The computer case, that is.

Having ordered the new CPU (Ryzen 7 5800x3D), cooler (ALPINE Arctic 23), and motherboard (ASrock A520M), all that remains is for me to find a case I can afford that isn’t full of glowy shit and doesn’t look like Darth Vader’s humidifier.

Like I said yesterday, . I don’t need a new case, but I would like one, and getting one would make life a lot easier for Spuug when he comes over to put it all together for me.

My current case is weirdly small and hard to work in. For all I know, in my ignorance, it might be that the new motherboard wouldn’t even fit in my current case.

Not with the HD, GPU, and so on in there.

I wish I could afford this one. It’s actually almost tasteful.

It looks like some antique Victorian coffee maker or jukebox. Or maybe the “In case of emergency, break glass” fire alarm on a particularly well decorate alien spacecraft.

But alas, it’s around $50 USD more than I can afford right now.

And then there’s this ludicrous thing a friend showed me :

I get that the idea is to maximize airflow and thereby maximize cooling and hence performance on your PC, but are the translucent black panels really necessary?

I mean, what do they even do? Besides enhance that “casual evil” look?

Interesting to see that the translucent black look is back, though. I associate it mostly with electronics from the Seventies.

Yet another piece of evidence that the Seventies have returned. Yay. I would only be happy to see the Seventies back if it meant I got to be a kid again but with eveything that I know now intact.

I would go back to being around five, I think. Get to spend a year as a carefree kid before having to go back to school.

And if you thought I got good marks the first time around… this time I would actually try.

And needless to say, if any naked strangers approached me in the showers at The Spa, I would punch them right in the fucking dick.

Anyhow, this is the one I will likely get :

It’s not exactly pretty. Way too monochromatic for my tastes. It is in dire need of some kind of accent color. Gold, perhaps, or a tasteful silver for that “well dressed goth” look.

But the price is right and it’s not hideous or anything. In fact, if anything, it is slightly better looking than my current too-small case.

At least it’s a tower case and not whatever you call my current case : some sort of squat cottage case, or maybe a emergency shelter case.

I will need to make up my mind soon or whatever I pick will not arrive before the other components and said components will have nowhere to go.

Ordering internal components is so much easier. Nobody cares what they look like.

More after the break.

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He’s such a card

Phew! Things are finally back to normal.

Julian was able to get me a Pay Power card at Freshco, and after an abortive attempt on my own, with Julian’s able assistance, I was able to get it registered.

And I am now apparently a Door Dash man because after many, many years with Skip the Dishes, their service no longer takes my card.

But DoorDash does! So they get my money. ^[1]

And I spend a lot on ordering in. Too much, honestly. I am going to try to cut back to ordering in only twice a week so I can then use that money buying something of a more lasting value, like books.

I never read books any more. I should get back into that. They help me sleep.

The tablet, on the other hand, overstimulates me, and therefore takes me in the wrong direction entirely. That naughty thing!

What I should do is make sure I have a book I want to read close at hand on my bed and then leave the tablet in my bathroom when I want to sleep.

That way I can leverage my general sloth again my late night tablet habit, betting that I will be too lazy (or ill) to get up and go get it when there is a lovely book right there for me to read.

I am almost positive that my sleep would improve immensely if I did that. All it takes is the willpower to do it!

And I definitely have that!

At first. Usually. Maybe.

The true rest comes when the original wavbe of enthusiasm crashes and keeping the healthy new habit going requires an additional investment of energy.

And long term repeated investments of personal energy with no end in sight are anathema to us more dysthymic type depressives.

We are energy misers, and always act from a position of energy austerity, as if we are constantly on the edge of energy starvation and must ration our energy very very carefully in order to get our minimal effort life activities done.

The problem is not a lack of energy, but of motivation. We have the energy in our bodies but the lack of motivation from the reward center of our brains blocks its use.

The tank is full but the spark plugs don’t spark.

In fact, a sure sign that my depression is hitting me hard is when absolutely nothing seems worth doing to me.

Not even playing video games or masturbating or eating. And those are the three things with the highest reward to effort ratio I have within my reach.

Luckily, I know how to handle that. I just do things in a rote, robotic way until the cloud passes and I am back to “normal”.

I dunno, though. Maybe I would be better off if I just let myself fall apart now and then and thus forced myself to get to rock bottom… and start over again.

Kind of like rebooting.

But I have this powerful compulsion to just keep going no matter what. I just keep puttering along at my tragically low level come what may.

And I don’t know how to turn that off.

And to be honest…. I’m too scared to do it.

What if I never turn back on again?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Let’s talk about my rage.

I have a lot of it.

And I really don’t want to talk about it. I prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist and that I am one hundred percent the cute, cheerful, brain, friendly fuzzball everyone knows me as.

But that’s not normal. Normal people get angry at each other sometimes. Normal people have a temper. Normal people can use their anger to protect themselves when needed.

And normal people definitely don’t suppress absolutely every emotion that does not fit with the happy go lucky image their project to the world.

Normal people can just relax and be themselves, and let the chips fall where they may. They are not possessed by a deep and corrosive self-consciousness that monitors and judges and controls everything that they do in a very misguided attempt to control outcomes and keep me from embarrassing myself or worse, being out of control

Because heaven forbid that my every single move not be the product of carefully reasoned choices that were very thoroughly checked for booby traps and pitfalls before being approved by the safety committee in my head.

The same committee that will excoriate me completely after the fact if I should ever make a move it didn’t approve of in the heat of the moment.

Jesus, no wonder I find it so hard to do anything and end up doing very little that is even remotely new to me. What impulse can possibly survive such a winnowing? How could anyone meet such a brutally unfair standard? How could anything human make it through such an inhuman labyrinth?

Clearly, that shit’s got to stop. I need to ease way the fuck off myself so I can breathe and live and be a free and valid human being.

But back to the rage. (Damn it, I threadjacked myself again. )

I have a great supply of latent rage due to hardly ever expressing it at all. That combined with all the suppressed pain from my very lonely and isolated childhood and the primary trauma of being raped as a toddler leads to my carrying a raging firestorm of impotent anger around while pretending to the world and myself that it’s not there.

And that’s bad. Very, very bad.

For one thing, it costs a lot of internal resources just to keep that firestorm contained. It also means that a great deal of my personal energy is locked away where I can’t use it as part of that containment procedure.

If I could release that raging wildfire and survive the consequences, when the smoke cleared I would be a much calmer, stronger, happier person.

But first, I would have to stop being so god damned afraid of my rage. I would have to stop listening to the evil and corrupt voice in my head that tells me to never ever so much as touch all that raging hellfire because if I do, I and my sanity will be consumed by the flame and I will become some kind of murderous lunatic who will end up shot to death by the police after going on a long and bloody killing spree.

That might feel like it could happen. But it can’t. That’s just another of my depression’s long, long list of distortions, distractions, and outright lies.

Sure, I might go a little crazy for a little while. I might become mighty irritable as I struggle to find a new equilibrium, one that INCLUDES anger but is not dominated by it. I might have to go through an “angry young (sic) man” phase.

But that’s a far cry from going on a murderous rampage.

And it behooves me to remember that.

More after the break.

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Very good news

Not only have I finally ordered my dream CPU, but it ended up costing a lot less than I thought it would!

I know what my “mistake” was. When I went to the Amazon USA website and looked up the CPU I wanted, I naturally assumed that the price listed was in American dollars.

But it wasn’t! It was in Canadian dollars! Meaning, when doing my calculations as to how much all this was gonna cost me, I converted the price into Canadian money when it had already been done.

The result? When I went to order the CPU today, it was a bit over $100 less than I thought it was going to be!

I wish all my mistakes turned out that good.

Now I could ask Joe for a refund. But I don’t think I Will. I think I will get the motherboard, cooler, and case I need with the overflow instead.

Then the only thing left of my old PC will be the hard drive, and what the hell, maybe I will get a new one of those one day too.

Then the Ship of Theseus transformation of my computer will be complete!

Well except that I would probably keep the old HD around for the storage space. And there is no point in replacing the mouse or WiFi or Bluetooth dongly bits.

Heck, the new motherboard probably comes with Bluetooth and Wifi built in!

Needless to say, this has put me in quite a good mood. I am going to get my snazzy new computer and I won’t even have to be all that financially strained by it all.

UPDATE : I have now ordered the CPU cooler and motherboard my fuzzy friends recommended to go with the CPU, and I still have $95 left in my Joe’s Visa budget, so now I am looking at cases.

And I mean, just look at them. What a bunch of garish, tasteless, ridiculous nonsense.

I mean, who would want something like that shining on their desktop or under their desk all the frigging time?

I was looking for something simple, plain, functional, and cheap. A “no frills” case.

Enter this fascist monolith. On second thought, don’t, because they will probably do something horrible to you involving the word “probe”.

Well, it’s not garish, and it is definitely cheap. But man, is it ugly.

I may get it anyway, though, as it is within my budget and I usually put my computer cases with the rear end facing me so I can get at all the cables and USB ports anyhow.

Then I will just have to worry that when I’m asleep, it’s just watching me… And waiting.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

The anointed day had finally arrived. I was all ready for Julian to drive me to the bank at 11 am so I could withdraw my cash and give Joe an additional $200 “on account” so I could charge the approximately $463 for my new CPU on his credit card and finally get my grand upgrade going.

But at 10:50 am, Julian knocked on my door to tell me that it was still snowing out and that the radio was telling everyone to stick to essential travel only and as eager as I am to get the upgrade ball rolling, I can’t very well argue it’s essential per se, and it certainly isn’t worth risking out necks by trying to drive in this crap, so I have been thwarted.

And being thwarted really thmarts.

Hopefully things will be less hazardous tomorrow because not only do I want to go to the bank but I need to go to Wound Care too.

If we can make it to Wound Care, we can make it to the bank after, as the Community Care Clinic where I get my Wound Care is a lot further away than my bank.

I honestly should switch banks to one that has Visa Debit so I can spend money online and have it come directly from my bank account and skip this whole buying a credit card every month business entirely.

In fact, at that point, all I would have to do is figure out Venmo so I could pay Joe the rent every month and I would never need to go the the bank again.

That sounds nice.

Speaking of money and Joe, this is going to be a bit of a lean month for me. Diverting $200 to my CPU purchase will put a bit of a strain on my finances and so I will have to forego my usual ordering in via Skip for possibly the entire month.

Oh well. One must suffer for one’s indulgences, or something like that.

I spend too much money ordering in anyhow. Might be good for me to learn to go without for a month. Might help me kick the habit so I can use that money on something more lasting – like more computer upgrades!

Or, ya know. Something more sensible. Like a new goddamned bed. One without spring poking up constantly trying to impale me.

Granted, I don’t need a new bed for that. I just need to clear all the crap off my existing bed so Joe and Julian can flip and turn the mattress for me.

But a brand new bed could make a huge difference in my life, if it helped me sleep better. And it had better, or I would return the damned thing.

I would not shell out that much dough just to have a bed that looks pretty.

Or maybe I should aim lower and get a new comforter. One that is guaranteed to be machine washable so that I don’t end up in the same situation, with a comforter that has not been washed in like a a decade, again.

According to Joe, dry cleaners don’t clean comforters, and they are not machine washable. So apparently, when these large, heavy, expensive items get dirty, people just throw them away and buy another one.

I have my doubts.

More after the break.

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Trying to start

I think that somewhere inside me is a spark plug that stubbornly keeps trying to ignite my fuel mixture and get me going somewhere in life.

But it is doomed to fail because of the heavy, oppressive weight of my depression’s dark and evil regime killing any such spark of life with its freezing bulk and torturous stasis and phantom fears before said spark can come anywhere near starting something.

Because as badly as I want to get going, it is nothing compared to just how badly I am afraid to leave.

I am terrified of the real world. Frightened of growing up. For whatever reason, failure to launch types like myself are positive that the real world will destroy them and so our only survival strategy is to hide in our dysfunction as we turn our back on the real world.

And that makes healthy growth impossible. We are an ingrown cohort. When you can’t grow up, you grow in. And that means you end up all backed up and turned around and rootbound and hacking up a lung somewhere having lived a tragically short and pointless life all because your growth got caught in your throat.

My former supervisor, Blaine Skerry, was a perfect example. Great guy. Funny, smart, kind, and understanding. And wise, at least compared to me in my 20’s.

And he had a real job, unlike me most of my life.

But he never moved out of his parent’s house. Lived there long enough to inherit it from them when they died. Never had a girlfriend, never did anything with his free time except watch movies and play video games. Died alone.

He never made it out. That’s how I think of it these days : escape. Real escape, not the bullshit escape offered by all our distractions. Escape from the shadow of our own gravity wells into the real, true, living grown-up world.

The kind of escape that requires us to change who we are. And that means accepting that changing who we are does not mean death. On the contrary, it means life. It means choosing to live. It means letting go of who we are so that we might climb higher.

You can’t climb any higher if you’re still holding on to the rung you are on with both hands, after all. So that you can be “safe”.

But you’re not safe. The acid is burning through the ropes. The wolf is howling at the door. The house is on fire but you’re still too scared to jump.

And maybe you will jump before the flames consume you. But maybe not. Maybe you would rather die in a fire than leave what you know for some scary fall into God knows what out there in the dark.

Maybe a fatal known still looks better than a chaotic unknown to you.

I guess we’ll find out eventually. One way or another.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

The power of pay, that is. Pay Power!

I went to the Pay Power website today. Faithful readers will recall that they are the people from whom I buy my monthly credit card.

In fact, the only reason I bought that god damned Canada Post card last month was that our usual outlets had no Pay Power cards.

But according to their website, there’s like five locations here in Richmond that still sell them, so hopefully Julian will be able to secure one for me soon and things can go back to normal again.

God, that Canada Post one sucks. The only places I have found that accept the damned thing are Amazon and Denny’s.

Meaning my dining in habit has had to be cash only, which more or less limits me to Pizza Hut as they are the only place I know of that still lets you pay via cash at the door.

There might be other places that do that. The Wing Kee, which is a Canadian-style Chinese place a few blocks from us, might still be old school enough to do it.

But their prices are insane now. They want $22.60 per dish. You want some chow mein? $22.60. Fried rice? $22.60. Mushu pork? $22.60.

That’s madness. The best spin I can put on it is that maybe they have shifted to being focused on large Chinese families and other large groups and so that $22.60 actually buys you a lot of food.

But I doubt it. They probably just charge more because they can get away with it in this delivery service bound era where people are just used to paying more.

Which is how I end up paying $25 for a McDonald’s order than would cost $15 if I was buying it in the restaurant.

I am paying for the convenience, I suppose. Plus I am paying the delivery person.

They should give us disabled folk a special rate, though. Because we are on a rather low fixed income and we don’t necessarily have the option to go get it in person.

That would be nice.

Today has been a little rough because I am all abuzz with anticipation like it’s the night before Xmas because tomorrow is Deposit Day and therefore the day when I will finally be able to order my fancy new CPU.

Pity it has to come from the US, with all the extra expense and hassle and wait that involves. Technically, the import fee charged by Amazon is an import fee “deposit” for what they will be charged by the Canadian authorities, but I am pretty sure that it’s not the kind of “deposit” where you get any of it back.

Like Jeff Bezos is going to give my money back once he has it.

I even looked to see if it was possible to transfer my Amazon.com balance to my Amazon.ca account, and unsurprisingly it is not.

If it was, they would essentially be an international bank, and that would be a whole huge hassle for the various Amazons.

I would much rather buy Canadian. Not just out of patriotism but to avoid the import fee and the extra wait time as the CPU crosses the border.

But my sister Catherine’s virtual gift certificate was for Amazon USA, so I am stuck.

It will all be worth it when I have a snazzy new computer! Fingers crossed.

More after the break.

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Swing and a miss

I thought I was so damned clever.

Earlier today, I thought, “Wait a minute… my stupid Canada Post credit card works with Amazon.ca,,, so what if I can buy Skip the Dishes virtual gift certificates there? Then I could do an end run around my credit card issues. ”

I am so darn smart.

And lo and behold, they DO sell virtual Skip the Dishes gift certificates on Amazon.ca! Huzzah! I will be feeding my McD’s habit tonight!

So I ordered it, and the transaction went through, and I got an email receipt from Amazon.ca telling me I bought it and it had been delivered, so I figure it was al good in the hood, right?

But the actual virtual gift certificate never showed up. What the F?

So I went to Amazon.ca support to try to figure out what was wrong. And after a heck of a lot of poking around, I finally discovered that the transaction – for which I have a digital recept, mind you – did not actually go through.

Now, suddenly, Amazon.ca has a problem with my credit card. Well poop.

Luckily, I remembered that I had earned a free medium pizza via the Pizza Hut website’s reward system, so I was able to order a medium 2 topping pizza and a 591 ml of Diet Pepsi for like ten bucks.

Why ten bucks and not two? Because when you order via the Pizza Hut website, the delivery charge is eight freaking bucks.

Yeah, they obviously really want you to order through a delivery app instead. Which I would be glad to do if my stupid fucking Canada Post card worked.

The real kicker is that I can’t even check the balance on my Canada Post card because of how registration got fucked up, and the “forgot your password” system doesn’t work, and there is no way to contact a human being for support.

Ergo, I have no idea how much I have left of my initial $250 load. My best guess is that there is around $100 left, but I could be way off.

In fact, it could be that my card bounced on the Skip card transaction because I don’t have even $50 left on that Canada Post POS.

Which in an odd way would be a relief, because that would mean I don’t have to keep trying the card on Amazon transactions till one bounces in order to be sure that I have drained it before moving on to (hopefully) a new Pay Power card.

But of course, I can’t check the balance, so I don’t know if that is what happened.

Why can’t things ever be simple?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today, I had to do TWO appointments! On the same day! Imagine!

I feel faint just thinking about it.

First, this morning, I had good ol’ Wound Care. I guess I am on Mondays and Thursdays instead of Tuesdays and Fridays now.

Whatever. It amounts to the same thing. Both have their advantages.

The appointment itself was fairly routine. My nurse had a good sense of humour, which is always a big plus for me.

Things are a lot less stressful when I can laugh about them.

Getting to the appointment, on the other hand, was stressful because I had gotten so deeply involved in what I was doing on the computer beforehand that I completely forgot that I even had an appointment to get to this morning. leaving poor Julian to have to show up at my door with my jacket to remind me.

D’oh! My bad. We ended up leaving five minutes later than usual, which meant I arrived at Wound Care more or less at the exact time of my appointment.

Which was a bit tense. I don’t like cutting things that close.

No harm done, though. Turns out my nurse wasn’t quite ready yet anyhow. I made it to the waiting area and she came to fetch me a couple of minutes later.

That was a bit of excitement I didn’t need.

Then ar 12:20 pm, I had an appointment with my GP, Doctor Chao. I was there for a number of reasons, all of them pretty minor.

The main reason was to get another vitamin B12 booster shot. My levels of it are still way too low, despite my including animal products with every supper, and so I need to go in to get the whole thing jump-started.

I will be going back in a couple of weeks for my next shot.

In theory, if I can get things going on that count, I should feel a hell of a lot better. My B12 deficiency might even be the root cause of my muscular degeneration, which means getting my levels up could even repair the damage.

That would be nice.

I was also there to review the results of the urinalysis he ordered before Xmas last year. Nothing spooky there except for that pesky small amount of blood that keeps popping up when I do this pee test.

Chao is sending me for an ultrasound of my kidneys at RGH just in case.

I am getting distressingly comfortable with going to their Medical Imaging department.

Finally, I was there for my post hospitalization review. Whenever they discharge you from Richmond Hospital, they tell you to follow up with your GP within a week.

This time it was more like ten days later, but whatever.

Just to be on the safe side, he is going to send me for another round of chest X-rays to make sure all of the pneumonia is gone.

I feel fine, but better safe than strapped into a ventilator, I always say.

And that was my very (for me) busy day. Right now my legs are none too happy with me due to all the exercise but I am otherwise none the worse for wear.

I may end up taking some extra Gabapentin to compensate.

More after the break.

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Quick video link

I found this to be an interesting and mildly amusing video.

Warning : it’s an hour and a half long.

Nothing particularly shocking or new in there. I didn’t know the bit about “Daniel”. But I liked the somewhat snarky presentation style.

It would be better if it was faster paced and they cut out some of the heavier scholarly stuff. Plus there is no real thesis or through-line.

And I would have emphasized how the Bible contradicts itself and so it is literally impossible to follow the whole thing.

But, ya know. Still a good vid.

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Bitch, bitch, bitch

Three lady dogs.

Anyhow, my legs continue to hurt.. They are, if anything, even angrier with me than before because I had the nerve to go to the kitchen and get something to eat.

But it’s Gabapentin time, so hopefully that will help.

I think I will take an Aleve too. Just in case it helps.

My pain relief policy is simple : if I am in pain when not even doing anything with the body part in question, it’s time for medication.

And I am just sitting here in front of Mister Computer with no weight resting on my legs whatsoever and they are still bitchin; at me.

Here’s some drugs. Now STFU.

I think I am also in sleep debt. I have this urge to lay down and sleep that just won’t go away no matter how much I nap.

Makes me wish I could take a sleeping pill like a normal person. But they just make my sleep apnea worse and I end up waking up feeling like I just got tossed upon the jagged rocks by a stormy sea.

Or maybe that’s just what happens when you catch up with months of deep REM sleep all at once and sleep apnea is, in this case, an innocent bystander.

Either way, I don’t want to put myself through that. The last time I tried it, I woke up in such a bad state that I was barely sentient. I would get lost in the middle of typing a word and have to backspace and start over.

Needless to say. this made blogging a very long and arduous experience. Like I was trying to swim upstream through river rapids.

And that can’t possibly be good for me. Not with three stents in my heart, uncertain circulation, and something eating away at my muscles.

And ya know, the heart is a muscle. Hmm.

Who knows, maybe if I can get my B12 levels on track, I will feel stronger and more resilient and not so god damned weak and scared all the time.

That would be nice.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

OK, my blog is finally back and I have finished cutting and pasting the blog entries I did during the outage into this lil blog o’mine, and hopefully things can go back to normal.

I even backdated the missing blog entries, thus erasing all evidence of the outage as far as the archives of this silly ol blog are concerned.

It’s like I have POWER over TIME ITSELF. Mua ha ha ha ha!

And to celebrate being once more in the holy anointed land of WordPress…. PORN!

But first, the traditional innocuous pic to cleanse the palate.

Ain’t he a sweetie? I wanted to capture a moment of pure innocent joy, and so of course my mind immediately went to the beach.

So many of my fondest childhood moments took place on the beach. Going there was always a happy time for the Bertrand clan. I loved it there.

It combined being with my family with being near the water. What’s not to love?

We would pack up the family vehicle with snacks and Tan-N-Gard (combination sunscreen and bug repellent) and towels and a giant Thermos keg of water and head of to Linkletter Beach for an afternoon of being more or less a functional family.

Those were good times.

Now, on with the blatant pornography!

Of course, there’s other ways to spend a glorious summer day.

If I ruled the world, this kind of thing would be commonplace. The rule would be that people would be allowed to get naked and fuck like wild monkeys anywhere they wanted to EXCEPT legally cordoned off “no sex” areas.

Because even a no-limits libertine pervert like me might need a place to go to get away from the fucking and maybe have a nice meal in peace.

Plus, of course, the erotophobic types who are trying their hardest not to grow up need a place where they can feel sheltered and safe.

I might not agree with their lifestyle but I still want them to feel safe and be happy.

Now what else do I have… how about some equal time heterosexuality?

I am still annoyed that I could not find a way to make her wooly all over. She could just be a human chick with a sheep fursuit head on.

But she’s completely adorable either way. Look at her, exploring herself. Awwww.

Now back to the faggotry.

How about every bottom’s dream?

Being stuffed full at both ends. Man, does that look good.

I swear I go into heat sometimes. Mama needs MEAT.

One more pic…. hmmm….. so much to choose from. I’m a prolific pornographer.

How about this innocent little scene?

Nothing sexual, just a ram boy finding some much needed relief.

Well I had to include at least a little pee. It’s a tradition!

That’s probably not what a sheep dick looks like, but then again, sheep don’t have hands and arms either, nor do they duck into alleys to discharge urine.

They just let loose wherever they happen to be. Like a bunch of animals.

I’m telling you. Sheep these days,

More after the break.

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The gallery continues

I have no news to report, nor do I have a burning insight to explore, so what the hell. let’s do more pics.

First, another from my “green” (as in green light) directory :

Aren’t they cute? That would make a kickass illustration to put on a tin of Earl Grey tea, or maybe in an ad for a high end bookstore.

It’s totally crazy that a person with absolutely no talent for drawing or painting can nevertheless produce something of that quality.

Admittedly, I don’t know how much credit I can take for it. On the one hand, a computer program did all of the actual “work” in terms of the labour that kind of art requires when produced via traditional methods.

On the other hand, I told that computer program what to draw and how I wanted it drawn in terms of style, lighting, camera placement, etc.

That’s why I am fine with people calling folks like me “directors” and not artists, because that’s essentially how I see my role.

I might not be producing the art with my labour, but it’s made according to MY vision.

And that’s what is really important. You can make art that is technically perfect but if what you draw is not interesting, nobody will care.

It’s the atelier model of art.

And now, the music of Hunter and Beauregard!

I adore that picture. It’s so warm and friendly and homey. It reminds me of my early childhood and the down home cozy country aesthetic that resonated with me so deeply from way back then in the 70s.

And you know what? I still love that kind of thing. If I was ever rich enough to have both a home in the city and a cottage in the country, the cottage would be done entirely in that old timey country style so that when city life gets to be too much for me, I can retreat back to a simpler and more innocent time.

I realize that is probably painfully bourgeoisie of me, and I don’t care. This is my little country life fantasy and it will be how I want it to be.

Now how to end this. Hmmmm. Cozy or pornographic. Cozy or pornographic.

How about a little of both?

Those two clearly see something they like.

I guess that’s it for the art show. It will be back the next time I am feeling lazy and tired and can’t think of anything interesting to write about.

I will see you wonderful readers then. And…

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

T God DAMN it.

I should not be typing this into an Office Libra (or whatever) document right now.

I fucking renewed the domain this morning, and for a while it was working. The blog came up no problem, and I immediately started cutting and pasting the blog entries I have written in LibreCuba (or whatever) into the blog and backdating them and all that good stuff.

BTW, for future reference, the previously missing blog posts start on January 6. Enjoy catching up.

Anyhow, right in the middle of getting the blog all caught up, the fucking thing herniates and goes back to saying my domain has expired.

Um, no it fucking hasn’t. In fact, when I go to the Control Panel for my website, it says right there that my domain is good till January 1, 2025.

So what gives, FatCow? Did a case of Fat Cow Disease scramble your brains? Did you do a restore from backup and forget to check the financial records? Have the Martians finally caught up to me and this is the first sign of the coming Alien Apocalypse!f!?!

Having not heard from you on this subject, I am forced to assume the answer is “yes”.

I have emailed FatCow support about the problem. And I am proud of myself for starting the email by saying, “I am very upset. (line break)

Yay for me actually expressing non-sunshiny emotions at the right time and occasion.

And it’s true. I am. I thought I had finally solved this shit but no, something had to come along and piss on my Wheaties yet again.

This is why I have trust issues. Deep, deep trust issues.

No matter how hard I try to cover all the bases, something beyond my ability to predict and/or control always pops up to screw me over.

I guess whatever comes up, I’ll just deal with it.

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Meanwhile, in the other realm

I have reached the “everything goes to hell and the city’s on fire” part of the game I have been playing, Dragon Age 2.

No dragons so far. I ain’t holding my breath.

Anyhow, it seems like all these RPGs will inevitably have a part like that. I suppose once one game did it, other dev teams saw it and went “Wow, what a great way to raise the stakes!” and now they all have to do it or the other dev teams will make fun of them or something.

Right now I am stuck on a very difficult fight. I have to fight the leader of the Qunari in my city, who is known as the Arishok, and I can handle the sea of minions he throws at me, but he is one tough hombre who can plow through my people like a bowling ball, and so I am stuck for now.

I am very disappointed to be fighting him. In our previous encounters, he seemed like a pretty cool dude. Serious and intense, but a pretty decent and sensible leader, and also kinda hot.

Mostly because he has this amazingly deep and expressive voice that conveys so much of the character’s weariness and long-suffering boredom so well.

He is voiced by Rick D. Wasserman, who did a hell of a job.

I am just sad that, despite all my attempts to keep the peace between the citizens of my city and the Qunari (big tall grey dudes with horns), it still has to end in violence and blood and me ending up having to kill a fuckton of Qunari.

But it seems like this uprising was the Arishok’splan all along. He wanted an excuse to rise up and slaughter all the various humans, elves, dwarves, and so on surrounding his compound, and pulled strings behind the scenes to make sure he got one.

I am so disappointed in him.

More after the break.

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It’s still gone

Blog ain’t back yet. Grrrrr.

They have my money now I want my god damned blog back!

I miss it. I miss being able to drop YouTube links and images into the text. I miss the familiar (if imperfect) WordPress interface. I miss the feeling of connection with you wonderful readers.

If it doesn’t rectify soon, I am going to have to do the thing I thought I had successfully dodged, namely calling the 1-800 line and talking to a live human being.

The thing is, in my head I know it will not be that bad. I am actually pretty good on the phone. Likeable, charming in my goofy kinda way, articulate and funny. Just like in real life.

But the Trog don’t care. It doesn’t matter what I “know” to be true because the diseased parts of my deeper mind are immune to logic and reason and they are always on the scene first with the fear and the anxiety and the dread.

Oh, the dread. So much dread.

I keep telling myself that I have nothing to be ashamed of and no reason to fear these simple social interactions that are practically nonevents to healthy, robust people.

It’s not like they ever go badly. They always go just fine. And it’s not like I don’t have all the skills needed to navigate them easily.

But the fear and the dread are always there anyhow, making things harder for me than they need to be. There have been so many times in my life where a social interaction would have gone much easier and been a lot less stressful if I hadn’t had a big panic attack blaring like an oversensitive smoke detector in my ears and throughout my mind making it really hard to concentrate on the here and now.

And that describes pretty much every moment I spent at Kwantlen and VFS. From the moment I entered to the moment I left, I was having a low-grade panic attack which occasionally surged to full strength depending on what was going on.

Makes the fact that I still excelled in all my studies all the more impressive, no?

Makes me wish I had just had a huge ego instead. Would have protected me much better.

I guess it’s not too late…

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Bleh. Here I am starting my blogging an hor later than usual due to a nap attack.

See, around 2:30 pm, I had been computing away for a couple of hours when it occurred to me that this was around the time I would usually take a nap, if I hadn’t had one lately.

“No!” I said to myself. “I don’t have to hide in sleep all the time! I am going to power on through to when I blog and eat lunch at 4 pm and only after THAT will I take a nap!”

That lasted until around 3:30 pm, ehich is when I caved. Set the alarm on my tablet for 4:30 and took a nice one hour nap.

Woke up when the alarm went off. Then fell back asleep till 5 pm.

Turns out that I do, in fact, have to hide in sleep all the time because that is what my body and brain now expect and I am powerless to resist the siren song of sleep as a result.

Because by 3:30 pm, I was very sleepy. If I stayed up, I would end up very stressed out by trying to stay awake past that point, let alone trying to keep enough of my marbles together to blog.

And ya know, stress is a killer, especially for people with three stents in their heart and a bunch of other maladies like myself.

So the “sheer grit and determination” method for breaking my napping habit so I can get better sleep at night is not going to really be an option for me.

Back to my first idea, which is to get myself a six pack of fully caffeinated Diet Coke and drink that throughout the day in order to bolster my attempts to stay awake.

After all, my ban on caffeine is entirely self-imposed. No doctor or other medical authority told me. I didn’t even get told to do it by a YouTube video.

I just decided it all on my own because I was worried about my blood pressure.

And to be honest, it was never an all out ban anyhow. I still drank regular Diet Coke when I went to Denny’s once a week, and often when I ordered in I would get regular Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi with the meal if that was an option.

And my blood pressure is okay-ish now, so what the heck.

A small trip back to caffeine land probably won’t kill me.

And getting myself into healthy sleeping habits could yield great health benefits. This being unable to sleep for more than a couple of hours during the day and at best three hours at night is for the birds.

I need lots of deep REM sleep in order to clear out my medium term memory and maybe cut through some of this god damned brain fog for once.

Imagine being able to think clearly and cleanly.

The prospect both amazes and terrifies me.

In other words, sounds like fun to me!

More after the break.

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Half way there

Well, I regained my FatCow password. I can log in to it again.

But they won’t accept my credit card, so I couldn’t renew my domain et al. Motherfucker.

I am starting to think this Canada Post card is a real lemon. Pretty sure my Pay Power cards never had this kind of problem.

Oh well, I can always switch back if Julian can find me any Pay Power cards next Deposit Day, which is next Wednesday.

If not, I will get Julian to put like $50 on a new Canada Post card just so I can see if I can get the damned thing properly registered and maybe get around these damned problems,

Why do things have to be so damned complicated?

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More on the Trog

He’s the reason I have to drag myself into doing things I actually want to do.

Like Therapy Thursdays. I know the sessions are good for me. I know that I get a lot out of them. I know they invariably make me feel better.

But the Trog don’t care.

Like doing Zoom then PVR with Le Gang tonight. I want to do it. I know I will enjoy it. Heck, I know I will be a little sad when it is over.

Try telling that to the Trog, though.

Even my beloved outings to Denny’s, which are the highlight of my week and without a doubt the best thing that happens to me in this sad life of mine, doesn’t get through to the Trog.

All the Trog knows is that all of these things mean an increase in both social and sensory stimulation and therefore must be fought with all the blind ferocity of a cornered rat.

And with about as much screeching and clawing and biting too.

Kicks in around two or three hours before the event. I might be perfectly calm and rational and looking forward to the event before then, bnt once that line is crossed, I become anxious and apprehensive.

Most of the time this doesn’t keep me from doing the thing, of course. It just causes me unnecessary fear and stress and wear and tear on my poor nerves.

And every once in a while, I lose the fight. The anxiety overwhelms me and no matter how much I know I will enjoy the thing, or at least not mind overmuch, I must demur.

And I suppose that is enough to keep that god damned Trog going. It knows that it probably won’t win, but each time might be one of the times it does, and so it always puts up a fight.

Intermittent reward and all that.

And I am just so god damned tired of it all. It’s all so futile. Why put myself through this over and over again when what I am fighting against is something I actually want?

But I guess there is no reasoning with that scared little animal inside of me.

And in the end, that’s all the Trog is.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Translation : Holy shit, it’s snowing!

Yup! We got the white stuff, baby! There is snow on the ground here on the Wet Coast.

Silly me, for no logical reason I figured that if real winter(tm) had not shown its frosty face by Christmas, we wouldn’t see it at all this year.

Clearly, Mother Nature had other plans. Glad I don’t have any and can remain safely indoors until it is time for Denny’s on Sunday.

Snow is always at its prettiest when you know for certain you won’t have to go out in it.

The cold, I could do without, though. Because there is definitely a draft in this here bedroom of mine. I know this because every time it gets windy, it gets really fucking cold in here.

To the point where even after I got dressed this morning, I still felt very cold. So cold, in fact, that I had to truncate my usual time spend hanging with the fuzzies so that I could go back to bed and get back under my comforter to warm up again.

I should not require thermal protect in my own damn home. Grr.

Once more, I contemplate getting some thermal tape and going draft hunting. Of course, here on the Wet Coast, they’ve never even heard of thermal tape, so I would have to order it online.

The problem with that is this big wonderful window directly in front of me and behind my computer desk. Drafts mostly come from windows and this one’s a doozy, and with my computer desk in the way it’s hard for me to reach most of it.

Ergo what I need is a caulking gun with a reaaaaaly long nozzle. Like around six feet.

More seriously, I would have to pull the desk back far enough that someone (not me, legs don’t work) could get in there and seal the whole thing up properly.

I swear, I have been way colder living on the Wet Coast than I ever was growing up on Prince Edward Island because my late father knew how to insulate the house for the winter.

On this coast, people have no fricking clue.

Luckily, it has warmed up during the day, at least. But it’s still too cold in here. My hands, in particular, are very sensitive to the cold, and I would hate to have to try to type with gloves on.

I have the heat turned almost all the way up in here and I am still freakin’ cold. And I am not feeling any heat coming from the heaters in the room so I am thinking my thermostat is fucked.

So I am going to have to bury the dial, even though when I have done that in the past the place hav ended up TOO hot and I have ended up all dehydrated and ill.

But I can’t very well stay in bed all day.

I had enough of that in the hospital. Turns out that it’s really not good for someone with circulation issues like yours truly to lie in bed for too long, because when I finally got up after three days in bed, I felt incredibly dizzy and weak and sort of when your hand falls asleep, but for my entire body.

It made me doubt whether I was actually healed up yet or what. Before I got up, I had felt great. Totally ready to go home. But after… not so much.

More after the break.

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“The government has no right to tell me how to raise my kids! ” said the pedophile.

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That god damned Trog

Let’s talk about that diseased side of me I call the Trog.

That’s the part of me that just wants to crouch in its deep dark fetid cave and hide from the worldf and all its frightening stimulation forever.

All so it can feel “safe”.

If it had its way, I would never do anything. I would just stay in bed under the covers all the time, in total darkness and silence, and just enjoy being “safe”, I guess.

The Trog is too mindless and primitive to have an endgame in mind.

You see, to do anything after achieving such low stimulation “bliss” would be to move in the direction of greater stimulation, and that is unthinkable.

That is the stange and twisted world view of the Trog. Luckily, it has never completely gained the upper hand. A certain amount of life spark remains within me and it can still impel me to get up and use Mister Computer here, as well as get food and go to the bathroom.

And most of the time, I can overcome my inertia long enough to go hang with J&J and watch Colbert and whatnot, or do a Zoom with Le Gang and watch random stuff.

So I have that much wiggle room against the damned thing. But it pretty much rules the rest of my life, and that sucks.

It’s what keeps me from expanding my sad little world beyond what I just listed. It is both caretaker and enforcer for that terrible chill that freezes the life out of me when I even contemplate escape.

It is the primary necromancer of my undeath.

And I hate it. I mean, that fucker really has to go. I will never get anywhere with it around.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe, like the walls of my cold stone prison, the whole point of the Trog is to keep me from having to face that big bad scary adult world out there which, deep down, I am sure will utterly destroy me if I go out to face it.

But it will only kill the me that I am right now. And that’s just a costume my true self, the one who has always answered to my name, has been wearing for a long time.

It’s not real. It’s merely a mask, a disguise, another one of my many illusions. I can give that up and still be me, no problem.

In fact, it is starting to seem like a pretty good idea.

Farewell, chrysalis. Hello, you big bright beautiful world, you.

Time to leave this pathetic charade behind.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I am beginning to feel guilty about my lollygagging on getting my blog back.

I really should have done it by now. Tomorrow will mark the one week anniversary of my coming home from the hospital last week and discovering my predicament.

But it involves making a phone call and that’s a big gumption trap for me. Makes it very, very easy to keep putting it off.

After all, I had an appointment with Doctor Caswell yesterday, and wound care today, and tomorrow I have therapy, and I clearly can’t do two things on the same day, so….

My excuses are quite pathetic when held up to the light, aren’t they?

I will have to get it done soon. The guilt is eating away at me. Both the interpersonal guilt of disappointing both of my readers and the personal guilt of feeling like I am failing myself.

At the very least, I need to reconnect with my FatCow account and get a text only backup of this entire blog as well as the WordPress backup in case I want to migrate it all to a new host.

Maybe I should come up with something completely off the wall and weird and wild for my new domain. Like duckfart,com or teriyaki_suicide.net or you_cannot_resist_the_b.org or the like.

I could have a lot of fun with that.

Lately I have found myself longing for bulletproof anonymity online. I could really disrupt and subvert (and pervert) things if I knew my words could not be traced back to me personally.

I could do all that without the anonymity, of course. It’s not like I fear the angry responses and general outcry and outrage I would inspire.

In fact, I would revel in it. Bring it, motherfuckers. Let’s dance.

But I know that I would piss people off enough that they would want to literally and figuratively destroy me, and I am not quite ready to die or have my life destroyed for my beliefs just yet.

But give me that unbreakable anonymity and watch me set the world on fire with the irrefutable truth of my indigestible views.

I used to call myself a reformer, not a revolutionary. I guess that made me feel like less of a fringe lunatic and more of a thoughtful, rational, sensible citizen.

But fuck that bullshit. I hereby admit to myself that my “reforms” would be so radical as to change damn near everything, and that makes them a revolution, and me a revolutionary.

Direct democracy. CEOs, bankers, corporate board members, stock brokers, and all other manner of finance industry scumbags in jail. Accountability written into the goddamned Constitution. The stock market and other speculative arenas outlawed. All “vice” laws eliminated, starting with those governing people’s sex lives. Indecent exposure laws gone too, replaced with “no nude” zones for those who want them while everywhere else people can fly free. Comprehensive educational reform that eliminates redundant management positions. uses that money to increase the wages of teachers, and leaves education in the hands of educators. And the government funding all the education you need to get to the job best suited to you.

Oh, and mass transit would get SO MUCH BETTER. And be FREE.

I could go on and on. Like I said, I would change just about everything.

Vive la revolution!

More after the break.

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Holy crap, there’s a name for it.

It’s called dyspraxia, and it explains a hell of a lot about my life.

(ref. URL : https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23963-dyspraxia-developmental-coordination-disorder-dcd)

(video URL : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dYz6pCjEy8)

Also known as Developmental Coordination Disorder by those who find Greek words too scary, it is a neurological disorder that makes it very hard for people like me to coordinate out limbs, our fingers, and our movements, and that makes it hard for us to learn motor skills and makes it very hard for us ot do things like sports or (my nemesis) arts and crafts.

And holy diagnosis euphoria, Batman. does it feel good to have a name for this beast I have struggled wih and been ashamed of my entire life, and to know I am not the only one.

Nope! It’s a known and diaLike gnosable thing.

And said diagnosis would have made my life so much easier.

For my whole life, I have struggled mightily to learn any kind of motor skill. From threading the needle in sewing class to throwing the ball in gym class, I have always had a hell of a hard time trying to get my body to do what I wanted it to do.

And this has plagued me because I could not explain it. I was so bright in so many areas, and yet in a previous, less enlightened era they might well have called what I have “motor retardation”.

And it got me in trouble over and over again when I could not do even the simplest of things. And without an explanation, all I could do is sit there, helplessly miserable, as some older person berated me for not really trying.

I am trying. Like the lady in the video I linked said (great channel BTW, check it out), this is me trying.

I am just really, really bad at things like that.

And now I know why. I have a developmental issue. My brain isn’t wired right.

I have finally being (self) diagnosed as neurodivergent.

I always knew I was special.

And it’s a pervasive disorder that disables me in far more than just gym class. It makes me helpless in all kinds of everyday situations, to the point where I can say, in hindsight, that I have been crippled by this kind of thing my whole life.

I was disabled way before my legs went boom. Before my depression diagnosis too.

No wonder I have needed to have competent people around me to handle the details of living for me for more or less my whole life.

No wonder I can’t bloody grow up.

No wonder I feel so helpless in the world. Humiliation and debility lurk everywhere for me. I never know when a situation that will reveal unto the world what a hopeless spaz I am will pop up.

No wonder I prefer to just stay home and sit in front of this computer, which I am fully competent to use and which can therefore be my prosthesis for dealing with the world.

Inasmuch as I actually do.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.