And manifold and diverse topics of general interest.

Just finished watching How To Train Your Dragon 2. It was quite awesome. I would say it’s ninety percent as good as the original, and it loses that ten percent only because we already know that dragons are good and Hiccup is awesome and so on at the beginning of the movie, and other revelations can’t stack up to that.

When I saw the original in the theater, I knew nothing about it (always the best way to enjoy a movie, in my opinion) and so I was completely convinced by the opening scene that these dragons were evil beasts from the Devil’s nightmares.

So when they pull a Lassie Meets Alien Mine and had Hiccup befriend Toothless and found out that dragons weren’t so bad after all, I was totally with him on that journey. And being an animal lover, it is the sort of journey that really struck a chord in me. I should have known better than to attribute evil to an animal. They are only as good or bad as we have been to them.

And it was humbling, but in a very good way, to be reminded of that.

One irony that struck me while watching 2 about 1 is that in the first movie, the Viking of Berk are at war with the dragons because the dragons attack their village out of nowhere, burn everything down, and take their cattle and anything else they take a fancy to.

That is only a handful of anatomically improbable rapes away from being pretty much what the Vikings are famous for doing.

And who bore the brunt of the Viking raids? Northern Scotland, which to this day is half Viking. Some of the people are more Viking than Scot, and a lot of the villages and towns there have Norse names and even Norse festivals and holidays (along with the proper Christian ones, of course).

They even say that it was the Vikings who introduced the redheaded gene to the UK.

And so it makes perfect sense that all the Vikings have Scottish accents. I don’t know enough to say if they are Northern Scottish accents, but I like to imagine that they are.

The only Scottish accent I can recognizes is the Glasgow one, and that’s because it is practically its own fucking language.

Other than my dealings with dragons, it’s been a typical quiet Saturday. Joe and Julian are off at Joe’s parents’ house for board games, and I am left alone in the apartment.

On the one hand, it’s kind of lonely. I grew up in a busy household and so the sounds of other people moving around and doing their thing is normal to me. Saturday nights are always a little too quiet for me.

On the other hand, if I want to sing along with my music or make weird silly noises to amuse myself, I can. without worrying that my roomies will think I am that other kind of insane.

You know…. the reality issues kind. Depressives interpret reality in insane ways, like thinking some random person they are passing on the street who is laughing is laughing at them because they know how stupid and disgusting and lame and pathetic you are and thinks you should just crawl under a rock and die.

I know that one all too well.

But thankfully, except for a few moments when I was falling asleep or waking up and I thought I heard someone say my name, I have never had that kind of insanity. Depression is a horrible illness, but it’s no psychosis.

Although I dunno. Maybe psychosis would be better if it was a happy psychosis.

That’s why I always keep going completely and utterly crazy as an option. If life becomes too fucking horrible to endure, I can always pull the plug and go to Crazytown.

I’d rather it didn’t come to that, obviously.

I can’t say my mood is wonderful right now. In fact, lately, I always seem to get depressed after I eat. Maybe it’s just the product of my blood sugar spiking than crashing. I don’t know.

But right now, I feel quite melancholy and very fragile. That seems to be a pattern with me too. After I make any significant progress towards recovery, I have a period of mild depression as I recover from the surgery, so to speak.

I feel quite emotionally cold. I really feel like my recovery involves birthing the cold dark void within me. I have to let the cold out, and thermodynamics be damned. That’s how it feels to me : like I am radiating the cold out of me like a reverse space heater and when I do, I thaw a little more inside.

I still have so much of it inside me that sometimes it seems like I will never be rid of all of it.

But it doesn’t matter if I am ever rid of it all. Who knows, maybe I need to keep some of it around to continue to be me. What matters is that getting rid of it makes things better for me in the long run, and that is more than enough to make it worth doing in my books.

I’ve written four of them.

But it is painful and redious to disgorge an iceberg an ice cube at a time. I am always looking for things which speed up the process. This is usually some form of media that moves me deeply and thus provides the necessary heat energy to melt a big chunk of my personal glacier.

After that, I just have to hold on till the flood recedes, and I witness a new and better land.

Strong urge to link Peter Gabriel’s song Flood yet again. But no.

I will just quote it.

If again, the seas are silent
And any still alive
It will be those who gave their islands to survive.

Drink up, dreamer, you’re running dry.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.