Today has been somewhat unpleasant.

Basically, the issue has been sleep. (Big surprise there.) I got to sleep a little later than usual, then got up at 7 am or so, which should have still been plenty of time to sleep but that is the thing with sleeping pills. They do not instantly evaporate when you want to be awake.

And I have no diet cola left, so I could not take the caffeine cure. Dammit.

So I was sleepy while watching Daily Show and Colbert with Joe and Julian. We were quite far behind, so even watched three episodes (well 2 and 5/6 but who is counting) did not quite catch us up.

Then I tried to get back to sleep, but I could not quite seem to just get to sleep and stay asleep. My god damned bladder kept waking me up. Isn’t there supposed to be a switch in the brain that is flipped when you sleep that slows down the production of urine so that you can get some goddamned sleep?

Well mine is busted, apparently, because I could not sleep more than an hour and a half max without being woken up by a full to bursting bladder.

And when this happens, I am always left wondering : where the hell was I keeping it all? In my bloodstream, I guess, and sometimes, my system just suddenly clears a backlog of urine production all at once and suddenly it is like I pee for a living.

It really bugs me, especially when it disrupts my sleep. It begins to feel like one of those Greek punishments for pissing off the gods, cursed to always be sleepy but never be able to sleep because you are always having to pee.

Of course, it is not just the whole “I am but a bend in the river” business that is making my little pond ripple with the tides today. I am also still worried about this whole deal with my right foot.

It is still getting super cold fairly often. Now that I am scrutinizing it, I notice that it also tingles sometimes like it is falling asleep. That suggests the vascular explanation to me, but it could just as easily be a nerve issue. Who knows? That is why I am going to see the doc.

So that worry is lurking in the back of my mind all the time, disturbing my peace and making relaxing enough to get some solid sleep difficult. That is not even including the actual physical discomfort from the issue, which is not severe by any stretch of the imagination. It is nothing like when I had that mega nasty finger infection. But it still sort of drains the happiness and calm from my consciousness, and I am a pretty ill person so it is not like I have a lot of that to keep me afloat in the first place.

Notice how water imagery permeates my talk of my emotional state? Pretty weird, right?

Been meaning to share this lately, so what the hell.

That is a super effective PSA to me, because it puts its point across extremely well without being preachy, angry, weepy, or accusatory.

The guy really bares his soul and that just blows me away. It got me right in the heart and really articulates why it is wrong to claim you are a nerd when you are not. I was not really sold on why people decry “fake nerds” until I saw this.

I am a highly inclusive person, so I figured if people wanted to join out little club, good on them. And I hate the kind of “not one of us!” divisive identity politics that lurks within the zeitgeist of any marginalized group. I tended to assume it was just people overcompensating for their own feelings of inadequacy by turning “oppressed minority” into “persecuted elite”, and that is offensive to me and goes against the real humanist goal of a place for everyone to feel good about themselves.

If your feeling better about yourself requires someone else feeling worse about themselves, then that is some evil zero sum bullshit and you are a bully, even if you do not do the bullying in person.

The idea is to increase the love and peace in the world, not just move it around!

But the guy in the PSA makes a very good point. Being a nerd is a lot more than just another subculture. A lot of us have suffered enormously from what is basically our handicap, and so for someone to just come along and put on our label because they think it’s chic or cute is as offensive as pretending you are a blind in order to panhandle.

Or to take it another metaphorical way, it is like pretending to be black. We need a word like “wigger” for these fake nerds. Something that makes it clear that they are phony people who are slumming for cred.

But the thing is, if you can stop being a nerd (or blind, or black), then you are not one of us. I am a socially awkward nerd with crippling social phobia due to (among other things) childhood bullying and I can’t just change clothes and leave it behind.

I am not ashamed to be a nerd. We are our own tribe, and I consider nerds my people. The happiest period of my life when when I was in college and had fellow nerds as friends for the first time ever.

But when someone just puts on fake Tiny Fey glasses and pretends to be klutzy and doofy just as a romantic ploy, that offends me terribly.

I understand why some people, mostly gals, might be tempted to dip a toe into a dating pool which still has very few women and the men will treat you like a goddess (for both good and ill) because they are not used to getting any positive female attention whatsoever.

But just remember, you are walking with the wounded, and you can hurts us a lot if you are just slumming in the ghetto where we live.