Had good work day Sunday which I guess triggered happy dream about being young and in "love". A love based on a lot of unknown that I could fill with good things. I went for a walk with this young lady I "loved" along with her family through the woods. Which was another unknown thus filled with good/magic things. The feeling for the young lady was a feeling I hadn't felt in many years. I woke up and managed to hold onto the feeling for a very short time then lost it. I use the word "love" but of course the word is so vague. In truth we use it to attempt to describe so many different things. It's so vague because two people rarely ever actually feel the same thing for each other and usually at least one wouldn't be able to stand understanding the difference in what the one was feeling versus the other.

This Tuesday night I took my cello to a relative of my wife's and messed around with his guitars, etc. He's very good on the guitar. Can just hear songs and figure out how to play them quickly. Also has a lot of guitars, lots of amps, and then lots of other interesting instruments. An omniharp for example which made great music immediately. His wife had spent so much time making a rock garden around their house. Yet they live in a trailer park, in a trailer on rented land. I like trailers actually. Always thought they had a nice setup but the renting part I really think sucks. In my socialist utopia renting would mostly be illegal. The government would give everyone land to own and/or make it such that people would sell land not attempt to rent.

Anyway feel bad my house is so nice while this person who's so similar in their love of music lives in a trailer. The difference between my house and their trailer caused me to dream I lived in a castle.

On a research team at work. Me and otherwise all managers and directors. And I've gotten stuck being the person primarily doing the research and now going to make and present a poster at a research day. I suppose they're impressed with my work. I hope this doesn't lead to getting offered a promotion. I'm sure I'd be unhappy with an office job. As things are I'm mostly happy to be getting to do a little bit of research but oh how I hate having to communicate by email with all these managers and directors.

Also I may be intelligent but ultimately these long term projects seem to always lead to some degree of procrastination which in turn gives me stress. Much prefer having a job where all the work basically needs to be done immediately. And communication is all face to face. And for that matter where there is a lot of communication and very little time spent alone.

I suppose that points to there being something lacking within me. Possibly it's just that in the past being a researcher was so negative. Or that such similar projects were otherwise tied into school which is basically a flaming hoop circus. Provided the work is actually useful I think it's different. And this work is.... But it's somewhat warped by politics. And the warping perhaps ties into me having a bit of procrastination. Like today I plan on not even looking at it... Although I did read a 225 page book Monday and Tuesday. And I only get paid by the hour. And I'm only getting paid 4 hours a month actually for this work. Which is to say I'm basically doing a ton of work for free. Because again, as long as it's actually useful work that's really making the world a better place, I'm pretty happy to be doing it for nothing at all in return. I don't want extra money, really DO NOT want to get a promotion. Happy to do it for nothing. But then, again, some politics are warping the process, although not too badly so far.

Thanks to blueberry smoothies can do multiple set high rep weightlifting again without insomnia. Sleep is like a magical thing. Pond and yard mostly finished. Can see the pond liner a bit and the wall is a little crooked. Two very small things that would have been a huge pain in the ass to make perfect. Still not sure if I should have made them perfect. The whole pond and garden thing, I thought first of making sure not to be "gaudy". Now I'm thinking of royalty having their perfect gardens and me being a commoner with pretentions, with my crooked pond wall and liner showing. But well really it's beautiful. 5 gold fish and 2 koi, they come right up to you for food already. Floating water lettuce and hyacinths. Water lilies, parrot's feather and two other water plants of unknown names. The maiden and pampas grass. The wysteria vine growing a few inches every day. The japanese maple, weeping willow, crimson maple and japanese kwanzan. The norfolk pine. Watch it all grow. The miracle of life. The small stone sculpture (too much would be gaudy, redneck/commoner pretending they're the king, lol.) So just one small scuplture and a large stone bench.

Oh and a bit of pakisandra. Hopefully it will flourish and there'll be a lot less grass to deal with eventually.

Done except to figure out where to let the wysteria grow. Maybe plant some blueberry bushes somewhere later. Blueberries are the most important food a human can eat.

Bought a guitar, bought a pulldown machine. And that's it. No more purchases. Still have 16 thousand in the bank and nothing else really to buy. Wrote two songs yesterday. But only because my nephew wanted something to sing along with.

Enjoying escapist fiction. Snuggling cat. Drinking tea. Feel very well physically. Starting each day off with a "comfortable" jog on the thousand dollar treadmill. Wife finally agreed even to let me move it out of the garage and into the very spacious kitchen. And I moved it all by myself. A year ago I didn't feel up to doing it by myself. Moved stone bench by self also which weighed 200 pounds. Feel good. "Magical" sleep.

Got a snail and it had a baby. Aquarium filled with anacharis. Doesn't seem to grow in outside pond though.

Scorching heat. Like it outside. Love to feel really hot. For just a while though. Like the 200 fahrenheit saunas in Kazakstan. (Just don't breath too fast or you'll burn your noise.) But don't like it to be relentless 24 hours a day. And thankfully have air conditioned home.

Feeling like cello lessons come up too quick. Want to switch to once every three weeks instead of every two, but afraid to displease cello teacher, whom I really like quite a bit. A bit too cheery, but well still, really like her a lot.

Chris showed up today. I did mention the Lord of the Flies and not really wanting to hear about people from 25 years ago. Think it was all perfectly pleasant though, unlike what I typed here. Chris wants to get a guitar. I'm going to buy him one from rondomusic.com and send it to him. Just afraid he'll feel like he's got to get me something in return. Need to communicate that all I want in return is for him to learn how to play and play with me some time.

Cuckoo clock just ..'hooted' 1AM. Hoping to stay up till at least 2 so to prepare for night shift tomorrow. Chocolate works much better than tea. Had really come close to falling asleep at 11pm, which would be a bad bad thing.

Patient from the UK. First ever in a few years from the UK. He said he drinks 40 cups of coffee a day. He looked like hell. Said he sleeps two hours a night. Insomnia all his life. I told him of the blessed blueberry smoothies. Hope he tries them, poor poor fellow.

I was watching the Twilight Zone and reading about Rod Serling. Some of the episodes are very cheesy but all in all, I think the social commentary of some episodes may be the best that ever survived TV corporate censorship. Really can't think of any other TV show ever made that had such messages as like 'monsters due on maple street'. Purchased a biography. Serling said the worst thing was to become a misanthrope. I think that must have been something he really fought against becoming.

Back to jogging. I've started and stopped jogging so many times. Wish I could remember better why I stop time after time. But I'm not so great at recording my failures or remembering them. All in all not remembering all my failures in life may be a good thing. Maybe. But I guess I'd still, just barely, like to think not.

Now to jogging again, as usual I think, in order to sleep better. The pond digging reminded me, I think, of what a good thing daily exercise is, exercise that is, which isn't conventional weightlifting.

I live in suburbia not even a mile from where I grew up. Jogging in the area is a little depressing. First reminded of the paper route I was forced to have from 10 to 17 years old. The constant sleep deprivation. A very few nice memories. Remember wearing my walkmen entranced by music. Eurythmics, The Cars, Billy Idol... I recall one synthy instrumental in particular I had thought was by the guy who did the Miami Vice music. But I searched and searched and never found it. Finally tried to just recreate it, but I think maybe I need the specific hardware analog synths. Seems such a loss that no one is using analog hardware synths anymore...

Mostly though the newspaper route was just a depressing, ugly thing. Every single morning it was so hard getting up. Not like now, where I almost always just get up when I can't sleep anymore. Back then it was always force/fear that dragged me out of bed. Imagine 60 people angry that they hadn't gotten their newspaper that morning. Imagine my parents screaming at me as our phone started ringing.

Every single day, never a day off, for 7 years. On Saturdays I could at least come home and sleep in. A few years I wasn't forced to go to church and could sleep in on Sundays. But, I think the constant sleep deprivation--I needed so much more sleep than I was getting--caused sleep paralysis to run rampant on these weekend late mornings when I finished the route and came home and slept.

Waking up paralyzed wasn't much fun.

So I go jogging through the old neighborhood in the late night. Hate jogging during the day, hate to be stared at as I'm bouncing up and down, running much slower then I wish I was. So I go at night. I run out to the end of a long dead end street. The West Virginia hills going up high in the distance. Here still is a methodist church with a huge parking lot. I remember more than 20 years ago discovering they had put up a basketball rim in their huge parking lot. I went there and played on it a couple of times during the course of a week. And then came to find the basketball board taken down. Here I come by now, and still, more than twenty years later, the pole still stands, still with the supports for the board on it. The board clearly taken down because they didn't want some unknown kid hanging out in their parking lot.

More than 20 years later I'm still disgusted about it. Incredibly disgusted.

I get home and sit on the wall of my pond and rest. All three cats come running to be with me. I sit here out in the open where my neighbors can see me and think that probably my neighbors disapprove of how often I'll be out where they can see me. This is white industrialized society. You stay inside or in the backyard where you can't be seen. But our backyard is very small while we own a huge side lot, thus that's where the pond is, thus I'll be there a lot. It will take years for the trees I've planted to hide me. Neighbors probably will really disapprove of how often they may look out their windows and see me out there.

That's how I feel anyway. Like an oppressive weight pushes against me.

This is the song I wrote thinking of my neighborhood.

The oppressive empty feeling. House after house without a soul in sight. Here passes your childhood. It's not supposed to be this way. And there's nothing you can do to change it.

It gets dark at 4:30. You live on a street where the average age is 60. You know this because you did a survey for a science project. You sit at home wasting your evenings, wasting your youth, wasting your existence, watching Barney Miller and Alice, knowing how wrong. It. All. Is. You're just a little kid. And YOU KNOW.

The closest kid your age lives half a mile away and is mistaken by most to be mentally retarded. And because you're friends with him, you're ostracized at school along with him. You know damm well that's how it works, but you do the right thing and continue to be a friend to him instead of making fun of him like you're supposed to. And years later, the dumb ass just thinks you're crazy and dismisses you, because you're so far above what he can comprehend.

Strangely enough, now I've a seven year old nephew living in that same house I grew up in. He's been calling my mom day after day crying about how his other grandmother has been treating him. She's a dumb ass. The particulars aren't important. This seven year old is now meeting the world in all it's horror and he can't believe it. This is how people act?

I hardly ever see him thanks to my rightwing dumb ass brother-in-law but my wife, my mom, tell me that he's just like me. Maybe the genes run that strong. The first picture I saw of my grandfather I was so confused, wondering when I had worn such clothes and had a black and white picture taken of me. Maybe it's the house...

I continue to play the cello without needing willpower. The cello has no frets. This can be very frustrating. Each time you go to play a note your hand lands just a tinsy bit different on the string and the pitch is lower or higher. As a novice I'm forever off tune. It could be thought of as frustrating but at the same time, it's what keeps it interesting. Forever having to focus so much on the pitch of each note. Is it right? Is it low or high? You have to focus so much more, it seems to me, then with most other instruments. And so the thing that makes it so frustrating is also what makes it interesting, and keeps me playing.

I keep waking up to a nightmare. A real world nightmare. My best friend other than my wife has, it seems, suddenly turned into someone else. Suddenly I'm the enemy. And it hurts me so much to try so hard to be a good person, in general and very specifically to her, just to get this for my troubles. And still I worry so about her, but what else can I do? Each time I wake from sleeping, the nightmare anew, and is there something else I'm supposed to be doing?

No. It seems not. I'm just beating myself up.

I sleep and wake again, and repeat.

I sleep for an hour and wake again, and repeat.

It is at least a good sleep lately. I guess thanks to the physical activity of building the pond.

And so if she does nothing, I'll be left with yet another ugly memory for the rest of my life. A decade from now it will still periodically bite me. Jumping up out of nowhere. And I cry reading the end of Hobb's last Fitz trilogy.

http://roadofentities2.blogspot.com/
Strange that found this blog interesting for a year or two. Going on and on about things that for the most part aren't actually interesting. Least I could see no reason to write of such things. Rambling on (and on) about spam email in a blog? Sorry but how is that not sad?

I had spoken to this person by email for more than a year. Then told her I wasn't going to email people anymore unless it was supplemented with some actual speaking. And sure enough, of course, I never heard from her again. Which wasn't even slightly surprising.

As such I'll give biting criticism if I want.

Somehow just perfectly represented a lost life, a life in the UK. With some focus on small things. UK bustops, etc. All about the UK. And a woman that... well does make sound files and is good looking. And does have deep thoughts, does like to think.

But still a total fail in my opinion.

I consider it unethical to speak by email with someone you wouldn't actually speak to. A dishonest act. A misrepresentation. An act of startling immorality.

And too much of my like of her was just symbolic, which is as I told her from the beginning, although not sure she understood. Symbolic of a life forever lost.

That should have been!

Like a ghost after I die perhaps I'll linger thinking this.

Represented by the one Hobb trilogy where at the end, he gets it back. The life he lost. He gets it back. Gets back his first love. 20 years later.

Hurts so much to read. Makes me cry. Because this never happens in the real world. In the real world it's always forever gone. Injustice is always forever. And the people who wrong us, never apologize, never see their mistake. So cruel to make a book where such incredible injustice is finally defeated.

Like holding some grand prize just out of reach.

See this?

You'll never have it. This is what will never be.

When very sick or very unhappy I like to watch a few certain fantasy movies and also now the two main Fitz trilogies by Hobb. The movies are The Dark Crystal, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, The Last Unicorn, Labyrinth, Python's Search for the Holy Grail and The NeverEnding Story. Childish I guess. As is rereading Hobb.

Have been rereading Hobb and watching these movies/having them play in the background as I'm very hurt by something someone did to me. Feel that a light in my mind has been switched off.

And what are the chances they'll apologize, they'll right their wrong?

I read Hobb's happy ending and it makes me cry. It seems downright cruel to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHXqmTHUnA0

Like that deer hang out in our yard. This one isn't in a very secluded place but 75 yards down to the right there is a very small creek (not sewer water) with a ton of trees/vines, etc for privacy. Lots of deer hang out. Love it. Wonder if most of our mythical creatures come from real world creatures... Which brings up the question of just how old are myths about elves and dwarves anyway?

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Elf

There is a midget at work, I must say she's pretty grumpy, just like dwarves are usually portrayed in fantasy fiction. If she weren't a midget, I'm not so sure she'd get away with being that grumpy/rude to others.

Wonder if elves are inspired by deer? Or perhaps just types of people? Liberal tree hugger types, and perhaps artistic types and effeminate men, etc? Which leaves rightwingers as ogres, troll, and goblins I guess. Rightwingers generally don't read fantasy fiction. And they lockup their doors tight each night, with plenty of guns, by the bed. Not interested in finding out what might be out there.

Strangely adding one last bottom row of bookshelves really changed the effect. Now it feels like both walls are just a mass of books from floor to ceiling and I look at it and feel so much more sooooothed. This is the effect I had wanted in the first place but until adding this one last row it had seemed to completely fail in giving the effect I was hoping for. Vague though the effect I was hoping for is. Thus at the time I just dismissed it as a stupid, childish thing.

...story sort of "idea". A certain sort of people are working their way through a castle. They have this special weapon which they spike it into a door so that just it's tip is protruding into the next room. Then they pull the trigger and destroy whatever was in that room. They don't even check beforehand to see what they're destroying. They destroy the unknown. The unknown is mysterious and magical... and they have no respect for it at all. They have no interest in the unknown. Minds Closed. Not interested in learning anything else. Or particularly worried about excessive killing. So, there they are, working their way through a massive castle, stretching for miles.

-
Today I practiced my cello,
wrote 112, which I like, unfortunately my favorite sounding VSTs only do 12TET,
wrote a bit of story,
played Oblivion for an hour,
lifted weights,
watched some movies including rewatching The Last Supper, which I had liked so much before, geez I must have had more aggression in me back then,
and off to read more of George Eliot.

The degree of relevance of your dreams correlates to your happiness/mental 'health'. If can go home and immediately dream about something that had happened at work just that day, you're doing excellent. If you never have dreams about work, you're not doing so well. If your dreams are always just complete gibberish, you're hanging on to life by a very thin thread.

The above seems generally true to me although not perfectly so.

I dreamt about something related to what happened at work today for the first time ever. Not quite the first time I ever dreamt about work, but in 4 years at this particular job, pretty close. I came home the most relaxed and in a positive mood that I've been about my work.

I've still never had even one single dream about any of my previous jobs, that I can remember.

Was very happy today for many reasons, positive talk with boss perhaps mostly, few other odds in and ends perhaps played a role:
a person I found strangely, incredibly attractive,
physically surprisingly good today and more and more, maybe because of removing caffeine and chocolate from my diet???, taking a children's chewable multivitamin???
stayed over at work and soaked in the sunrise,
and got out of taking report from maleovent(sp) nut case at work who simply didn't show up, a person who slanders me behind my back, etc,
planted two large trees in yard last night.

May have found a cello teacher. She wants me to go buy a 2000 dollar cello though. J wasn't happy about that. Started an argument, trying to portray me as a spendthrift when actually I have no debt and 10,000 dollars sitting in my checking account. This was while I was still feeling sleep deprived. Not having slept decently for days on end. And the resulting bad physical feeling was causing a heightened state of fear/tension/anxiety for day after day. Then her going on about a cello, when in a decade I've basically bought a computer and that's it. And sometimes I drive down the road and think how nice it would be if I just yanked the steering wheel... And finally, had enough. Shut up!

Bought a bike pump, bike rack, and non f me up the a bike seat. By the time we drove home I'm so tired I'm feeling delirious. So long since I slept decently. I lay in the passenger seat with the seat back all the way down and look out the side back window at the trees and houses. It's like being a child again. I've no concern for the actual driving of the car. Endless houses pass me by. I wonder who might live in these houses... It's like seeing what I see everyday from an entirely different point of view, seeing it brand new.

Almost half asleep I write a song. No plans to remember it. I write and forget all my vocal/lyric songs.

We get home and I stagger out of the car like a sleepy 6 year old.

J says I snored while sleeping. I don't normally snore and I would normally want her to wake me for her sake. But she figured for once that would be a really bad idea, and she's right, it would have been a really bad idea. I might have gone nuclear I think. (sigh) And I'm not that sort of person at all....

I have a nightmare where my current boss is teacher and I haven't done my assignment. And now it's due. What am I going to do!!! I considered running off and becoming a homeless person. I slowly wake still trying to figure out the answer. Totally awake and still I sit there trying to figure out what to do about this. Trying and trying and finally, what the hell am I doing? This didn't really happen. Quit torturing myself.

I want to lay there until it's time for J to get up. 10 minutes before the alarm I'm allowed to wake her up for snuggles. So I lay there for an hour. Finally go down, put bike rack on, put new seat on, then come back get snuggles. Then off in car to ride bike.

In the car I put in Skinny Puppy-Bites-Dead Lines. Haven't listened to it in so long. After finally sleeping well music sounds so good. Plus remembering the far past. Monterey, Calinfornia. The long runs out under the sun. I possibly didn't even have this particular album then, but it works for me. A nostalgia. Perhaps largely based on a faulty memory. But a past time when I felt such hope at least.

It's too cold to enjoy the bike ride much. The faster I go the more wind chill. Right thumb really starts hurting. But on the way back huge hill, push myself to the very edge making it up it. Wonderful feeling to be that exhausted. To push myself to the very edge. Then lay there exhausted. Outside.

I imagine something. Some place where this is a daily occurence.

Stop at very cheap restaurant on the way home and have coffee, OJ and blueberry pancakes. Read about WV in the final four. The coffee hits me so nice. I'm shaking slightly, so cold still from the run. Perfect. There's three somewhat distinguished older black men at this diner. That's so unusual for here. Black peope do live here. Do they normally just not eat out...?

They look like me though. In a way whites around here never do. Big boned. Sharp faces. Wisdom combined with tough lives. The whites generally look like puff balls. Like they've had it so cushy. Like they've got nothing in them.

Home. Another minnow is dead and this time it's confirmed. It's body has been snapped in half. The one cat is killing them. Have to go get the glass before she kills anymore. Down to 9 minnows in a 80 gallon tank. I feel guilty to stick large fish in only an 80 gallon tank. Not quite so guilty that I'm not writing this before I go get the glass apparently... They're just tinsy minnows...

The anxiety. The insomnia. The fear. The physical pain.

Robin Hobb's best book is the one where the main character is put through the worst hell of all. In reality she's a somewhat annoying cheery lady. Yet her characters are always going through hell. But Fitz the Bastard had a very special hell indeed.

At the moment I think I'll get through this life without ever having an actual breakdown. I don't think I'll start having actual panic attacks. I don't think I'll end up long term unemployed... Lately though having feelings that really do go in that direction. And I want to try to closely document them. For one thing, to try to head them off. For another possibly to someday help others understand these feelings happening within themselves. And finally because I want to blow Hobb and her Fitz out of the water.

Spent some time in the spare bedroom in bed with J with both windows open with the wind and rain. We both had a book and snuggled close to stay warm. My latest song wafting in from the other room. All very nice. J is always so warm while I'm usually quite cold. I was trying to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Beautiful book but I was quickly falling asleep... Trying to stay awake as I've got to switch back to night shift after 5 days off.. Ate a bunch of chocolate but still fell asleep very early and am here up by 5AM next day... So now the possiblity (again and again and again) of having a 27 hour day. At least (as it happens over and over) not bothering as much to stress about it. This time will go out for breaky and then take sleeping pills.... Which I bet probably aren't so good for me. But what else to do?

Well anyway, this was supposed to be a happy post. Have been running at least 3 days a week. A max of 4, work stops me from any more than that. And have been sleeping very well. Managing to sleep deeply for 6 hours instead of waking up after 3. That is The Reason for the running. Knees and hip joints holding up very well thanks to set of lunges and toe raises after each run. Side effect has been that I'm running much faster. Running with 5 pound weights also.

Anyway, so nice to fall asleep while reading with J. With hohner 26 melodica glitchy reggae coming from other room and the rain and wind and three kitties. And Proust.

Also read Hobb's new Dragon book. Read the entire 400+ page book yesterday. It's both really enjoyable and incredibly absurd on some level. Kept on imagining a friend as being the main character. A lady described as having red hair and freckles and being very scholarly...

And a vikingish Weis and Hickam fantasy that was slapped together pretty badly.
And Black Hole by Charles Burns which was extremely depressing. I suppose the disfigurements were symbolic... It maybe is a good representation of high school...
And The Genius in All of Us, which is I guess what I've mostly thought... That it's a matter of wanting it and then practicing hard enough and smart enough. And that virtually anyone can achieve virtually anything. But, the thing is, the wanting it part in the first place is no simple matter... Nor practicing smart enough...

Trying to find a cello teacher somewhere in the area. The one's listed online have moved/disappeared. Cello is so expensive. Online the talk is you must spend at least 2000 dollars or otherwise not even waste your time. Also must get a teacher they say... I've never bothered with teachers. Past music teachers only seemed to be trying to make me hate music and were quickly discarded. Might end up just buying an electric cello... But for now still looking for a teacher and hoping to rent a 2000 dollar cello...

Cutting off all that is pretend. Cutting off all that is meaningless. Left staring at a wall....

Close to deleting my facebook account. Close to destroying email account. Soon I'll not exist at all.

Soon free to be nothing.

And... running 5 days a week. Really trying to get up to a minimum of 6mph. Feels like a return to youth. A pretend youth that never actually was. Now I can go back and remember it all insanely different from the hell it was. Back then my achilles tendon, my grievous injury... I remember imagining the euphoria if this grievous wound ever healed. But of course there was not really much euphoria. Did that which didn't kill me make me stronger? If at all, only for absurdly useless activities. But the euphoria didn't happen in part because I've forgotten. Through (faster) running it's like I'm going back... ?? (This is a paragraph safely misunderstood, for all of time.)

The problem with music is that it's not supposed to be such a spectator sport. The massive concert of people just watching is the height of the sickness. If at least they were watching some freak, some Vladimir Horowitz at least, that, although also wrong, would be a magnitude better than Brittany et al.

Playing a musical instrument well shouldn't take years of practice. Practicing by yourself 8 hours a day is sick. Music should be a participatory endeavor. It should not consist primarily of bystanders.

Musical instruments should exist that the average person can pick up and immediately play a half decent tune on, immediately improv with others. There shouldn't be pain involved. There shouldn't be the need to toughen up the finger tips, etc.

Plucking/strumming strings is no good. Brass instruments no good (hard on the mouth, takes too long to learn to play, too much spit.) Keyboards too unweildly. Plus 12TET set-up too difficult for novice. Reed instruments too difficult.

And the embochure of the flute is too difficult for the novice. The one I built from PVC, I have to change the shape of my mouth for each note. Then instead the fipple of the recorder and the irish penny whistle, etc... still the issue of overblowing. Will construct a micro-orifice upstream to limit the max flowrate. But still, such a small max volume. How else to reduce overblowing? How to get a louder sound?

Will learn the physics of the whistle next.

Will tinker around. Watched Scanners and The Deadzone last night. Put 5 60's and 70's Godzilla movies on my netflix. Watched short thing on how Monty Python got together (I never had a chance in this life). Will tinker. Will run. At the same time that I cut off everything meaningless, everything pretend, such that I don't exist. And life is such a quick blink of the eye. There's hardly any hurry for what comes immediately after...

I'm of miner stock. A bit of genetic inertia of something else. It's painful to watch. My epigenetics are miner stock at best. Maybe a lot worse. Me not having children is no loss whatsoever.

A blog IS a good thing. And I think I should start running again. Except there's a half a foot of snow on the ground. That will burn out my calves too quick. And starting a running program in the dead of winter will probably give me a cold. I actually own a really nice treadmill. But still it sits at the old house. It wouldn't but my wife is so very good at throwing up obstacles. She mistakenly thought the cold would destroy it. And where would we put it anyway? "Oh my god you couldn't put it there!!!!" We still have half the pictures not put up because I have to ask her approval first and she hates making decisions so much that instead she finds something to scream at me about whenever I ask about finishing to unpack. So the treadmill sits unused in the cold at the old house as I really wish I had a way to do some jogging her in the dead of Januaury. But then the house is so big and circular I can just jog in it. And I hate treadmills anyway. I bought it for her. ($1000). She never uses it. Endless excuses why she can't exercise.

But, I lay in bed at night and if I'm touching her I can sleep. Just the back of my hand against her upper thigh and the overheated feeling and insomnia abates a bit. And I sleep. She hates to be touched when she's going to sleep though. So I have to be kind of clandestine about it. Reminds me of my past cat Gulliver. He wanted to be touching the much older very grumpy cat when he went to bed. And it was just like my wife. It would hiss at him to get away! So, he'd wait till it was asleep and then reach out delicately with one paw lightly touching his back.

So I do the same with my wife. I do wonder about how cats sometime seem to act like the people they live with.

Gulliver was killed by coyotes in New Mexico.

So my wife rolls over in her sleep on top of my hand and I finally wake up with my hand all sweaty and pull it out from under her. And immediately that relaxed sensation is gone and the insomnia and overheated feeling is back. I lay there and experiment with lightly touching her upper thigh with the back of my hand and then not, back in forth. If it's just in my head why can't I pretend I'm touching her when I'm not to get the same effect?

I work night shift so we usually don't get to sleep together. I haven't been sleeping so great. So many factors go into sleeping good/bad.

Through a bad memory I feel guilty about Gulliver's death. I used to let the cats go outside, now I don't. Gulliver died because he was allowed outside. But the reason we don't let them out now isn't because they could die. It's because the one cost us 800 dollars when someone shot it with an air rifle and broke it's leg. I periodically remember that all these years later Loki's dad could still be here with us, if only I had kept him inside. And I feel guilty. But it's because I keep forgetting. The cats we have right now I'd also let outside except that I can't afford huge vet bills when they hop home with dangling legs.

-

Started a song on the old "music" computer using z3ta+, that new wonderful reverb, and Partch's 43. Just using 6 notes though from it. The root, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75 (the lost harmonic seventh), 1.33 and 1.66. So effing beautiful. z3ta+ destroys every previous VST. But on the old "music" computer just one instance of z3ta+ and that impulse reverb uses from 40 to 60% of the CPU. But it sounds so beautiful it's worth it. I guess I should upgrade the computer to 4 gigs of memory. Had been thinking to just go right past 4 up to 6 or 8, possibly just buy another computer. But, actually 32 bit systems can't use more than 4 gigs anyway. And most VSTs are only 32 bit I hear.

The new piece is so beautiful I have to just let it sit untouched for at least a few more days.

Demonizers, Force, Indifference.

You see what you think is indifference and demonize the person. And think the demon can only be controlled with force. They in turn see you the same and blah de bleh. (Seeing someone as a demonizer doesn't necessarily make you in turn one. Nor does the usage of the word...)

Anyway, this worked I suppose. This blog at least, if nothing else. Just need to find the power cord to my old laptop...

New house. Beautiful. (...no... it's not a sort of panglossianism...) There's something about the one room with the fake fireplace and the slanted high ceiling. That it's slanted may even be essential. Also feel less confined. Also fire. It is real fire. Something about sitting... lounging on a massive couch in front of a fire with no ceiling so close to one's head.

It's like the perfect room, somehow. It's an L shape. Three open rooms going 37 feet to the left. 30 feet to the right. 16 feet above. The fireplace on mid left and wondows on mid right facing a massive oval couch. 12 feet in diameter.

Outside yesterday in the yard: ten deer. There is a mom and her two children here everyday. Wasn't sure they'd find the corn in the grass. They really did. There was also a massive owl sitting in the grass one day. I'd never seen an owl in this area before. Was it eating corn? I'd thought them carnivores.

Off to Vancouver in a couple days. What to do there?

Health is very good. Back to grease the groove ("synaptic facillitation"). Sleeping decent. Some variant of it was always the best.

Those three concepts (demonizers, force, indifference..) they're one way to look at it. One way to (loosely) divide it. They work well.

Looking for massive pictures to hang on a few large walls. Not happy with what I've found. The 15th century is the best so far. Bosch still, actually. And I didn't realize how damm popular The Garden of Earthly Delights was.

Finishing up shelves for room. (Staining vertical surfaces didn't work well.) Probably done tomorrow. What to build next? Maybe something musical.

Still want some VST with alternate tone capabilities that can do more/sound better than homegrown piano. Maybe Z3TA.

I want better sounds in general.

I guess I've been really busy lately.

...as I reread Robin Hobb it's clearer than ever before. I won't be stumbling blindly through the wilderness quite so bad now. Still see the potential for taking big wrong turns though. It might be best to just reread a couple of her books over and over and over again. Hopefully noticing more and more. The seeming imperfections. And the greater problems that attempting to "fix" them would cause.

This desktop is in a 7 by 7 foot room which was meant to serve as a very large closet. The main room it's off of has the massive book shelves I'm building. This little room has no window. I shall probably just use it for music usually. Laptop downstairs is the best room. I slept on the massive half oval couch today from 9AM to 5PM. I've noticed the light matters not to me at all. Windows open with sun shining in. Doesn't bother me at all.

Finally, a thing which I find it seems must remain unspoken. For to speak it seems to shatter it. But left unspoken I fear I'll forget it. But the latter worries me much less.

A giving up. A melancholy. And ultimately an overall substantial increase in happiness.

The Heart of Stalking???

Trying to change you though (make you something other than indifferent) is I think the main question of humankind. So to sit and ponder and ponder and wonder what miracle it would take doesn't seem to be really that much of a waste of time.

Would be good if I had some idea what the particulars are here though.

Do you know what suffering you're causing and just not care?
Do you think I'm not actually suffering?
Do you think it's some kind of bizarre trick and that actually I'm some kind of evil person?
Do you think there's actually nothing at all you can do to stop my suffering? I'm just nuts (go see a 'professional', you just need a happy pill)? Or that it would take waaay too much on your part to stop it?

Which one of the above errors, or which combination, are you making?

There are types of people that think when they disagree with someone, the thing to do is simply say nothing and suddenly cut all ties with the person.

Why?

Because they believe the way everyone acts is set in stone?
Because they project their own incredible closemindedness on everyone else?
Or because they don't understand what the heck is going on in their own head well enough to explain what it is they aren't liking/disagree about?
Because there's so many millions of people living in close proximity and yet at the same time conveniently shut off from one another that we can let a few float in and then pass on by and it really doesn't even matter? They're interchangeable? Concepts like community and friendship are so 16th century?
Because actually, other than a spouse, 'friends' today are just the people you work with for a year or so till one of you moves to a new job?
Because we really don't have any meaningful concrete connection? There aren't any crops we're growing together; no village we're defending?
Because they're evil?

All it would take is appearing to give a shit about the lives of your fellow human beings. Just attempting to explain whatever in the world you're thinking.

And what would it take for that to happen?

The assumption of good on my part. Not perfect. Making mistakes. But not meaning anything bad. Not trying at all to cause harm. The assumption that of course there is a worthwhile human being here.

With that assumption, then just simply having explained yourself in the first place, instead of what you did.

But that's not what you are, that's not what the world is. (You = World, symbolic. Like it or not, you've represented it perfectly). You and everyone else doesn't make that assumption. You and everyone else errs on the side of not getting taken advantage of. And the weaker and stupider people are, the farther they err in that direction. They find ways to suspect, to believe, the other is evil.

Or they find no way to not be indifferent.

And thus the world is a sort of dystopia.
---
And then there is punishment of the evildoer, etc, in a great big neverending circle.
---
My gawd my music kicks ass.
---
I went to work the other night despite my back being so messed up I could hardly stand erect. The first 8 hours were hell. Of course I got pulled to another unit for the very first time. I knew the evil god who's (or I'm Job) torturing me would make sure on this night when my back hurt so bad I'd get pulled and have a difficult assignment. Possible dilantin infiltrations, endless people with so many tubes coming out of them it was very difficult to keep it all straight. And I'm hobbling around like Igor. Perfect.

Then I drank a bottle of OJ. Regretably I don't hardly ever eat fruit or even drink fruit juice. I drank the bottle of OJ and within an hour I was walking normally without any pain. This after my back being so messed up for the previous 5 days. Hmpf.

Surely there was more to it than the OJ but it reminds me (yet again) that I really ought to make sure to consume a little fruit each day.
---
What was it? ? ? ? ? ? Ghost idealism

Imagine a large tribe of elves in the woods (by elves I mean 'good humans') that are defeated by an army of orcs (bad humans)(notice 'good' was in quotes but not 'bad', as it's maybe not actually possible for anyone to be good but bad is easy enough).

The elves are defeated and made slaves (because they're not as aggressive and being aggressive more than makes up for stupidity). The pretty elven women that survive exist as sex things. The people who survive in general are slaves.

But the orces are way too crude to not have a meritocracy. If you embrace their ways you can move up and someday be a powerful man amongst them.

Three elves. One on seeing the women raped attacks the orcs, knowing full well he'll be killed and indeed he is killed.

He's an idealist.

The second one sees it and is sickened but does nothing to stop it. He does as he's told and spends his life as a slave. Never attempting to effect any change.

He's a ghost idealist.

The third elf embraces their ways. He seemingly learns to think a bit of rape is all in good fun. Slavery's just how life is, etc. He becomes a powerful man and enacts some few rules regulating slavery.

One could say the first man was a coward; that he couldn't bear to continue living. One could say the second man, the ghost idealist, is another type of coward; by being an idealist he is making himself partially not really here at all. He's making sure he'll never accomplish anything and actually need not even ever really try. One could say the third man is the one responding the best.

One could look at it all another way whereby this makes no sense.

One could instead make the pragmatist spend his life in a most awful way where every moment is horror just to in the end see himself and his race die out.

It's a question of degree but humans don't really do degrees well. Should be some kind of way to take questions of degrees and respin them so that we can consistently hold on to highly nuanced positions over the long term and even in our 'reflex' thinking.
---
What was that? ? Ghost Idealism and what was the other? ? I imagine it was some really amazing thing. But I remember that it wasn't actually. It's really just I have nothing to say and I'm saying it (the entire blog). But this one bit that was forgotten has such mystery now. I can put it on a pedestal as a great thought to worship. To love.

Me and my wife just had a laughing contest. Each person stares at the other until one person genuinely laughs. Good fun.
-
Thought of a music video where the visual image would be that of one insect eating another alive (or should it be multiple examples?). What would the music sound like that went with it?

Real live monsters doing the most unspeakable acts to each other... It's like they're some kind of humorous psudeo subtle reminder by the way. What if instead they looked just like human beings (but still seemed relatively mindless) and there were chainsaw wielding species that went around killing and eating damsel in distress species?

There's something Phillip K. Dick about them but worse. He was mostly just losing reality. What if reality was not only being lost, but was being replaced by some other reality? What if you had suspicions the more realistic way of seeing the world was actually quite horrible and you had these tiny little monsters around you, which you're supposed to just ignore, which are constantly eating each other alive. In literaure, such things can almost serve as foreshadowing, or symbolism for the 'reality' of the situation in the story.

You can imagine a world where these bugs were the size of humans. Imagine say a battlefield of ants. Attacking a dying boring bee. It's not dead yet but they're already eating it alive. To be down in such a world is a nightmare world. No matter you're an entomologist and 'love' insects. They're eating each other alive constantly. They have extremely short life spans. They're often such mindless and yet highly specialized killing machines.

That they're so tiny is humorous. They're all around us. We're supposed to just ignore them and focus on Jesus or whatever as we sludge through our days. But there they are, sometimes there's minature flying monsters on my computer screen at this time of day. They're in effect saying, "Hey, guess what? Guess what the truth is of this world?" But we just ignore this other reality which is right on top of our own reality.

But at the same time they seem a beautiful miracle. That life can be so diverse. The boring bees on my porch would always get right up in my face. I like bees. How can such things exist? Have life?
-
What about a fictitious story that began in 1933 Germany, but then consisted of a way that the Jews managed to get the Nazi's past all that ugliness and they all learned to love one another instead? What in the world would it have taken to make that happen instead?
-
I have bicuspid aortic valve. I've known this for almost 30 years. I finally bothered to research it on the internet this week. I won't go into the complicated reasons I never did before. Apparently the last few doctors I've seen the last 5 or 6 years didn't have a clue. Apparently I really shouldn't be doing any heavy weight lifting or sprinting/jumping as both raise my blood pressure too much. Such is what I was originally told as a child. Was told I shouldn't even run. And that I would have to have open heart surgery before the age of 15.

But I had no pain, or symptoms at all when I ran and played. Just sharp pains when I was sitting around doing nothing. And I was so full of energy to run around and play. It was too much to do to such a kid. My parents even agreed. So we ignored the doctors advice. And I did everything. Including boxing (beat two state champions), powerlifting (even got third place in a big tournament once in the 242 class), general very heavy weight lifting (have done a chinup with an extra 140 pounds attached to me at 220 pounds bodyweight), basketball (could do a 360 two hand slam), run very long distances (although like a snail on that one), etc.

Through all such things never had any chest pain, thus figured the doctors were FOS. ...but here and there always had very sharp pains right over top my heart, thus I still worried I might keel over at any moment...

I finally quit worrying about it a few years ago on one doctor's advice, who said they now know such exercise makes no difference. And the pain I described couldn't possibly be the result of anything wrong with my heart. Probably some unimportant lung issue... A great weight off my shoulders...

Then even those sharp pains I'd had all my life went away.

But now, a new feeling has come. A strange fluttering feeling in my chest. Which caused me to finally use the damm internet and research my condition.

Now I see she didn't know what she was talking about. (Or perhaps figured lying would be better for me?)

I apparently really shouldn't be doing any heavy weight lifting. Or sprinting.

It appears I really have to be a wimp from now on. I have to live as if I'm broken.

And still chances are good I'll have to have my chest cracked open within the next 20 years.
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Treated like hell at work this morning. It's actually hard enough I think to work one's ass off for 12 hours without then getting quizzed on every little irrelevant detail of each patient and then treated like shit if you can't remember each 100 of those new facts you could be attempting to memorize about each new set of patients.
No, I don't remember off the top of my head (of course it is all written down) the exact diameter of each patient's pupils when each patient doesn't even have anything wrong with their eyes, etc. My one boss tells me to just treat each report like a quiz. She's kind of a dumbass. The unfortunate thing about work is that both my bosses are... straying in that direction. Somehow, so far, they like me. But they ruin people's morale by telling them such things, to treat every single day at work as if there will be a big quiz at the end, that each day, after 12 hours, at which point you're exhausted, now take a test on every little thing you just did. I hope you were concentrating on every little endless unimportant detail. I hope you memorized it all. Now after you've reported it. Dump it. And memorize another endless string of useless info the next day. Repeat for 20 years until you suddenly get fired 6 months before retirement (which I've heard of happening quite often.)

The way I was treated today... it seemed like a setup. Don't want to go into the ugly details. Anyway afterwards I could look down at my chest and through my clothes I could count my heartbeats by sight. Treated in such a manner after working my ass off. 52 hours in the last 4 days. Such is life. Hopefully I'll be able to run myself through the ground trying to help, help, help people for a few decades before someone destroys me or my heart gives out.
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81 and 82 rock.
------------
http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/what-happens/#more-7422

Coco Loco spoke to me for 6 hours until 4AM and thus I was able to sleep till 3pm and then work from 6pm till 8am (two lumbar drains, one ventric drain, two that were unintentionally pulled out during the night and a doctor who seems to not care so very much, again: too stressful) and then drive 4 hours and spend that whole day and part of the next helping my older sister move out of her house. I was a bit loopy from lack of sleep that evening. Actually I'm probably funner to be around. But I'm more likely to accidentally offend or even scare. My one brother-in-law at one point asked me how I got to the one house (the one I've managed to never speak a word about in this blog despite the seemingly ranty nature of it...) and I answered I ran (after the truck), then started pumping my arms like my hands were blades and humming the terminator music and running around. It seemed funny at the time. He probably thought I was trying to be an ass to him. We don't get along. Bastard Bush supporter probably occasionally reads this blog as he likes to spy on people using his computer skills. On the other hand he's so dumb he probably can't read it much, nor has he yet figured out how to ruin me with what's in it. I can't actually picture him reading this blog. He's too dumb. Yet, the way he loves to spy, he almost surely does. He's scary in that he's an extreme rightwinger, dumber than a doorknob, yet very good at spying. And I mean microcameras, computer programs, etc. Perhaps that's why I never mention him here? No, it's really just that some things aren't worth ranting about.

My other brother-in-law and sister bought a house that was more then they could afford. And finally after struggling to make payments for a few years they finally gave up making payments 10 months ago and finally managed a short sell. So it was a sad day for them. At least they didn't actually go bankrupt like my other sister who owed 250,000 dollars including 40K she put on a credit card in my mom's name.

They're moving in with my one brother-in-law's family. The whole family was there helping and they're wonderful people. Both parents, the daughter and all three sons. All wonderful people. The one son is a philosopher like me. I'm reminded of myself. Which is both a good and bad thing. Hard to explain the bad. It's as if not enough consideration to being good at the mere survival parts is taking place. But one can't point a finger at what exactly is really being neglected. Just in the way he converses you feel like there's something he's not keeping an eye on that he's 'supposed' to be... I wonder how much the same I appear but really I'm not that much the same. In some ways he's a typical weed smoker who spent a long time in college without ever getting a degree and being unemployed. None of that remotely describes me. But still he seems a really good guy to me.

During the 31 hours we were there my stepfather at first was going to buy a 280,000 house for them (in his name as their credit is ruined but then they would make the payments), then decided not to, then based on talking to me decided to buy it, then when I wasn't paying attention changed his mind and decided not to and told the realtor so, then at the last moment, literally right as we were leaving, changed his mind again and decided to buy it.

The morning of the second day... I like mornings. They have more hope. Woke up early. Went with wife and dad to look at this house. Listened to his philosophy of what a good person is:
(1. Makes as much money as possible. 2. Saves as much money as possible. 3. Gives away as much money as possible.)
He's a sort of philosopher but his philosophy is pretty crude. But there are beautiful thoughts underlying it. And he has spent his life being both a miser and a philanthropist, somehow. And ultimately a wonderful person also.

Or I should say he's always truly meant well. Made my life and others utter hell at times. But I'm on a wonderful streak and that's not a bad thing. There is truth in it.

He had decided not to help get the house. We went and looked at it. I helped him understand why he had decided not to get it. (He has the idea in his head that my sister and brother-in-law need to be somewhat 'punished', yet doesn't entirely understand that he has this idea in his head.) I managed to convince him to help them buy the house.

Then we went to the Shepherd farmer's market. In Fairmont my stepfather bought 15 green peppers for 3 dollars. At this one they were a dollar a piece. In Fairmont it was all just raw produce. Here they had cashew butter, and guacomole dip, and unusual breads, hummus, etc. Snooty. I liked it.

Then breakfast. I had plain oatmeal. It tasted wonderful. Vunderful. Tasted better than my own. Maybe they don't use a microwave. Maybe the oats were steel cut. I ate my oats and read the New York Times. It's actually a worthwhile paper. The local papers where I live are utter crap. While I read and ate my oats we sat at the counter; my wife inbetween me and my stepfather. The restaurant was loud and I couldn't hear what they were talking about. By the time we left he had changed his mind again and wasn't going to buy the house. My wife claims she had nothing to do with it.

The whole 4 hour drive there and and then back was in the Camry with the really good sound system but my wife and stepfather would not let me listen to music. Once though when dropping off furniture, etc at someone's house, I was driving with my brother-in-law's father and he went inside to watch the football game for 15 minutes. And so I got to listen to 81 and 80 that I recently wrote while staring at the verdant scenery out in the country. I like them. 80 is seemingly repetitive but actually always has a little bit of stuff going on that isn't quite. And I like the analog simulation sounds. The philosopher weed relative thought the drums cheesy. They sort of really are but I don't mind them. The underlying piano in 81 is completely unrepetitive but you have to actually be listening very closely to realize this. It's a very good song from the selfish standpoint of the composer. I know it well enough (unlike anyone else who'll ever hear it) to understand the complexities of it which probably go unnoticed by others. Yet, even I can't tell you consciously what happens next.

OK so I showed up for my RN board exam yesterday, a very crucially important bit of flaming hoop chop chop and whoopsie! I forgot my all important 27b-6 form. Can't take the test without it. Sorry! :)

But I just knew it. There's always something like this. It's like a predictable plot in some B movie. It's old and tired.

So it's about a 35 to 40 minute drive back home and I have 60 minutes exactly to get there and back with this paper. I had to park far away and run to my car like a little... I don't... animal... slave with a whip at my back. I'm supposed to be frantic but there's a part of me that's not capable of letting myself be affected that way.

I'm just stoic.

Torture me, etc. You might make me angry, (although I've gone further than anyone I've heard of in trying to eradicate such emotions). You might put me on constant edge for years. But that's just a sort of low grade stress... real fear, no. I don't play that. I laugh or just sit stonily like Spock.

So I hobble/run to my car as my knee has been hurting.

In the car and off speeding on the highway at an average speed of 90 miles per hour.
An old cd of my music happens to be playing. How about this?

No, that's no good. LOL. That's just heightening the stressful feelings.

How about this:

No! That just heightens the primary feeling I have about this, which is one of just being tired of this crude mere survival. I am just tired of such games.
But this one?

Yes, that works. I let it repeat a few times at least as I speed along. Of course my speeding causes road rage in a few other drivers who try to go as fast and cut me off, etc. I need a gun that shoots bananas... (Road rage is absurd.)

Why does this song work? There's something grand about it. I can't explain it. It was written randomly. Outside of rational thought.

But unfortunately it lurks in the back of my mind a good part of the time. Both a good thing and a bad. So now that I'm in the perfect frame of mind I take this test and it shuts off at the minimum number of questions which means there's about a 99% chance I passed. (They don't immediately tell you because they're afraid someone who fails might go nuts there.)

The idea that I might have failed is so ridiculous that to entertain it as a possibility does maybe cross over into mental illness. I once scored in the 99.85% on the GRE (relative to the population at large, not limitied to people who take the GRE). I missed the triple nines society by I think one question. Last week I had just gotten some other standardized test they made us take of roughly 100 questions. I was hoping for a perfect score on it... I missed 1.

But I really do think I could have failed. Because it seems that's the sort of life I've had.

Surely it isn't that bad really... but ultimately I do think I'm stuck in a low grade nightmare. (Although negative to the point of 'nightmare' primarily not with respect to my luck but just to what I see all around me. What acceptable behavior is, etc.) And I feel I've had to be an unfeeling piece of steel in the face of it. While at the same time managing to be pseudonormal as such thoughts mean I'm not well adapted. I'm the anomie. I'm the outsider. In our monkey society I'm to be ostracized, unfed, etc.

Of course I did pass.

I can now actually relax, for the first time in over a decade I think. I surely couldn't relax while getting my BS, MS and working on my PhD and for that paranoid schizophrenic at Los Alamos. I couldn't relax while unemployed for a year. (Have to get a job, a jobbie job!!) I couldn't relax through nursing school. Ridiculous subjective tests along with at first feeling very very out of place...

Now, I suppose, I can finally relax. I only work three days a week. I can stay up all night and read some escapist fiction if I want. It may take a while to kick in. Maybe it's been so long I'm not capable of it. Hopefully not. Although I expect I'll mostly always be held back by the knowledge of how bad others still have it.

So anyway, I've got an easy life then. Really I do. Most people don't. Most either have to work much harder or have to worry a lot more about money. Not to mention romantic troubles, physical problems, etc.

(In response to VictoryGrey on Dysamoria's Blog):

Yes, that was you trying to be manipulative, trying to make him pity you thus giving you the job.
No, I don't think that of course but a surprising number of people seem to think that way. Expressions of unhappiness are viewed with suspicion in general and they're especially verbotten in job interviews. In an interview you have to go in and smile, smile, smile and go on about how you've loved every single job you've ever had, and are just a happy, happy, happy well adjusted person.

I always liked this from 2:08 till 6:15 for the average job interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH6-XWFtR54

The way generally to approach it though is to remember that it's actually a very negative experience for the person giving the interview also. And making sure to completely hide any unhappiness, anything negative at all, is considered being considerate to them.

I don't mean to be negative in what I'm saying. This was important stuff for me to understand. And I had bad interviews through not understanding it well enough when younger.

For Jace's previous job for example I'd just gloss it over as short as possible. Not in the sense of lying, but in the sense of being considerate to the interviewer who really doesn't want to have to contemplate anything negative at all. And who probably genuinely wants to think good thoughts of all people. And so they want you to just gloss over past negatives.

There is all something very strange about how humans act. How so many obvious things (Like: No, we're not really all that happy, in fact a considerable portion of the population is on prozac, etc, etc. Yes, we've all had crappy jobs, etc.) we're supposed to just pretend about, through some kind of unspoken ...social norm or whatever which seems to amount to something like insanity.

But then many people have pointed out that to be happy you need to be insane. Mark Twain for example. Sorry, not trying to go off in such a depressing direction here. Basic thought: hide all things negative in job interviews out of an attempt at being considerate to the interviewer.

-

Meanwhile a neighbor's house caught on fire yesterday. A lady died.

In the newspaper article our street was described as a very close knit community.

The house across the street from us is less than 20 yards away. Both our houses are right on top of the street. The street is just a straight stretch that comes to a dead end; not even 20 houses total. In this house across the street lives a couple in their late 70's, a daughter in her early 40's (C) and then her daughter who's about 10. The house that burned down was two houses up. In it lived a second daughter (who died in the fire) and her boyfriend.

We have spoken here and there to the couple in their 70's. The daughter C has never spoken to us in the three years we've lived here. We figure she's just very shy. Otherwise 4 other people on the street have spoken to us. The lawn nazi to the right, a nice older lady to the left, a nice guy to the right of the older couple's house, who doesn't actually live in his house but comes by occasionally and then just barely the people who live down from the lawn nazi. Inbetween the old couple's house and the house that burned down is an apartment house where lives the people who keep getting cats and leaving them to die outside and whom had the dog that mauled the ten year old girl.

In the article it was said the fire burned hotter than any seen in 20 years. The siding on the house across the street actually melted it burned so hot. It was an inferno.

The old man next door has a very bad heart and they were afraid finding out his one daughter had died might have killed him. So the boyfriend sat on our front steps and sobbed, hidden from the old man's view by a firetruck. I'd also never ever spoken to this man and just let him be. Nor had I ever spoken to the lady who died. I'm a little introverted I guess. But mostly in this day and age it's normal to have not have ever spoken to a couple that have lived 50 meters away for three years.

I suppose it is a 'close knit community.'

Relatively speaking anyway. Relative to the rest of 2009 America.

I think I love work. People seem so good there.

Then on the other hand, I look in other places and people appear so awful.

I think it's because people are good as long as there's no danger in being good. But as soon as one thinks acting 'morally' might result in getting attacked, the good people get real scarce.

It does seem though that in order to take morality any distance at all, it means being strong enough to continue being moral despite getting attacked.

But in reality too much morality results in such people being less likely to successfully reproduce.

For example, if you thought christianity was resulting in people being treated badly, etc, and spoke out about it, there were a lot of times in history where they killed you. If you spoke out against the Nazis while living in Germany, you very well could have died.

Whenever you're in the minority, if you point out that the leaders, the people who are primarily establishing social norms, are wrong in some way, they're going to see you as a threat to their rule and possibly kill you. That's how it's been for humankind for all of history. Being 'moral', acting 'altruistically', was only acceptable provided it didn't go against the men with the power.

...And so, I love the people I work with at the hospital. Such essentially good people. I love going to work. Then I look... elsewhere. My god, such indifference as far as the eye can see. (And that's a long damm way thanks to the internet.) But it's no wonder at all that almost no one speaks out against the immoral actions of those with power. Throughout mankind's history doing so has almost always meant dying. And through killing such people, humans today are generally a lot more selfish and stupid then they'd otherwise be.

It is a sort of genocide.

"Moralicide"?

Still I love work. What a wonderful place. I hope to work as a nurse for decades. Even if I finally get that trust fund my stepfather first said I'd get then strangely denied having said (haha), still think I'd have to continue working there at least a few days a week. Just such a positive place. (Even with constantly being over worked and basically no patient ever truly getting quite the quality of care they should get.) Still, the work is so positive. The people are good.

And it's a damm good thing I love work because outside of work I keep not turning away from such ugly truths and it's tough to stand.

Sex.

The male praying mantis may continue to thrust after his head has been chewed off but I think the vast majority of beneficial sexual mutations are related to perceptions that the activity is increasing one's distance from nonexistence.

-like with having friends in general we perceive we've got a bit more power/security, more so the closer a friend they are...
-information, what's underneath those clothes? etc... And to some extent we do look exactly how we are... or better put, we have an ability to decipher looks...
-usually men liking to feel in charge, a sex game where they feel more powerful than they otherwise actually are. Unfortunately is rape not just a question of a greater degree of such a thing?
-...I dunno... information (=power=increasing distance from nonexistence), feeling connected (=power=etc), etc...
-altruism, making the other person happy in turn, showering them with love, makes us happy....
-...and why are the most regular features so often considered the most beautiful? Ugly stuff. It's about conformity. And, having our genes combine in a way that will result in a hopefully well conformed child. And so short women always want tall men for example. And so hindus value fair features (caucasians are the most average looking). Japanese die their hair red. Black men love white women... and asian women... But it doesn't work in reverse so well because the power balance gets out of whack. The poor asian man feeling too physically inferior to a black woman. (And there has to be a balance though... what is it again that the women generally has in order to keep things from getting too out of balance? I don't remember at the moment... was it sex? Ugh, I dunno. Oversimplifying.)

The perception of beauty is tied right into conformity. We are constantly controlled by the need to conform without realizing it.

There is still something of the headless praying mantis thrusting away tied into human and animal sex... I think of certain things and get an erection. There's no sense to it but it feels good. Oh well.

--

What were the three main negative emotions? Anger, sadness and....???? Luckily I wrote this down somewhere... But anyway, sparked by rideflame's blog to reremember...
We feel sad when we want others to help us. We feel anger when we perceive someone is closeminded.

Not remembering the third primary negative emotion is the number one reason I have this blog. No need to look it up right now though. If I ever came along and found this blog deleted (which the owners reserve the right to do at any time) that would be awful.

--

My first day as a nurse was yesterday. Went well. I can't quite put my finger on just why I like work so well. Was wondering if being the only guy harkens back to some primitive thing, where I vaguely feel like the alpha male. I don't think so... There are men who work there on night shift. I switch to night shift very soon. They seem just as nice as the women. I really don't think I care that I'm surrounded by people who physically are female. But there perhaps is something about the different way of thinking. Occasionally it hits me how bizarre it is, for me of all people to be a nurse, surrounded by women. I am not the sort of person one would expect to be a nurse. Somehow it seems to be working out really well.

http://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/another-advice-post-on-writing-productivity

k-punk: Fans, Vampires and Trolls

Too short on time lately.

The top link... I think I disagree... sort of kind of... Oh I don't know. I do think there is something "mystical" in the writing process just in the sense that the unknown is mystical and the unknown is our subconscious and our idea of an audience is residing to some extent in our subconscious... our imaginary eyes... At least I think so...

The second post is (or I can just say it is anyway) a counter to the feeling that the audience has gone all wrong and is ruining the writing.

It's such a complex process though. Layers and shmayers...Lately things seem to have gone awry a bit and I can't figure out why exactly. Too happy at work? While still having a final chop chop off in the distance (and too busy at work) to find time to think it out. A few people linked my blog. Did that play a role? But already felt "reticent" before then. Just too busy I guess. I always procrastinated wonderfully when in school. Was thinking maybe the perfect way to write would be to take college classes forever with no intention of actually passing them and instead taking in a laptop, sitting in the far back and just writing. (With the necessary pretense (to myself) of attempting to pay attention, which generally has always been impossible to do, to actually listen to anyone talk on and on for 50 or more minutes.)

No time...

http://www.ruthheidrich.com/Tarahumara.html

Don't know how they manage it. I've been going on a two hour run once a week and lately I've been really getting a headache afterwards. I wonder if I'm getting hypokalemic and/or hyponatremic. I've been pushing it too hard these last three weeks though. I was thinking maybe I need electrolyte pills. Have been drinking just a little gatorade. They run 24 to 72 hours just on corn?

I think I've still improved every run but I've got to make some adjustments. Not enjoying it now. Need to slow down. Somehow not get headaches. Just getting monotonous now.

...this has been a week off and it's such an unusual thing that I hardly know what to do... (I should mainly study, chop chop). Tuesday after my run I went to coworkers house with my wife and met 8 or so other people from work. I wasn't feeling so great after the run. It was fun when finally this one lady showed up from work who's highly intelligent. I rarely see her at work but I really enjoy her company. When we left my wife immediately commented on how much she liked her. My wife and I seem so different but somehow we're very similar. She, my wife, this one also (bluntly put) more intelligent nurse and I watched a rerun of the national spelling bee and tried to figure out the words based on their language roots, etc and somehow had a much funner and more interesting time then the other half of the party which went off and discussed boring crap.

That other intelligent coworker... she's the one I wish would be my trainer, the nurse I probably like best of the 50 or so I work with, she just happens to be my younger sister's best friend. My younger (half) sister is then another person I seemingly have nothing at all in common with but apparently have something essential in common with.

Then Wednesday out with S. Maybe still a bit bleh from the run. My wife at first didn't like S. The way she scowls. Wonderful picture of her scowling on facebook. I love it. Now my wife admits that she's wonderful. I am a pretty good judge of character. My wife thinks I'm not because even when I'm pretty sure a person's not so good I still give them a chance just on that ever so slight chance I'll be wrong.

Was proven very wrong about someone this last week or so. But out of compassion for them I tried to be very nice to them. Repeatedly. Bit comical how they blew me off. I feel sorry for them still and hardly mind the lies and indifference I got for my trouble.