fetid tomb, I am going to have to willingly plunge my soul into the fires of creation by facing all my fear and rage and self-loathing head on and endure all the suffering my depression will throw at me to try to break my will so I can emerge pure and reforged on the other side of the flames.

But it’s so much easier to just keep letting things slide, even though they slide almost entirely downhill towards death.

Not better. Just easier.

And life’s too short to limit yourself to that which is easy,.

More after the break.

---

Nothing fucking works

Pardon my growling, but I ordered from Donair Dude and they gave me a 591 ml regular Pepsi instead of Diet Pepsi and it pissed me off.

Now I lodged a complaint and got a refund on the drink, so justice has been served and material damages have been covered.

But honestly, I am so tired of little fuckups like this that I am in the mood to get me some frigging punitive damages for emotional pain and suffering too.

I was really looking forward to that Diet Pepsi, partly for the flavour, but mostly for the caffeine. I am still addicted to it.

I shouldn’t be. But I am. Granted, I drink a lot less of it than I used to when my legs worked and I drank a liter of Diet Coke with lunch and again with supper.

You know. To help with my writing. Writing is traditionally powered by caffeine, isn’t it? Granted, it’s usually in the form of coffee or tea, but the principal holds.

Most days, I don’t miss it too much. I usually only miss it when I am sleepy but I need to go somewhere and/or get something done.

It helps a lot that my body doesn’t seem to realize that the cola I drink the most is caffeine free and so when I drink it, the cravings are satisfied.

I hope my body stays dumb like that.

Now I need a way to lose this shitty mood…

---

Fields of green

I know! I’ll post some lovely G-rated pics.

Like how about this majestic fellow?

I couldn’t figure out where I wanted the sun to be or how to get it there. One of these versions of Stable Diffusion needs to include the ability to just click and drag picture elements to where you want them to be.

As is, it kind of looks like the sun is shining out of his butt.

I have a fondness for tuxedo cats. You know, the black cats with the white chest? Some of the sweetest (and biggest) kitties I have ever known have been in formalwear.

And that inspired me to create this sophisticated fellow.

In my mind, he’s a prosperous businesscat who owns a small chain of fisheries with a storefront out front that sells the freshest fish in town.

Caught fresh today!

Let’s see, one more…. how about this family snapshot?

That’s either a kitten with a teddy bear, if you take the traditional view, or a teddy bear with a kitten if you go by volume.

Either way, it’s very sweet. I do good work.

For what it’s worth, the kitten is, indeed, naked. But tastefully so.

What do you know, it worked. I feel a lot less grumpy now.

I will have to remember this particular technique. Solving bad moods by the liberal application of cute memes.

That’s just so “me”, ya know?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.