I’m feeling better these days. I think finally getting actual therapy on Friday helped enormously. I wasn’t sure whether my recent blues were due to the lowered Paxil dose or whether it was lack of therapy, but therapy made me feel a million times better, so I am willing to say that was the dominant contributing factor.

I’m not sleeping so much either. I still have a bed addiction that needs to be dealt with, but the need for sleep is decreasing on its own and I am finding more pleasure in the little things, like making music, and that is all for the good in the end.

No more fast-forwarding through life!

You know what also makes me feel good? This video.

Yes! Yes yes yes, a million times, yes. THIS. I am so glad there is a backlash against this Princess-ification of little girls and against the strange way our society has of knocking the interest in science, math, and engineering out of girls starting in their tween years.

The statistics are as stark as they are damning. Up to the threshold of puberty, boys and girls rate their own interest in science and math at around the same rate.

But by the time they get to high school, the girls’ interest in science and math has dropped by more than half.

Clearly something is wrong. The world needs all the scientists it can get if it’s going to survive the century, and we can’t afford to be drawing from only half of the gene pool, not to mention only one gender’s perspective.

Another happy-making thing : This essay by Michael Enright of the CBC about whiny atheists.

It’s a great essay, but I have to deal with this first or I’ll burst : What the fuck is Enright wearing? Was he dressed by Munchkins? Has his neck joined the Red Hat Club? Is this part of some sort of Gay(er) Les Nesman subculture that I’m not aware of? Is his Halloween costume going to be Elton John’s accountant this year?

I guess when you work in radio, you can dress however the hell you want.

OK. Got that out of my system. Now about the article itself : I see Mr. Enright is on the same page as me, and so are others re : this whole angry atheist thing.

Atheists are hardly a persecuted minority. Sure, religious bigots hate us, but I take that less of an attack and more as an endorsement. It’s not like we are being rounded up and shot or denied food and lodging. We are not even attacked in the media very much.

And every time some bunch of self-righteous dickbags raise a stink about there being a cross on government property or getting their knickers in a twist about people saying “so help me God” when they are being sworn in, it makes us look just as nuts as any Reverend Phelps or David Koresh, and makes it look like we are a bunch of shrill, shrieking, humorless, heartless cunts with nothing better to do than pee in people’s Wheaties.

Plus it supports the religious right’s absurd sense of persecution. So not worth it!

So anyhow, feel like I am going up not down lately, and that is always good. I think I just needed to unburden myself with my therapist. I don’t feel entirely light yet, but next weekend is Vcon, so that should do a lot to boost my spirits.

I always absolutely adore being at a science fiction convention. A public function where I feel totally at ease! Imagine that. I can walks amongst my people, the nerds of the world, and stuff my brain at all kinds of cool and interesting panels, and then at night, party down in geek town!

Paying for it will be a bitch, and I get moments of clutching panic about that, but what the hell.

I will manage somehow.

Oh, and speaking of stuffing your brain with info, check out this Mental Floss vid.

Man that guy is good at giving you a feast of fascinating trivia at maximum speed. I wish I had the kind of mind that collected facts like his apparently does.

I know a lot of stuff, but I don’t have the ability to collate it into a list. If I did, I would be churning out list based comedy articles a la Cracked.com every day.

Anyone out there good at lists?

And finally, I did one of my slideshow thingies.

I was originally going to do a talker and I was all set to do it, but my camera is in one of its rare bad moods where it doesn’t want to show any picture and while I could always do a talker where the video is just a still picture of me looking mentally deranged (how unlike me), it just wouldn’t be the same.

Don’t worry about the camera, by the way. A reboot will fix it. I will be on your screen talking about odd things again soon enough. I just didn’t feel like waiting for a reboot before I got to work.

When the fit is upon me, I MUST DANCE!

So instead you get one of my silly ass slideshows. There are a number of stupid mistakes in there, including me repeating myself, but by the time I figured that out it would have been an enormous pain in the sphincter to fix it so I said fuggit.

I may go in there and fix it and re-upload sometime soon, but don’t hold your breath. My particular web of neuroses makes it hard for me to go backwards even when it is clearly justified and if I don’t do it, I will end up looking like a putz.

I fire and forget, which I am sure will bite me on the ass at some point but it’s just the way I’m made.

Well, it will be time for Denny’s and conversation soon. I will see you tomorrow folks!

And THAT you can count on!