No crisis? OH MY GOD, everybody panic!

Part of trying to exit freeze mode{{1}} is an attempt to convince my deeper self that there is no danger, the predators are all in my mind, and that the coast is clear for us to relax, let our guard down, and get some real rest for a change.

But I don’t think my deeper self is really getting the message. When I write about it like this, and talk about “coming home” and the like, I can feel myself relaxing inside some, and for a little while after, I will feel somewhat better.

It never lasts, though. The moment I am not thinking about it, the old hypervigilant system takes over, puts the predators back in my head, and resumes acting like I am always barely surviving some kind of terrible catastrophe. .

The bunker mentality, as I have come to regard it.

I guess it is what is programmed into my body in mind as “normal” and therefore I will always return to “normal” even though that “normal” sucks.

This is the same issue faced by pretty much all mentally ill people. Someone really needs to research how to change your “normal” to something healthier.

It’s like our instinct to seek our proper habitat gets reprogrammed by trauma into making us only feel “right” in objectively terrible situations.

Why do people keep ending up in the same kind of terrible relationship? Because that’s what their sense of “normal” makes them seek, and it is perfectly capable of maneuvering you via seemingly arbitrary impulses, none of which trip your “oh no I am doing it again” alarms, into ending up in the same old place again.

And the kicker? That’s when you’ll relax, Because now everything is “normal” again.

That’s why I keep coming back to the phrase, “the new normal”. I’m the sort of person who wants to settle into some kind of stable position and then stay there.

But some stable positions suck. They are just plain not good enough. You can’t get what you need in order to be emotionally healthy there.

In fact, stability is their only virtue. And by itself, it’s a pretty lousy one.

“Yeah, this sucks, but at least it will never change!”

Yeah, I got a problem like that.

Ergo, to improve my position, I need to convince myself that somewhere out there, there is a “place where I belong”. A better place, where more of my needs are met, including the need to feel included in society instead of being stuck way way out on the fringes like I have been all my life.

And that’s not an easy sell. In order to get to that better place, I have to pull up stakes and sacrifice my current rotten kind of stability in order to go wandering off in search of a better place that might not even exist.

And worst of all, that means deliberately moving in the direction of a higher stimulation level. Exploring new worlds in search of home is inherently far, far more stimulating than remaining in the soothing low stim comfort of cozy, crummy stasis.

I have been seeking minimum stimulation on all but the intellectual level for so long that merely contemplating going out into that big ol’ world gives me palpitations.

So it all comes back to fear. It always comes back to fear.

Guess I need to learn to overcome that bullshit.

More after the break.

It should not be this easy

Truly, this is an age of great and terrifying wonders.

You have to check out covers.ai! 

Literally, all you have to do is pick a song from your mp3 collection, pick a voice, and press go. And in five minutes or so, boom, you have a perfect cover of that song in that voice, neat as you please.

My mind is freaking BLOWN. I was originally looking for AI music generation from more of a composer’s POV, but stumbling upon this positively magical tool threadjacked that the fuck out of my mind in a hurry.

Here are Deadpool and Bart Simpson singing “In The Neighborhood” by Tom Waits.

The system has a problem with duets where one person has a high voice and the other has a normal voice.

You know, like every male/female duet ever.

So either the man can sound right and the woman sounds like a chain smoker that smokes actual chains, or you can have the woman sound right and the guy is singing in an almost sarcastic sounding falsetto.

Here are the Minions singing “Sailing Away: by Styx.

Yeah, I know, everybody is sick of the frigging Minions now.

But you have to admit, they sing surprisingly well. A bit weak on the strong passages, but they ARE only tiny little tube people, after all.

And here is my favorite one that I have done so far, it’s Homer and Marge Simpson singing one of my all time favorite love songs, “45 Years” by Stan Rogers.

Presented in link form, because for some reason it won’t let me embed.

https://youtu.be/kfQcGcViedY

It looks so old and sad in that form. Like it’s just sitting there naked on someone’s Geocities home page.

I can relate.

Anyhow, obviously, I have only scratched the surface of what can be done with this incredible tool. I am now on the hunt for the perfect combination of song and voice to make something either really touching or really fucking sarcastic.

It’s also occurred to me that I could use text to speech, or even my own voice, to record a track that I then get, say, Donald Trump to sing.

I think I will call the song “I Have Nothing But Contempt For You Republican Bitches”.

Might be a big hit. And you know it’s absolutely true.

Might start it with him saying. “Why did I run as a Republican? Because Republicans are stupid. They’re the dumbest people in the world. Fooling them was easier than taking candy from a baby, because the baby might fight back and at the very least the baby won’t still worship the ground you walk on. I’m telling you, these are stupid people!” Or something like that.

Hmmmm. Maybe I should see if I can just do text to speech as Donald Trump.

It would be a lot easier.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.