writing

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Here is my threatened audio post

You’re gonna love it!  Or not.  One of those things.  That’s logic for you.

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I can’t think of a good Shakespeare quote, but there’s a little Milton below

Hello and good morning.  Welcome to another Thursday.  Please wipe your feet on your way in.

Just kidding.  It’s all crap here, anyway; don’t worry about wiping your feet.

I don’t have much to say today.  I don’t think I do, anyway.  Not that such a thing has tended to stop me in the past, but I don’t know.  I feel that maybe it’s at least slightly different this time.

Let’s see…updates.  I took my third small-dose of lithium this morning.  We’ll see how it goes.  I don’t think one would expect to see any major effects already, so be patient.  I tend to be patient, at least about some things.  What’s a doctor without patience, right?

Oh, yesterday afternoon, I had a near episode of esophageal spasm.  I’ve had that before‒the first big time it got me to the ER (I was already working in the hospital, so it wasn’t far to go), where I was checked for potential heart attack, which it was not, of course.

It wasn’t one yesterday, either, in case you’re worried.  It responded, albeit somewhat stubbornly, to drinking warmish water (and finally some Coke) to help soothe and relax my esophagus.  I don’t think anyone else in the office even noticed.

If it had been like the first time they would have noticed!  That time I had an apparent vaso-vagal response and my blood pressure went down way low, and I almost fainted.  That was part of why they brought me downstairs:  a BP of 80 over 40 in a 29 year old man who did have a history of heart surgery is somewhat concerning, and when you’re a medical resident at the hospital, they tend to treat you with urgency.

Okay, well, I think my esophagus yesterday had been irritated by my recent upper GI illness.  It’s not impossible, I guess, that lithium could have been involved.  I have noticed that, if I accidentally take too many multivitamins‒i.e., more than one in a day‒I am prone to esophageal spasm.  Perhaps electrolytes (etc.) are involved in at least increasing the chances of it happening.

I doubt they would be enough to trigger it all by themselves, though in severely misadjusted amounts they could cause severe pathologies of various kinds.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I found out electrolyte “imbalances” had caused such a thing all by themselves if they were off enough.  I don’t think that’s the case with me, though.  I have no other signs or symptoms of electrolyte dysfunction that I have noticed.

Okay, that’s enough discussion of that for the moment.  I don’t want to trigger an event by thinking about it too much, but since my upper GI tract is still a bit sensitive, it’s not impossible that I could accidentally do that.  “The mind is its own place, and of itself / can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of Hell”, as someone said.

I think I may try to do another audio post today.  The few that I did recently seemed surprisingly popular, and conversely, my readership numbers have been going down pretty steadily since the last time I did one.  Maybe doing them in the first place was a bad idea, like giving a dog a taste of human food so that now it doesn’t want to eat its usual stuff.

Of course, dogs are practical, about food at least.  They rarely avoid their usual meals because they get treats.  They just eat them both.  At least, that’s how the dogs I have known have behaved.

Cats are a little more persnickety.  There are situations in which cats really will go dangerously hungry because the food on offer is not their favorite.  I would do that with eggplant.  It’s not the only food about which I could say that, but it’s the worst.

Anyway, again, I may do an audio today, partly as an experiment.  That may even become the subject of the audio, but I don’t think I’ll leave it at that (knowing me, which I do, at least a bit).  That would be kind of lame.  I guess we’ll see.

I might as well do something though.  I haven’t played or sang (or really listened to) any music in nearly two weeks, and I haven’t been reading, and I certainly haven’t been writing fiction.  I haven’t even been doing any exercises on Brilliant dot org.  And I’m possibly writing worse blog posts lately, and it’s causing people to stop reading.

I don’t know, maybe the declining readership numbers are related to the fact that I’ve been posting a bit earlier in the morning.  My insomnia has been generally increasing, and I’m getting up earlier and earlier, and so going to the office earlier and earlier.  Some people might just miss the posts because they’re arriving before they look at their notices (or email, or what have you) and other things follow and drown my little whimpers out.

So, if you’re interested, keep your eyes (and ears) open today for my possible audio thingy.  I’ll try not to disappoint, even though that’s something I just tend to do ceteris paribus.

Whatever the case, I hope you all have a truly good day.

TTFN

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Monday, Thursday, Doomsday, Workday, let’s call the whole thing off

It’s Monday, but for some unclear reason, I felt the strong urge to write that today was Thursday when I was titling this file to be saved.  It took a moment of concentration to correct that urge.

Probably it goes back to the long stretch of time when I did my blog posting only on Thursdays, because I worked on my fiction every other workday.  That paid off, in a sense, because I did write quite a lot of fiction in that time.  Though, to be clear, it did not pay off in any material sense; I’ve spent more by far on copies of my books to give away to coworkers and such than I am likely ever to make back.

It was an awful lot of work for things that, as far as I know, only two other people have actually read at all.  My music has done better, honestly, though not in the sense of bringing in any income.  But at least some people have listened to it, my originals as well as my covers.  I guess songs are quicker and easier to consume than novels or even short stories (especially my short stories).

So, yeah, even though it’s been years since I was following that Thursday blogging practice, the etchings of that habit are still not completely effaced from my brain.  This is the way of habits, as I think I mentioned not too long ago.

Speaking of music, by the way, I want to share a really cool bit of music that came up in my YouTube feed, and which I think deserves a listen (and a like and a share if you can) from all of you.  It’s very good, as is the artist’s other work.

YouTube is basically all I did this weekend.  I did not read nor write, nor did I play any music (either on a stream or from a recording or on guitar or keyboard or cello).  I haven’t done any of those things in several weeks, barring a few one-time exceptions.  I mean, I went for walks on Saturday and Sunday, though I was careful not to go too far, and I used sunscreen this time.  This was because I had a few errands to run; it was too hot and humid to walk for fun.

But, yeah, I watched videos and vegged out rather pathetically pretty much the entire weekend.  I mostly watched various reactors reacting to either Backrooms or Fantastic Four First Steps.  Meaning, I watched multiple different people and groups of people reacting to each movie, more or less at random.

It’s almost like watching a movie with someone, though not quite*.  Movies are a way of socializing for me; they are one of the few ways I can connect with people.  TV shows are similar.  I don’t really like to watch things by myself.  I do it sometimes, of course, and I even went to see a movie by myself once, when I went to the theater to see the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, because I just didn’t want to miss that.

I considered going to see the new Spider-Man movie this weekend, but it just felt…I don’t know, like something that would highlight my solitude even more than does watching oodles of different people reacting to movies that I’ve liked.

Mind you, I did watch a few more worthwhile videos.  The Science Asylum guy put out a couple of new videos about basic circuit theory topics, and I watched Tyler Folse reacting to a Veritasium video.  That tends to be fun.  He (Tyler, I mean) frequently speaks my own thoughts** when he’s watching such videos, which is refreshing.

Anyway, that’s as good as it gets, and I don’t know if it will ever get that good again.  But I am still going to work, though it is often difficult for me clearly to say why I do it, even to myself.  I’m just bringing in income to sustain an existence that is almost without anything to recommend it.

I don’t like it here in Florida, for one thing.  It’s naturally an amazing state, quite unique and with many, many interesting life forms.  Unfortunately, humans are not one of the interesting ones.  They are an infestation that has turned this state into a wellspring of the stupidity that is so rampant in the US.  It’s no coincidence that Taco Piggy took up residence here.

So, I’m working to sustain an existence I hate, in a location that is largely repellent‒but with a few very lovely oases in time, such as my youngest, who is enough to counterbalance many, many negative things, but who would almost certainly be well served by not having me in their life any more than necessary.  That’s certainly the general consensus at which most other people have arrived regarding my presence in their lives.

It gets harder and harder all the time for me to get up and get into the office every day.  It’s not because there’s anything particularly bad about the office; I mean, the noise can be really irritating, and if I don’t watch myself it can get the best of me, but the people are okay.  They’re actually quite nice.  I’m without a doubt the least pleasant person at the office.

That alone is enough to make life subtly and pathetically dreadful.

*I also watched a few more people reacting to the “special look” trailer for Avengers:  Doomsday, but I think I’ve seen most of them by now.  Doom is, as I’ve noted, my favorite villain and one of my favorite characters overall in fiction, so the special look is nice because it focuses more on him.  Here it is, in case you missed it.

**Not literally.  He’s not like Tyler Durden.  I just mean that he seems to have similar thoughts in response to the things he’s watching to the ones I have.

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Each paragraph in this post begins with a vowel. This pattern STARTED as an an accident…

Ugh.  I don’t feel quite well this morning.  I woke up in the middle of the night almost throwing up, which was also associated with almost choking on my near-vomit and coughing for quite some time while still feeling queasy.  I think I ate something that didn’t agree with me, as they say.

Either that, or it could have been one (or more) of my medications (all OTC) that gave me trouble, because I took more of them than usual yesterday; it was quite a bad pain day for me.

Oh, yeah, and my coworker was out sick as well, and therefore I was a bit more run around than usual despite having a bad pain day.  So, that wasn’t very good.  It hasn’t been a very good week either, overall, even by my standards, which are not exactly stellar.

On the other hand (he said with uncharacteristic optimism), at least that means that next week is likely to be better than this week.  This is yet another example of the phenomenon of regression to the mean, which I discussed here recently.

Anyway, at least today is Friday, and I am not working tomorrow.  Having the weekend off is something of a mixed blessing, of course.  It’s definitely good for me to get the extra bit of rest, which I need mentally even more than physically.  But the increased isolation that is an inescapable part of me being off work can have a bad impact on my mood.

And as I think I’ve noted here before recently, my various distractions are losing their capacity to distract.  I haven’t been reading or playing music/singing or listening to songs or to podcasts or to audio books.  And I need to search increasingly widely to find YouTube videos that grab my attention even briefly.

Of course, I have whole playlists of videos related to science and to mathematics and to autism and what have you, full of videos I thought looked interesting at the time, and which would probably be interesting, at least in principle, if I were to start watching them now.  But I cannot seem presently to summon up the energy, the interest, even to start a single one of them.

Again, it’s been a particularly bad week for me.  Maybe it was triggered, or influenced, by my long walk in the high heat and my associated sunburn from Sunday.  I suspect that took more out of me than I realized at the time.  I particularly wonder if the sunburn might have been worse than I thought.  Certainly my skin is peeling all over my forehead, nose, and neck.

Alas, there’s not much I can do about it now other than, potentially, to learn from it.  For instance, this weekend, since I don’t work, I can do my things that require walking quite a bit earlier, when it’s cooler, and I can also make sure to wear sunscreen when I do.  At least I do tend always to remember to bring water, and even if I don’t bring it, there are dozens of places where I can buy some along my routes.

Okay, here’s a little aside that occurred to me as I contemplated my own frustration at having to use the stupid smartphone (ha ha) keyboard.  It seems, from what I have heard, that Steve Jobs et al were inspired to try to create the touchpad for the iPhone and related products by watching Star Trek:  The Next Generation when he was younger.

I watched that show, too, after initially being prudishly defiant about it because I loved and supported “original” Trek.  Before long I loved the new show.  But even back then, I thought the concept of their various screens, which had no fixed controls and no actual keys to press and so on, looked revolting.  I hated the idea.  I likewise hated the notion of reading from the flat computer screens, or the handheld screens as was often the case; I thought it looked terrible.

I could see that it would be quite useful, however, and that it would be only too handy not only to be able to bring up whatever pages or diagrams or whatever one needed on the screen but to have variability of controls on a screen, so the same surface could fulfill many purposes.  I could tell how useful it might be, and I could sort of feel the inescapability of it at some level, and aesthetically, it kind of turned my stomach.

And I thought to myself (just now) that if I could avert the existence of the stupid touch-screen crap, but to do so I would have to allow TNG never to have come into existence…

…I think I might choose to let Star Trek go.

Admittedly, some of this verdict is probably related to the fact that I spent a lot of time watching NextGen with my (now-ex) wife, starting from quite early in our relationship.  So, I don’t watch it anymore, not on reruns or whatever else, because that pain outweighs the pleasure by quite a bit.

In addition, there are many songs and shows and movies and musicals and even books in which I do not partake anymore, because they remind me of my ex and all things associated with my ex, and they make me feel very sad and lonely.

Unbelievable:  that “aside” took up more info-space than the rest of this post entirely!

I suppose that happened with Shakespeare sometimes, too, so I shouldn’t feel too bad.  But, of course, I do.  Hey…it’s me after all.

Anyway, I hope you all have a good weekend, and if you like, you can probably rather safely look forward to next week’s blogs being better than this week’s.

I know I do.

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I haven’t found a good Shakespeare-based headline

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and there is no lapcom involved in writing this post, at least not on my part.

Maybe “involved” is too broad a word.  One could argue that all the posts I’ve written before on my lapcom(s), of which there are many (posts, not lapcoms), set the stage and set the pace and set the precedent for this post.  And so, in a sense, they are involved in this post, and thus so is it.  However, that is reaching a bit.

So, I will clarify.  I am writing this post on my smartphone, not on my lapcom, which is still at the office, which is not where I am writing this.

I feel very groggy this morning, perhaps even more so than I have the previous three mornings, though the residua of my migraine pain appear mostly to have gone.  Between that* and the fact that I am writing on my smartphone, I may not write much today.

I appear to be very tired.  Actually, I say “appear”, but it is my own state to which “very tired” refers, and it is a subjective sensation (though it is also an objective fact), so if I appear tired to myself, then the odds are good that I really am tired.

Speaking of being tired to myself, it feels like I’m being so very tedious here lately.  Perhaps I am no more tedious than I’ve ever been.  I don’t know.  For all I can tell, I have always been tedious, my entire life, starting long before blogs (BB if you prefer).

Certainly, no one has wanted to stick around me for any very long period of time, not my parents, not my (former) spouse, not my children.  I seem to be an unpleasant fact and presence eventually to those around me.  Maybe it’s time I took the hint and got gone.

I still haven’t been able to read.  I think I’ve spent less than twenty minutes reading over the last two weeks or more.  I don’t know if you quite realize what a departure that is for me.  I haven’t even been reading audio books‒which would count for me, since I always read auditorially, meaning that I “hear” the words I am reading.

I also haven’t played guitar (and sang) for more than maybe half an hour in that same time.  That happened when I started watching a video of “Groovy Grace” reacting to the Pink Floyd album Animals, which is one of my favorites.

As the album began, with Pigs on the Wing Part 1, I could not resist pausing the video, picking up my own black Strat, and playing and singing that song.  I played the combined song, parts one and two, including my own tortured** version of the guitar solo by Snowy White, which was the version one could hear on the old 8-track tape, or so I’m told.

After that, I played and sang a few more songs, including Wish You Were Here, which starts and ends on the same chord (G) as Pigs on the Wing.  I might have also played the Radiohead song Lucky, and probably The Man Who Sold the World.  That was it.  I didn’t even do Nothing Compares 2U.

Other than that, I’ve just mainly been distracting myself.  But I’m a bit foggy even for that right now.  You can’t tell (probably) because I edit these posts, but I’ve been making a lot of typos again.  That’s more likely to happen when I use the smartphone just at baseline, but today’s rate is still an outlier from the mean (see my post from the other day).

All right, let’s wrap this up.  I don’t have anything more to say (not for the moment, at least), so I will emulate the habit of Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer and seal my lips.

TTFN

*How groggy am I?  Well, I initially wrote “between that…” (by which I meant, my level of grogginess) “…and how groggy I am, I…”.  So, yeah, pretty groggy.

**I nevertheless actually like my version of the solo better than Snowy’s.  Go figure.

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Migraines, after-effects, lesser evils, and greater goods

I’m a bit wiped out this morning, so I may only write briefly.  For those of you who may not know it, I developed a migraine headache yesterday.  It started with the surprisingly rapid onset of a “classic” migraine aura, which is to say a deficit in one’s visual field, marked by apparent, weirdly twinkling, almost rainbow-like lights.  It is not as lovely to see as one might suspect if one has not had it.  This first time it happened to me, way back in my early teens (while I was caddying), I worried maybe my retina had become detached.  Weirdly, this concern did not lead me to panic, nor to seek help, nor even to stop in the middle of that golf round‒work is work, after all.

The classic migraine, which is what this migraine with twinkling lights is called, seems to begin with a rapid, spreading depolarization of cells in the brain cortex, particularly (in this case) in the occipital lobe (thus the visual aura, because that is the region of the vision centers of the brain).  It spreads from there, and as part of its spread it seems to lead to vascular swelling and pressure in the meninges, which causes some of the pain.

The science has probably improved since the last time I studied it, so some of this description may be inaccurate.

In any case, as soon as I realized what was happening, I took steps to head things off.  Although I had taken a naproxen that morning, I popped three ibuprofen right away.  After a few minutes, as the aura progressed, I added two acetaminophen (extra strength) as well.  This was probably not ideal for my body‒kidneys, liver, and to a lesser extent, stomach come to mind‒but I didn’t really hesitate, because I have experience with migraines, and not just with treating them.  I also made sure to drink lots of water.

Anyway, I did get some dull pain (as well as just dull dullness) centering loosely on the left side of my head, but the Motrin™ and Tylenol® seemed to have done their work well, since I took them so quickly.  I did have pain, but it was not nearly as severe as it usually is, though I took one more ibuprofen a bit later when it seemed to be increasing.

With migraines, though, the pain is more an effect than a primary part of the process.  In a way‒and only in a way‒a migraine is a bit like a slow-moving seizure.  As such, it tends to cause quite a lot of fatigue in one’s central nervous system, and I certainly felt that yesterday and continue to feel the after-effects today.  For instance, I am making many more typos than I usually make right now.

I do seem to have slept slightly more than usual last night.  Tiring one’s nervous system by internally, directly causing the hyperactive discharge of whole populations of neurons seems to lead to slightly deeper sleep, no doubt because for the nervous system, it is something of an emergency and it must be cleaned up.  Trust me when I say, while the slightly longer sleep is nice as far as it goes, it is not worth it.

Even though I was able to prevent the worst of my migraine pain, the other effects were still quite palpable and unpleasant, and their after-effects remain.  They aren’t good.

This is not to say there aren’t many, many worse things in the world, and certainly when one has only two choices, one should choose the least bad of the two.  For instance, I would choose many migraines over a kidney stone.  The lesser of two evils is, mathematically, the greater of two goods.

If this fact is confusing‒I don’t know why it should be, but apparently it is, and that confusion has been consequential on large scales‒think of the old grade-school level number line, centered at zero.  If you have two negative numbers, such as negative two and negative twelve, you can certainly say that they are both negative.  But that’s a function of where you put the origin (where the zero is), which you can shift and put anywhere else, given the infinity of the number line and its inherent symmetry.

But even if you move the origin 100 places to the left, so that you now have 98 and 88 instead of -2 and -12, the distance between the two numbers, and their mutual relationship based on that, is unchanged.  One of the numbers is still less negative than the other.  And if that number measures the usefulness or the desirability of something, and if one has only the two choices, then one should pick the less negative one, which is by mathematical definition the more positive one.

A billion is less negative than a million.  And negative a million is less negative than negative a billion.

I’m not sure how I got from migraines to here, but that’s okay.  I’m sure it will make at least some sense during the edit.

Anyway, I hope that my mental fog will clear a bit today.  It would be nice to be able to sleep better without requiring general neurological, pathological exhaustion.  But then again, many things would be nice that are simply not so.  By which I mean they aren’t real, that they don’t exist, that they aren’t the case, not “many things would be nice that are simply not nice”, which wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

If wishes were horses, we’d all be drowning in horse shit.  And then we’d probably wish for it to go away, which would just produce more horse shit.  Alas.

I hope you all have a good day.

[PS:  I tried to do a brief audio recording on the way to the office from the train, while walking, because a thought had occurred to me and an occurrence had gotten me thinking, and I also wanted to “experiment” to see how well I’d be able to compensate for the noise of traffic and (to a lesser extent) wind.  It was unfortunately something of a disaster, and to correct it all would have required many hours of audio manipulation that may be beyond my skill.  So I just deleted it.  But I thought I would at least mention it.]

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Yet another pointless discursion

Well, as I warned you would probably happen, here I am, writing a blog post on Saturday (August 15th, 2026 AD/CE), because I am going to work today.  I feel barely awake, to be honest. Nevertheless, as I said, here I am, smartphone in hands, thumbing out the words to yet another pointless discursion, one which I have headlined “Yet another pointless discursion”.  Go ahead, see for yourself.

I’m really pretty foggy and groggy right now, so I don’t know how good or interesting this is going to be.  I mean, I guess I could say that every day, of course, but it feels more acute at this moment.  It’s a bit weird to have a strong, sharp feeling of not knowing something, and of not being able to know it.  It feels like some sort of epistemological contortionism.  Which is itself a rather strange notion.

Of course, I don’t know what to write about today, or rather, “I don’t know about what to write”.  I feel that fact quite acutely at this moment, as well.  Still, it’s a work day, and one on which I am indeed going to work, so I guess I should fulfill my duty as I perceive it.

It’s not as though it would make any significant impact if I didn’t write anything, though.  I know of only a handful of people who consistently read and “like” my work.  Even those who don’t specifically “like” it but do come to read it number only in the few dozen.

But the readership here is pretty much the only regular social interaction in which I engage nowadays, if you don’t count work-related stuff.  At work, though, I think that I am probably quite unpleasant, because I am quite uncomfortable a lot of the time, and so my personality is negatively affected.

I’m not snappish and irritable at baseline, not as far as I can remember.  But for many years now, I have been quite grumpy and ornery.  I still try not to be rude if I can avoid it.  But I think I fail in that endeavor far more than I used to do.

And really, while it’s good not to be rude, ceteris paribus, my energy for such things is often less than optimal.  That dearth* also seems to affect my sensitivity to sensory annoyances, especially general noise and lateness and such like.

My tinnitus doesn’t help, either.  Right now it’s blaring at what feels like maybe 90 or 100 decibels in my right ear.  My left ear has a much milder amount, often zero, but the very disparity leaves me constantly a bit off balance.  Anyway, it’s quite annoying, but it doesn’t distract from my other discomforts, it merely layers itself atop or amidst them, like some kind of sensorineural seven layer dip or something.

There’s such a thing as seven layer dip, isn’t there?  I thought there was.  I could swear I had it at some family get together in the distant past or something.

Anyway, I’m very tired and very uncomfortable, and I’m just bobbing around here like a discarded plastic bottle that once contained one of those “experimental” sodas that never caught on, floating in the brackish, contaminated wastewater canal that is what’s left of my life.  I’m so tired and I am so uncomfortable.

I really want to get out of all this, to rest or at least to escape or even just to cease.  I am doing no good, as far as I can tell, and if I am doing no good for anyone, even myself‒at least not enough to outweigh the natural harm brought about by my very existence‒then why am I doing anything?

I feel rotten‒not morally so, but literally, as if my body were decaying in a more than metaphorical sense, yet still I am conscious and able to experience the sensations of that decay.  It’s not a good thing (duh!).  I wouldn’t say it’s hellish in any usual sense; it’s not as if it were so much discomfort that all I can do is scream.  In some ways‒admittedly, very few‒that might be better, because at least if I were in howl-worthy agony, I would not feel the compulsion to bother to try to force myself to be productive in any way.

Which one is worse, a Prometheus-style agony, where one is immobile and tortured regularly in such a way that one can do naught else but shriek, or a Sisyphean type of situation, where one strains and struggles to carry out some pointless task constantly, but one is at least able to act in that task?

Oh, who cares?  It doesn’t matter, and the answer is probably not precisely the same for any two people ever in the world.  I hope you all have a good weekend.  I guess I’ll probably be back on Monday.  I don’t think I’ll do audio today.  I’m too tired. 

*Does anyone else here remember Dearth Nadir, the Muppet Show’s spoof of Darth Vader, clearly played by Gonzo because his nose was unmistakable?

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I’m too worn out to make up a decent headline

I’m going to try to make this a shortish blog post today, because honestly, I’m pretty worn out (see above).  I haven’t brought it up that much this week, but it’s been a very bad time for pain‒in the sense of being good for pain, bad for those experiencing the pain.  Well, it’s been bad for the one experiencing it here, anyway.

I’m not aware of anyone else actually experiencing my pain, though there are those around me this week who have sympathized, since my pain has been rather obvious.  I’ve spent an unusual amount of time (even for me) lying on the floor, or trying to thump on my legs and sides until they stop hurting as much, or trying to do various exercises, from lunges to squats to steps and so on to try to improve my back, sides, hips, etc., all during the workday.

These interventions have been less than perfectly effective, alas, though the exercise is probably good in and of itself, ceteris paribus.  My pain might have been worse if I had done differently, which seems plausible, but it might even have been better.  I doubt it, of course, but if I had not doubted it in that way, it would have been absurdly masochistic for me to try these various exercises to see if they helped.

My thumb bases have also been particularly sore, which was at least part of my motivation to try my little audio posts.  I have to say, the audio stuff appears to have increased my “readership” slightly, though the before and after numbers are both so small that it’s difficult to draw too many inferences.  Still, they haven’t diminished anything, so far.

I don’t know if I’ll do an audio post today or not.  I’m really wiped.  But in any case, I should work tomorrow, exclusis improvisis, so if I don’t do one today, maybe I’ll do one then.

Mind you, psychology has shown that semi-random, intermittent rewards tend to garner greater capture (of an audience, of gamblers, of addicts, whatever) than any steady amounts of reward…again, ceteris paribus.  This does not appear to be one of the lamentably numerous findings in psychology that have failed to replicate over the years; it seems fairly robust.  Certainly it is working for the casinos and for the various lotteries.

I have restarted taking naproxen since yesterday morning, and at near-maximum dose, because the pain is just too much right now.  I’ve been so uncomfortable that I’ve been getting Ubers to and from the office (the whole way) all week; this is how I heard the song about which I complained (in audio) a couple of days ago.  But this is not a sustainable practice.  It’s costing me quite a lot of money, certainly relative to my income, such as it is.

So, I’m taking more NSAIDs and hopefully it will help and won’t box my kidneys (to use typical medical slang, in which “to box” some organ is basically to kill it, i.e., to put it in a box or a coffin or whatever).  And if it does box my kidneys, well, we’ll probably just call that good for this life.

How much longer do you think I want to live with chronic pain that I can’t even partially control without taking toxic amounts of one or more medications, especially while being almost completely alone, living in a one-room dwelling with only a camp bed and my piano stool for furniture*?

I haven’t even seen the new Spider-Man movie, nor have I felt like looking to see it.  I have watched the trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, as well as reactions to it, because Doom is my favorite, but even that is not encouraging or exciting or motivating enough for 4 months of waiting.

If I were to have to face four months feeling as bad as I do this week, I think I would just buy a huge amount of ice cream and Jack Daniels and Coke and Tylenol and laxatives and every other thing I could think of and try to dissolve myself away, as literally as possible.  Okay, well, that’s not very practical, I know; I would probably have to do something else.

Anyway, that’s already about as much as I feel like writing today.  Maybe I’ll do a little audio about how we have no right or reason to imagine that there will always be a satisfactory answer to every problem, like chronic pain.  The universe is allowed to suck, and it is allowed to produce misery that doesn’t have the slightest shred of any silver lining.

Nevertheless, I hope you have a good day.

*That’s where I’m “sitting” at the moment of this writing.  I used “scare quotes” because I’m really almost leaning more than sitting, pressing the middle of my back against the edge of the keyboard to try to decrease local pain.  It’s less sexy than you might imagine.

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This post is about 900 words long; other than that I don’t know what it’s about

It’s yet another day‒this time it’s Wednesday, the third day of the work week.  This is as expected and probably does not truly merit or at least require my pointing it out.  That’s fine, though; nearly everything that I do is without merit, let alone necessity.

Of course, merit and necessity tend to depend very much upon one’s point of view.  This is not to say nor to imply that such merit or necessity is entirely subjective and relative.  Some things have an intrinsic necessity in that, if one does not satisfy the need for them, one will suffer and/or die.

Think of food.  A person can, in principle, decide that they don’t ever want to eat again, and they may even be able to carry out that intention, but they will not be able to do so for long.  It’s not just an evolutionarily unstable strategy, it’s an individually unstable strategy.

The fact that suicide happens does not refute the drives and requirements for survival.  It just means that some organisms will be sieved from the rest of the biosphere and from the future.  Just because some buildings are destroyed in earthquakes does not mean that they should all be abandoned or that buildings are overall a bad or useless thing.

I don’t know what point I’m trying to make with this.

My audio yesterday seemed to work okay.  I guess the sound quality was decent using the mic from my headphones.  That’s kind of nice.  I don’t know how often I’ll be doing that, or if people will like it or not, but I feel that there are some subjects about which it feels more natural for me simply to speak rather than to write, if only because of the discomfort in my hands.

It still uses up a lot of memory for the amount of useful data conveyed.  I certainly have no intention to do videos of me speaking any time soon.  The notion of using tons of memory to store and share images of me is worse than useless, to me and to the world.

Indeed, if I could find a mask that I could wear all the time and that would be tolerably comfortable even in Florida (and wouldn’t lead to horrible fungal rashes, like what led me to have to stop wearing watches) I would probably use it.  But people would probably think I was weird if I wore a mask all the time.  I wouldn’t want that.

That’s a joke, of course.  People think I’m weird already, and they always have.  This consistency of opinion probably points to a clear underlying common fact:  I am weird.

I want to make it clear that I don’t hate myself because I’m weird.  I’m okay with being weird.  That’s not why I hate myself.  But I am also very, very dark inside.  There’s a reason that I tend to write horror (even when I’m not writing an “official” horror story) and that I have a blog subsection called “My heroes have always been villains”*.

I just seem to have a tremendous fount of anger inside, a fierce urge to lash out and destroy, and it’s been there as long as I can clearly recall.  I don’t know why it’s there.  Probably it’s at least partly related to my ASD (not the heart one, the other one), but there may be other psychological processes behind it.

I’ve gone to therapy a lot, in several different places and times, and I don’t recall getting any insight into the whole thing.  If any of you know any real subject matter experts who are willing to give me therapy for free‒or if you’re willing to pay for it‒then by all means, let’s hear the pitch.

Or, of course, if you think you have some insight that might be revelatory or just useful for me, I suppose you should feel free to leave it in the comments.  But remember, I’ve been trying to sort through myself for a long time, and I’m pretty bright and tenacious, so obvious sorts of things are unlikely to have escaped my notice.

Then again, I’m on the inside, and that sometimes hampers the clarity of one’s vision.  If you honestly, and not just out of hubris, think that might be the case and, given that, you think you have some useful insight, by all means, have at you.  Don’t get your hopes up, though.

I could probably give that as general advice to everyone about everything, come to think of it:  Don’t get your hopes up.

Speaking thereof, I expect I’ll write posts again tomorrow and Friday and Saturday this week, exclusis improvisis.  I’m not telling you not to look forward to those by saying “don’t get your hopes up”.  On the contrary, I’m advising you against getting your hopes up that you’ll get a break from my vitriol any time soon.

Of course, you are free not to read this any time you choose to stop.  But then again, we are not the pure authors of our actions, nor of ourselves, so I know you may be compelled by forces that you find inscrutable.  I can sympathize.

Please have a good day.

*I am here parodying the old Willy Nelson song, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.  No one seems to get that reference.  It must be a less well known song than I imagined.

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The Emperor of Silence reaps no relief from pain…or something like that

Welcome to August, everyone.  For today is August 1st, 2026 (AD/CE).  How exciting.  Huzzah.  Yippee ki yay motherf…

…or goodness sake, we certainly have a rather Roman day today, don’t we?  The month is named after a Roman emperor (the first “official” one, though I wish he’d just kept the name Octavian, since Augustus has too much of a try-hard vibe), and the day is named after the Roman god, Saturn.  Sailor Saturn is also my favorite sailor soldier*.  Though, that last thing doesn’t have anything to do with Rome.

I’m working today, just to confirm what would probably be your conclusion if you were even thinking about the question.

It’s not an absolute correlation, by any means; it’s possible, and not even unreasonably unlikely, that I might write a blog post but not go to work, or that I might go to work but not write a blog post.  The latter has happened more times than not (by far) throughout my life, but we need not worry about that likelihood, since it is ruled out by the fact that I am indeed writing a blog post.  You can tell, because you’re reading it (albeit not while I’m writing, as far as I know).

I am still quite sore all over, especially in my thumbs, back, hips, knees, ankles, shoulders, middle back and right side and flank***.  So, yeah, I don’t feel very great.  I also still have some residua of my apparent middle respiratory inflammation, but I think that’s improving.

Maybe it will be good for me to go through a bit of time with basically no NSAIDs in my system‒they’ve been there a lot, for a long time, and cannot fail to have had unintended effects.  We’ll see how the lack thereof even for a few days impacts my health.

On the other hand, NSAIDs can reduce some kinds of depression, and I think they did at least some of that for me.   Still, I am using Tylenol, and that seems possibly to help not merely with physical pain, but also with psychical pain (a little bit).

Weird, right?  And it doesn’t do that by decreasing inflammation in the brain, as NSAIDs appear to do.  It definitely works differently than NSAIDs, though it is not entirely unrelated.

It’s interesting how modules in the nervous system became repurposed (or added-purposed) for later mental functions in larger brains and especially in social animals.  The mental processes associated with physical revulsion and disgust/avoidance toward potential toxins and infectious materials became tied to our moral emotions of judgement, condemnation, and contempt.

Physical processes of fear became connected with anxiety about social opprobrium‒though, in a species like humans, social ostracism really was a serious danger to one’s life in the ancestral environment, to say nothing of being a rather obvious impediment to reproduction.

Anyway, the point is, it shouldn’t be too very surprising that a substance that attenuates physical pain can also ease psychological torment, at least a bit.  We know that opioids do this as well, and to a much greater degree than acetaminophen.

That’s one issue they have.  If a person has a lot of psychic pain‒and many of us do, which is predictable given that we are creatures adapted to hunting and gathering in the savannahs of Africa but are now living in the nightmare/fever dream/bad acid trip that is the modern world‒and has no better, more available, way to assuage it, they’re going to be tempted to reach for the tools they have, however blunt.

If we can figure out better ways of easing those pains, ones that are available and usable by everyone who needs them and which have acceptably few side-effects, that would be nice.

Okay, well, I don’t know if I’ve written anything coherent here, but I’m going to keep this relatively short, because I am still feeling poorly.  I hope you all have a good day and a good remainder of the weekend.

*Not counting Sailor Moon, who has the same unfair advantage over the others that the Beatles have over other bands.  Sailor Saturn is my Radiohead**/Pink Floyd sailor soldier.

**Heck, on one of my favorite songs by Radiohead, No Surprises, the chorus is followed by the invocation, “Silent.  Silent.”  And Sailor Saturn is the sailor soldier of silence, wielding the Glaive of Silence, with the power to end the world and bring about…well…silence.

***This makes me nervous considering my urinalysis strangeness, but I haven’t yet checked that today.  It feels like it is improving.