Biological analogues aside^[1], I feel like what I’ve been doing lately is squeezing out long dormant emotions and making myself feel them in an attempt to clear up space in my mind for my actual personality to emerge and grow.

It’s hard to say how long this process will last. It kind of feeds upon itself. The more space I clear out, the more space I can clear out from then on.

Obviously, the goal is to empty myself out. Or at least clear out enough of the backlog for me to be able to live and breathe and function.

Along that journey, there will be something I will have to face so I might as well face it now : what if my problem has been my Paxil all along?

All my complaining about feeling cold and lonely and isolated in my Midnight Tundra mindscape could simply have been the emotional anesthetic effect of the Paxil I have been taking for my social anxiety for over 20 years.

And this never occurred to me until now because I had lost all sense of what my emotions should be like so I had no basis for comparison any more.

But since the dose has been lowered by a modest amount (30 mg instead of 40 mg twice a week) I now have some idea of what my Paxil has been suppressing all these years and it’s been a real eye-opener.

Don’t worry, though. As tempting as it might be to a certain kamikaze part of my mind, I am not going to immediately jump to going cold turkey on the Paxil.

Heck, I am still adjusting to the moderately lowered dosage as is. I love that my emotions are thawing out and becoming more accessible and that this means my world feels more immediate and real now, as do I, but my world is also less stable and predictable and a lot of “stuff” is emerging from my inner deep freeze like zombies rising from their grave, so I know that a total cessation of Paxil would likely leave me absolutely insane, at least for a while.

So I will keep toddling along dealing with my newly more reactive emotional world and doing what I can to help the process along.

Maybe what I need to do is to think a lot about fiber.

It’s nature’s broom, after all.

---

A new world

Specifically, the real world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my video game addiction lately and I am getting increasingly sick of it.

It came to a head in the wee hours of the morning today when I form the intention of playing more Divinity : Original Sin but found myself putting off actually doing it in favor of watching more YouTube videos and/or reading more gay furry smut comics.

So I had to ask myself what was up with that. And I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t feel like dissolving my consciousness into that virtual world. I wanted to stay in the more immediate and “real” environment of non-gaming computer use.

This represents progress. The idea of leaving the cloistered confines of my video gaming worlds doesn’t seem quite as scary or cold now.

I don’t think I will be going cold turkey on the video games any time soon either, but carving out time for other things seems more possible than ever now.

I don’t have to hide from reality in these virtual worlds all the time.

I can stay out and play.

More after the break.

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The long sad

Apologies if I have used that title before. I was too lazy to check.

The long sad is like a long low-key sigh. It’s a feeling somewhere between depression and outright crying, and it’s the closest I get to sitting there feeling sorry for myself.

I’d be better off just having a good long cry, of course. This male emotional constipation than runs rampant in North American society is a demon and a curse and probably the main reason I have to sit at this keyboard and type just to know what I am feeling.

Or at least to articulate it. Make the feelings real.

This long sadness of mine can take place almost entirely in the back of my mind. I can be going about my usual (wasted) day playing video games and blogging and chatting with my fuzzy friends and so on and yet somewhere in my deeper being is a very sad little boy who is all alone.

Always all alone.

Or at least that’s how it feels. I am positive there have been a number of times in my life where people tried to reach out to me and instead just ended up feeling alienated and confused by this strange person who seems like he is there but can’t be reached.

Again, sorry if that’s ever been you. Mental illness doesn’t just hurt the mentally ill. It can hurt the people close to us too, and the worst part is we don’t even know it.

Too busy being crazy, I guess. It takes up a lot of our time.

I know I have a long way to go till I am truly open. The walls around my heart are tall and thick and cold, and undoing that is a long, slow, delicate process.

Like I always say, part of me wishes there was a button I could push or a pill I could take that would just unsuppress everything all at once knowing that this would mean my being completely insane for a while but hoping that when the flood waters recede I would be remade anew without all that baggage and there would be a good chance for me to go out into the world as a truly free and present being.

Instead of constantly hiding inside myself, looking out, terrified of being truly seen.

Because if they can SEE me, then they KNOW, and if they KNOW, they can FIND me, and if they FIND me, they can GET me.

And that would be worse than death.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Oh, so very many things, and that’s part of the problem. A big part.

I’m growing increasingly discontent with my video game dominated lifestyle so I am looking to expand my life to at least the point it was at before Skyrim stole my life, where I actually did do stuff other than play video games with my free time.

And I have a LOT of free time. Way more free time than committed time, to be honest. And from that point of view, it would seem to be a trivial thing to simply peel a few hours off that fat bundle of time and spend them doing something more productive.

But I have an addiction to wrestle with and those are notoriously unreasonable.

When I imagine leaving the dank but cozy nest of filling all my spare time with video game playing, I get this cold-sweat feeling of deep dark dread accompanied by a chilly feeling like a cold wind blowing through my soul.

And I hate that.

I have lived this particular variation on my cloistered existence for so very, very long that it’s hard for me to even imagine actually doing anything else with my days.

Oh sure, I can imagine all kinds of wonderful alternative activities for my time on Earth. I could explore new social environments like Discord or Snapchat, I could take university courses via remote learning, I could write fresh new stuff and posted it to Not’d and/or send it to traditional publishers, I could try to become a YouTuber.

I’m a brilliant and resourceful fellow and dreaming up alternatives is less than trivial for someone with a mind like mine.

But the intellect is never the problem, is it? Not for me, anyhow.

I have way more intelligence and insights and charisma and so on than I know what to do with. Quite literally.

It’s the fear that is holding me back and keeping me from using all of my powers to make all my dreams come true.

Or at least let me make a fucking living for once in my life.

I suppose that on one level, it all comes down to my problem with making decisions, especially ones that effect or involve me directly.

If I step away from video games, I then have to figure out what the hell to do with myself and that means facing that Infinite Corridor Of Infinite Doors problem of mine.

And that always devolves down to asking myself what I want. And I dunno.

It sounds like the most elementary question you can ask someone. Whaddaya want? Even wee children can answer that one.

In their case, it’s probably candy.

And it’s not quite that I literally have no idea what I want. I want all kinds of things. Sex. Money. A pleasant living space. An occupation. Sex. Luxury. Indulgence. Sex.

Oh, so much sex.

But again, those are dreams, not plans, and to go forward would require choosing one of those things and pursuing it, and I am still afraid to truly want things badly enough to go out into the world to try and get them.

I just make do with what I’ve got, for the most part.

And that almost never changes. So neither does my life. My life in which survival is easy but thriving nearly impossible while I remain in this locked in, blinkered state.

Somehow, I have to convince my deeper self that it is okay to go out into that big bad world full of so much more stimulation and confusion and options and to fight my way upstream as the urge to scurry back into my hidey hole batters me and to do this all with absolutely no certainty of reward or success.

It’s how normal people live, as far as I can tell.

But I am both far more and far less than normal.

And I need someone or something else to provide structure for me.

More after the break.

---

An open letter

Dear Normal People :

Hi. I’m a mentally ill weirdo from the far edge of the herd.

So no, I don’t think we’ve met before.

Obviously, as I was not raised by wolves in a cabin in the woods, I grew up around normal people like yourself. I might have been that weird fat kid in your class in school, the one who pissed you off by acting like the school work you struggled with was super easy for him.

I hate to break it to you, but it was. It really was. Sorry if that made you feel bad.

But school – the academic part – has always been super easy for me.

It’s the other part – the social part – where I failed miserably. I was the kind of kid who got straight A’s in math, English, and history, but flunked recess and lunch.

It’s also possible that I was that weird fat kid from your neighborhood. Maybe you wondered what the hell my deal was.

Don’t ask me. I’ve never known either.

Anyhow, down to business. I am writing this open letter so I can maybe open a dialogue between folks like you and folks like me.

I am very much a nerd and an intellectual, and that means I have both strengths and weaknesses that you do not.

And to be honest, I have always envied people like you. I might have had high grades but even as a little boy I could see that you had so much that I did not.

Things like warm family connections, a place in the social fabric, a feeling that there was someone looking out for you so it was safe to explore, and so forth and so on.

I would have gladly gone from being an A student to a B student if it meant that I could have had friends, and felt accepted.

And if that’s not enough to quell your envy, take comfort in this : you’re sane, I’m not. You’re functional, and I’m not. I have completely and utterly crashed and burned when I have tried to make it in the real world, and if you are my age, by now you probably have a career, and success, and a home, and a spouse, and a family, and all these other things that people like you think just come to you at a certain point.

After all, all your friends and extended family have them too, and everyone at work as well. So how hard can it be to get them?

Well it’s kind of like a disability. Walking up a flight of stairs is easy for most people. But if you’re in a wheelchair, it’s not just hard it’s impossible.

That’s how it is for me. I’m very good at brainy things like school but none of that matters very much because life is not like school and at some point you have to leave school and deal with the real world and at that, I have completely failed.

So don’t feel bad about where I was back then.

Look at where I ended up now : disabled, unemployed, alone, and on social assistance.

Not so smug now, am I?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did therapy just now.

Covered a lot of ground, as is usual when it’s mostly just me talking. One patch we covered was my belief that a one hundred percent dedication to the absolute, provable, logical, demonstrable truth is toxic to the human soul.

It sounds noble enough, in an Enlightened way, but the truth is that we need the ability to lie to ourselves at least a little bit in order to be able to handle the harsh truths of life and maybe sand off their pointier bits for ease of digestion.

Now I am not talking about rampant delusion. That would not be helpful. No, all I am talking about is granting oneself permission to make minor adjustments to the facts or even just altering how you view them in order to make it easier for you to thrive.

I mean, why martyr yourself? Of what use is this Truth? True, it’s necessary to have accurate information about the world, but just how accurate does it have to be? And to how many significant digits?

Surely there is room for small inaccuracies in the service of the greater happiness of the person doing all this Truth-ing?

We cannot choose our own reality but we can and should choose how we see and approach the real world and life in general.

This is the sort of thing those yappy idiots who go on about having the right attitude are getting at. You can choose to always view things in the most positive light possible without it leading to succumbing to delusions of grandeur.

You can fudge the facts a little.

I think it’s also what makes atheism so blankly incomprehensible to the faithful. My God, why would you choose to see the world that way? Why are you making yourself unhappy like that? Wouldn’t you prefer there to be a God?

Objective truth is a positive but like all positives it can turn into a negative when pursued with excessive zeal.

For my whole life, I have been obsessed with finding the Truth. With cutting through all the bullshit both internal and external and peeling back the layers to reveal the really really real reality underneath it all.

And how does one do that? Through analysis, of course. Figuring things out. Making sure to cross-reference everything in order to make sure it all fits together. Pruning the tree of knowledge when necessary, or even lopping off entire branches if contrary evidence of sufficient weight is acquired.

That’s been my bag for as long as I can remember. And I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel like I was better that everyone else.

Oh, you weak-minded fools can wander around in your delusional haze but I am a Rugged Intellectual whose powerful, insightful mind can pierce the veil of illusion and reveal unto me the true nature of our reality! I am the one eyed man in the land of the blind! I am the only one who knows what’s REALLY going on. Only I truly SEE!

Big fucking deal.

Oh, there are many advantages to having that one eye. It allows you to make strategic moves that baffle others because they are made with a view of far more of the chess board than most people get. You can act based on far better information than most people have. You can, at times, seem almost magical due to this.

But none of that makes you happy.

Whereas those intellectual peasants out there? They’re happy. Which is why I keep asking this key question : would you rather be right than be happy?

Is the knowledge that you are more “right” than other people enough to keep you warm at night? Or might you be looking with envy at the warm and cozy fires of those delusional fools you feel so superior to?

I will always be a hardcore truth seeker. It’s a drive that goes straight through to my core and is therefore not open for editing.

But that doesn’t mean I have to bleed for it.

More after the break.

---

Not your lucky day

A very good bit of furry animation :

It is admittedly not super original, but a story like that is always satisfying even if it is a little bit obvious.

And it’s so well done! I’d love to see the storyboards because every shot is perfect.

And, of course, our protagonist is adorable. And she gets wooed by a handsome fox!

I just love everything about this short. 🙂

---

I’ve seen you naked

In fact, I’m naked right now! Ba dum tish.

Patient readers know that I had to learn the hard way that not everyone “sees” other people’s thoughts and intentions and whatnot like I do.

I suppose this metaphorical X-ray vision comes from a combination of two things : a highly insightful and analytical mind, and a great deal of empathy.

As a child I learned that this is not how most people see other people and that, in fact, what was “obvious” to me might be something the person doesn’t even know about themselves let alone know somebody else can see.

That still seems somewhat alien to me. I have trouble imagining what it would be like to have other people basically be unreadable black boxes to me.

I would certainly be a radically different person. Maybe I would have been better off. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up being the Kid That Knew Too Much.

But it was being raped that started that, really.

That’s what ripped my innocence away and left me exposed to the world in all its horrors at far too young an age.

Innocence serves a purpose. It keeps up from learning things we can’t handle yet.

But my poor little mind was blown wide open at the age of 4 and so from the very start I always knew way more than was good for me.

No wonder I became so analytical. I was trying to make sense of the world. Still am.

And as a result, I knew everything about what a kid was supposed to be like. I couldn’t just innocently follow my instincts and have them guide me forward in my development without me even knowing that was happening.

So the development didn’t happen.

And I grew into the half-baked shell of a man you know today.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’ve had my usual busy Friday. Wound Care in the morning, ordering and receiving my groceries, then off to my community shower at 2:30 pm.

My Wound Care nurse’s name was Devinder, which was slightly surprising as she was as white as I am and did not have even a trace of an East Indian accent.

Mixed race parents, perhaps. Sometimes the randomness of sexual reproduction produces a kid who is entirely one of the races of the parents.

That’s got to lead to some tense conversations.

“I’m telling you, Preet, I’ve been nothing but faithful to you!”
“No! I do not believe you! Some white man has colonized your womb!”

And then, for some reason, they dance.

Grocery ordering and receipt went fine, although I am kicking myself now because I forgot that I am almost out of peanut butter.

So now it’s either admit defeat and order the peanut butter separately and pay another delivery fee and tip, or tough it out with the last bit of peanut butter I have left and then dramatically doing without.

Oh, the humanity.

I still have jam, but jam sandwiches are so boring. Even jam on toast is pretty dull. All that sweetness really needs something to contrast with in order to shine, at least as far as my personal palate is concerned.

And the jam I have is raspberry, which is even more boringer.

I could make cheese toast instead. We have plenty o’ Kraft Singles. Called that because they are looking to mate.. with your sandwich!

Plus they sleep around a lot.

My shower is where the whole touched by a stranger thing happened because my usual guy, Albert, is on vacation right now and so my shower today had to be done by a “casual” worker, whatever THAT means.

So I went into the whole thing in a suspicious mood, although me being me, I didn’t act that way around the poor guy. He was shy and nervous enough.

Which, of course, endeared him to me.

It didn’t start super well. It was his first time at Rosewood so I had to show him to the “spa” room where they do my showers and tell him he would need to go get a nurse to open the door to it for him.

I am impressed by Rosewood Manor. It has a very relaxed, sunny vibe supported by a marvelously soothing decor and all the old folks I see when I am waiting for Albert (or whoever) seem quite happy.

The staff, on the other hand, treat Albert and I like hoboes.

Anyhow, once we got into the “spa” room my guy (he never told me his name) knew what he was doing and everything went fine.

It’s good that I have quite a relaxed attitude about nudity. Heck, I have even lived with nudists and have been one myself.

And we’re quite casual about nudity chez moi. Why not? It’s not like we stare at each other and we’re hardly worried someone might think we’re gay.

Because we are.

I’ve come across the observation that it seems like us elephantine people have less shame of that sort than the average citizen, and I am not sure what would cause that.

I mean, being fat certainly encourages you to emotionally invest in things other than your body. And you have to develop a certain kind of self-confidence just to move around in a world meant for people smaller than you.

It’s really the only sane response to a world that glares at you disapprovingly.

And it’s possible that just being bigger than other people activates a primitive part of our brains that, on a very deep and extremely subconscious level, makes us feel like we must be in charge.

I can totally imagine myself as a fat and decadent king who lounges around nude just to make other people uncomfortable.

Look, I’m not an angel. I can be diabolical AF.

More after the break.

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A Nabisco mystery

Fun fact : Nabisco started out as the Nation Biscuit Company, hence the name.

Anyhow, I just had a “reality moment” that I feel compelled to share.

So I ordered three things off of Amazon recently : a one pound sack of Russell Stover(hallowed be his name)’s sugar free chocolates, a big bag of sugar free gummy bears, and a family sized box of Vegetable Thins.

That last one was me just catching up on groceries.

Anyhow, the chocolates arrived the next day, as advertised, and so I had a lovely Xmas Even and Day eating chocolates and feeling like a spoiled grand dame lounging in her opulent salon and eating bonbons.

I would really love to be someone’s pampered pet. I’m just sayin’.

I knew the other two things would not arrive till today at the earliest, so when I got my box of Vegetable Thins, I was quite pleased.

Then I got a phone call saying another package was waiting for me at the front door to the building. Julian was heading out anyhow so he picked it up for me and would bring it to me when he got home.

And that’s where this gets complicated.

Julian got home and handed me a package. Awesome, my gummy bears, I thought.

Then later I am looking around for this package of gummy bears and I can’t find it. And I am puzzled because I clearly remembered Julian handing me the package from Amazon and yet I don’t see it anywhere.

This is where the reality issue begins.

So I am looking all around, no luck. So I decide I might as well put the gigantic box of Vegetable Thins away and check to see if I had put my gummy bears away too.

So imagine my surprise when what did I find in my little storage area in my end table but…. another giant box of Vegetable Thins!

Fut the WUCK???

Luckily, my high performance analytic mind soon figured it out. Somehow, BOTH the packages that arrived today were boxes of Vegetable Thins, even though I only ordered one and they arrived via separate couriers.

Life never runs out of new ways to fuck with my head. Or piss me off. ^[1]

Anyhow, the gummy bears will arrive Monday. No clue how I ended up with TWO giant boxes of Vegetable Thins. It was definitely two separate orders, though.

Maybe I added them to my cart twice?

Oh well, at least it makes for a good anecdote now.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Happy Foxing Day, everybody!

Yes, this is that magical day of the year where we celebrate all things vulpine. We foxes are a special bunch (the good, non short bus kind of special) and this is the day when we get together to sing Foxing carols (bring ear protection), exchange Foxing Day gifts, and enjoy one another’s company.

And we’re even so magnanimous and awesome that we let everyone else celebrate us on this day too!

We even let them get the name wrong. We’re just that amazing!

So get together with the fox or foxes you love (everyone has at least one!), give them lots of attention, and don’t forget to greet one another with a hearty, “Fox you!”

---

Well that was fun.

Random symptom of the day : muscle stiffness. Getting up out of this computer chair earlier made me feel like I was minutes away from having to shout, “Oil can!”.

Otherwise I seem to have made it through Xmas okay. I dodged my depression and did what I could to stay in a positive frame of mind, and of course I spent most of the day deeply involved in my latest video game.

Just like every other day of the god damned year. I just had one more thing to shut out and ignore than usual.

Piece o’ cake. It’s the part I was born to play.

No Therapy Thursday today, or last week. Last week he was away and this week he is mourning a death in the family and because he is deeply Jewish he is “sitting shiva(sp)?” and the funeral was last Sunday, so he will be doing that until sunrise on the Sabbath, aka Saturday.

I am inordinately proud of the fact that I remembered the name of their traditional period of mourning despite only knowing of it from one episode of Fraiser and another of Northern Exposure and possibly a mention of it by some old Borsht Belt comedian.

What can I say, I learned a lot about the world through television. TV was not just my parent and my family, it was also my tutor.

Anyhow, I am proud that I remembered the word and used it unprompted in my phone conversation with Doctor Costin where he told me about why no therapy today, thus demonstrating my cultural sensitivity.

You have to take your little “wins” where you can find them.

My sisters Anne and Catherine both gave me $100 in virtual gift certificates for Amazon this year, and miracle of miracles, they were both for the SAME Amazon, Amazon.ca.

You know. The right one.

Why make me have to deal with import fees and all that crap?

It should be interesting to see how Trump reacts to the realization that Canada and the USA are basically conjoined twins and they can’t hurt us without hurting themselves too.

Who am I kidding? He’ll never realize that because it would imply that it is possible for him to be wrong about something and that is clearly absurd.

2025 is going to be ever so much fun.

Dunno what I will do with my Amazon windfall. I “should” probably use it to get a new and much beefier power supply for Mister Computer so that I can hopefully solve that nasty “crashing when it uses the graphics card” problem.

But that’s boring. And it’s a problem that is not a problem most of the time because of how old the games I play are.

Divinity : Original Sin is from 2015. That’s slightly less than ten years ago.

And there is nothing 3D about it, so I am good.

So the power supply thing can maybe wait.

Then again, what the hell else am I going to spend it on?

---

I stagger around

Just got back to the computer after getting supper together, and boy are my arms (and the rest of me) tired.

My heart is pounding and I have a slight headache. Overall, not a fun time to be me.

By the time I sat down again, I was starting to feel a little dizzy, which led to me not so much sitting as slouching in a slovenly fashion into the chair.

And that’s a little worrisome because I am all by myself right now. So if I took a tumble there would be nobody to call to for help unless I could get to a phone.

Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

Oh well, no harm done. Maybe some day I will need 24 hour care but for the time being I can more or less take care of myself.

Not that I don’t appreciate all the help Julian gives me, of course.

I’ve realized that I have become reluctant to talk about how I feel in any detail. I guess that’s always been true to a certain extent.

I am much better at talking about my feelings in the past tense. Which in the past have been rather tense.

But it’s become more of a thing lately because my mood has been destabilized by the slight lowering of my Paxil dosage. As a result, it’s hard for me to say how I feel. There’s always a high level of flux in my mood now.

Not to the point of actual mood swings, at least not yet. And I am fairly confidant that as my emotional resources are loosened up, I am learning to put them to good use.

But it’s a process as slow as sunrise and just as inevitable.

I can handle the confusion. It still feels good to feel. The more of my emotions I can thaw out of that glacier of a heart of mine, the more awake and real I feel, and hopefully I will eventually sink my hooks into the here and now and finally have some kind of anchor in the real world.

Being untethered to the real world is great for imagination and vision, but at some point you want to be able to stop treading water and sleep on land.

And now for a nice, dry nap.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I just can’t afford to care that it is Xmas today.

Like I was saying yesterday, this is the year I have to cut all ties to Xmas that would bring me down. It’s just not worth it to keep caring when that can only lead to me feeling dangerously terrible this year.

I could lie to myself and fill myself with false cheer by telling myself that next year will be different. Next year I will truly celebrate. Next year I will save up to get myself a room in a nice hotel where I can do Xmas in pleasant surroundings and even pretend like I am a grownup for a while, at least till checkout time.

Or I’ll find some homeless shelter or soup kitchen or food bank and spend the day handing food to the people in society who are even poorer than I am.

Or I’ll volunteer at a suicide hotline, or be Santa for orphans, or wander the world singing songs and solving crimes.

Why, just think of all the wonderful things I could do!

But I know damned well I won’t do any of them. In fact I am betting that exactly 365 days from now, I will be doing the exact same thing – typing my feelings into this blog and whining about how I don’t have the wherewithal to celebrate by myself.

The only way I could prevent that is if I bought all my Xmas stuff for 2025 now, while I am still at least a bit inspired. but set it to not be delivered until Xmas Eve of next year.

But I know I ain’t gonna do that either. The truth is that I just don’t have what it takes to take care of myself. I still haven’t overcome that deep and terrible passivity that lurks at the core of my being that makes it so hard for me to act at all except to just keep going through the motions of my stupid so-called life.

I just keep going along that same old downward path. The gradient is such that it doesn’t feel like I am going down, but when I look around it’s quite clear that I am silently trudging my way down to Hell and a truly pathetic death.

And it’s not like that’s my desired destination. My desired destination involves having a job, a boyfriend, a house, and friends with various levels of benefits.

If I came into a ton of money and met my dream man the same night, he would have to understand that I have a LOT of wild oats to sow before I can consider monogamy.

Luckily, we gay men are more likely to be tolerant of that kind of thing.

But I can’t seem to get off this path no matter how undesirable the destination. It’s like I am locked in by some self-hypnotic magnetic field, like I’m on a rail and this is all just a very depressing Disneyland ride.

And I have tried to figure out what this magnetic force is. What is it that makes it so hard for me to make any kind of change to my life, no matter how desirable?

I feel like my energies are focused in the wrong direction in time. Like at some point, all my potential got sunk into being able to go forward the exact same way indefinitely and that system violently resists any attempt I might make to take those resources and put them into making that future actually better.

Like if I change anything at all, everything will fall apart.

Clearly not true but it’s still how I feel.

So here we are.

More after the break.

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¿Tienes hambre, amigo?

Decided that my traditional Xmas dinner would be a traditional Xmas burrito bowl from my new best friend, Quesada Tacos and Burritos.

Finally, I can get Mexican food delivered! I’ve never done the “burrito bowl” thing before, but it’s not very complicated.

Take the contents of a burrito and instead of putting it in a tortilla, stick it in a bowl. Ay caramba, you got yourself a burrito bowl.

It’s a very West Coast kind of thing. Has less carbs this way.

So I got layers of lettuce, tomatoes, refried beans, taco beef (!), and brown rice. all in a bowl for your dining pleasure.

And it’s delicious. Om nom nom!

My delivery dude didn’t want to call me on the phone built into the building. I think he actually expected me to come down to his fucking car because he whined that there wasn’t any parking.

Well too bad. I’m disabled and I can’t come down to get it, you have to get it up here.

Besides, what are the odds that someone would ticket a car that you left running with the door open while you took a quick trip up the elevator?

Not my problem, anyhow. Gimmie my food!

My mother called earlier. I always love hearing from her, of course. It’s good to hear her voice and be reminded that, despite all my misgivings about my past and the bad family dynamic I grew up in, she remains a very sweet and wonderful woman.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. She told me that goes for a Chinese food meal once a week, just her and a book, and quite often when she goes to pay her bill, she finds some kind stranger(s) have paid it for her!

Can you imagine? People see this sweet little old lady with her book and decide to make her their act of kindness.

I told my mother it was because she’s very lovable, which she is.

I didn’t ask if anyone could maybe think she’s homeless, which they might, with her tendency to have a purse and an overstuffed cloth bag with her at all times.

She’s not unhoused, folks. She’s just my dear sweet lovable eccentric mother.

Merry Christmas, my most beautiful and wonderful readers. I hope you had a good one.

And I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

The second I stopped playing Divinity : Original Sin, I got super sleepy.

I think the darkening skies probably played a part too. And the fact that I went out to do the Wound Care thing at 2 pm today and was therefore already already tired when I sat down to play m’game anyhow was probably a major factor.

But this happened at a bit before 3:40 pm, meaning that in 25 minutes ^[1] it would be time for me starting the bloggening, and that is not nearly enough time for me to go back to sleep, so here I am, sleepy but determinedly typing away to you lovely people.

I think it being Xmas Eve is making me more sentimental.

I haven’t done a heck of a lot to prepare for the evening. No surprise there. Even when my legs worked the depression suppressed whatever bright and perky urges to do a bunch of stuff to “celebrate” and left me knowing that the minute Xmas was over, I will wish I had done more, and it still not making me motivated to do more.

I am so cold and damp and dark inside. No wonder nothing can live there.

Even so, over the years, like patient readers know, I have been stubbornly determined to keep Xmas in my heart even if it meant being super sad and lonely on Xmas Eve because I just loved Xmas that much.

Well that ends now. Fuck it. I will always love Xmas with all my super sappy heart but this year I am cutting any ties that lead to me feeling isolated and terrible and depressed because I don’t want to have to spend my Xmas day talking to someone at a suicide prevention hotline because I have nowhere to go and no will to get me there.

Those are the stakes, folks. Robin William’s suicide resonated with me far too much for my comfort. Maybe that’s why I got so mad at him at the time.

He made sure all his loved people were away and that they would be OK and then he quietly slipped out death’s door when he was all alone, like some kind of wild animal crawling off to die.

If I ever harmed myself, it would be when I felt utterly alone and isolated with no connection to humanity at all. Or when I felt very happy and replete and didn’t want to go back to the bad place ever again.

Kinda like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Michael Hutchens of INXS. They both committed suicide when they were finally getting better, and starting to heal.

I get it. I understand exactly why that would happen that way.

But I could never do that to the people I love and who love me. Suicide is a brutally violent act to perpetrate on everyone who knows you. It will do considerably more than just break their hearts. That kind of thing could shatter a person.

The guilt alone could kill you.

So no, I could never be that selfish. Even at my lowest moments, and I might be heading into one of those soon, my love for those who care about me would keep me from doing such a terrible thing to them.

Maybe that’s another reason why I got so mad at Robin Williams. How could he do that to everyone who loved him, which includes like half of humanity?

When I learned he was in terrible pain, I forgave him somewhat. I vehemently oppose suicide but I am for euthanasia. If all you have to look forward to is pain and debility and the horror of being in it while your body dies, then GTFO with my blessing.

But as for me, I am fine. Yeah, I have health issues that worry me and I do have daily indignities to deal with, but I am nowhere near despair.

I just feel down now and then.

And then I come pour it all out into this blog, and that helps so much.

Thank you so much for making that possible, dear readers.

Merry Xmas et Joyeux Noel, mon amis.

More after the break.

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I’ve been trying to read these gay furry smut comics from Korea via Google Translate, and while it can translate the words, clearly it has trouble with the meaning.

I mean, try reading this :

There’s always a ton of repetition and naked dudes screaming “I want to know what I want to know” and “I want to know what I want to say” and “where is the point!?!” at each other and it makes for a bizarre and surreal read.

Presumably, these phrases represent idiomatic Korean that does not translate well, at least not with mechanical translation.

I had been meaning to post one of these for a few days now, but having someone say, “Eskimo…?” completely out of context then having a burly Korean player of American football yell, “I want to go to KKK!” drove me to finally do it.

I mean, what the proverbial fuck, man? LOL.

---

Oh right, Xmas pics!

I forgot I made some of those.

Like this darling picture of feral Fruvous on Xmas morning :

Those stories ended up being quite wholesome for something that started off as a way for me to process family trauma. 

Maybe I should try that again. Hmmm. 

And then there’s this wholesome trio : 

 

I wanna hug them and kiss the top of their heads so bad!

And here’s one from when I had some friends over for Xmas dinner.

In the holiday spirit, we will just pretend that is a tofurkey, as sheep are herbivores.

Well that’s enough wholesomeness for now. We now return you to your usual protective coating of snarkiness and cynicism.

And I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

But I’m not.

I feel dizzy. I have since I woke up from a nap around ten minutes ago. It’s a mild dizziness – I was able to get my lunch from the kitchen without too much trouble – but it runs quite deep and is accompanied by an even deeper feeling that something just ain’t right in my body right now.

So color me concerned.

Insert my standard, “wah, I don’t wanna go to the ER or Urgent Care!” whining that usually comes up when I have a health scare of some sort.

The pattern of my life would predict that this will be a scary problem for a while then disappear entirely like it was naught but the frost on the lilies come morn.

But this is not just an outbreak of my periodic flu-ish symptoms. Something deep inside me is telling me something very not good is afoot.

I will see how I feel after I finish lunch and it’s had time to digest, and the water I am drinking has time to percolate through my body.

This could be just another weird way for my dehydration to manifest.

We will wait and see.

My digestion just make an ominous sound. Raise alert level by 10 percent.

Otherwise, I am having a decent day. Divinity : Original Sin continues to be very fun to play and I am glad to have acquired it, especially now that I know that it has a rating of “Universal acclaim” on Metacritic.

Well who am I to disagree with the universe?

I ordered some treats for myself earlier today. Found that Amazon Canadastocks the “big half-kilo bag o’ chocolates” that I got in a previous year, so that will be arriving some time tomorrow.

The website says it will arrive “before 10 pm”, which certainly gives them a nice wide window of time to get it here and have it still officially be “tomorrow”.

Once I get them, I will then have to practice a modicum of self-control in order to keep myself from eating too many at once.

That’s not out of some Puritan streak of compulsive self-denial out of fear of giving in to “decadence”, of course. But the chocolates are sweetened with maltitol^[1] and that stuff is known to have a mild laxative effect,

Why can’t everyone just use Splenda?

Unwelcome thought : it would be far too typical of my life for me to end up in the hospital for Xmas Eve and Day.

Well at least I wouldn’t be alone, assuming I’m out in the ward and not isolated because they don’t know if I’m contagious or whatever.

I’m pretty sure the only thing infectious about me right now is my smile.

We will see how things play out. Right now I have that seasick kind of dizziness that makes my body want to keep going in whatever direction I move it, as though my limbs suddenly weigh twice as much.

No malaise as of yet, knock on wood. And phew for that. If I had a major energy drain and/or sickly feeling going on at the same time as the rest of this bullshit, I doubt I would have been able to get out of bed and focus enough to blog.

But I’d sure as hell try. I am way, way beyond the point where blogging is optional. I need to write my words every day in order to clear the logjam in my brain and let me actually think clearly.

And that’s, like, my favorite way to think.

More after the break.

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Still not right

I feel a little better than I did earlier, but I still feel that sense of wrongness.

And I am still a bit dizzy. Plus my nose is running and I can feel that the sinuses above and around my eyes are stuffed up.

That congestion is probably what is causing the dizziness and the ill feeling. It’s pressing on that part of my dura that swells up when I get heat stroke and that leads to me feeling dizzy and ill then, too.

I wonder if that’s fixable? My mother once told me that her father, my late Pepe, had a nasty sinus issue once that got way better after an operation. Made a huge difference.

Then again, I have had my head examined relatively recently. One would hope a sinus malformation would be the sort of thing that would stand out enough to get noticed even if they weren’t looking for it.

But maybe not. I dunno.

I think I am more or less ready for Xmas. Which is good because tomorrow is Xmas Eve. I think I will weather it well on an emotional level.

Being able to write out all my fears and anxiety certainly helps a lot, and for that I have you, my readers, to thank.

Like I said up above in part 1, I need to blog. I can’t imagine going without blogging for even a day. I would feel so anxious and restless and, well, blocked up.

Constipated. I would feel mentally constipated. Make of that what you will.

In fact, that need to blog is the best argument for finally replacing the battery on my tablet I could think of.

Sure, typing on a tablet sucks rancid donkey taint, but it’s still better than not being able to share my words at all.

I am still struggling to accept that I can only “push” every once in a while. Most of the time, all I can do is hang on to my scraps of sanity and try to make it through the day.

The sorts of things that might expand my world are still out of reach most of the time. I just don’t have the chutzpah or the wherewithal to fight my inward tide inside most days.

And it’s hard not to get angry and frustrated with myself over that. That feeling that what I want is right there and I therefore should be able to just grab it is maddening.

I guess I need to learn to have more patience with myself.

But I have all this pent up energy and ambition and even good ol greed inside me and it wants to claw its way out.

And I still won’t let it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’m not feeling it.

Mostly because I know that I’m not getting much of a Xmas at all this year. No dinner with Joe’s parents and sister, no gifts from my mother n’ brother, and just the usual dinner at Denny’s for me and my tight knit little friend group.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy to do Denny’s with Le Gang, and this time, it comes with gifts, and I love giving gifts.

I like getting them too, of course. I’m as greedy for the loot as the next guy. But for me, the greater pleasure has always been in the giving.

What can I say? I love making people happy. Especially those I love.

But yeah, other than tonight, I’m not getting an Xmas this year unless I make one for myself, and so far I have not been able to get my shit together enough to provide one for myself this year.

I’ve never had to do it on my own before. I don’t know where to begin.

The only thing I have planned is ordering a turkey dinner from Denny’s for supper on Xmas day. Woop de frigging do.

In theory, I know things I could do to make things more festive. I could decorate my room. I could watch the Alistair Sims version of A Christmas Carol. I could order myself a box of sugar free chocolates.

Or maybe some not-too-sugary naughty treats, even.

But meh. I just don’t have the motive power for any of that. It all comes back to the main core issue that I don’t find my own welfare to be particularly motivating.

I am still in the grips of internalized neglect and learned helplessness. I can imagine all kinds of solo holiday activities and I can even imagine enjoying them but it all just seems so sad and pathetic to me that I’m not sure that it wouldn’t make things worse in the long run.

Thus my thinking uncharacteristic thoughts like, “it’s just a day and soon it will be over”.

That’s far more Grinch-like than I have ever been before. Patient readers know that I have always kept Xmas in my heart despite the inherent dangers to my fragile psychological state and tender, sweet little heart.

But I’ve always had dinner with the Devoys to anchor me before. It’s hard to even fathom just how much having something to look forward to means to me. I could see my way through a lonely Xmas Eve knowing I would have Xmas Dinner with a lovely family to look forward to.

But now, alas, I have nothing, and no experience with spending Xmas alone and somehow making it feel festive and special.

I’m not good on my own. The last time I lived alone, I lost my frigging mind to depression, and that was when I was a lot younger and healthier.

I could investigate places to go for us lonely souls on Xmas Eve and/or Day. I am sure there must be something in this big ol’ GVRD of ours.

But there would be no point as there would be nobody to drive me there. My friends will all be with their families on Xmas Eve and Day.

I suppose I could finally get around to looking up what would be involved in taking HandyDart to places.

For those who dunno, that’s a kind of specialized bus service/taxi for us gimps. It can take you door to door to things like doctor’s appointments, shopping, social events, and all the rest.

I’ve never taken it before because I’ve always had wonderful Julian to take me the places I needed to go.

And I could look it up, and research places I might go, and do all kinds of wonderful things to make life happier for me.

But first I’d have to convince myself that I am worth the effort and expense.

And that’s a pretty tall order.

More after the break.

---

More gay furry smut recommendations!

Leo the Magician

Well, furries plus whatever the heck Leo is.

I love Leo the Magician because it has everything I love – it’s warm and sweet and funny with seriousness peppered in and it is quite joyously pro-sex to boot.

Its entirely sensibility is very very “me”, plus I love how the art style eschews any pretense of realism for good, solid, appealing, cartoonish character design.

And that’s very “me” as well. If I had a webcomic (again), that’s the style I would want to to be in, albeit maybe slightly more detailed.

But the most important factor is the characters and their expressiveness and appeal.

Lights Out by Funkybun

I love how well written and developed it is. I can feel the emotion in it so clearly! And that makes it super sexy to me.

Even though “all they do is give each other handjobs”. Pshaw. I am way past the age where specific sex acts or combinations of genders and genitals will mean very much to me at all. For me, it’s the emotional intensity and context that turns me on.

And Funkybun’s stuff is so well written! They understand that lust is an emotion and therefore emotion matters in smut just like it matters everywhere else.

And I so totally identify with our, shall we say, more experienced critter. I can totally imagine doing the same thing in the same situation myself.

Maybe it’s my trickster nature. I dunno.

---

Farewell to Xmas 2024

”But wait! ” the version of you in my head cries, “Xmas isn’t until the 25th! How can you be saying goodbye to it on the 22nd?”

Because my Xmas is over. I did Denny’s with Le Gang and we exchanged gifts and I got a few nice things and that was pretty much it.

I loved every second of it, but that was it for me this year unless I can somehow find it within myself to arrange something better.

And it’s not looking too good for that.

I am at least going to do some extra grocery shopping so that I have nice things to eat on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon.

And I will order something nice for myself for my personal Xmas dinner. Just to be on the safe side, I had my turkey dinner at Denny’s tonight. So in theory that leaves things wide open for Xmas dinner.

Maybe it will be more Denny’s. Maybe I will see what White Spot is serving up. Maybe I will go totally random excess and have some festive Xmas donairs.

We will see what I feel like at the time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well for fuck’s sake.

After my computer crashed while I was not even using it (thanks, Salad), I of course rebooted. And my computer came back online.

But it came back wrong!

Apparently, out internet is out, which is why I am typing this into a Libre Office document and not the WordPress interface for my blog as God intended.

My computer connects to the network fine, but the network can’t seem to reach the internet at large at all, and my uninformed guess is that this is a Shaw Cable problem, not an us problem.

I have rebooted several times with no useful result. Once I get enough words out of my system to calm down enough to even think about doing a totally cold reboot where I turn the power off at the power supply (basically unplugging the whole thing) then boot up from THERE, I will have some kind of definitive answer as to where the fault lies.

Not in our stars but in ourselves, as Shakespeare wrote.

It’s just aggravating as a lot of fuck to have to fight this hard just to get back to normal. I should not have to toil and wait and toil again just to get back to where I fucking started.

Not that this is a particularly useful kind of “should” or “shouldn’t”. Whether something should or should not have happened is irrelevant to the problem at hand and can divert important mental resources from the task of actually solving the problem.

But even a paragon of logical analysis like myself (sic) has to give in to the urge to shake his fist at the sky and curse the gods now and then, whether or not it “makes sense”.

It vents emotion, and that’s all the sense I need it to make.

---

Well I did the fully cold boot and it didn’t fix anything. I am still at the “connected to the network but the network isn’t on the internet right now” phase.

Lovely. Because life didn’t suck enough yet, apparently.

Oh well, I can at least still play some of my video games. Offhand, I can’t think of any of my currently installed games which would have reason to need to be online all the time.

That doesn’t mean they won’t require it, of course. Video game companies love requiring an internet connection so that they can continually monitor you to make sure you’re not pirating games.

Which is downright creepy, now that I think of it. We must watch you constantly to make sure you are not breaking the law, Citizen.

But really, it’s for your own protection. From, i dunno, scammers or whatever.

Trust us, we wouldn’t violate your privacy just because we live in a culture of corporate paranoia where everyone is guilty until proven innocent, and even then we assume you’re guilty as hell and are only eluding our greedy grasp because of the mere technicality that you didn’t do it.

A likely story. That’s what they all say!

I just asked Julian to reset our WiFi router. Hopefully that will resolve the problem. If it doesn’t, then we will have to escalate to actually calling Shaw and asking WTF.

I hope that does not prove necessary as it will be a lot of hassle. As with nearly everything, I would rather deal with it all by myself.

It’s so much less complicated that way. Involving other people in things always makes this so much slower and clumsier and stupider.

I did not and never will enjoy group work. Just give me a task and let me get at it.

I can been incredibly productive that way. Don’t make me slow down to the speed of

the slowest sheep in the flock. Let me FLY.
More after the break.

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The return of the kid

Well rebooting the router restored our internet access, so say for that.

I’m still writing this in LibreOffice because at this point it’s marginally easier. Plus I like how Libre provides me with a constant word count as opposed to WordPress, which makes me press a button to see how much I’ve written.

Oh, how I have suffered.

Other than my computer and internet issues, today’s been okayish. I have my Xmas shopping on the way to being done.

My credit card is glowing red hot from overuse, but whose isn’t this time of year?

Hopefully Joe’s gift from me will arrive before Denny’s tomorrow. We don’t leave for Denny’s until 7:10 pm or so, so the odds are good.

Physically, I feel fairy rotten today. My cold or flu like symptoms are back. Runny nose, sore ear nose and throat, and all the rest.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s not anything viral at all but rather how dehydration presents in me. If so, then all my talk of upping my hydration game gains a brand new urgency.

Because I sure as fuck hate feeling like this.

The muscle soreness and stiffness in particular has been kicking my ass today. That awful back pain I get where it feels like a giant is squeezing my spine is back and it’s not playing around.

I’ve been taking my muscle relaxants to try to fix it. Hard to know if they actually help because the problem happens mostly when I have just gotten out of bed and for obvious reasons, I have not taken a pill in a while when that happens.

The pills do seem to help me get to sleep and stay asleep thought. So there’s that.

Emotionally, right now I feel tired and anxious and low key depressed. I feel very isolated and alone and abandoned, which is a feeling to which I am sadly quite prone.

When depression’s deadly chill comes down it’s like interstellar space inside me. I try my best to remember that no matter what my electrochemical imbalances tell me, the people who love me are still out there and still care about me and want me to be happy.

I guess it’s just easier to feel forsaken and forlorn.

Not better. Just easier.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.