Just to Post

Post a picture of u? Nobody wants to see that.
Would you date an 18-year-old at the age you are now? I don't date anyone. So, no.
Do you prefer to be friends with girls or boys? I've found it easier to be friends with girls, but I don't prefer one to the other. I prefer nerds and that requires no gender.
Would you ever smile at a stranger? I do it all the time.
Can you commit to one person? Probably. Right now that person is me.
How do you look right now? Through my eyes.
What exactly are you wearing right now? Polo shirt, black slacks, grey sneakers.
How often do you listen to music? At least 30 minutes a day, but it tends to repeat.
Do you wear jeans or sweats more? Sweats, I guess. I don't wear jeans. Cheap slacks are more comfortable.
Do you think your life will change dramatically before 2015? When was this written again? No for back then and no for 2018.
Are you a social or an antisocial person? Antisocial.
If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say? It depends on how friendly we are. If we're not friendly then I don't say a thing. If we are casually friendly then I probably only say that it's nice when directly asked. If we're good friends I ask what they like about the other person. I wouldn't do or say anything to hurt this person's feelings. It's my fault for not moving.
Are you good at hiding your feelings? When I have feelings I think I'm good at hiding them.
Can you drive a stick shift? In the USA I can. I don't know how well I'd be able to do it in the UK or other drive on the left nations.
Do you care if people talk badly about you? Not really, but I do get bothered if I think about people talking about me. It doesn't matter what they're actually saying.
Are you going out of town soon? I hope to see a play soon.
When was the last time you cried? Long, long ago. Why is this question so important to these types of questionnaires?
Have you ever liked someone you didn’t expect to? Is this like a suddenly you're crushing on your friend that you've known since kindergarten thing? Or more you're crushing on the evil super trash who hates everyone -- you can tell by the racial and sexual slurs used -- thing? Every time I've like-liked someone it was a surprise because I don't expect it.
If you could change your eye color, would you? Probably not. Unless I could do like bee stripes concentric circles or something.
Name something you have to do tomorrow? Grocery shopping.
Name something you dislike about the day you’re having. Work.
Have you ever liked one of your best friends of the opposite sex? I've always like my friends of the opposite sex. I'm not friends with people I don't like. Have I like-liked any of them? Yes.
Are you nice to everyone? I try not to be rude to everyone, but I'm not neccessarily nice.
What are you sitting on right now? My ass. A rolling chair.
Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months and not cheat? Yes. Absolutely. But I don't relationship, so I'll never test this out.
Have you ever wanted someone you couldn’t have? I've never tried, so how could I know I couldn't have had that someone. Pining from the distance assuming that person would never romantically is not knowing. The only way to know is to ask. I don't ask.
Who was the last person you talked to before you went to bed last night? The last person I would have talked to is a coworker before we locked up for the night. After that, I only talked to myself. Oh, and some cats.
Do you get a lot of colds? Usually only one bad one each year.
Have your pants ever fallen down in public? No. When your a fatty, you worry more about splitting your pants in public.
Does anyone hate you? I don't think so, but I spend as little time with people as possible and would do my best not to spend time with someone I knew hated me. Unless I was getting paid, that is.
Do you have someone of the opposite sex you can tell everything to? My therapist is the opposite sex of me, but I would never tell anyone everything.
Do you like watching scary movies? Yes, but I didn't start enjoying scary movies until I was in high school.
Are you a jealous person? Rarely.
If you had to delete one year of your life completely, which would it be? Sixth grade. Let's erase from August 1 before school started through the next July 31. Good fucking riddance!
Did you have a dream last night? Yes. I seem to dream every night with this current antidepressant. Sometimes they are crazy vivid.
Is there anyone you can tell EVERYTHING to? In theory I COULD tell everyone everything. In practice, no way.
Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years? No.
Do you think someone has feelings for you? I assume my family and coworkers have some feelings for me, but I also assume that no one has romantic feelings for me.
Do you think someone is thinking about you right now? God, I hope not. I get twitchy when I think someone is thinking about me.
Did you have a good day yesterday? It was average. I don't like my job, but I also don't hate it. So...
Think back 2 months ago; were you in a relationship? Romantic relationship? No. Never have been, probably never will be.
Is your life anything like it was two years ago? Eerily similar.
If the person you wish to be with were with you, what would you be doing right now? Waiting in line for a roller coaster arguing which was better/more important, Wonder Woman or Captain America: First Avenger?
What’s the best part about school? Those times when a teacher takes your thoughts seriously and you're not treated like an average asshole.
Do you have any pictures on your Facebook? Yes, but I don't post pictures of me.
Do you ever pass notes to your friends in school? I was lucky enough to rarely have friends in the same class as me
Do you replay things that have happened in your head? Yes. Mostly when I'm trying to plan for the future or figure out if a memory is real or from a TV show I watched as a kid.
Were you single over the last summer? Over every summer.
What are you supposed to be doing right now? Reviewing applications.
Don’t tell me lies, is the last person you texted attractive? My mother is adorable.

HULK MAD!

I read a fic this evening and it had this written in it:”’her tone turned pitiful, ‘or maybe you just don’t feel the same way about me as I do about you!’”

Emphasis is mine.

I’ve had this said to me so many times and it was never true. I HATE it when people assume that because you don’t act out you feel differently, or, worse, feel less.

So angry even thinking about those stupid words.

People can fucking suck.

GET IN MY BUSINESS PLEASE:

Found these 100 on a tumblr. Thought, what the hell.

The meaning behind my url: Created in the days of only 8-character names. Combines one of my favorite superheros with his big blue buddy.
A picture of me: Here.
How many tattoos i have and what they are: None.
Last time i cried and why: 1997, I realized that I am an afterthought.
Piercings i have: None.
Favorite band: Fluctuates between They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies.
Biggest turn offs: Close talking? I don't deal with peoples socially, so it doesn't come up much.
Top 5 (insert subject): I guess someone would actually have to ask me this one.
Tattoos i want: 阴茎 on the left forearm and 阴道 on the right.
Biggest turn ons: See two questions above.
Age: I’m the sum of the first six primes minus the second prime years old, until my next birthday.
Ideas of a perfect date: November 2nd?
Life goal: To have a life goal.
Piercings i want: None.
Relationship status: I think I understand about them.
Favorite movie: Fantasia.
A fact about my life: I don't think I have one.
Phobia: So far, none that I can't work though.
Middle name: Dannon
Height: 173 cm
Are you a virgin? Yes.
What’s your shoe size? 8.5-10 depending on the width.
What’s your sexual orientation? Asexual.
Do you smoke, drink, or take any drugs? Only meats and cheeses, tea and water mostly, to keep me from hurting myself.
Someone you miss: Old friends, long gone.
What’s one thing you regret? The past.
First celebrity you think of when someone says attractive: Anne Hathaway
Favorite ice cream? Mint Chip. Unless I'm making it, then I have a tough decision because possibilities are endless.
One insecurity: All of them. Everything.
What my last text message says: "K"
Have you ever taken a picture naked? I've taken very few clothed. No.
Have you ever painted your room? Yes.
Have you ever kissed a member of the same sex? No.
Have you ever slept naked? Yes.
Have you ever danced in front of your mirror? No.
Have you ever had a crush? Yes.
Have you ever been dumped? No.
Have you ever stole money from a friend? No. Christ no!
Have you ever gotten in a car with people you just met? Yes.
Have you ever been in a fist fight? No.
Have you ever snuck out of your house? Sneaked. And no. Never had a reason to.
Have you ever had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back? Probably, but I didn't ask.
Have you ever been arrested? Nope.
Have you ever made out with a stranger? No.
Have you ever met up with a member of the opposite sex somewhere? For sex? No. For a movie or drink? Yes.
Have you ever left your house without telling your parents? Yes.
Have you ever had a crush on your neighbor? Never had much of a neighborhood living in the hills.
Have you ever ditched school to do something more fun? Yes, but I got my parents' permission, first.
Have you ever slept in a bed with a member of the same sex? Yes.
Have you ever seen someone die? I have not watched someone die. I've seen the dead.
Have you ever been on a plane? A few different kinds.
Have you ever kissed a picture? No. Do people really do this?
Have you ever slept in until 3? The latest I've ever slept is 10AM and than includes the night I stayed up until 8AM.
Have you ever love someone or miss someone right now? Awkward phrasing, but no to both parts.
Have you ever laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by? Yes.
Have you ever made a snow angel? Whenever possible.
Have you ever played dress up? Not for a very long time.
Have you ever cheated while playing a game? Only when I play by myself.
Have you ever been lonely? Yes. I'm pretty sure everyone gets lonely sometimes.
Have you ever fallen asleep at work/school? I don't think so.
Have you ever been to a club? Yes, but not exactly the thump-thump kind a dance club thing.
Have you ever felt an earthquake? Yes.
Have you ever touched a snake? Wrapped around my arms and neck.
Have you ever ran a red light? Yes. And I was happy to learn that there wasn't one of those ticket cameras.
Have you ever been suspended from school? Nope. Goody-goody here.
Have you ever had detention? Yes. I was reading a newspaper in class rather than pretending to work on the work I'd finished.
Have you ever been in a car accident? Not that I can remember. Looking forward to being in a car on purpose someday.
Have you ever hated the way you look? Oh my, yes.
Have you ever witnessed a crime? I'm pretty sure I watched a drug drop in near a Catholic church.
Have you ever pole danced? Nope.
Have you ever been lost? Not so lost that I couldn't find my way. Except for that one time that the map was sucked out the window. I couldn't get where I was going, but had no problem getting home.
Have you ever been to the opposite side of the country? If I live in Kansas, what the hell would the opposite side of the country be? I've been to San Francisco and New York, so I've been to both coasts of the USA and touched the both big brineys.
Have you ever felt like dying? All the time.
Have you ever cried yourself to sleep? Not that I can remember.
Have you ever sang karaoke? Alone.
Have you ever done something you told yourself you wouldn’t? Not that I can remember, but probably.
Have you ever laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? Yes, and it stings.
Have you ever slept with someone at least 5 years older or younger? When I used to babysit my cousins overnight they'd crawl under my covers. But I don't think that's what this question really wants to ask.
Have you ever kissed in the rain? No and I'd rather live out this song. It's more my style.
Have you ever sang in the shower? Almost every day.
Have you ever made out in a park? No.
Have you ever dream that you married someone? Long ago.
Have you ever glued your hand to something? To the other hand, to paper, to a table, to the wall.
Have you ever got your tongue stuck to a flag pole? No. It doesn't get that cold here. No hard frosts.
Have you ever ever gone to school partially naked? Only in my dreams.
Have you ever been a cheerleader? Never. I have no spirit.
Have you ever sat on a roof top? Yes. It gets very hot up there in the summer.
Have you ever brush your teeth? Brushed. And Yes.
Have you ever ever too scared to watch scary movies alone? Do you mean "been too scared"? I've watched most scary movies alone. The others were mostly in the theater.
Have you ever played chicken? Nope.
Have you ever been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? Nope.
Have you ever been told you’re hot by a complete stranger? HAHAA! Nope.
Have you ever broken a bone? Not one of my own, nor a human beings, nor a living animal's, but lots of chicken and turkey bones have been broken because of me.
Have you ever been easily amused? Often.
Have you ever laughed so hard you cried? Once. Not only did I cry, I couldn't breathe.
Have you ever mooned/flashed someone? Nope.
Have you ever cheated on a test? Never needed to.
Have you ever forgotten someone’s name? Almost every day of my life.
Have you ever met someone who didn’t seem real? I've met some unreal people, but they all seemed real to me.
Give us one thing about you that no one knows. I don't like being touched. Hugs, handshakes, friendly pats on the shoulder, jostling on the bus, I hate them all. After the touch, my skin feels tingly and I try to rub it away. So, horribly uncomfortable.

Posted to my Fanfic Blog

Preemptive Apology

As stated by the title, this is a preemptive apology to fans and fandoms and those who may find their way here. This promises to be rambling and possibly pointless. I expect some personal things will be tossed out there that may make some uncomfortable, but nothing personal that makes me uncomfortable will be posted, maybe just written and erased.

Maybe this whole preemptive apology thing, too.

I apologize for disappointing the expectations of those who decided to follow me. My self-esteem is low enough to wonder why you would do follow, but I appreciate the follow. I've always wanted to tell stories for a living. This is the closest that I've come. Probably the closest that I'll ever come. I don't know what kind a storyteller I am. I have some idea about what kind I'd like to be, but I'm unclear on the future. I can't know what you expect except for maybe more of what I've already written and I hope I won't be, though. So, I'm sorry about not meeting any expectations that may be out there.

I apologize for all the time between one story and the next, whether they are or are not related stories. In no way am I a perfectionist, just see the errors that riddle this and anything else I've written and been willing to post. Some people can write a few hours every day and be happy tossing it out for our reading pleasure right away. I am not one of these people. I don't write stories every day. If I'm lucky I'll do something every week. And when I do write, it's in hard to stop chunks of time. My fingers pound across the keyboard trying to finish, like they're afraid that I'll forget or lose my ability or something, which I have done before. Also, I'm unable to serialize. I don't like posting something that's unfinished. Serialize is a promise to finish. A promise not always met. A promise I'm afraid to make. I don't need to live with that guilt. So, I'm sorry for waiting instead of starting and stopping and starting and stopping again.

I apologize for shipping your ship and then turning around and shipping your ship characters with others. I've never had a "one true pair" as a fan. I don't really understand the OTP mentality. Part of the reason why is because I like to write post-canon stories and I don't believe that the pairings of youth carry through as time goes on. Yes, two of the best people I've ever know began dating in high school, married in college, and now have two school age children. I know it happens, but it's the exception, not the rule. I believe that it's much easier for friendship and feelings to span childhood to senility than it is for romance. Besides, in the end the best romances become the best friendships. So, I'm sorry for not backing your ship, or any ship, 100% of the time.

I apologize for rarely creating for things that are currently being produced. I prefer not to contradict canon. I like to answer a question not answered or imagine a future that can't be undone with a single word or come up with something outlandish that doesn't interfere with what happened. Yes, ripple (or butterfly, if that's your thing) effects are cool and fun and can alter favorite stories in interesting ways, but that's not my thing. (At least for right now.) Things in production change so quickly and in such unexpected ways and I like for the stuff I make to "count," even though it doesn't "count." So, I'm sorry for often waiting for the end to begin.

I apologize for not sticking to one fandom. I did that for years in the beginning and I'm slowly re-posting the stories I wrote back then that I still like. Anyway, I'm not feeling that way anymore. It was finding this other fandom, and one drawing in particular, that gave me the bump I needed, the bump meds couldn't supply, to start writing again. Suddenly there was an itch again that wouldn't go away by ignoring it. When that itch was satisfied, another came along. And now I'm itchy to convert notes I've carried around for a while into the stories they were meant to be. These are shows that I enjoy and, ultimately, I write for two reasons: 1. practice, and 2. because I'd like these characters to be remembered. So, I'm sorry for not always writing for the fandom that encouraged you to visit but hopefully, other stories will keep you coming back.

I apologize for being a terrible part of fandom. I'm not great at cuddling and sharing and communicating. Years ago, when I first ventured from a passive member to an active member of fandom I did join in. I found a message board that was mostly devoted to my show of choice. I worked up the courage to share my thoughts along with my stories. I'd post a thought and a thread would die. No answer to my question. No acknowledgement of the joke. It simply died. I don't know if my perception was objectively right, but I got tired feeling like a conversation killer and I hardly ever commented anymore until the point I stopped commenting until the point where I stopped posting. Reason why, see the self-esteem issue mentioned at the top of this ramble, also the darkness became overwhelming. So, I'm sorry for not jumping in with gusto; I've not had good experiences trying.

I apologize for writing too much or not enough "not safe for work" content. I've marked this tumblr as adult content because occasionally I expect to write about naked bodies pressing against one another. However, I try hard not to keep my work from being smut, even though I quite enjoy smut. It's a fine line that I've just started trying to walk in my writing. Originally, this tumblr wasn't marked adult content because I think stories that include naked bodies pressing against each other are fine for teens, the fappable and non-fappable stories. Then I wrote about how panels are used in a comic and got called a lot of terrible things. It wasn't for my content, but I'd rather not deal with those people. So, I'm sorry for trying to write some NSFW stuff without making it too explicit.

I apologize for the times I'm not sensitive enough and the times I'm too sensitive. See: self-esteem issues. There's this one word that I've thrown around about myself usually after the modifier "socially" or "emotionally." Under its original meaning the word is fine, but the (recent) historical use makes that call much harder and I shy away from using it in conversation and writing to keep from alienating people over a word. Too sensitive, right? However, if I were to write a certain kind of character, say a scientist with a hard on for Szechuan sauce, then using the word could be very appropriate because the character has said the word before and there are plenty of character situations where I would write him saying it again. Not sensitive enough, right? This is one of the few places where I can't see a line to walk. You step on one side or the other, upsetting one side or the other. Where's the middle ground? Thank goodness I don't write Huck Finn fanfic because to be historically (and canonically) accurate would upset lots of people, but so would disregarding an important aspect of one of the themes that really can't be explored without. So, I'm sorry for over-thinking the meanings that individuals may or may not ascribe onto words due to popular usage.

I apologize for criticism that veers into the insulting and for the generalities. I have plans notes to write a bit about the writing quirks out there that drive me nuts. My notes aren't near me, but I think it's mostly word usage stuff that makes things unnecessarily hard to read or confuse. This isn't grammar-Nazi stuff, but phrases and choices that are grammatically correct and accepted that interrupt my flow when reading and take me out of the story. Not just in fanfic, but everywhere. The plan is to keep these things very general because I don't want to single out an individual. Just because it's writing that bothers me, doesn't mean that it's bad writing. (I also have a list of my own writing quirks that I can recognize. I plan to use those to explain myself and better understand why I constantly fall back on them.) There's also the possibility that if I write one of these, or any type of criticism, on the wrong day I could be perceived as insulting or actually be insulting. I recognize this about myself. So, I'm sorry for the generalities that I will be writing and the possible cruel things I could write about actions and individuals.

I'm a person who wakes up most morning and has to be reminded that the best reason for waking up, bathing, and going to work most days is because I get to do it all over again the next day. Without the reminder, I can't promise that I'll be able to do it again the next day. I want to find something more positive for the reasons and I think writing may be that reason. However, I don't want to get bogged down and overloaded with the petty, vitriolic minutia that fills so much of the unterblerbs and crushes the morale of some good writers and artists and critics. I'm afraid of being one of those and by getting my apologies out there now I hope I won't feel like I always have to explain myself.

Some may ask, why post the writings? To which I will reply that arts aren't complete without someone (who isn't the creator) reading/hearing/seeing/experiencing the artwork. While I can't prove that people actually do read what I've written, I can track numbers and see that someone landed here and I can tell myself that at least one person read it. (Bots may mean I'm lying to myself, but I'll live with that.) And if I believe that one person did read it, then I believe it's complete. Completing art, it seems to me, is very difficult for many artists to do. Maybe because they look at feedback instead of simple numbers. It's harder to lie to yourself when you have no comments or cuddles or whatever the site give you, isn't it?

Thinking of comments, this isn't about me looking for praise and guilting a reader into saying nice about my work. I'm not perfect and neither will my writings be. I know that. True critique is the best way to explain to me, though, not name calling. (This is one of the reasons I don't often write comments. I want to go into the hows and whys of the creation, not just the created. Also, I truly believe, deep down inside, that, the hypothetical, you are not interested in my opinion because self-esteem.) I have to assume that any praise I get isn't simply mindless or rote (again, see: self-esteem issues, it's a terrible theme!), and I have to work hard to assume that. My favorite comments, the ones I remember most clearly, are the ones that let me know that the person finished the story because that means I really succeeded. I kept interest for however long I needed to. That's success.

These are my preemptive apologies. I reserve the right to add a retroactive apologies list which has the potential to grow forever and ever until the day I die. Amen.

A Horrible Idea

I had this idea eight years ago and this is what I wrote:

It's like My Fair Lady, but with nerds. A gorgeous girl decides to learn how to be a nerd. She goes to an expert, a know-it-all comic book shop owner. He teaches her to talk the talk then plays down her look so she can walk the walk.

It's all okay, though, because in the end she decides that it's okay to like geeky things and still look gorgeous. End with her in a super slutty looking costume of some sort at a con being stopped to have her picture taken then pull back to the guy who "trained" her nodding in a knowing way, because he did his job perfectly.

I've pushed it forward as a draft for a long time because I thought I'd flesh it out. You know how well that turned out.

I have lots to say, but not tonight.

I'm writing fanfiction on tumblr.

Have a wonderful bit of Steven Universe fandom:

Bruno: The Bear Who Stayed Awake

My brother wrote a children's book and it's up on Kickstarter. Please take a look.

Reminiciance

This has been posted all over Fartbook, but I didn't want to post mine there because of peoples and such.

Tell us about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!
It was 1997 and I was disappointed.

1. Did you know your spouse?
It depends on if I ever get married, I suppose. Probably not, though.

2. Did you car pool?
Yes. My best friend picked me and my brothers up in the morning and, many afternoons, dropped us off in the afternoon.

3. What kind of car did you have?
No license. No car. No money for car. No money for gas. No money for insurance. No point.
Why no money? That answer is below.

4. It's FRIDAY night. Where are you?
No where. Again, no car. Other people were at football games for band, but I was no longer in band and disliked football. I stayed where I was and watched tv or read comics and let others be where they were.

5. What kind of job did you have?
No job. I lived in a neighborhood, but not a suburb. A kid couldn't simply hope on a bike and get a job at the grocery store five blocks over. All jobs needed to be driven to. Dad said that neither he nor our Mom would drive me to work and pick me up, that was my responsibility. I didn't have a car, though. My dad said that if I, or my brothers, wanted to drive we needed to pay for insurance and gas and buy our own car. If all the jobs required driving and you couldn't afford a car and insurance and gas to drive, how do you get a job? Not that I really wanted a job then. Not that I want a job now.

6. Were you a party animal?
I was not an animal and I did not party.

7. Were you considered a jock?
Not even in my imagination.

8. Were you in band or orchestra?
Not my senior year.

9. Were you a nerd?
I didn't have the stereotypical glasses and high pants, but I was a nerd. I was good at school work and even enjoyed it sometimes. I read comics and was at the shop every week to get the new ones. I always had at least one novel, science fiction or fantasy, in my backpack along with a toy from The Tick cartoon. Stat Trek was very important to me to the point where I could tell you the name and plot of nearly every episode of The Next Generation. Even at the time, I embraced the word nerd. Couldn't hurt me for enjoying the things I enjoyed

10. Did you get suspended or detention?
No. If it wasn't academic, I worked hard not to be noticed by anyone.

11. Can you sing the fight song?
I couldn't sing it then. Neither could my classmates.

12. Where did you eat?
We sat on the lawn under a tree in the mall between the 'H' Building and the Administration Building. Now I wish that I spent a day or so a week at a different site. I regret not doing that.

13. Where was your High school?
Cowtown. The same town that I currently live in.

14. What was your school mascot?
Cats that are wild.

15. If you could go back and do it again would you?
Only if I could make some changes. If I can't make those changes then there is no way in hell that I'd do it again.

16. Did you have fun at prom?
I don't even know if there was a prom my senior year.

17. Do you still talk to the person you went to prom with?
If there was one, I didn't go. So, nope.

18. Are you planning on going to the next high school reunion?
There's a price I could be paid to go, but that price is high and I'm not liked enough by my classmates for them to pay it.

19. Are you still in contact with people from high school?
Depends on what you mean by "contact."

20. Did you skip school?
Yeah, but with the permission of my parents. (NEEEEEEEEEEERD!)

Copy and paste if you want. Let's hear yours.

Out of the Breach

I've been feeling okay for the last two weeks. Not great, but I don't have thoughts about killing myself several times an hour every day. Only a couple of times a day. And in between those time there were periods where I may have been grasping at normal; a finger on a ledge and maybe it's possible to get a second and third up until I can get a firm grip. I'm pretty sure it's due to the additional medication my new brain doctor gave to me about eight weeks ago.

Before today, the worst day was a week ago, the 23rd. I was a my brother's in Los Angeles with my parents. My brother and his wife threw a baby shower. Their son is expected in about six weeks. About thirty people were there. Thirty people. That I didn't know. My brain kept shorting out. I would be listening to someone and then I heard everything in the room all at once and couldn't focus. It was awful. After it happened a few time I went to a bedroom and just stayed there for a while. Eventually I could focus again and went back to the party, but I acted the same way as I did before I lost focus: I sat in a chair and didn't say a word to anyone.

This afternoon is a going away/early birthday party for one of my cousin's. He just graduated from high school in June and will be shouting "Semper Fi" in a week or so. But that's beside the point. Today was much harder than last week. Almost as soon as I walked through the door I had trouble focusing on a single conversation without the other babble leak into my ears. So, it was hard to begin with and then I made a mistake of getting involved in a discussion about the presidential election.

It started out fairly innocently. There was a question about the delegate rules and I knew the answer. There was more talk about rules and then some talk about the conventions. (I mentioned how much I liked parts of Ted Cruz's speech and wished that Bernie Sanders had been as brave in his speech.) And then the dreaded question was asked. Who am I voting for in the fall? I gave my true answer, which is I think I know, but I'm not happy with either candidate. My uncle (who said he can't seem to ever vote Democrat because they don't seem to represent white males anymore) asked if the one I'm leaning toward starts with an "H"? And I had to answer yes. My grandpa (who said he doesn't understand the people who simply vote the party line without any thought and is also married to my grandma who has only ever voted Republican, even down ticket, because she won't ever vote for someone who supports "hand-outs") asked why? So I had to talk about Trump not being presidential and that if he's gets angry at internet nobodies who make fun of him online, then how is he going to take criticism, legitimate and not, from world leaders. I don't think he'll handle it well. My grandma said that he's already worked with all of those people, which I assumed meant the world leaders. I said he hadn't, that he worked with people who want to make money off of him and then I ranted about all the people overseas who seem to hate the man, including employees at his resorts and the town-folk who live near the resorts, I then got into his lies about his fortune, his use of bankruptcies to hurt employees and investors to save himself (I acknowledged he used the law to do it legally), and his self-made man crap when he got a million dollars from his father to start his business. My grandma said that she's read about these criticisms, too, but that I have to read stories from the other side.

I was baffled. What other side when you're stating stuff that happened? Were these not things that happened? Were they not facts?

Then Grandma moved on to how people who are on Social Security earn too much money, more than she and my grandpa, and that they constantly whine about not having enough. This is where she always goes. She hates Social Security, for those that didn't pay into it, especially those who aren't of retirement age (even though that was kind of the point when the program was created). She hates food stamps. She hates that people who don't work/pay get medical and dental and vision insurance. I didn't get into it with her over this. We've gone through it before, but she told me what she has always said. She and my grandpa have never taken anything. They've never earned much money. They do what they can to help people through their church and that's the way everyone should be and blah, blah, blah. (In the past she didn't like it when I brought up the uncle who used food stamps to keep his daughters, her granddaughters, fed. So I didn't bring it up again.) She then started in on a story about how her parents would invite people to their farm for dinners and there were sometimes up to 60 people and they all got fed and ... I didn't understand what the point of the story was.

That's when I hit my limit. That's when I had to leave. More was said, but I did my best to turn my brain off and simply look like I was listening. I hope she doesn't think I understood or agreed with her.

Of course I waited the appropriate time before I left so it didn't look like she set me over the edge.

This is why I avoid politics when talking to people. Most everyone, I include myself in this statement, aren't flexible enough to want to hear differences in thought and even is they hear the difference they don't discuss, they go on attack arguing why the other side is wrong rather than arguing why they are right. And attacking is no way to discuss anything.

Unspecial

I'm watching The Magicians. It's a TV show based on a pretty excellent book. It's about a school where people learn magic. Older people. College-aged people. Like every other school that teaches magic though it is only for certain people. People who have the ability. People who can pass the impossible exam.

So far it's a good series. Not exactly like the book, but that's there. Of course they had to add stuff to fill out 13 episodes. I've enjoyed what I've watched.

The thing is the show and all the series (books, TV, movies, comics, whatever) with secret, special school is that if they exist in our world I was never able to go to them. And I'm afraid that if I was in a world where those do exist I wouldn't be invited.

The Medication

The pills have complete control over what little life I want to live.

Web MD is Dangerous

I'm not usually one for self-diagnosis, but come on.

I'm not sure if having a label helps. I certainly don't feel any better right now.

Dear Dr.

In December of 2013 I was feeling great. Better than I had felt in years. I had started planning a real future for me and felt better about myself than I ever had.

When January came around my insurance company switched me from a name brand medication, Cymbalta, to the generic version. Soon after I started to fall apart to the point where I had missed some work. At the beginning of February I saw my psychiatrist, S Q, and he believed that it was the change from name brand to generic. We switched back to name brand, but I didn’t get any better. There was no holding and I started to get worse.

Soon after he switched me to another pill, I don’t recall the name, and I stabilized, but I also didn’t get any better. Several times a day I fantasized about killing myself in various ways and planning how I would do it. Then the new drug started giving me major cold sweats. I’d sit in my off on a nice spring day with the window open and no breeze and suddenly I’d start sweating so bad that it would bead and run off my nose and I would leave a sweat print on my seat.

Again, we changed drugs. The sweats went away, but my depression deepened. I also started experience major stomach cramps. The cramps were so bad that I would walk about two dozen steps and then have to stop before I could move again. I nearly killed myself – I had everything ready to go – but my brother, sensing something wrong, visited for a few days and I lived to see my next psychiatrist appointment. At that time I insisted that we change drugs.

It was at this time, January 2015 I think, that I was put on Viibryd.

Viibyrd boosted my mood up enough that I stopped fantasizing all the time about killing myself. But it hasn’t given me enough to regain my old level of concentration or bring me out of my mental and emotional exhaustion. Also, I’d still rather be dead than alive, but my thinking is “clear” enough that I know I shouldn’t shoot myself or lock the garage and turn on the car.

Instead I think about how I could kill myself by not giving a shit about myself and that the people who know me are far less likely to be upset. What I mean is that if I have a heart attack in my apartment, can’t reach the phone, and die of dehydration a few days later, people will be sad and think it was preventable, but they would be much more upset if I tied a rope around my neck and jumped off a bridge. Same thing if I become diabetic and start losing toes and fingers and eyes and eventually die or if I get so fat that I just stop breathing, forever, in my sleep, people would be less upset than if I took an active hand in my demise.

The main reason I came to see you, beside good recommendations, was because my psychiatrist kept saying I needed a GP and when I went into the Prompt Care for my stomach cramps the MD I saw freaked out about my blood pressure and insisted that my stomach cramps were a symptom of my high blood pressure. So I came to you and I feel bad because it’s not that I don’t hear what you say or don’t read what you’ve given me, it’s that I don’t really care. I take my pills each night before I go to bed. I try to follow some advice from the papers you given me. Ultimately, though, I don’t care and can’t bring myself to care.

Which leads to the ultimate question: Why haven’t I asked to switched drugs?

There are two parts to this answer:
The first is that I spent the better part of 2014 fighting to not actively kill myself because I was switching drugs. I wanted a break from that. And if there’s one thing Viibryd does for me, it keeps me from actively working toward death. No ropes, no hoses, no guns.

The second is that my psychiatrist is retiring at the end of the year. I will see him one last time, next week. I don’t want to be working on a new drug while interviewing the few psychiatrists who take my insurance to make sure they will be a good fit to me. Maybe if I find one we can discuss changing to a different pill, after we get through the whole – “So, you’re depressed?” Yes. “Why do you think that is?” I don’t know, but it’s been in my life for a long, long time. “But what triggers it?” Nothing. “Something had to have happened.” Not recently. “How’s your job?” It’s okay. A bit boring, but I don’t hate it. “Having a problem with your boss?” Nope. I like my manager; even better, I respect her. “What about your coworkers?” They’re all okay. I don’t deal with them a lot, though. “Friends?” I have a few friends, but they live a long way away. “That must be lonely.” Not really. I rarely crave companionship. “That’s not true. Everyone likes to be with other people.” (Words that a counselor actually said to me.) I don’t. I never feel more lonely than when I’m surrounded by lots of people, even if I know everyone there. “Okay. We’ll come back to that. Girlfriend or boyfriend?” Nope. Not ever. “Not ever?” Not ever. “Why?” You don’t recommend a movie you don’t care for to a person you like, do you? – thing.

If you wish to speak with my current psychiatrist, please do:

How Santa Does It.

There is only one Santa, one sleigh, one sack of toys, and eight reindeer.

Santa and his elves spend the year carving largest, the most clear, most pure ice into a prism with so many facets that's impossible for the eye to find the edge.

Christmas Eve is the darkest day the North Pole experiences.

That night the reindeer pull the Santa and his sleigh into the air. They circle the pole gaining speed and altitude. When they graze the top of the atmosphere they turn and head straight down.

As they gain speed their physical form begins to shed until they become beings of pure light energy.

They hit the prism in this form and refract, a new sleigh, Santa, and set of reindeer fly from each facet.

These Santas each rocket off to their designated sectors to deliver gifts to the children of the world.

Tickets

Months ago I got a flyer in the mail saying that The Book of Mormon, the play, would be in Cowcity in March 2016 and that I could order tickets on 11/19/15.

When I called, from work, yesterday they told me I needed a code from an e-mail that I hadn't received. Today, I was told, is the day just anyone can order tickets.

Last night, 7ish, I got the e-mail with the code. The box office is only open from 10AM-6PM.

Ten more minutes.

Girls Meets Restraint

One of the best things about Girl Meets World is it's willingness to hold back. I think that tonight's episode:



Any other show on TV -- whether made for tweens, teens, or adults -- would have had the two of them kiss. Then the action of the kiss would have been the focus of the next episode(s) rather than the reason for or meaning of the kiss. Friends would get angry but eventually make up. New couples may form and all friendships would be tested. But in no way would they actually look at the feelings beneath the kiss.

Girl Meets World choose to stop these two from kissing and now they have to deal with the emotions. The emotions that Maya has been trying to suppress because she's afraid of losing her best friend and surrogate family. The emotions that Lucas is afraid to let out because he works so hard to not upset people. The emotions that Riley have involving how quickly she wants to grow up versus how quickly the rest of the world wants her to grow up.

Sure, these things will, at best, get one episode, the one on tomorrow night, but at least the show is sophisticated enough to try.

That Next Marvel Movie

Dear Marvel Movies:

Re: Captain America: Civil War

Your movie has the same problem as the comic book event did.

You insist that both sides are equally right. That there is no right answer to whatever the question will be, but two are given and we, the audience, are supposed to decide which of our heroes are correct.

I'm here to tell you that once you put Captain America on a side, you have your right answer. We all have the right answer.

The movies, since Captain America: The First Avenger, have been building Captain America as the American ideal. Not because of his super-strength and mighty shield, but because he's brave and spunky and relentless and eager to do what's right even before he's shot up with an ex-Nazi's magic juice. He tried to enlist a half-dozen times. He jumped on the grenade when everyone else ran. His first thought was to rescue the kid who could swim. He happily served in an integrated Army. Time and again, in the movies he's been shown to be morally right. The moral choice for America.

If Captain America is the physical representation of America's morality, how can Iron Man also be right?

Also, if the movie ends like the comic did, please do this for the next Avengers movie:

Fuck the Winter Soldier. Falcon for America!

An Anniversary

I have worked for The State for 10 years.

That's 120 months.

520 weeks.

3650 days.

Or 87600 hours.


During that time I have been at work approximately 20800 hours. (I'm counting any vacation or sick or furlough time because those are things my job gives or forces on me.)

That's 960 days.

137 full weeks.

31.65 months.

Or 2.64 years.


I will retire in approximately 28.58 real years.

That's 343 months.

1486 full weeks.

10404 days.

Or 249704 hours.


Actual time working before I retire is approximately 59446.4 hours.

That's 2476.93 days.

353.85 weeks.

81.66 months.

Or 6.80 years.

On Chocolate Chips

A few months ago I bought an ice cream maker. One that has a tub you freeze overnight before you churn. It's a good ice cream maker that's dangerous, but creates much deliciousness.

I tackled the big three right away -- vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry -- with no problems. The next on the top five list seemed easy. Make vanilla and add mini chocolate chips because big ones get too tough to chew.

Pow.

Except not really.

The mini chocolate chips are easier to chew, but not by that much. Also, because the chips are frozen I couldn't really taste the chocolate.

One of the joys of chocolate is that it melts at body temperature. When it melts in your mouth is when you taste that singular flavor. Shoveling it in with frozen cream does not allow for much melt and therefore not much flavor.

Store bought chocolate chip ice cream doesn't have that problem, though. The chips melt fine and every bite is nicely balanced between the vanilla of the cream and the chocolate of the chip. What makes them chips so special?

The last time I was at the store, I looked at the ingredients of a chocolate chip ice cream: cream, sugar, blah, blah, blah, chocolate flavored chips.

Chocolate flavored chips?

Fortunately, modern ingredient lists also list the ingredients for the ingredients and I learned that chocolate flavored chips are made with bittersweet chocolate (like standard cookie chips) and coconut oil, non-hydrogenated. (In other brands it may be some other kind of oil.)

My brain went DING.

Coconut oil is solid until about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and then starts melting. Mixing the coconut oil with the chocolate brings the melting point of the chocolate down and, if you don't buy the super organic oil (oops), it doesn't taste too different. Not as strong as bittersweet chips, but more chocolaty than milk chocolate.

I felt stupid. I've been making homemade Magic Shell for over a year now. It's mostly chocolate and coconut oil. This keeps the concoction liquid at, relatively, cool temperatures and then it freezes on the scoop of ice cream (or frozen strawberry or ice cube or frozen spoon, however you take your chocolate).

The chips work, too. Now the question is what's the perfect ratio of oil to chocolate?

Dear Old Friend

I'm writing this today, in part, to apologize. I have not tried hard to remain in contact with you. I don't write you regular e-mail. I don't drive to your location to simply visit you. I don't call you one the phone or text you. I don't even know if I have your phone number. This is on me.

To be fair, though, it's on you, too.

When I have written in the past you responded with only a sentence or two and after I wrote back you didn't. You never seem to be the first to send an e-mail. Why is that?

When I've been near where you live, I have let you know so that I could visit with you. You never seem to be near where I live. Those few times you have been near, you haven't always let me know. Why is that?

I rarely call or text anyone. If I don't have your phone number I haven't asked you for it. Which would be the same reason you don't have mine. If you asked, I would give it to you, but I'm not going to call. I have issues with myself that don't allow me to call you. Do you have similar issues?

The other part of why I'm writing this is because I think I'm done calling you/thinking of you as "friend."

"Friend" should be more than a person who can see your Facebook feed. It should be more than hitting a "like" button or posting a comment on a picture. I don't know what that more is, but friend should be more. Maybe regular reconnection through thoughtful communication to see how we've both changed and how we've stayed the same and how we're still compatible, but in a new way. We haven't done this in a very long time.

Maybe it's because you've changed so much more than I have in "grown-up" ways: spouses, children, mortgages. In my mind I can't picture myself with the first two and the third is only a possibility of a possibility. And when you have spouses, children, and mortgages those thing are what should be important to you. I understand that. I know that's how it should be. Just because I don't have those experiences doesn't mean I don't understand them or that I don't want to understand them.

Do you remember the last time I visited you? I was horribly uncomfortable. I don’t know what to talk to you about. Your life seems so focused because you have these outside things to focus on that are also intimate and personal. My life isn’t. I have no focus and my interests are not personal at all. For how long can I force the conversation into deconstruction of pop culture things that I’m interested in and you may or may not be before I wear out my welcome?

I want you to understand that this isn't a spur of the moment thing. I don't want you to think that I suddenly got tired of you posting pictures of your children. There's been thought about this.

Several weeks ago, one of my cousins got married. The person he wanted to have as his best man, his step-brother, couldn't be there because of Army. My cousin's step-father stood in as best man. Neither person was chosen out of obligation. Both were asked because of love and friendship. That's also why they accepted.

I sat there wondering if I were to ever get married, who would I have to step in as my best man? I had no answer for that. When I wondered who I would ask to be my best man in the first place, I had no answer for that either. Maybe one of my brothers, who would have to do it out of family obligation. Maybe not.

Fifteen years ago I know who I would have asked. Ten years ago I would have asked a different person, but I knew who. Five years ago I'm not so sure. Today, there is no one I could ask and not feel like I was backing them into a corner. A position like best man shouldn't feel to either party like its being forced.

This has been coming on for a long time. I remember when I felt like I was an afterthought. The person who was called only when you realized that I wasn't already there and an extra body was needed to play a good game of Risk. Not long after, I wasn't even a thought. I was a person who wasn't even invited to a party in his own home. Asked days and weeks later why I wasn't there and told I was a liar when I said no one told me. How could you not be told about a party where you live? I was asked. How, indeed.

Part of me wishes that I could be cocky and cruel about this. I wish that I could say I replaced you with someone and your friendship hasn't been necessary for years. That's not true, though. I haven't made a new friend in at least eighteen years. Me choosing to no longer call you friend leaves me with no friends. No friends.

Those words were not easy to write and I paused for a minute or two before I continued.

"No man is an island," John Donne wrote. "Every man is a piece of a continent." Many people use the first four lines of that poem to talk about friendship and togetherness without actually reading the rest of the poem and seeing that it's about people dying and how each death, no matter if one knew the dead personally, is a blow to mankind. As with so much poetry, we tend to ignore the words and meaning of the whole to focus on out of context bits.

I don't know if I'm an island. Or a rock. I do know that the longer I live, the less I desire to try to make, or keep, any kind of interpersonal connections. I can't remember ever desiring children. It's been nearly a decade since I wanted a spouse. Much of this blog has been about my lack of ability to make friends. Now, I don't have the drive to make friend, nor do I have the desire to pretend that people from my past are still friends. No matter what you may think. I can't control that. I am, however, sorry if I have offended you. It wasn't my intention, but I can see how it may be a possibility.

Last week I found a psychiatric term for who/what I am. Beyond the depression thing. It starts with a horrifying word, but the meaning of the whole title isn't as scary. It is me, though. And I know it's dangerous to self-diagnose, but in the age of the Internewts it's hard not to. Also, I don't think me finding a label is a bad thing. It makes me feel less unique to know that I'm not the only, let alone the first, to be the way I am, in a good way.

I seem the brain doctor on Tuesday. I keep wondering if I should bring this label up to him and if so, how to bring it up. There are a couple of problems, though. The first is, he is completely retiring at the end of the year and I will probably see him only one or two more times before he's done. I also doubt that I'll be seeing another brain doctor after him because there aren't any nearby who accept my insurance. There are several an hour+ drive from where I live, and that's where my current brain doctor is, but I don't like making the drive and the one on one talk seems to be mostly me manipulating the brain doctor to not ask me certain questions. (Now that I've been with him for three years, I'm much better at doing it than I used to be.) The second reason is that there isn't really any fix for this personality disorder. Drugs can be used to lessen depression that may or may not have to do with this, but it only works on depression which makes one want to kill oneself less, but doesn't really do anything to the other stuff. There's talk of group therapy maybe working, but for group therapy to be effective for someone like me the group needs to understand that I won't participate much, if at all, for months. The third reason is do I want to change. Am I unhappy being the way I am? Does it cause me to be depressed? Most people learning that I am friendless probably assume that I am lonely, except that I'm not. By myself I'm almost never lonely. In a crowd is when I feel a loneliness so crushing that I'm surprised my bones don't crack under the pressure. What happens if I lose the ability to be alone?

If this is wrong, then who am I when I'm right? Am I at all?

I don't know. In the end, I don't know if it really matters, either.

I thought you should know all of this. I thought you should know because I wanted to be clear that while I accept that it's mostly me, and it is mostly me, it's partially you, too. I also want you to know that I understand that it's not malicious. You've simply changed to accommodate things that I won't have, that I don't want.

So, when you see on Facebook or here that I was in or near your neck of the woods and I said nothing about it, this is why. I'm done making efforts. I'm done trying. I'm simply going to be me.

Be well,

ticknart

The Internets

I'm reading about how this guy believes that the gods of the acient Sumerians comes from an extra planet in the solar system, beyond Pluto. He states that this planet has an orbital period of 3600 years and I wonder just how big of an orbit that is. (Pluto takes about 250 years to complete an orbit around the Sun.)

I think what the hell and go to Google for a search. BAM! Several calcuators for orbital period.

So, if the planet is out there and Earth sized then it's a little less than 250 astronomical units away from the Sun.

The internets is a strange, sometimes wonderful, place.

5/4 Decision

I've been trying to sleep for the last 45 minutes but this stuff keeps rattling in my head and I have to get it out. I can't post it to Facebook because I'm sick of both the blind devotion and the blind hate. So, for the few who read this, please pardon the disjointed randomness along with all the grammar and spelling error I'm sure to ignore.

This morning, when I heard that the Supreme Court of the United States of America decided that all the states had to allow same sex couples to marry and recognize those marriage I was thrilled. I had expected the Supreme Court to rule that states must recognize all marriages that take place in other states, but I didn't expect them to force all the states to allow same sex couples to marry. My second thought was to wonder how long before some asshole with a gun shoots up a church because two men or two women had a marriage ceremony there? I hope it never happens, but I bet it will. This is a very cynical thought for a day when so many are celebrating good news. But what will happen when that asshole comes along? Who will celebrate that? How will that be rectified? It's been 51 years since Brown V. Board of Education said that segregation in schools was wrong (which, incidentally is when South Carolina decided to put the Confederate flag on its capital building) and we don't have any racial problems in the US anymore.

And then there's the Facebook crap. Most of the people I'm "friends" with are very happy about the ruling. Like me, they lean to the left on social issues. The problem is that most of them look at this and seem to say that the problem is over and things will be great from her on out. To me, that's blind optimism. Things are rarely that simple, even if we want them to be. And I don't want to burst their happiness bubbles. I did that years ago when Obama first ran for president. I told them that no matter what the man said, things would pretty much stay the same even with all the hope and belief in the world. I was pretty much called a heartless cynic for saying that. Of course a couple years later they were saying it on their own.

The thing that really bothers me is this sort of conversation that went on between my Sister-In-Law (SIL) and Grandma:

SIL: I can just sit there And keep liking all the post all day long. Soo happy. To know, to get close to, have seen so many gay friends with their love, passion, sacrifice for each other, no one, with a tiniest heart left in them can stand depriving that right from them. No. Because love is love. You can feel it cross culture, language, ethnicity. Yes Yes yes. :')

Grandma: I have never had a problem with anyone, who wanted too, getting married but I do have a problem with the groups that go to small businesses who choose, for whatever reason, not to serve them. The group then sues these businesses and the expense runs them out of business. This is so wrong. If some one didn't want to sell to me I would say it was their right. Today the rights only go one way and I am sick of it!!!!!

SIL: Well, I wouldn't be ok with people not selling me stuff or hire me because I am Asian.

Grandma: It has always been, if someone won't do business with me, I'll take my business elsewhere. These people are targeting these businesses and are making a big deal of serve me or else. In one case the group came from another state. Anybody should marry anybody but they have no right to then ruin other peoples lives. This morning they made a big deal about not interfering with the belief of others. That is an out and out lie. For eons people have been exchanging their vows on mountain tops under the full moon and in many other inventive ways but they have never tried to change the beliefs of others. When I was a child two ladies exchanged vows and no one said one word. That was in the USA . . . in the 1940s. ♥

The idea that every single gay couple getting married really bothers me. I've heard it before and I don't believe it. Yes, businesses have been sued for not being willing to serve homosexuals who want to buy a wedding cake, but that's the extreme minority. Most homosexual couples, like most heterosexual couples, will simply move on to another store if they are refused service because why would they want to give money to a store where their money isn't wanted? Most don't. A vocal few will make a fuss, but how is that different from the vocal few of dark skin who demanded to be served at lunch counters who didn't want to serve "colored" people? How would the world react if SIL went to buy a cake and was refused service because she's Asian?

Have to say, though, that I agree that bakeries shouldn't be sued because they don't want to make a wedding cake for the wedding of a same sex couple. Owners of business should have the right to refuse to accept money. That said, I do think that boycotting those establishments is a great idea. Why isn't there an online list of all the bakeries and flower shops and other whatnots that won't serve gay couples so that I know who I don't want to give my money to? (Probably because this suing thing has really only happened two or three times and isn't going to destroy thousands of businesses.) Choices like this can be made. I choose to never set foot into a Hobby Lobby because they won't provide insurance that covers birth control for women but will cover penis pumps for men. I wish more people would make that choice and hit Hobby Lobby in the pocket. I hope that it's what'll happen if suddenly most of the wedding industry decides it won't serve same sex couples who want to get married.

The thing that really gets me is when Grandma call the gay couples "these people." She may be doing it unconsciously, but by calling a group "these people" she's separating them and implying that the gay couples who sue are different and wrong and other. "These people" are not other, their neighbors and parents and friends and coworkers. "These people" are us and we are "these people," too.\

Grandma's story at the end misses the whole point. Yes, I do believe that in the small town in which she grew up two women who vowed to love and honor each other until death happened. I believe that these women were probably left alone because where Grandma grew up it was very live-and-let-live and if the two women weren't hurting other people then the community would leave them alone to be who they were. I don't believe that no one said a word, though, because juicy gossip is always talked about. People still whisper about these things today.

Besides, the real point isn't that gay people get to marry, it's that they get the protections and benefits that are governed by law that they couldn't get as domestic partners. Most importantly, they are allowed to legally be parents to their children. Did you know that only one parent in a same sex couple could be their child's legal guardian? That only one parent could make medical decisions? That one parent wasn't allowed to yes to life saving procedures? That if the couple split the non-guardian could be denied visitation because he or she wasn't a legal parent? For me, the most important part of this decision is now there is equal protection for the children of gay parents and hopefully that will improve the world a little bit.

Working Report

I just learned that on July 1 I get promoted. This will likely be the last promotion I ever receive. Everything after this level involves supervising/managing. I don't want to do either of those things

Halfway through September, I will have worked for The State for 10 years. 3652 days.

The best I can say about it is that the pay has been more that I've ever been paid, but lower than I'd like and the pay has been steady.

Four or so weeks ago I went to this mini conference thing for the local community college. It was a lunch with the business teachers and local schools and businesses. I was there as a representative for the prison I work at and spent most of the time shouting that people, not just the youth, need to be taught how to fill out an application properly (a waitress who writes "I waited on tables" does not actually tell me what she did) and have fuckin' manners on the phone (no, I am not here to take your abuse and I'm not going to fill out the application for you nor will I take the exam for you).

This year also included instructors from the computer science-ish type classes. This way we could also talk technology and the programs that student's will be using once they enter the industry of, hopefully, their choice. One of the instructors was a teacher I had nearly 15 years ago. I took three classes from her all based around graphic design. I did two classes on Adobe Illustrator and one for InDesign. (The second semester of InDesign was with a different teacher.)

I spoke with her before the lunch and the talk began. Mostly, we talked about her classes. She's still doing the Illustrator and InDesign, but she's also teaching Photoshop (which she taught way back when, but I wasn't interested in taking), an computer aided animation, not Flash, and 3D modeling in Maya. All of it excited me. We did get around to talking about me. She seemed... well... disappointed with where I was in my life.

I was, too.

Ever since that day, going to work and staying at work has been very hard for me to do.

I have spent much time looking at the classes she offers, but most are during the day now. Way back when she was only a part time teacher and her classes all took place in the evening. But how do I justify to my boss and then her boss, the Warden, missing six hours of work each week? Especially for classes that would do nothing for promotional purposes? How do I make those hours up without wanting to poke my eyes out? Should I use 90 hours (more than two work weeks worth of time) of vacation time over a semester to take a class? I don't know!

Not since I was little did I really know what I wanted to do as an adult. For a time, I thought I could be a professional story teller, or at least a semi-professional. That idea was squashed out of me in college. The closest I came to finding something that really interested me was the graphic design. I moved from Cowtown to Cowcity to continue design courses. It was just starting in Cowtown, but Cowcity had a real curriculum and was building a 3D modeling/animation curriculum at that time. Eventually, I didn't get enough hours working at a coffee shop and couldn't afford to live there anymore. (You can actually read about this time on this blog by clicking through 2004 and 2005 through September or October. Crazy.) I ended up back in Cowtown, where I didn't have to pay rent, and looked for a job that would actually pay me money and I wouldn't have to live with my parents or a roommate. That's how I ended up with the State in September 2005. In 3 1/2 months I will have finished my tenth year with the state. Fuck.

Most of the ten years have been okay. Just a job. Stuff I do for money. Unfortunately, I've never done a lot outside of the job stuff because of the depression thing. So, I just worked at work that was work that didn't make me more miserable. Work I didn't hate. Work I still don't hate. The problem is that I was reminded about something that I liked that could have lead somewhere, or not. Like I wrote, it's been hard to go to work and then stay there for the full day.

And along with all that it's been really easy to want to quit, give up, and go away.

Egotism and Emnity

I just finished reading Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

It took 30, or so, chapters to become interesting and then there were only 30, or so, left to read.

I enjoyed it, for what it was. However, I refuse to belive that people actually talked like the characters in the book speak. Why say only two words when you can say two dozen instead and bury your true intention under useless verbaige?

It's nice that the two words in the title applied to both the main character and her love interest.

In the end, Jane Eyre was better. Read that instead.

Another Year

Happy birthday to me
I'd rather not be
I'm tired of existence
Happy birthday to me

The Move Is On

My March has been spent preparing myself to move.
Not by choice, mind you.
The whole thing was handled badly.
Very badly.
On the side that owns the land.
I just stewed.
I'm still stewing.
I'll probably be stewing for another week or two.
Saturday I move.
I'm moving from a house to an apartment.
It's not much smaller, but it is so not private.
The price is more, though.
One Fifth more.
Right now I feel like this will be my last move.
This apartment feels like the last place I will ever live.

The Missing Word

I spent 10 hours, today, giving a civil service test. 150 people took the test. People of both genders and of all flavors. Ages ranged from 19 (I know because his mother is a coworker) to somewhere near or in their 60s (I saw at least two driver licenses with birth dates in the 1950s, but I can't remember the actual year). Most of the day was spent slowly walking around the room watching people fill in little bubble, waiting for a hand to be raised so I could replace a pencil or scratch paper.

When I was young(er?) I used to watch the proctors of exams and think that it was a very grown-up job to do. They were in charge of this thing that seemed so important to me. The thing was proof of education. Proof of learning. An ethereal thing made tangible. Made measurable. (Which seemed very important to me, once upon a time.)

Today was a reminder of just how not grown-up the world is.

I walked around the room for many hours. I stumbled a few times. I stopped to whisper banalities with the other proctors. I sang songs, under my breath, to myself.

I don't know why, but I keep expecting there to be a moment where I'm suddenly a grown-up.

Even after talking to my parents, brothers, other people I know who I'm sort of close to and think they like spending time with me, and learning that none of them have ever really felt GROWN-UP. These are people with children and grandchildren. It seems like raising a family should be one of the most grown-up things people can do. It's too bad any couple of assholes with a half six-pack and a broken condom can fall into this.

The grown-up moment doesn't exist. I know this. I know that everyone is just faking it and anyone who says they feel like they're a grown-up are either a liar or insane. I know this, but I keep waiting for it to happen. I keep looking at moments of my life and wonder if that was it. Then I wonder if I missed it, that moment. That it somehow just didn't sink in for me.

Do other people even worry about this? If they do, how do they push it into the back of their minds so they're not sitting up late at night with tears behind their eyes with worry? What do they do to get it out?

Part of all of the AAAARGH! in my brain is me thinking about my last visit with the brain doctor. The last time he really pushed on me that I need to meet people. People who I want to spend time with. People with like interests. People who want to spend time with me (who aren't family). And I just can't do it. I can't.

He asks about co-workers near my age and I say it's a no go. Why? Because I don't know anything about what they are interested in except their children. And that's the way it should be. Their children should be their number one interest. That's good parenting. What else do they like? I don't know because I don't know how to talk to most human beings when there isn't lifescript involved.

What do I mean by lifescript? It that thing everyone can do with everyone when it comes to talking about work because no one cares, but everyone has crap to say. It's rattling off all the crap that needs to be said when I talk to people on the phone. It's the way kids instinctively know how to dodge their parents' questions about school. It's the rote conversations everyone has each day with other people where they put little thought if any into the responses, but always require some basic topic that's so internal to people that the thought really isn't necessary.

The last time I saw the brain doctor he kept telling me that I need to go somewhere and do something with people and somehow, due to like interests, we'll become and everything will be great. You know, because putting a person whose throat freezes around new people in a social situation is the perfect idea. The worst thing was that he made me feel like I was wrong. Like I was lying. Like this part of me that's been a part of me for as long as I can remember is something that I use as an excuse for I don't even know what.

When I first walked into his office and sat down he spent a long time and a lot of words telling me that the depression in my head is real. After I took the brain test he wanted me to take he spent a lot of time and words telling me that my depression is more than normal depression, but it's chemical. It's real, he kept telling me. This thing I have about people, my inability and lack of desire to make he just doesn't understand.

Two or three sessions ago, I spent a long time trying to make him understand that the desire to go make just isn't inside of me anymore. It was there when I was little. I wanted to be with everyone so much and I tried so hard, but they never seemed interested and trying hard was especially hard because I couldn't vocalize things well to the other kids. I wanted to be with adults, but I was a goofy little kid and goofy little kids aren't with adults. Eventually, I reached a point where I just didn't want to be disliked by my peers and that can be done by just staying out of the way and flying under the radar. I thought I made him understand. Apparently I didn't.

The worst, this last time, was when he told me that I have to make more of an effort with the people I already know. That I have to take the time to go to them and figure out things that we can do and I'm tired of doing that. I've been doing that for years. At least it feels that way. And like earlier, a lot of it has to do with people focusing on families and that's the way it should be. Still, I'm tired of it, trying to set up stuff with people who are.

I see the brain doctor in about 10 days.

I don't know much about what it means to be a human being, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not actually a person.

The Bed Song

A favorite waltz of mine:



Although I think the song should be a duet.

My Father's Mother

On 12/25/14, my grandmother died. My mother got the call as we were pulling up to my uncle's house for Christmas dinner.

I've been thinking for a week about how to say something about her and her place in the world, like I did for my grandpa earlier this year, but it's much harder to do this for her. With my grandpa, I could, and can (and somtimes do) talk about his idosincratic behavior and his contracictory nature for ever. Everything with him was right on the surface and very little was held back.

She was different. She was kind and cared for everyone, maybe even everything. (Not snails, so much, because they ate her plants.) That kindness the simple way she showed it was who she was.

Which isn't to say she was a simple woman. How could she be simple? She was my grandma.

She was born in the USA, the daughter of immigrants.

She and her best friend couldn't eat lunch at Woolworths because the lunch counter there wouldn't serve colored people. They had to walk downtown to the Jewish deli and did that every day.

She never learned how to swim. She had a bathing suit and would come into the water with us, but she'd never go in past her hips. She enjoyed just wading, she said. As a kid it always concerned me that she never learned and, when I asked, she said she wasn't going to learn. Now that I'm older I wonder if she was scared.

She loved playing games. Cards and board, mostly. She introduced the family to Spite and Malice and when she got going she'd let out a wheeee and when things weren't going so well she'd put hexes on the other players and circle her chair for luck.

She'd take my brothers and me to the mall and we'd all just browse. There was nothing we needed, but it was always fun just looking.

Everyone she met she treated as an old friend. She called everyone darlin' and meant it.

My Brain

It's not at its best, my brain. It's been fuzzy. Tired.

The brain doctor didn't increase the dosage when I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He said what I'm at is the max. I decided, and he concurred, to continue on the way I am, for a while. The only other choice would have been a new drug and after six month (I think it was that long) of trying to find something that didn't hurt me while it helped me I need a break to just settle down.

Not to say that I'm doing well, though. I'm just existing. If I didn't have a job to go to five days a week, I wouldn't leave the house. At least I'd leave as rarely as possible.

At work, I've had a couple of major screw-ups that could lead to some future problems, although I doubt it. I've also made lots of minor ones. Most I've caught before the next step and no one knows about them. Some went on but came back to me to correct. Rarely have they gone past that state, but if they keep going, they're gone.

I'd like to quit my job. Not because I dislike it, but more because I'm "meh" about it. The great manager has moved on, for at least a year, but I expect she'll fit in the position permanently. The current acting manager is a good guy, but we only have him for a couple more months and then who knows. The biggest problem is I can't see this job leading anywhere that I'd like to end up. Even as I look out across the virtual 160,000 square miles of the state for a different job I see nothing that I want to do. I don't want to arrange contracts or spend my day in meetings or arranging travel plans or track expenditures or write reports or work with the public. That's all that I see available to me.

When I look out at other places, away from the public sector, I get lost in not knowing what I can do. There are a lot of things that I can't do or haven't learned to do and most of the time when I see a job that I might like I think I can't do it. When I see things that I can do and would like to do, I have no experience and would have to start at the bottom.

One of the best things about working for the state is knowing that every 12 months I'll get a step raise until I hit the top of the pay scale as long as I have performed my duties well. I don't beg to get that little bit more. I don't have to dance around convincing some asshole that what I do is valuable and that I do it well like people do in the private world. That kind of thing is especially hard because I don't believe it myself. Never have.

Sometimes I think I'd know what I'd like to do for a living. It would require a lot of work, though. A lot of time and learning to do things that I can actually do. Worst of all it doesn't really pay enough for a person to live. And then there's all the rest "social" "media" bullshit that you have to do just to stay "connected" with "people."

"Oh, he surely must be happy with everything he's got."

The meds that I've been on for about six weeks now have helped and don't seem to have hurt. (Except for maybe the break-outs on my forehead, but that could be something else.)

I feel nowhere near as well as I felt last year at this time, but I'm not scouring the internets looking for people thinking like I was thinking and reading what they've written. I'm not finding websites that give me information I would need to better make sure that I would end up dead. (Because, honestly, the scariest thing to think of when thinking the horrible thoughts is what if I fail and wake up tomorrow.)

Obviously, I'm still thinking things, though. However, it's much easier to turn on a smile and laugh at the appropriate and expected moments and make sure that people at work and people in my family don't even suspect what's in my mind.

So, I am feeling better.

I don't know what the maximum dose of the medication is, but I bet that if I can take one step more the brain doctor will put me at that level when I see him on Tuesday.

Children Without a Parent

About three weeks ago my brother caught up with this here blog. He worried and fretted and then showed what I had written to his wife. His wife, the kind and sweet woman she is, told him to drive down and see me. Which he did.

However, he didn't tell me. I just got cryptic messages about breakfast and seeing him and I don't really know what. Of course I had a feeling that he was driving down from Oregon, but I hoped, so hoped, that he wasn't on his way. My brother, being my brother, didn't respond to me about, well, anything. His wife, unlike how she usually is, kept cryptic on me and experienced a partial me not being so nice. (This is where I try to tactfully tell the person who they are or what they're doing in child friendly language, but all the subtext comes out as me yelling at them to stop being a fucking asshole and tell me what I want to know, in a very passive-aggressive way. I did, sort of, apologize for acting this way.)

Eventually, I got confirmation from my brother that he was in California and he wanted to take me out to dinner. Nothing about why he had driven nearly 700 miles, but I could guess. I knew what I had been writing and how it would look to someone who hadn't been following daily, but rather read everything in one chunk. Of course, I spent the whole day feeling sick to my stomach because I had made my brother leave his family out of concern for me, which is something I never wanted to happen.

It also made me rethink this whole blogging thing. In part, especially over the last year, this has been a record of just how sick my brain has been. Reading it, you can see the few highs and horrible lows. And I think that's a good thing. Maybe not for me or my family, but there's this sickening cycle of thought on the web that may help other to understand what it's like to be a severely depressed person. A person on meds that worked and then stopped working and the mental and physical pain that's one can go through trying to get back to okay.

That evening we met and we talked. I felt like I was driving the conversation more than him. There are two reasons for this: 1. I'm very good and sneaking conversations onto other topics that are comfortable for everyone. 2. I kept pushing back toward the blog and depression because I wanted to reassure my brother that nothing was going to happen, for the foreseeable future.

It was a weird dinner and a weird after dinner, too.

He left for Oregon so his wife could get back to work. I went back to the house and thought about deleting everything I'd written on the internets, or at least this blog.

Also, while he was in California, he stopped and talked with each of our parents. Our dad, for the first time ever, had a flash of understanding about the sheer insanity this depression thing is made of. I'm not sure what he and our mom spoke about, but she reminded me that I can talk to her and my dad about anything. ("Hi. What'd you do today?" "I stared at the brick corner of the building for a few minutes trying to figure out how fast I'd need to swing my head so I can smash the bricks through my skull and deep into my brain while picturing that exact scenario in my head." "Uhhh...")

A couple of nights later, my dad wrote me a pretty long e-mail, at like two in the morning, which I feel guilty about. In it was all sorts of advice on how to counteract bad things with good. (He's a fixer.) He reminded me that he has felt depressed in his life so he does know what it's like and not to dismiss his advice. I wrote him an equally long e-mail and very carefully laid out what my depression is like; what depression is like when you can find no person, no action, no thing, no emotion to blame it on; how this depression is just being mentally exhausted all the time and knowing, simply knowing, that there is only one way to stop being exhausted and that one way is socially unforgivable. I think he understands what I've been going through better. The other night he was willing to engage me with questions about depression and that's a big step for us.

As for the blog, I don't know. I didn't like the idea of deleting it. It charts the course of my life very well, especially the last year when I decided no one was reading so what the hell. I'm surprised I'm writing this. I still feel very uncomfortable and I'm censoring myself more than I was because it was my fault my nieces didn't have their dad for three days. And that's just one problem that I know I caused.

Schrecklichen Schönheit

On TV, death can be funny and it can beautiful even when it's horrific, but it's rarely sad.

In life, death is never beautiful. It is always sad and often horrific, but it is never beautiful and only "funny" in the Darwin Awards.

Yet in my head I see stark, contrasting colors and unique environments.

Day Off

I took a mental health day today. Well, mental and physical health. The new pills are still doing a number on my stomach, so much so that I hurled this morning.

On the brain side, well, I'm ready to take a trip to Utah.

I see the brain doctor tomorrow afternoon. We're going to have to try something new. I don't want the sweating and the headaches and nausea anymore. How can someone feel mentally good if they feel physically disgusting all the time. It's hard enough being morbidly obese and trying to be accepting of oneself.

Anyway, the time away from work didn't really help me, but I made sure that it didn't hurt other people, either. Tomorrow my concentration will be just as poor as it is today and my stomach will be just as achy, but I'll go to work and then, eventually, drive an hour to see the brain doctor. And I'll hear him tell me, again, to just hold on. Of course I'll hold on. There's a lot of stuff to do before I'll be ready to go to Utah.

*blink*

Away It Goes

I haven't read a book in over three weeks.

I haven't finished reading in book in four or five months.

Reading was one of my favorite things to do. I used to be able to spend all day reading and now I can't muster enough concentration to read for more than ten or so minutes.

This makes me angry and sad and that doesn't help me with anything.

*blink*

Fancy Pants

I think if I were thin, or normal, I'd be a clothes whore.

Jacketed Hollow

Earlier this week, Tuesday I think, I found myself reading about bullet caliber.

I honestly don't remember how I got there, but there I was. Not only was I reading about the size of bullets, but I had tabs open relating to the fillings, or lack thereof, of bullets, reading about the different kinds of shapes and coatings. I read as much as I could learn about bullets in a short amount of time.

This probably isn't a good thing because the most recent fantasy (both an accurate and horrifying word) floating around in my head involves a handgun of some sort. The kind changes, but it's never a rifle.

Fortunately, I don't own any kind of gun, so there's all that time, right. But since I've done nothing for years, what are a few weeks for paperwork and background checks. And I can wait. I can wait as long as I need to.

Patience may be a virtue, but it's also a delaying tactic.

Just the Fingertips Touch

Yesterday I spent time looking up books to buy my neice for her birtday. When I look stuff up for her, I tend to look for two things: pictures and writing that's above her age group. She's only turning four, so she's not a great reader anyway, but I like to get her books above what's recommended for her age group because it helps push her a little and I expect that her parents will read with her at this age. I know that they do read with her because I've seen both of them read with her. Hell, she and her younger sister like to hand me things to read to them when I visit and the one turning four will correct me when I screw up. Reading at that age is a shared experience for their family as it was for my family while I was growing up.

I found things to get her, but I also make the mistake of reading the comments. Most of the comments were positive, four or five stars, but there were a few in the one or two star range, which I had to read. The common complaint was that these books were not really for "all ages readers." They complain that there's a lot of words and some are difficult, but maybe they could give it to a second grader rather than the kindergartener.

To me, this means they expect a child who is only five to read by his or herself. If something is out of the child's current range, shouldn't they be reading along with the kid? Shouldn't they use it to sneakily teach the kid? To push the child's abilities?

Apologies

I feel bad about what this blog has become. Especially after last night's post.

The blog used to be more fun. More funny. Maybe more thoughtful.

Yes, I spent thousands of words bitching about work and bosses, but interspersed were reviews of movies and comics or goofy things I found on the inturdmets. Plenty that was fun. And even when I was deep in my bitching, even when I felt as dark as I feel now, everything had a lighter tone than my posts do.

In part, it's because the vast majority of people migrated away from blogs. Myspace started the destruction or personal blogs, but Twitter and Facebook squashed it completely. People who used to blog several times a week quit blogging. For a time, they still read personal blogs, but eventually they drifted away from even that because it's so much easier to read 140 characters from a bunch of people or it's easier just to look at news-feed -- because it shows everything everyone wrote -- rather than use a feed reader which might force you to click to read a whole post. Away went the 1000 word essay about burning last night's dinner and in came the three word "I burnt dinner" post or worse just a picture of the burnt dinner. At least you get 150 "likes" on the short post/picture rather than the two to five comments your essay got, right?

I'm guilty of slowing down on the blogging, but I never stopped. I think that every month since October 2013 has at least one post. The average monthly posting is about 13 per month. Not perfect, but I'm still around. Mostly because I have to get some things out of me and the only people who come to this blog choose to come to this blog and can choose not to come, too. Sometimes I wish there were more readers so there could be conversations in the comments sections, but I can live without that interaction on my blog.

Interaction was never the reason I liked blogs. I'm not good at doing it and since, on bigger blogs or in message boards, my comments get ignored or trolled down I'm afraid that my comments come off as condescending or rude. What I liked about the personal blogs was seeing people's thinking and reasoning. I liked watching them drift around topics like a feather on the breeze or narrow down like an electron microscope as they wrote. I liked reading the slices of people's lives; it was never just a moment, though, but things leading to the moment and the fallout of that moment, too, because rarely did people blog just one sentence. Even though I wasn't a part of the story, I got to experience it in the unique way that each and every blogger wrote.

Now most blogs tend to be about hyperspecific topics that only interest small groups or regurgitate the new and all for money. Not that any of those things are bad, they just aren't people and the lives they lead.

See, the interesting thing about the personal blog boom, for me, was the drama in daily life. Life isn't a TV show or movie. The story of our day doesn't build to a climax which gets resolved before a denouement and then bedtime. Victory in life is getting through the day. It's the lonely person having a good conversation with a stranger at the coffee shop or the hardworking parent making it home in time to tuck the kids into bed. It's the daily survival of high school by anyone in high school. It's the heavy petting that leaves both parties with blue balls because they're just not ready for the next step. Each day is frustrating and painful and hopeful and sad and angry and happy and everything all lumped into a mess. And that's what all of those personal blogs shared, the mess that we each live and those little moments that add up to life.

I guess that all this is to say that I'm doing my best to stick with the little things in life. Unfortunately, my life is not interesting right now and my only victory is not hurting myself each day. All those little goofy things I used to post now end up of Facebook because that's safe to post there. That's all I can post there.