Today’s been busy, at least by my standards.

This morning, I went to see Doctor McKay, my eye doctor. I get the feeling Doctor Vaezi, my previous eye guy, is too successful and important for West Coast Retinal Consultants out here in Richmond.

But don’t let the name fool you. They do the rest of the eye too.

It was the usual long process of actually getting to see him. Show up, check in, sit in the waiting room. Get the dilation drops put in. Sit back down in the waiting room. Get back up for the imaging of my eyes in various forms.

There seems to be three forms. I know one of them is to map the blood vessels in my eyes, but I dunno about the other two.

Maybe they just want to capture the sparkling depths of my baby blues.

Then there’s the testing. You know, can you read these letters. I got further than before with that at least with my right eye because when it got tough, I gave myself three or four seconds to just stare at the letters as my eye gathered enough information and the letters slowly resolved themselves.

I hope that did not throw off the measurements. My changing tactics.

Anyhow, then it was more waiting until I got called into the exam room, where I waited a bunch more before my ocular specialist Doctor McKay showed up to consult.

Impressively, he remembered me and what he’d worked on before, which was that blood vessel issue in my left eye. He asked about it, I told him it was fine.

Well, not really. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that the swelling was a lot worse in my left eye, which of the two appears to be the troublemaker.

And that meant it was time for an injection. Yay. He literally stuck a needle in my eye.

But they have new, sharper needles, and he probably remembered that I seem to be somewhat resistant to the numbing agent they use, so he was all slick with putting a drop of the numbant (sic) in my eye and doing the injection all in one motion.

Very impressive technique. Kinda hot, in fact.

Well, I did have a handsome blonde doctor stick SOMEthing in me.

Anyhow, it hurt, but it hurt a lot less than previous shots to the eye. Hooray for sharper needles and skilled doctors.

I will be back there next Monday at 11 am for a shot in the right eye. After that, the shots will be repeated every six weeks until the swelling is gone.

Fair enough. Whatever it takes to retain my eyesight.

After that, we headed over to wound care, and that’s when my troubles began because despite all the time I spent sitting and waiting, my legs were still incredibly tired just from getting to West Coast Retina Consultants and moving around there, so even just getting up the elevator to the clinic was very tiring.

What’s worse is that I really needed to pee.

Luckily, I had the time to do it. Unluckily, I stupidly chose to use a urinal instead of doing the sensible thing and sitting down to pee in one of the stalls.

This, of course, involved standing for a long-ish period and my legs do not like this. There were, thankfully, grab bars on either side of the urinal.

But my pee decided to come out at a very weird angle and that meant I had to use one hand to hold my instrument and achieve any level of accuracy.

Foreskins can be such a pain.

Anyhow, all that conspired to make it so that when I finally sat down in the waiting area I was in agony. I was breathing so hard and in such obvious distress that the old people in the waiting area with me felt bad for me.

Luckily, by the time I was called in to get my bandages changed, my endorphins had caught up with me so my legs were now somewhat numb.

Still very tired, but at least the pain was mostly gone.

Needless to say, after all that righteous suffering, I felt I had earned a vanilla cone from McD’s on the way home.

Thus ended today’s adventure.

Oh, and the bug people were here while I was gone. So, phew on that.

More after the break.

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Now there’s an image

I just realized how potentially creepy the phrase “the bug people” could be.

Oh, update on last night’s “cold” : it comes and goes. Which is very weird. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the edge of pneumonia and sometimes it’s almost gone. All that’s left behind is a bit of a dry throat.

It seems to be linked to my hydration level, at least partially. I’ve known for a while that because of how Jardiance works, it makes your urinary system work pretty hard and hence also depletes your hydration level pretty fast.

And I am trying to break myself of the habit of procrastinating on getting up and refilling my water glass. That is the number one cause of me ending up dehydrated and it has to stop or shit like this “cold” will keep happening.

I wish my body had a diagnostics panel I could check to see what my levels of various things are so I could top up (or cut back) when needed.

Oh well, maybe someday. We already have things like blood sugar sensors you can implant in your arm and read with an app, so once that kind of thing goes through a few more evolutionary cycles, maybe we’ll all be able to get a “health chip”.

It’s always bugged me that there’s no easy way to tell what vitamins you need. Even a medical lab would have to run a TON of tests to figure out the levels for every nutrient.

Maintaining your body should be as easy as maintaining your car.

“Seems I am low on Vitamin A, calcium, and brake fluid. ”

Imagine how much healthier people would be!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

But only a start.

So my apartment building is being treated for cockroaches (eep!) tomorrow, and here I am in my filthy bug-ridden environs feeling incredibly anxious because these people are gonna show up with their bug traps and see my pigsty and judge me harshly.

And I am deeply ashamed of the state of this room of mine. I live in squalor for what seems to the world to be absolutely no good reason and this bug trap visit is bringing that to the forefront and I don’t like it.

So I have started trying to clean up. I guess where filth could not motivate shame just might, but I know there’s no chance I can actually make this place clean in time.

And I know this to be true because, quite disappointingly, I found myself completely out of gas after just a half hour of cleaning, and I’d hope to do at least an hour or two.

But nope. Started at 2 pm and by 2:30 pm I was all tuckered out.

Dunno who this Tucker guy was but he was presumably very tired.

So tomorrow will be a sort of neurotic apocalypse for me. My demons are arriving in force and they come bearing bug traps.

Just like the old gypsy predicted!

Honestly, I really hope they show up when I am out of the apartment. That way they can judge all they want and I won’t care.

And I am going to be out of the apartment for a chunk of time. I have my appointment to see Doctor McKay (about the fluid building up in my eyes) tomorrow and that will probably keep me busy between 10 am and 11:30 am, and then I have good ol wound care at noon, so if I am lucky I will be away for two and a half hours.

Honestly, if they haven’t come and gone by then, I will seriously consider getting Julian to drop me off at my favorite White Spot (on Ackroyd) and then come get me when the coast is clear.

This is really fucking with me.

Oh well, at least it’s keeping me from worrying about my eyes.

I’ve only got so much bandwidth for freaking out, after all.

Meanwhile, I have been spending a lot of time on Bluesky. That’s the hip new alternative to Twitter (sorry, Twix) that all the cool people in the world are flocking to because Twix has become a toxic hellscape of right wing hooliganism.

And of course, with every decent person who flees Twix, the toxicity of the place only gets worse until one bright and shining day in the not too distant future when all us libs will be gone and they will only be trolling each other.

In fact, some of them are already migrating to Bluesky for some reason and then whining about how left wing Bluesky is.

I don’t understand it. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with all your awesome right wing bros back on Twix? I am sure they make you feel all warm and included!

Or are you willing to admit that you can’t stand to be around people like yourself?

Come on now. You can do it. Just a little push and I am sure you can evolve a sense of irony and shame again.

Trump hasn’t completely made you his bitch yet!

I find the folks on Bluesky to be very groovy. And it doesn’t matter if right wingers invade now because they will be little red drops in a vast blue ocean, and cannot possible have any noticeable effect apart from providing sport for assholes like me.

So bring it on, you troglodytes. Just try to troll me.

Because I troll back. And I can troll way, way harder than you ever could.

Because y’all are dumber than fuck.

More after the break.

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Oh crap no

I am feeling ill. Dammit.

My lungs feel very stiff and scratchy and sore. Hurt a little bit with every breath. Add to that feeling feverish and a little out of it and bone tired, and the picture is bleak.

Well I don’t care. I am going to my eye appointment no matter what. Sorry, John Q. Public, but my eyesight is at stake.

And I use that all the time!

In fact I’m using it right now.

But I really don’t like how I feel right now. This definitely feels like a lot more than just a cold. It feels like someone or something is sitting on my chest. And pain when you breathe is never a good sign.

So right now I am hoping my immune system can fight this shit off before it turns into pneumonia. I don’t want to end up spending a week or more in the hospital on top of the rest of my stressors.

I don’t even have a working tablet to use to keep me occupied. I’d have to either order the battery for it right quick or make do with books and crossword puzzles.

And I have done that before, and it stinks.

Hey Doc, can you do me a favor?

But hey, now I’m not worried about the bug trap people OR my eyes!

Let’s stop there though, please, I’d hate to see what’s next.

The ironic part is that I started feeling bad when I was cleaning my room. At the time I thought I was just tired from the cleaning but nope, I was at the beginning of coming down with whatever it is I have now.

I suppose that when I go out tomorrow, I should wear a mask for the protect of the public. Assume I make it that far.

It’s not impossible that I will get worse and have to go to the ER before then. And then boom goes my eye appointment.

It’s not like the hospital can do that kind of work.

Oh, one ray of hope I need to cling to though : it’s the fluid pressure in my eyes that is making my vision bad right now, so it is possible that if that pressure can be relieved,I will suddenly see a heck of a lot better!

That sure would be nice.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It’s harder than it sounds.

I could rail against my mind fog. Shake my tiny fist at the sky and yell, “Damn you, mind fog, I wish you’d go away forever!”

But I don’t wish that. Not really.

I know that I’m the source of the fog (remember, everything in your head is you) and that going around constantly in a daze serves a vital purpose, namely acting as a sort of soft focus lens to make reality less scary.

And by scary, I mean overstimulating. I think.

Still working out how overwhelm and anxiety fit together in my mind.

Anyhow, the mind fog blurs everything and makes it seem like things are further away and less intense than they are and thus preserve the inner sanctum of my mind in which I have been hiding for most of my life.

I can feel that duck blind of the mind quite clearly now. I can feel how it has acted as both camouflage to hide me from the world and as a kind of shark cage to protect me from it when the camouflage fails.

Above all else, nothing and nobody touches me. Not the real me. Not the crazy critter who lives inside that cage. He can get extremely close to people without them ever truly touching him and he’s so good at it that they never know that hiding inside all that cuddle warmth and snuggly sensitivity hangs a cage of ice colder than space itself.

And I know that this is a big problem for me. I know that I can confuse the hell out of people with the mixed signals I put out. That’s the main reason I tend to keep everyone at arm’s length – from that distance, I can be Mister Sunshine and nobody can sense the little man on the inside who is scared as hell of pretty much everything.

I know that if I am ever to get into a relationship, I will of course have to get one hell of a lot closer with someone. And I know that it is not in my nature to hold back when connecting with someone – we connect deeply or not at all.

And that means that at some point, that little man may well have to abandon his little shark cage and at long last let someone actually touch him and let the layers of ice around his heart just melt away.

I don’t know what will happen then. I hope I can handle it. I’d like to think I would finally simply surrender to it all and become a more whole person and truly, truly love that person with all my heart and soul.

But given that I can’t seem to handle the intimacy of even falling asleep while I am in physical contact with someone else, I definitely cannot guarantee a good reaction.

Oh well, Everybody has to find out what they are like when they are in love at some point of their lives.

Granted, it’s usually in their teens, not when they are 51, but whatever.

Better latent than never!

That’s the thing. I’ve led such a strange life. For as long as I can remember, I can convincingly act like I am okay, and even pass for normal as long as people don’t look too closely, but it’s all just part of the duck blind.

Deep inside I am frozen in time and detached from everything and scared, and all I can really do is lurk in the shadows most of the time.

I’m doing whatever I can to push against this tendency in me and force myself out of my shell and into the world a little bit more.

And sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t. And that’s okay.

It’s okay to get frustrated with myself over it sometimes too.

It’s okay to wish winter would end and the sun would visit my sky at last.

Even though I know I don’t really want that fog to burn away.

Because then I’d be exposed.

More after the break.

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The place where it dies

I can feel it when motivation should be happening.

It’s like electricity trying to flow through a broken wire. I can feel a stimulation of my brain but it never makes it to my motivational complex at all.

I’d have more luck trying to pass current through a block of wood.

In fact, that’s more what it feels like : like the wire isn’t broken, it just leads to a large cold block of deadness and apathy and thus gets nowhere near its destination.

And all I can do is just watch and feel it happen from the sidelines. Like I am not even involved. I feel the spark and I feel it get smothered by the deadness and I can’t even feel bad about that.

Because for reasons that are obvious if you think about it, I just don’t care.

Part of it – maybe a big part – is that this is my normal now. Has been for 30 years. Actually being motivated to do things would be weird for me now.

I mean, out of nowhere, feeling like doing something… what’s up with that?

I guess it all leads back to “control”, just like everything else. Almost never acting on my impulses does create a lot of solemn predictability for me.

By treating my own goddamned impulses like alien invaders burst into the room and making irrational demands of me.

I would be far better off being a lot more like a normal, healthy, functional human being who puts the impulses and instincts at the core of their being and everything else gets piled on to that primal id foundation.

I guess this is what happens when the defining trauma of your entire life happens when you are only four year old, your connection to your id gets severed as part of your panicked retreat into the chilly depths of the mind.

I guess I should probably do something about that.

But meh. Whatever.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

In other words, video games.

Beat the main plot in Morrowind for the first time ever a couple of days ago. So that was cool. I killed the fuck out of Dagoth Ur and destroyed his god-machine robot and saved the people of Vvardenfell from the Blight and there was much rejoicing.

I didn’t get a huge sense of accomplishment, I don’t know why. Maybe because they didn’t build up Dagoth Ur as a character at all. He was just a name connected to the bad shit going down until that final confrontation. So there was no real sense of having overcome a difficult foe.

The game did try at the end, though. He got a couple of villain speeches off before I killed him, including the requisite “join me, Luke Skywalker” type speech even though that was totally not actually possible.

Someone should make a mod where you can do that. I mean, morality would dictate that if you do that, it would be game over, but still, it’s nice to have options.

I’ve started a new character and started exploring quest mods and such.

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The Twilight Zone

I’ve just realized that the scam I have been pulling on myself involves something I already knew about, the fact that I live in a state that is literally and metaphorically never very far from sleep. but what I didn’t know till now is how I use that to keep from ever having to actually do things.

Like, for instance, that third lesson.

This is going to be hard to confess, which is why I’m doing it.

The way the scam works is that I convince myself that I can’t get things done in the morning because I’m too tired and I can’t do them in the evening for – reasons? – so I am totally going to do them tomorrow afternoon!

Bullshit. You’re going to sleep for most of the afternoon and play my vidya games for the rest of the time in which I am not blogging.

The time I really should be setting side for non-gaming non-blogging activities is between around 3 am and 8 am, which is when I am most active.

But of course, that would cut into my video gaming time, which is somehow both incredibly precious and very plentiful at the same time.

A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…

(It’s a reference to this. – Ed. )

Ahem. What I meant to say was that a long long time ago, I sank deep into the world of Skyrim and its galaxy of mods, and that’s when video games officially took over my life.

I stopped eating meals out in the living room with Julian like we’d done for years. I ate in front of the computer instead. Still do.

Heck, for those first few days, I didn’t eat, drink, or sleep at ALL. I must have entered some kind of hypomanic state because for a while, I really felt like I had somehow transcended physical limitations and did not have to do that shit any more.

In other words, I was delusional.

And that’s when the addiction took hold and displaced everything else in my life. My life became a video game playtime optimization exercise and it’s been that way for so long now that I barely remember the time before that when I might not have been any more functional but at least I did a variety of things with my time.

This addiction has hollowed out my life by jealously monopolizing all my free time and refusing to let me do anything else.

Including that third goddamned lesson.

I feel so very, very lost.

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More about addiction

When I so much as ponder going without playing games for even an hour of potential game time, I get this feeling like a cold wind blowing across my soul.

As if I was some infinitely delicate creature who will perish if exposed to so much as a mild breeze from the world outside my gaming so-called life.

Now obviously, this is insane. I could throw this computer out the window and move to a yellow yurt in Yalta and I would be fine, at least physically.

The withdrawal would be a bitch, though.

Life without screens? Is that even POSSIBLE?

It’s not that drastic, anyhow. I don’t need to leave all screens behind in order to get my life moving. I just need to develop my ability to step away from the gaming for an hour or two a day so I can get other things done.

I mean, I already do it for blogging. It’s not like the entire time I am blogging to you fine and wonderful people I am mad jonesing for my next fix of Morrowind.

I suppose on some level, I am looking forward to going back to gaming after, But for the most part, tippity tapping on the keys for you folks keeps me occupied.

And that’s the point, I suppose. Keeping this massive mental mansion of mine too occupied with meaningless activities of no consequence for it to get bored and start picking apart my sanity or having it decay away like an unstable isotope.

And of course it strikes me how limited a life that is. I’m sure that there must be tons of other things that could keep me safely distracted. It’s a matter of opening up to them,

But such is the nature of addiction that it does not allow for competition. My addiction simply MUST have every waking hour to itself or it will pitch a fit.

It’s a distressing and disturbing way to live and I know I would be a lot better if I could just let go of the LCD teat of video games long enough to gather some meaning for myself and do things that might actually be good for me.

Maybe I should look on each departure as a little adventure. And like all adventures, you are happy to go out and happy to return as well.

And who knows. Maybe it will turn out that productivity is addictive too.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

My exact level of assertiveness is kind of hard to define.

For example, I am ferociously opinionated. And I will take on anyone, anywhere, and at any time in the arena of public opinion. When it comes to expressing myself in that way, I am utterly fearless and would argue with God Himself if I thought He was wrong.

At the very least, I would request clarification on whether the laws in the Old Testament, and especially that Leviticus bullshit, were ever meant to be His laws too.

I suspect they were not.

And I am also fearless in the defense of others. I am constitutionally incapable of letting injustice happen in front of me without trying to intervene. I will throw myself into the jaws of danger not because I am especially courageous but because to sit by and do nothing is beyond unthinkable to me.

And I know I might make things worse.

But I have got to try.

On the other hand, my social anxiety has been so bad that I found myself unable to signal to my waitress that I wanted a refill on my drink because she looked busy.

And it’s still very hard for me to advocate for myself. To demand things, or even just ask for them. The power of the bad, bad tapes in my head telling me that I do not dare ever ask for anything because people are already only barely tolerating me is still too strong.

I was roundly resented for my entire childhood and it’s taken till now, at the ripe old age of 51, for me to realize it.

It’s not my fault I was a surprise.

So it would be accurate, if somewhat misleading, to say I have a problem with assertiveness. It’s very hard for me to stand up for my own needs and insist upon being treated as an equal.

Because in my head, I’m not equal at all. I am The Thing That Never Should Have Been, a hideous monstrosity utterly repugnant to all and wanted by none.

I mean, I must be, otherwise why did I get treated like I did by everyone? Parents, siblings, teachers, you name it, all clearly viewed me as a something disgusting that they wanted as little to do with as possible.

And yeah, I know they were wrong to do that to me, I know that now. But all that abuse and neglect is still written large upon my soul and I don’t know how to rub it out.

What I need, I suppose, is all of the opposite input that I can get. I need people to tell me that they want me around and that they are happy I am in their life and that they don’t view me as a liability or worse a social leper at all.

Because that feeling that nobody wants me around leads directly to the feeling that people would be better off without me and that leads directly to the bad place.

And I don’t want to go to the bad place.

I might not make it back out.

So let’s try to sum up. I can assert my opinions… just try and stop me. And I can assert myself on behalf of others in order to defend and/or protect them.

But when it just involves me and my fate, I’m as meek as a child.

In fact, it’s only been in recent months that I have even started to wake up to the fact that I am perfectly capable of pursuing my own best interests.

I may not always have the proper brain chemistry to do it – though I am working on that – but I am always capable of going out into the world to find my fun.

I can do it. It’s allowed. I don’t have to worry that someone will get mad at me for trying to do it myself. I don’t have to just passively absorb whatever happens to me like I am no more than a leaf in the wind and my fate is not my own.

I need to accept that I am responsible for myself.

And that being responsible for myself is a good thing.

Because it means I can finally start to grow up.

More after the break..

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I very much enjoyed this gay furry smut-ish comic.

It’s very well written and really touched me on an emotional level. There is such warmth in their relationship and it’s just everything I would want out of love.

For those of you unfond of gay furry smut, there’s just one long sex scene between Ethan and Allan and it’s not important to the plot at all so feel free to skip it.

And this is another good one. It has almost constant nudity but not that much sex per se. And the plot does get kinda wacky.

I hope you enjoy them too.

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A totally different person

That’s what I think (fear) I will be if I get myself sane.

I try to imagine myself without all the anxiety and aversions and escapism and I just can’t. I can grasp “me but happier” as a concept but when I try to imagine what that would actually feel like, I can’t.

It’s like I am trying to see all of a line that goes over my horizon. I just can’t see ahead that far. I don’t know what that would be like, or who I would be.

I’d like to think the end result would be more or less the current me, but with all my best points turned up to 11 because the mental illness isn’t holding me back any more.

So super funny and kind and charismatic and loving and cute, basically.

And able to open myself up and express myself in absolutely massive ways. Ways so big they create a fucking shockwave when they land.

In my heart of hearts, I want to come roaring out of the shadows and on to the world stage with a thunderous TA DA! and wow them all.

And I truly can do that.

If I just get out of my own shadow for a change.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did the Therapy Thursday thing today.

And it did me a lot of good to talk about my worries for my mental health re : spending all of Christmas all alone with Doctor Costin.

Um, I mean, I talked about my worries with Doctor Costin.

Spending Xmas alone with him seems like a longshot at best.

Though he did say I could call him that day. That’s one advantage of having a therapist who is Jewish. To him, December 25 is just another day.

Because I was able to talk it through with Doctor Costin, I was able to clear the mental fog enough to realize that I can create my own little Xmas for myself.

After all, I could get myself a frozen turkey dinner. maybe some dinner rolls, a nicely naughty (but not TOO naughty) dessert, heck, maybe even some wine.

I would just be keeping with tradition if I got a little drunk and ate turkey and chocolate on Xmas day, that’s what I did at the Devoy residence in years gone past.

I hope Joe’s parents are okay. I know the decision to not do the big Xmas dinner must have been very hard for them, but they are in their 80’s and just can’t manage it now.

Anyhow, I will get myself some special treats to make Xmas feel more special and maybe watch the Alistair Sims version of A Christmas Carol as it is by far my favorite.

And I am sure to get a phone call from my mother, and that will be a joy. I love hearing from my Mom. When I hear her voice, I feel like I’m a little kid sitting at her knee again.

She may not have been a perfect mother, but she will always be my favorite person and a very nice lady and I will always want to bask in the glow of her attention and affection even if she’s around 2676 miles away.

I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot for the distance between Richmond and my hometown of Summerside. That thing is so dang handy!

And I can spend time online with whichever of my fuzzy friends happens to be around on Xmas day.

There’s bound to be more than you might think because a lot of furries work through Xmas, either for the overtime or just out of silent, passive protection against the holiday making them feel lonely and sad.

At least, that’s why I think they do it.

Honestly, it’s what I would do if I had employment. Work seems like a great way to keep yourself occupied and therefore not thinking about what day it is.

Just like how I use video games to keep from thinking about my life. Nope, sorry, I have filled my mind with Morrowind and there’s no room left for depression.

Speaking of which, I hit a serious snag in Morrowind recently. I needed a certain super powerful artifact from a character and the door to that character’s palace was locked and there was nobody there to open it.

So I tried a bunch of different things to try to make it behave itself, but none of them worked, so eventually I used a console command to just give me the damned thing.

I hate to cheat like that but I only ever cheat in video games when the game itself has fucked up and I need to fix it to continue.

So it’s not really cheating. It’s more like making the damned thing behave.

So, yay, I reign victorious. When I play again, I will use the artifact to defeat the bad guy and quite possibly complete the main plot of the game.

At the very least, I can’t imagine what would come after beating this guy. It’s not like I am going to take on Dagoth Ur (basically Satan) myself.

I’m not nearly legendary enough for that!

Not yet, at least.

More after the break.

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Sort of half sick?

I think my body must be fighting off some kind of bug because I have felt off for three days now and it’s got me a tad worried.

In addition to sore ear, nose, throat, and lungs, I have a runny nose and I have felt tired a lot. I have slept an awful lot today and I will definitely be sleeping more because I can already tell I will be going to sleep when I’m done blogging.

One odd thing is that all my symptoms are at their worst in the morning, when I have just woken up.

Which is going to make tomorrow morning’s 8:45 am wound care appointment REAL fun. I may end up having to cancel if I still feel like this.

Whatever bug I am fighting should probably not come to the CCC with me.

All I can say is that this better not turn out to be Covid because I got inoculated for it just last week, along with the flu, and if I end up with Covid anyway I will have to go back to that Shopper’s and demand a refund of the no money it cost me.

Ha ha ha.

More seriously, though, I really am worried about this turning into something worse. I felt worse today than I did yesterday and yesterday was worse than the day before that, so the trend line is not a positive one.

If I do get worse and end up at UC or the ER, it will be, of course, on the weekend. For whatever reason, this shit only ever goes down on the damned weekend.

Maybe fate wants to make sure I have plenty of company in the waiting room.

And so far (knock on wood) I’ve only ever had to go in one time for a high priority thing (chest pain) and if it’s just the serious sniffles this time, that more or less guarantees I will be there for a long ass time because of its low triage score.

So honestly I hope I get better soon, if only to spare me the aggravation!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Because they’re basically the same thing.

The core dynamic is the deeply cowardly act of redirecting anger created by abuse by those above you (and therefore scary) onto those who are not only below you but actually the least powerful and therefore least scary targets around.

Shit flows downhill, as my late father used to say.

And it would be one thing if these people did it with the full knowledge that they are doing something rotten purely because they can get away with it and it feels good.

But of course, they don’t do that, because they are far too weak and timid to take that level of accountability for their actions.

Instead, they go through amazing mental contortions to actually convince themselves that the least powerful (and scary) people are actually to blame for their pain.

Thus the ability of billions of people all over the globe to blame the poorest people in society for things like national debt.

Because make no mistake : modern conservatism is abuse. Its entire underlying structure is about delivering the pleasure of hurting the weak to the masses and everything else is just window dressing.

That’s why it’s all so mean spirited. That’s the entire point. That’s the product. That is the addictive substance.

The right wind pundits and podcasters’ job is to use whatever means are necessary, no matter how blatantly intellectually dishonest, to remove all impediments to that sweet, sweet joy of taking your pain out on the only people you’re sure can’t fight back.

This is also why compassion enrages them so much. Compassion stirs actual tender emotions in people’s hearts and if you’re addicted to the joy of hate, that only reminds you that you’re actually being evil and that ruins all the fun.

The point is to have a great time hurting the very people Christ commands you to care for while also believing that you’re not just a good person but the best kind of person and definitely getting into Heaven ahead of all these heathens

I mean, why let that faggot Jesus spoil all the fun of being Christian, right?

And if you listen carefully, you can detect a solid note of panic in their voices when they are railing against compassionate measures. That’s the panic of a hate junkie who feels like their supply is being threatened.

Imagine the revolution that could be unleashed if all these people could swear off the hatred and became enough of a vertebrate to look above them for the source of their pain and suffering and direct that rage at the people actually hurting them.

But that would take courage and, like I said, these people are cowards. And that’s just as true for conservatives blaming the poor for the deficit as it is for your average schoolyard bully beating up a nerd for daring to be smart when they are dumb.

The entirety of modern conservatism makes a lot more sense when you realize that it’s all just an abuse delivery machine.

I have suffered from this effect myself because my own father would get shit upon and put upon at work by bosses who felt free to make messes they knew he’d clean up and who would dump nearly their entire workloads on him because they knew he would do it for them without a complaint.

And then he’d come home and take it all out on his wife and kids.

My childhood would have been a hell of a lot easier if he’d just had the balls to protest how he was being treated by lodging a complaint with his union, UPSE.

But no. Like a true conservative, he could only vent his rage on people who could not fight back – people he claimed to love – and where he felt the most safe – at home.

Makes you sick to your stomach, doesn’t it?

More after the break.

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The problem of stupidity

Ordered me some Pizza Hut tonight.

A Melts (Bacon Chicken Alfredo, yum) and their new Golden Crispy Waffle Fries (meh, not crispy, boring) cost me only $20.66, which is only a few bucks more than what getting McD’s via Julian costs me. Not bad.

When the delivery arrived, I had to explain the concept of me buzzing her up to my Dasher (seasonally apropos) twice before it sank in.

She did get in eventually, though. Which is good, because I’m home alone and, gimp that I am, I would have been able to get my order if it’d been delivered to the lobby.

Anyhow, the whole thing got me thinking about stupidity and why it’s so infuriating.

Part of it is violation of expectation. You expect a certain degree of mental agility from people and when it’s not there it not only throws you off, it makes whatever you’re doing way harder because now you have to explain things.

And odds are, if this person is truly a dip, it will not be easy.

But in the broader sense, the herd is only as fast as its slowest member and that is certainly truly for society as a whole.

Especially if you’re intellectually gifted like myself. My whole school career was spent bored and frustrated at having to move at the speed of the slowest student in the class when all I wanted to do was rush forward like a heavy locomotive.

But anyone who has been saddled with a particularly dimwitted co-worker gets it.

When you’re as brilliant as I am, in a sense most of the world is that co-worker. On a purely intellectual level, the average person with an average IQ is like a child to you.

And the fact that you are stuck in the world where these children run everything can make even mild mannered liberal intellectuals pull their hair out.

Let alone passionate types like myself.

That’s why so many of us succumb to misanthropy. It’s a natural response to the problem of stupidity because it’s either dedicate yourself to leading the sheep (a job for which we are often ill suited) or resign yourself to being stuck on the same bus as everyone else when you can clearly see that the driver is drunk.

Myself, I reject misanthropy as a matter of deeply held belief. After all, you can’t exactly be a misanthrope and a humanist at the same time.

And I will choose my humanism over mere crankiness every single time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Yup. More poop talk.

Had another “incident” this morning, though I didn’t realize it at first. I had already muzzily made it to the computer and the fact that there was a fecal odor in the air had made some sort of impression on my sleep-addled brain but it wasn’t until I moved a little and felt a certain kind of moisture under my buttocks that I realized something was seriously amiss in my southern regions.

Got up off the chair and yup, there was a big smear of poop there. I wiped that up with a Kleenex, then sat back down, and only then did it occur to me : um, but what about where that poop came from?

Got up again, and yup, there was a new, smaller smear of poop there. Duh. This time I wiped it up then wiped my ass too.

There was one more surprise waiting, but this one was almost pleasant. I discovered that, like a well trained puppy, I had managed to poop mostly on another very unfortunate McDonald’s bag and not the bed, so cleanup was easy.

So I may still be having “accidents” but at least I’ve learned to go on the paper.

This unpleasant discovery was the deciding factor in my choice to not go to wound care this morning. I had already been feeling poorly – the usual scratchy lungs, throat, and ears – but now I realized that the contents of my intestines were still feeling rather fluid and as bad as literally shitting the bed is, it’s got nothing on it happening in public.

Imagine if it happened in the car.

Insert melodramatic shudder here.

It would actually be better, if it had to happen, if it happened at the Community Care Clinic, because nurses are trained to handle that kind of thing and they certainly always have excellent cleaning supplies on hand.

Perhaps I am overthinking this.

And now we come to the portion of the incident report where I ponder what it all means. This is the second incident in what, three days? four? and that seems to suggest something is afoot down below.

The big worry is that it has something to do with my spine. I do have a hairline fracture on my L4 vertebra, after all, and that’s not good.

I don’t think it’s that, though. I have no other neurological symptoms (well, no new ones anyhow) and the way the contents of my digestive tract keep going gooey suggests that it’s a containment issue, not a spasmodic one.

Oh, one worrying detail : the insufficiently contained substance was not its normal color at all. It was light tan, not the usual dark brown, and that worried me because I seem to recall that possibly indicating a problem with the spleen.

Spleen is a funny word.

I just looked it up. Apparently it can indicate a problem in the gallbladder, pancreas, or liver, which are all part of your “biliary” system which acts as a drain for those organs.

Well obviously it can’t be a gallbladder problem because I ain’t got one. Mine was taken out a very long time ago.

But the other two are up for grabs.

It could be that my untreated umbilical hernia is acting up somehow. That thing’s been on my mind lately as a possible factor in a number of issues that I have had with my digestive and urinary tracts over the years.

I suppose I should at least get someone to look at it to see if it’s time for a surgical intervention or not.

Then again, I have had my lower abdomen imaged a few times in the last five years, so perhaps another look at the hernia would be redundant.

You know I think I’ve had that thing since high school?

More after the break.

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You know, it just occurred to me that two of my favorite chocolate bars when I was a kid were the Skor bar and Crispy Crunch, both of which can shred your palate.

Was I just a masochist? Did I just enjoy my chocolate with a hint of dangerous?

I think I just really liked butter toffee.

I still do!

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It’s okay to be okay

Let’s gnaw on this topic for a while.

Call it, “Is there a crisis?”, because it has to do with my feeling that there is always something I should be doing, but I don’t know what it is and so I am not doing it.

I’ve had very bad nightmares like that. Some of my worst, in fact.

That feeling has evolved into this sense that my time for making something of myself is running out and I need to get on it NOW NOW NOW before it’s too late.

And that’s just not helpful.

That just creates the very kind of pressure that I hide from and thus it just sends me even deeper into myself and away from any ability to cope with the real world at all.

Ditto for all my talk of being trapped in his shithole life of mine. And my talk about how shitty my life is, come to think of it.

I mean, that all represents genuine anger and frustration in me, granted. I am deeply grief-stricken AND pissed off at how mental illness took thirty fucking years of my life – my entire adulthood so far – and I am just barely waking up from that funk now.

And all those emotions have to go somewhere. Maybe crisis mode is not a good final destination for them but it’s at least a move in the right direction.

I know in my heart that I would be far better off if I could approach life with open-hearted joy and a sense of wonder and enchantment where I greeted every new day with breathless anticipation of all the fun stuff I was going to do.

Um yeah. That’s not going to happen. I am the wrong generation for that shit.

The point, though, is that I need a deep and fundamental shift of attitude to something more accepting and forgiving and thus compatible with my happiness.

Survival isn’t enough. Survival is easy.

It’s thriving that’s hard.

But I’m going to get there, god damn it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

He said to his body.

Feeling somewhat nauseous due to a sinus headache at the moment, but I unclogged an ear to allow the fluids to drain out again and the headache is on the way out

And taking the nausea with it.

Which is good because a “sick headache” is a terrible thing. And I should know, because I have had a lot of them,

It was a happy day when I finally put the whole picture together and realized that my sick headaches were from sinus pressure and that this meant that I could find relief just by unclogging my ear.

Not to be too gross or anything, what is happening is that my nose runs a little bit more of less all the time. First that clogs my sinuses, but then when they fill up, the liquid backs up and starts oozing out my ears via the eustachian tubes.

But when my ears get clogged up too, then the liquid has nowhere to go and that’s when the pressure starts building and the sick headache comes a-calling.

Luckily unclogging an ear is quite easy. All it takes is a finger wiggle. And then the problem magically disappears. Poof!

Otherwise today’s been OK. Had a potentially game-breaking issue come up in my game of Morrowind – a key character’s dialogue was missing. I would talk to her and she would say nothing, just a blank speech window, in return.

How very rude!

And this quest is part of the main storyline, so I can’t just shrug and go do something else like I would if it was a side quest

I Googled the problem. No solutions. I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot about it. It had a number of suggestions, none of which worked. I was beginning to despair. Visions of having to start a whole new character/playthrough to only maybe get around the problem were swimming in my head.

It’s surprisingly damp in there.

But then I restored a game from before I entered the area with the character in question, and this time while invisible I actually bothered to steal the key to said character’s jail cell and used it, and that fixed everything.

I hadn’t done that before because, being part wizard, I could just spring the cell door lock with a spell.

But apparently the game didn’t like that. Go fig.

So yay, problem surmounted. I reign supreme. Feel my technical might. Etc.

I still haven’t done that third lesson. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen today.. Maybe tomorrow after wound care.

I have to officially admit that I am definitely avoiding it now. It has joined the long and ever-growing list of avoidant aversions that wreck my life and leave me trapped doing the same things over and over again ad infinitum.

So what I need is to summon the mental fortitude to firmly resolve to do it, and other gainful things, at a certain time, and that means no video games during that time.

It also, hopefully, will let me prove to myself that I can overcome these mindless aversions in order to get what I want.

It’s not like there’s a genuine threat here. The worst thing that can happen is I spend an hour or so doing something I don’t enjoy and do not immediately understand.

And the feeling like something terrible is going to happen to me if I leave the fetid embrace of video games is just the addiction talking.

It signifies absolutely nothing. It’s just meaningless electrochemical noise clogging up my synapses and keeping me trapped in the same old negative but predictable cycle.

I swear to God that I will ctrl-break out of this loop.

Or die tryin’.

More after the break.

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The easy part is over

Last night, both before and during my writing about being all alone this Xmas, I had myself a good cry.

And I am proud of myself for that. I felt all that sadness and pain inside me and I let it out in a healthy way instead of just swallowing it back down and letting it make me depressed and angry.

So far so good. But once I’d gotten all my tears out, I realized that I still had a lot of pain in me and it was not going to yield so easily.

So now I feel like I successfully opened an infected wound and cleaned it and got all that nasty gunk out, which is great, but the wound’s still there and it still hurts and relieving that is going to be a lot more tricky.

The nurse has done her job and now it’s time for surgery.

So I am continuing to poke and prod at the wound. Digging around in it, looking for those pockets of infection that remain, and doing my best to feel it all.

Not an easy task. I have suppressed almost everything for a really long time in order to maintain the delusion of things not being so bad, so all my instincts are wrong and it’s hard to catch myself in the act of repressing myself because it happens so fast.

But I am learning. I have these occasional (but vitally important) moments when the emotions are close enough to the surface that I can give them a little push and have them actually come up and be felt and expressed instead of lurking forever in my all too densely populated subconscious mind.

Seriously, my unexpressed emotions are packed nose to nuts in there.

It’s not as fun as it sounds.

The truth is, I don’t even know how much feeling I have left to do. A lot, presumably.

But I am confident that I will get it all out eventually because I am honing my ability to “lean in” to my emotions and get them over with and take a sense of accomplishment from that as it’s way healthier than the alternative.

For now, my emotions are a vast and waveless underwater sea, dark and mysterious, and I am in the process of learning to swim in it.

At least I’ve stopped drowning.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

The first one is the videos by this guy :

I’ve only watched a few of his videos and I already adore him. As far as I am concerned, his videos are perfect internet contents because :

1. He’s very likable – he seems like the everynerd to me
2. He’s very funny, in a sharp but also self-deprecating way
3. He’s very cute (might be a less big deal for others, idk)
4. The videos are about gaming, and, hello!
5. The videos are informative, interesting, and entertaining
6. I don’t have a sixth point
7. I really love watermelon

Well I’ve never been good at staying on topic.

I like his videos so much that in my mind I am paying them the ultimate compliment of being jealous of them.

I wish I made stuff that good! He’s doing the exact sort of thing I want to do.

Well, one of the things I want to do. I got a million different ideas for what I want to do on YouTube if I ever manage to become functional enough to make videos again.

I can record videos with Microsoft’s Camera app. I’ve gotten that far. But the audio goes out of sync when I try to edit it, so that’s my current gumption trap.

It doesn’t have to be one, though. I could just record the videos all in one go and pop them directly onto YouTube, and then use YouTube’s editor.

Either that or try to figure out why Corel Video Studio is fucking up my vids. In many ways that is preferable because I’d be able to edit video the way I like to do it.

Now where was I? Oh yeah. Scott the Woz and his videos.

You can bet I am taking copious mental notes. His videos make me feel like I am taking a master class in how to make YouTube content and I want in, god damn it.

But would I cover video games? I dunno. It’s such a crowded topic. And I don’t like crowded rooms. I get claustrophobic.

Then again, I’ve already decided that the real product in anything I do will be me. My personality, my charisma, my wit, my unique point of view.

So who knows, maybe I could make gaming videos as good as Scott’s.

Not the same, though. Not only would I never try to directly compete with stuff that good, videos like his take a lot of research, and a researcher I am not.

So I’d be more likely to do game reviews, or stuff about video game design or my hot take on the latest gaming news or whatnot.

I feel like I might find a natural home in soft journalism.

The other discovery is actually a re-discovery of how much I love reading gay furry porn comics. And how good it is for me.

Perhaps it scratches some itch that would normally be satisfied by actually going out into the world and finding romance. And I am considering it.

In the form of trying to become active on some dating site.

But not the hookup apps. I am more interested in people I can talk to than sex. I am just plain not built for casual hookups.

Unless some kind person invites me to an orgy some day.

Anyhow, reading these comics is good for the soul for both a light and a dark reason.

The light reason is that they present a positive, wholesome, fucktastic view of a world where being gay is no big deal and gay romance is just as likely as the straight variety and things are saner and nicer and better overall.

The dark reason is that sometimes they cause this deeply buried powerful aversion reaction I have towards homosexuality, no doubt left there by my childhood rapist,to surface, and I want to bring that shit up as much as I can because only by feeling it and dealing with it will I ever be rid of it and I want that shit gone.

It’s gotten in the way of my having sex far too much.

I deserve to get proper laid, dammit. Like the bottoms in the comics.

And I don’t need old tapes in my head getting in the damned way.

More after the break.

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Iceberg on the horizon

Julian, please do not discuss any of the following with Joe. Like, at all, I don’t want him to feel bad and I don’t blame him and I’m not mad.

But I have a very large problem coming up and at the moment I cannot think of a solution and that has me worried.

See, Joe hath revealed unto me that his parents are not going to have a big Xmas dinner this year because they are both in their 80s and just aren’t up to it any more.

Fair enough. I am not entirely surprised. At the last Devoy family Xmas dinner I went to, I could tell that his parents were struggling to keep up.

So I completely understand. But it leaves me in dire straits because that Xmas dinner was the one thing keeping me relatively glued together through Xmas eve and Xmas day, and without it I will be spending the entirety of Xmas all alone and I am really not sure how the fuck I will survive that.

I will have to talk to Doctor Costin about it when we do Therapy Thursday this week. And once I am over the shock I can try looking for places online where I might find some kindred spirits that day.

As patient readers know, Xmas is a very psychologically dangerous time for me. Sentimental holidays cut right to the core of my feeling alone and isolated and alienated and worthless and abandoned and bereft and alone.

Yes, I know I said alone twice. It fits.

Were I healthier, I might try volunteering at a soup kitchen or some equally Xmas-y appropriate venue. Were I wealthier, I might rent a hotel room someplace swank and at least be alone in luxury. Were I more socially connected, there might be any number of places willing to let a poor little droop-tailed fox come in from the cold on that wintry day

But I’m none of those things. I’m me. And my usual safety net will, of course, be busy with their own families that day, because unlike me, they still live where they’re from.

But I am all alone and a solo Xmas could leave me feeling awfully depressed and I don’t want to end up in that very bad place.

And unfortunately, I am not able to take the scrooge option. I will always love Xmas, no matter what Xmas does to be in return, because I would rather be miserable than to cut off or shut down the part of me that loves Xmas.

I’m a sentimental fool, and that’s both my nature and my choice.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.