A Revisit Dream

Do you ever go back and visit places in your dreams?

I don't mean like a place you've been in real life, but a place you've only been in your dreams.

I have. In my dreams, I've watched a sleepy college town grow into a bustling city over the past 30 years. 30 years of real time, not dream time.

I was there again last night. I started in the transport station. I think I took the train, but it may have been a bus.

I ended up outside of the fence of the Japanese gardens. (I know they're Japanese gardens because that's what the sign says.) I've been there before and this time the gardens were very brown. They've always been green and lush and full of color.

A Dream Denied

I will never be invited to host Saturday Night Live.

That being said, if I were to be invited I know what my monologue would be:

I'd go out on stage and say how wonderful it is hosting for my 5th time. I'd carry with me a threadbare, button down, Mr. Roger's style sweater with a crappy, cut-out paper "5" pinned to it. An "audience" member insists that I haven't hosted 5 times and we argue. In the end, I'd ignore the "audience" member and start demanding that Candice Bergen and Danny DeVito come out to invite me to the Five Timers Lounge. Finally, Lorne Michaels or a cast member comes out and says no one's coming and makes me understand that it's my first time hosting. I'd fall to my knees in tears and say, "We have a great show tonight..."

The Word, Not the Sentiment?

While driving home today, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails started playing on the radio.

I know the song pretty well, from back in the day, but I didn't have cable TV at that time and don't think I ever heard it on the radio before.

I wasn't surprised that "fuck" was was edited out of "I want to fuck you like an animal." I live in the USA and we have issues with this word, for some reason.

However, I was a little surprised that the line "I want to feel you from the inside" was left unedited. I mean, that's just fucking, right? And as a lyric, I always thought it was more graphic imagery.

Does this seem weird to anyone else? Is it just me?

Back Off, Kitty!

How do you explain to your cat (or dog or whatever pet lives with you) that today you just can't handle touching her or being touched by her?

I mean, when I've tried to explain this to human adults who speak my language and they don't understand and/or they get angry at me.

A Tale of Two Introverts

My brother and I are both introverts. However, he loved living in big cities and I hated it.

For him, living in cities meant anonymity. He said people looked past him and he never ran into people he knew, who didn't own/work in the stores he regularly visited. In a small town, he feels like he's always noticed and constantly runs into people he knows. (Although, I think his life would be more anonymous in town if his wife and children weren't so involved in the theater community. I mean, I live in the same town and work in human resources at a place that employs over 1000 people and I recognize someone at the store maybe three or four times a year.)

For me, living in a city is a constant crush of humanity. I can feel it pushing in on me from all angles. (I'm currently in a hotel in a BIG city. I'm surrounded by humanity from five sides. Thank goodness for a window.) It's horrible and uncomfortable and I don't understand how people can stand it. Yeah, I know I miss out on lots of things, like music and theater and comic book stores, but being able to do those things a few times a month do not lessen the crush of humanity.

I have another brother. He's an extrovert. Cities or towns, he's happy because he can always find people to be with. New people, old people, whatever people. He's happy with all people.

In My Opinionation

For Christmas, my brother gave me the first two seasons of Blossom.

I started watching it a week or so ago and just finished the first season.

Included with the first season is the original pilot episode. In that episode, Blossom's parents are still together. When the first episode was released, Blossom's parent have been divorced for two or three years and she lives with her dad, which was a brave thing for a TV show from 1990 to choose to do.

Also, when the series starts, Blossom's brother, Anthony, has been in recovery for drugs and alcohol for a while. In the pilot, he's maybe only a couple of month into recovery. He's isolating himself from everyone and Blossom only sees him once, when she's up late at night while she's in the kitchen. I think the show would have been more interesting if he had been at the beginning of his recovery when the actual series started.

For the most part, the show is still enjoyable. It's very much a product of it's time and genre -- multi-camera sitcom. I'm enjoying the nostalgia of it.

However, this was one episode, so far, that really pissed me off. It's called "The Geek." In it, Blossom is tricked into going to a dance with a nerdy guy. A jock, played by the second Jimmy Olson from Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, talks to Blossom about going to a dance and she gets excited and when she says yes the guys says, "Great, you'll be going with this guy." and out steps the nerd. Throughout the rest of the episode, Blossom agonizes over not wanting to go to the dance with the nerd Six, her best friend, even points out the Blossom was tricked, but Blossom dismisses Six. She makes up an excuse to not go to the dance then feels guilty about what she did. Then she offers to go to the dance with him and he turns her down and he gets the last work by saying, "It doesn't feel good getting turned down, does it?" And Blossom agrees! She was wronged! The jock and the nerd tricked her! AHHH!

Anyway, looking forward to the second season.

Also, Six is the best. She was when I watched the show in the '90s and she's still the best.

It's Gonna Happen, Sorry

 Dear Kid From the Autism Forum Who Doesn't Like Being Touched,

As someone like you, someone who hates being touched by people, but is several years older than you, it's my unfortunate duty to tell you that there is nothing you can do about it. People will touch you, on purpose and accident, for the rest of your life.

Accidental touches will happen. The only way that I know how to avoid these kinds of touches is to never go out. I haven't yet figured out how to do this. I have to go to work and go grocery shopping and I like to see the occasional motion picture and the picture house. I hope you understand that accidents happen and there's nothing you can do about it.

Unfortunately, on purpose touching by others will continue to happen, too, and there's nothing you can do about it because most people don't understand and touching COMFORTS them. They don't get a pain in their stomach when a hand is rested on their shoulder. They don't get an ache and prickles that can last for hours in the place where the hand was rested. For them the touching feels good.

When I was a kid, probably around your age, I got up to courage to tell my extended family that I didn't like being touched and asked them not to hug me anymore. For the months orI was ambushed with hugs by the people who were supposed to love me and care about my feelings the most. They thought it was hilarious. When I confronted them directly, they pretty much insisted I lied about not liking to be touched. Then, as I stood dumbfounded, I'd get hugged again. Eventually, because I stopped reacting, they stopped all the extra hugging and touching and went back to the normal amount. It was more than I wanted, but better.

A lot of people on the forum suggested that you tell a teacher or the principal. I don't think that would help.

Have you, or a friend, ever told a teacher that you were being bullied? And then the teacher talks to the bully and tells the bully that you, or your friend, told them that you were being bullied by the bully? And then the bullying gets worse? Yeah. What's going to happen if the teacher tells your class that you don't like being touched is that you're going to get touched more and, as long as it doesn't get violent, there's nothing that the teacher can do except remind the class that you don't like being touched. That doesn't help.

Maybe telling a teacher could help is the teacher is touchy-feely or has the class do massage circles. Maybe they'll stop calling for massage circles or allow you to sit out without drawing extra attention to it. Maybe.

Friends are an interesting case if you tell them. Some will treat it as a joke and will touch you more for a while. Some will understand and do their best not to touch you and if they do they will apologize. However, this will only last for a month or two at most and then they'll forget and the casual touching will start again.

And it doesn't stop once you get out of school either.

I have a coworker. I've worked with her for years. She's very kind person, with some horrible politics, but she's kind. She's also a toucher. As she moves past me, she'll put her hand on my back. When she comes up behind me to ask me a question while I'm sitting at my desk or checking my mailbox, her hand is on my shoulder. Every time.

I've told her that I don't like being touched, more than once, and she sort of stops for a while. But the touching comes back because, as she's told me, to her touching is REASSURING and COMFORTING. She's heard me when I say I don't like being touched, but I don't think she really believes me and I know she doesn't understand.

The one thing I haven't tried is just freaking out on people. I don't like making people uncomfortable. I hold in my desire to to let out a big reaction until I'm alone and let it out then. Maybe freaking out on them when they touch you is the answer. Maybe it'll get the message across and people will stop touching you. Maybe it'll get you sent to the principal's office in a conference with your parents. Who knows?

Who knows?

I know it's not the answer you expected and I'm sure it's not the answer you wanted, but it's my experience.

Good luck and be well.

ticknart

It’s Been Awhile

The short: lithium poisoning.

It's a interesting experience to be sent to the emergency room, get interviewed by the check-in nurse, then be pushed to the front of the line, in front of people with their arms wrapped in bloody dishtowels, because your brain isn't working properly.

But the poisoning isn't what I'm here to write about.

In my ongoing attempt to correct my brain problems, I spent seven weeks doing TMS. Five days a week I had an electromagnet put to my for up to 20 minutes. Once a week, I met with two doctors who run the clinic, but weren't actually at the clinic because their main office is in another city, to check my progress. When it was becoming clear the I had no progress, the doctors started bringing up possibilities for what is causing my brain problem. After discussion, one of the doctors asked me if I am autistic.

This caught me off-guard.

To the best of my knowledge, autism is not a cause of major depressive disorder. Autism does not cause a person to wake up just as exhausted as you were when you went to sleep. Autism does not cause you to sleep more than 12+ hours a night, if you don't have an alarm to wake you up. Again, to the best of my knowledge. These are the things that I was hoping TMS would help fix.

And yet, it stuck with me because I have... tendencies.

Last year, I brought up autism to a psychiatrist, and he blew it off completely.

Having it brought up to me by a doctor, though, that's different. That's an external source, listening to me describe myself, and coming to a conclusion that maybe I'm somewhere on the autism spectrum in a way that affects my life.

I took several online tests for adults to see if I may fall somewhere on the spectrum. All of the, every one I've taken, say that it's quite possible that I am on the spectrum. Every. Single. One.

So, what next?

Based on the research I've done, diagnosis will cost me $4500-$8500. That's not counting travel and hotels, because nothing is local. Sure, everyone offers video conferencing for the testing, but I can't be myself, for better or worse, on a video call. When I'm on a video call for more than 90 seconds my brain starts shouting at me to get off as soon as possible; I'm the same way on a phone call, get off as soon as possible. So, if I am going to do this, I need to be able to do this in person.

If I do it at all.

Because, honestly, what good would an autism diagnosis do me?

Sure, there's that simple elation of getting a diagnosis. That moment of feeling not alone. But what's next?

I'm not suddenly going to want to join a community and make friends. My depression won't go away because I have a label. I won't feel again. I won't be able to stop masking. I still won't be whole.

But... knowing would be a good thing. Knowing more about myself, understanding myself better, would be good.

While I'm pretty sure that I fall somewhere on the spectrum, I don't know if I'd even be able to get a diagnosis because, based on my research, for diagnosing adults they want to speak with someone who was an adult when you were a kid so that they can get an idea of who you were back then because, again according to my research, an individual on the spectrum couldn't know how to mask when they were young. And I don't think I can trust my parent's to give an honest account of how I was when I was younger.

When I've brought up the idea of getting a diagnosis to them, my dad is indifferent. He says that if I'm autistic then I'm high functioning, his words, and it shouldn't matter because I live a life. Also, I don't know how much my dad actually saw me as a kid. I think, to him, I was a bit of a mystery: a kid who wasn't a kid the way he thought kids should be. My mother, on the other hand, seemed offended at me even considering that I might fall on the spectrum. She worked with autistic kids when she was an aide at an elementary school. Not the worst of the worst, but pretty bad. Kids that really couldn't function if they didn't have a constant guiding hand and I did not need that kind of help growing up. There are no other people, who were adults when I was a kid, who I spent significant time with. My parent's are my only option.

Am I willing to shell out up to $8500 to have my parents possibly derail the process? I've read too many stories online about someone who had their diagnosis process stop after the adult person was interviewed. To not even get the chance to describe yourself would be terrible. More than disappointing. Legitimately terrible.

****************

I don’t know if I’ll be writing again. I want to, but I just don’t know.

Be well.

Companionable Coworkers

I've spent way too much time in fast food places over the past week and I noticed something, something that I should have remembered.

Today, both of the places I went to were empty inside, except for me. Plenty of people in the drive-thru, though. And I could hear the teasing and mockery and genuine comradity (pardon the spelling). That sense of a team that functions well together and like working together.

I found myself missing that.

At my "grown-up" job, we may use teamwork, but we don't work as a team together. Everyone does their part and we hope all the parts fit together in the end.

Maybe that's why so many people there seem so desparet to connect to others.

Not Enough

I fell asleep yesterday sometime between four an five while I was reading. I woke up around eight. I think I brushed my teeth and then climbed into bed. Aside from a time or two when I had to pee, I didn't wake up again until 7:30 this morning. And I still could have used more sleep.

Oh, well, at least I get to see giant robots fighting monsters at the movies today.

Really, Only I Care

I've been watching too much YouTube and it led me to decide that when they make a Wicked movie, based on the play, not the book, Anne Hathaway should play Elphaba. She can act. She can sing. And she'll probably look really nice green.

Still not sure about Galinda/Glinda, though. The idea of Heather Morris as Glinda amuses me, but I don't think she has the voice for it. (Of course, whose voice could compare to Kristen Chenoweth? No one.)

At least I have the main character cast. (I even have a back-up actress in Jenna Leigh Green. She'd be good, too. Although I don't think she's "bankable" enough to be cast.)

Where are the woods?

I suppose we should talk, Universe (or whatever).

On Friday, you made me, well, not quite happy because I haven't really been happy in a while, but you made me feel good. You gave me a job interview on Tuesday. Not just another interview at the same level, but an interview for a job that would be a promotion. I haven't had an interview like that for four or five years. I guess I was excited.

And that excitement led to a decent weekend of nothing. I watched the first season of Louis. I caught up on e-mail and my feed reader. I was generally lazy, but felt okay about it.

Sure, there were things that happened, things I was told, things that I thought that weren't so great, but I had an interview for a promotion on Tuesday.

Sunday night I couldn't get to sleep. My mind raced with thoughts that I'd rather not repeat. I didn't get to sleep until about four-and-a-half hours before I had to wake up for work on Monday. I had an interview on Tuesday for a promotion, though.

At work this morning I was told, without actually being told, that a nurse is being asked to resign and she will resign, leaving us another nurse short. Then I found out that half our clerical staff are out, but should have been told hours before I did find out. And then, forty minutes before, I got volunteered to take minutes at a meeting I've never been to before and don't know what they are looking for. (Let me put it this way, Universe (or whatever), at a staff meeting you just write down the crap people say. At this meeting they were actually expecting specific things to be taken down because they are important and could come up at a lawsuit.) And I was unhappy, but I kept thinking about that interview for a promotion.

But then, Universe (or whatever), I got an e-mail. And what did that e-mail say? It said that the interviews tomorrow were cancelled. My presence, Universe (or whatever), was neither required nor requested in Cow City.

And I still had the fucking meeting to go to so that I could take minutes.

Fuck you, Universe (or whatever). Fuck you.

Maybe we need some time apart.

Ka-BOOM!

A few years ago, I was taking medication for depression. I was on it for about six months. Then I quit. The explanation I gave was only part of the reason and since I can't sleep, due to thinking about it, I figured that two years off the meds was enough time to really be honest about it.

I've describes myself as fluctuating between a 2 and 6 on the "how you feelin'" scale. I figure I should better describe that scale:
1 -- Your brain is in total shut down. It's trapped in this dark loop that's no thoughts, just horrible, horrible feelings. You can't do anything that requires a little thought. You don't walk. You don't eat. You can't sleep. And you don't care if you piss yourself.
2 -- Your brain is trapped in a loop of darkness, but there's enough extra there so you can function on autopilot. You can use the toilet. You can eat. You can do your mindless bits at work. Hell, you can even drive. You can't, however, do anything that requires even a little critical thinking. Even something relatively simple, but that you don't do all the time, is impossible. Speaking with people is also very hard to do.
3 -- Now there's room in your brain for thinking along with all the darkness. You can pass yourself off as being in just a "bad mood," so people don't worry about you. You can lie to others, but not to yourself about what's going on in your head. The horrible things in your head seem possible to do.
4 -- A lot like 3, but you can see the stupidity in some of the things you thought about/are thinking about.
5 -- You don't give a shit either way, but there's still a weight on you shoulders or chest pushing you down.
6 -- The weight is gone, but you don't feel light. You have trouble empathizing with those who feel good, but it's easy to fall in with those who aren't.
7 -- You start to feel light. You feel the emotions of others and you start to want to share the way you feel with the world.
8 -- The world is rosy. Sure, you might see some problems and you can empathize with the guy whose dad just died, but it's not going to ruin your mood.
9 -- You feel pretty great and you can think critically about everything around you. You can learn. You can talk. You are probably the best version of you that you can be.
10 -- You feel really damn good. You function mostly on autopilot going around doing the things you normally do and knowing everything is right.

(I'm pretty sure there's a stage where you're so blissed out that you can't even function, but I doubt people can reach it without the help of some pretty heavy drugs.)

(Also, I realize that this system isn't the same for everyone. These are my numbers. I'm sorry about how short the higher numbers are, but it's been a long time since I've soared to any of those heights.)

When I was on my medication and it started to even me out, I stayed near a three or four. Those are the most dangerous numbers because you feel bad, but you can think and, during that time, you think you're thinking clearly about things.

To be more specific (and yet vague): The day I decided I had to get off that medication was the day I was going to buy a garden hose. I had it my arms and was carrying it to the cashier when I stopped and realized that maybe going for a drive out into the woods where it would be just me, my car, a full-ish tank of gas, and a garden hose wasn't such a smart idea for my family and friends.

When you are at a 2 for short or long periods of time, you think about garden hoses, among other things, but it's beyond your capacity to do anything about it. Garden hoses aren't something that you've used everyday, or even once a week, for years and years so while the thought might be there, you don't have the ability to use a garden hose, assuming that you have one.

Short forays into 3 and 4 also lead to thoughts about garden hoses, but you're not in that state of mind long enough to do anything with a garden hose. When you're evened out and spend ten, fifteen, thirty days at that level, garden hoses are all you think about and it seems like a good idea to buy one. Garden hoses seem like the best idea not just for you, but for everyone. And you convince yourself that everyone'll understand because you've been trapped in a dark place for a very long time. If they end up having a problem with it... well, fuck 'em.

And as tired as I was, "fuck 'em" just didn't seem like the correct answer.

So, I talked to my GP and the psychiatrist, at the time, and they bounced me back and forth for a couple of weeks, neither one wanting to put me on something different. I got tired of being what that med made me and convinced my GP to ween me off of it. I went back to being what I am without it and I started getting days back where the weight was lighter and my mind was more grayish than black.

Je pense, donc je suis? Vraiment?

A while ago, I read a piece of a story (yeah, it was fan fiction and it has a lot of parts, but they feel too short to be called chapters) where a character, who has isolated herself because she's been teased a bullied for years, loses something that is important to her. After she spends the day searching for it, ditching all her classes, which makes her more depressed and anxious, she climbs several flights of stairs into a room where she knows she can be alone. She enters the room, walks over to a window, pushes the window open, steps up, and steps out. She falls, of course. She survives because she's the kind of character who isn't really allowed to accomplish what she sets out to do. (Also, she's not a main character. She's used to push the main character into a new situation and build that character more.)

That's where that part of the story ends. With her on the ground.

The story didn't bother me. In fact, I found it very honest. What bothered me was a lot of the discussion that came after it was posted.

The character was hated by nearly everyone who has been reading the story as it's been serialized. She was passive. She let things happen to her. She didn't take stands or push back. Her response was to run away and hide if she could. If she couldn't hide, she took what was thrown at her then moved on knowing it, or something similar, was going to happen to her again.

So, when she tried to kill herself, many of the people wrote comments saying good riddance. They didn't like her. They didn't want her around. They thought she took time away from the main characters.

One person tried to defend the character I've been writing about. This person wrote very passionately about people being bullied and how it destroys self-esteem and what it's like to live in constant fear.

Of course the defense was brushed aside. She would have been a better character if she'd stood up for herself. Bullies back off when confronted. She was a drag on the story. She didn't do anything to help the plot. And so on.

The defender continued to try to write about what led the character to step out the window. The defender wrote that this character just got tired of being noticed and wanted to end it and went the only way she could.

To that, one of the other people who hated the character wrote that if she hadn't wanted to be noticed that she wouldn't have tried to kill herself in such a spectacular and public way and that if she hadn't wanted to be noticed, she should have stood up for herself so she'd be left alone.

The defender quit trying to defend here. There was no point in the defender continuing on. The others didn't want to understand. So the conversation stopped online, but not in my head.

(For the record, I am not the one who was defending the character. All of this was written between the time I moved from North Bay to Cowtown and I started getting online regularly. It took a long time for me to catch up on the reading that I wanted to do. I can't say I would have gotten involved. I'm not so good at being part of a "community," even if it is a virtual one.)

What bothered me was the person saying that she tried to kill herself in a spectacular and public way and the implication that there's a way for a person to kill him/herself that wouldn't be spectacular or public.

In this world where (nearly) everyone believes that their life is precious, one taking his/her own life will always seem spectacular, once it's discovered. People are always shocked, whether it's someone quietly hanging him/herself in the garage or if he/she puts a pistol to his/her head in a crowded mall and pulls a trigger. One is reacted to more strongly than the other, but it all comes down to the average person asking why a person would kill him/herself. Because they can't fathom that someone wouldn't want to live. And once the death is discovered, even the quiet, private one, it becomes spectacular and public.

So, how do you explain to the average person that someone may not value his/her life like most people do? Can the average person understand the feelings of self-hatred, or worthlessness, or simple exhaustion others may have? Or will it just bounce off them because they simply believe that humans are simply animals and the first thing all animals try to do is survive?

Are humans simply animals? Do we simply want to survive as a species, if not as an individual? Are those who don't want to survive then wrong? Is it part of "je pense, donc je suis"?

Gulf Oil Spill

Sometimes, I think it's unfair that such a horrible thing can be so beautiful. Click for much bigger.

Taken from GeekDad.

Classic vs. Cliché

When it comes to the ending of a movie or a book or short story, how can you tell when the ending is classic (an homage) or cliché?

Example: Kid gets cool toy. Toy has artificial intelligence capabilities. AI is nice and helpful to kid. Kid helps AI to learn and AI helps kid get through problem, or whatever. In the end, AI ties up kid and kid's family. The end.

AI betrays its creator/master/friend is a "twist" that's happened a lot in science fiction. It's happened so much that when I read something that introduces an AI that's important to someones survival that I expect it to betray and when it doesn't (*SPOILER* watch the movie Moon *END SPOILER*) I'm surprised.

So, when is that sort of an ending a classic and when is it a cliché? Is it only a classic ending when I enjoy the story and a cliché when everything building up to it is boring and painful? Is it still a cliché even when I, or you, enjoy the story/movie/novel? Are all classic elements -- plots, character archetypes, endings -- of stories that keep getting repeated cliché, or are they something else entirely?

Big useless Statements and Ideas

President Barack Obama boldly predicted Thursday his new plans for space exploration would lead American astronauts on historic, almost fantastic journeys to an asteroid and then to Mars — and in his lifetime — relying on rockets and propulsion still to be imagined and built.

From this article.

The Moon was supposed to be the first stepping stone, right?

After the Moon, Mars. After Mars, the asteroid belt for mining. After successful mining, on to the outer planets.

The first stepping stone, right? But it didn't accomplish that, and it shouldn't have. Unfortunately, that's what the world, and worse, Congress expected.

What should the Moon landing have led to? More fuel efficient, cheaper, and safer ways to get into orbit. Practice creating artificial gravity. Permanent residence in orbit.

Then we go back to the Moon and set up long term facilities.

---

You know, I've lost what I was going to say.

Basically, I wish we'd focus our manned space program on learning better/cheaper ways to lob things into orbit. That's the expensive part, right now. After we can successfully and cheaply get people up there start to work on ways to get out of Earth's gravity well and moving to an asteroid or a planet.

I want us to continue to explore. I want us out there. I just don't see taking anymore big steps without setting up an infrastructure to support multiple trips as the way to do it.

Humanity should be done with the Cold War Space Race Bullshit by now.

Why do I get the feeling that it never will be finished, though?

So, yeah, we'll see what comes out.

There's snow, again in Texas. I assume Geewits is doin' fine, but is annoyed, since she hasn't posted an omigod-I'm-freaking-out-'cause-of-the-snow post. 'Course, she doesn't seem the type who'd freak out anyway.

I wish there was some snow here.

I know that if I always got a lot of snow I'd probably get sick of it and wish for the day there would be no snow at all, but I don't live there and I'd like some snow. I'd like to take a walk down the street in that brief moment of quiet after the storm. Actually I'd like to be out there during the snowstorm. Not that it matters in the place where I live.

Sometimes I think my brain is atrophying. I don't read nearly as fast as I used to. On occasion, it's hard to think about... things.

Criss, this is being very difficult to write. I set out with no aim and nothin' to say and just go, but nothing much is going to come out. Or wants to come out? Dunno.

In a few recent introspective moments, I've been wondering about souls. What would they be made of? If they're some sort of energy, we wouldn't be able to see them, would we? The only reason we see lightening is because it ionize the air around it creating a flash of plasma, right? Plus, the visible part lasts for only a fraction of a second. (Maybe I'm wrong about that.) What would sustain a soul? Why would a souls create shadows or drop temperatures?

Maybe I've been thinking about this crap because the Discovery Channel has one of those ghost hunter shows. I hate those shows. Okay, so I don't totally HATE those shows, but I HATE the way they use pseudo-science and camera tricks and act like they're doing REAL research. Locking a guy who believes in ghosts in a drawer in an abandoned morgue, in the dark, he's going to end up freaking out or feeling cold or seeing a streak of light; that's not research. Those girls who made all the accusations during the Salem witch trials actually felt cold, their skin felt cold to the touch, does that mean there were witches? Is there a God because there are people out there who say He told them to kill their kids?

GAH! It's just upsetting because once upon a time I could believe the Discovery Channel was actually about science. It's not, though. As much as I like the show, I blame MythBusters. It may have science in it, but science and learnin' isn't the point. Entertainment over information.

'Course, I'm in the minority in that whole thing. I really don't want to believe that the population chooses to be dumb, but it's hard not to.

Sure Ain't Shakespeare. It Ain't Even Daniel.

There's someone who's distant in the night
curled up under down, hand under head,
waiting for the moment when things turn bright
hoping it washes away all the dread.
But even the golden rays of morning
can't push away all of the little fears
that have built over time with no warning.
Some of life's many stupid souvenirs.
That person stays curled, waiting for day,
hoping that enough small things will get better
that the little fears won't come out and prey
and squeeze and constrict like a shrunken sweater.
Always looking for a small piece of hope
to find a new and better way to cope.

35000ish

And another month comes to an end.

Spent USA Thanksgiving at my parents' but ate food at uncle and aunt's house. She served food from Wednesday night to Sunday night. A different type of food each night. I missed ham night, due to pain, but the other three nights I went to were yummy. (Although, the mashed potatoes were disappointing and I learned that if your going to use a hand mixer to mash, put the potatoes into a bowl first, otherwise you leave huge chunks in the pot.)

I brought my Rock Band games and pho-instruments. The Beatles version was quite a success. (As if I expected anything less.) A request was made to bring it back for Christmas, and I will, but I'm also bringing my Wii to force my pa to play. He's such a pooper at trying new-fangled gadgets even if everyone says they're fun and he can hear the joy in their voices as they sing.

Nothin' else to report, that I can think of.

Hope all was well this last month and things will be well into the next.