Again, and again

The New Year. And as tradition, I make a blog post, looking back at the list from last year and making a list for the next. Except I won't. Why? Because I am tired. I am abso-fucking-lutely tired from the past year. Do you know why? Because it sucked. It has been, in retrospect, one of the shittiest years of my life. It started so promising. I was actually, dare I say, happy at the start. The year was filled with promise. Thing were looking up. It actually felt that my life might have taken a turn such that every waking moment wasn't going to be filled with pain and suffering and heartache.

I should have known better.

Past precedent may not be indicative of future performance, but it sure as shit is a better bet than not. The year began to decline quickly, then just short of 5 months in it took a nosedive into an abyss of shit that my life has not climbed out of yet, and does not appear to in risk of rising above in the near future.

So here's what I'll do. I'll go over the old list.

• Propose to my girl in a personal and creative fashion

Heh, the cruelest cut of all. At the time is seemed so certain we were going to get married. We were arriving at the point where it was something we both wanted. Then it all just...fell apart. Fell apart. It's like trying to pick up one too many things in your hands. One thing starts to slip, so you adjust to get it, which causes another to go, so you adjust again, then another slips, and so on and so on until everything falls from your fingers and you're left staring at your empty hands, wondering what happened. Everything seemed in control. Now you're got nothing to hold on to.

• Make more blog posts that start with movie quotes

I tried. I doubt I succeeded. I haven't written much. Anything I write is bitching, no one wants to read it. I can tell by the lack of responses.

• Play the new version of Dwarf Fortress

Didn't touch it. Movies were my escape this year.

• Get my guitar out once a month

I touched it once.

• REALLY start to work on losing weight, to perhaps look good in a tux

After I got dumped I reached a new high in weight. I've lost some, but it's still higher than it's been in the past decade or so. I've had to buy new clothes. I don't think I'm going to lose weight anytime soon. And it scares me, because I feel my lifespan shortening.

• Finish the origami page-a-day calender from last year

Still sitting there, unfinished.

• Succeed in doing some good science

I may have done that. Or at least started it.

• REALLY submit a story for publication (am I repeating myself here?)

Did, a number of times. All rejections. Most pretty nasty rejections.

• Finish the stack of books next to my bed

All but one. I don't know if I'll ever reach the point of mental stability where I'll be able to read The Road without wanting to kill myself. It's not about good or bad, the prose is heartbreakingly beautiful, but it's a depressing as fuck book and I can't handle that right now.

• Take a trip with my girl

We were planning a trip to Chicago when she dumped me.

• Take a chill pill

Not even close.

• Take a number

I applied to 43 jobs. I think that counts.

• Take a vacation before December

Does the day before and after Thanksgiving count? Cause those are the only other vacation days I took this year before December.

• Take a moment

I got drunk the night I got dumped. I think that counts.

• Work 8 hours without turning on my computer

Nope.

• Eat a balanced breakfast

Nope.

• Balance the books

Nope.

• Book a flight

Actually did that.

• Try to be happy

Does increasing my medication count?

• Hold myself to my New Years resolutions only so much as I want, and not feel guilty if I fail

Failed.

So what about a new list? I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to. I could put down pithy comments, or serious comments, or whatever, but it all boils down to one thing for me this year.

• Try to make it through the year without killing myself

Perhaps it a bit melodramatic. It is, in fact. I've never been suicidal. But every time I fall into depression I feel myself trending in that direction just a little bit more, a little bit more. And my life keeps getting worse and worse and worse, and judging by my job situation it's not going to get any better. So maybe next time is the time I buy the gun. And the time after is the time I get the bullets. How many lives do I have left? Who knows. Who knows how many lives any of us have left.

Life. Sucks. So all I can try to resolve for this next year is to survive. It's all I got left.

I cannot hide what I am

Don John: I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour.

Conrade: Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.

Don John: I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.

- Much Ado About Nothing

Tink, tink, tink

Tink, tink, tink

Tink, tink, tink

Ssssshhht

Tink, tink, tink

Tonk...tonk...

Ssssshhht

Tink, tink, tink

Tink, tink, tink

Where I skate upon the thin edge of my sanity

Do you know what the Golden Ratio is? The Golden Ratio. It's a mathematical precept where the ratio of a smaller number to a larger number is the same as the ratio of the larger number to the sum of the numbers. It manifests itself in a variety of places, such as the Fibonacci sequence (where the next number of the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers, i.e. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8...). It also manifests itself in architecture, such as in the construction of the Pyramids and the Parthenon. But even more so, the Golden Ratio is found in nature. For example, the graphical depiction of the Fibonacci spiral, which shows the Golden Ratio as boxes with a curve connecting the corners.


Is often correlated with the pattern of growth of Nautilaus shells.


Or the shape of the human ear.

The Golden Ratio is also found in the shape of a Pentagon/Pentagram. Here the colored segments are in Golden Ratio to each other.

And the human body maintains this aspect ratio.


People find the Golden Ratio everywhere. It constantly crops up in nature, and people use it in music, art, architecture, finance, etc.

The Golden Ratio is also a fractal.

A fractal is a mathematical equation that repeats itself on finer and finer scales. Think of it like this. You know when you look at the reflection of a mirror within a mirror you see the same thing repeated smaller and smaller? Like this:
No matter how small you get there's still a smaller version inside it? A fractal is the same thing but with mathematics. They tend to look pretty neat. And make good wallpapers.


Fractals are all over nature, where it becomes like the movie Pi. If you look, you are sure to find one. What does that mean? Who knows.

But all that is in my mind while I read this Cracked article about a guy who got beat near to death by some muggers, but as an unexpected result his brain was altered and now he essentially sees fractals. As in, when he looks at his hand, he sees the fractal shapes that make the hand. When he sees a cloud trail away, he sees the fractal spiral that makes that trail. I encourage everyone to read the story, I'm not doing the description justice. It's quite amazing.

Not only does he see fractals, he understands and has progressed the mathematics of fractals. The thing that has stuck with me from the article is that guy has found that Einsteins E=mc^2 equation is actually a fractal. And somehow this seems so very, very profound. I don't know why. I'm not a mathematician. I only know about these things on an intuitive sense. But it's something about the fact that one of the bedrock equations of physics now turns out to be a fractal. Fractals are found in nature a ton, but in physics? Now in physics.

So what does that mean? What is it about fractals? Repeating mathematical formulae, cropping up here and there and everything, in art, in nature, in physics. What does that mean for us? Are we just fractals? Are we just repeating mathematical formulae, replicating on infinite scales, through space and time? Everyone says history repeats itself, is human history a behavioral temporal fractal? If you crack the equation of the fractal, could you know the future?

I guess it's the same quantum equation people have been grappling with since fate and determination and mathematics intersected, but it's come through a lens of fractals. I don't know, I'm just rambling. A better man could make a story of this. Me, I'm just intrigued.

Enough

I don't want to feel any more. I want my emotions burned out of me. I want the wick of my nerves lit, and as my nervous system flares the silhouette of my skeleton will strobe through my skin.

The hail has the cats startled, and the late night Saturday has me scared of the ghosts of Sunday afternoon as they walk along the street, and the stabs of random pain I can't seem to shake.

Sometimes I wonder what holds up the thin wall between my current self and the full goose bozo of a state institution. Clearly I'm the craziest person around, and the guilt of bringing such harmful words as these to eyes of my friends has risen past my knees. They are good people, they do not deserve such unkindness. But I have to get these words out. It's a compulsion as strong as addiction. Even so, as I type the keys I can hear the legions of internet commenters yell "cry more, emo kid" and I laugh, as if my pain makes me special. Somehow I don't think I left my 15 year old behind. You'd think I'd be able to exorcise that demon. All the words I write strike me as so much bad poetry written in the back of a mascara-stained notebook. But writing them makes me feel better. What is there to do with pain but keep on living?

Edit: and now after spending time organizing a folder of 80's pop music, I somehow feel better. Man those songs were upbeat. They may be fueled by cocaine mania, but they sure seemed happy about it.

Son of a fucking bitch

Ok, at a certain level, I can accept having night terrors. It sucks, I want them to go away, but I can deal. I wake up screaming, shaking uncontrollably, then I calm down, go back to bed, and don't have to worry about that particular problem for the rest of the night.

Except lately when I've been woken up with night terrors it's taken me so long to calm back down that by the time I actually fall asleep again I get a second round of night terrors. That happened to me twice last night. That means three sets of night terrors.

That's not fucking fair, ok? That's salt in the wound. Foul: piling on. Unnecessary roughness. 15 yard penalty, first down.

Pointless waste of time

No, I'm not talking about my life. Badumching. I've decided to go through my Netflix queue and find strange combinations, meaning two movies next to each other in the queue which seems odd or humorous. This is more to kill time than be actually interesting. Feel free to disregard.

Don't Drink the Water
Once Upon a Time in Mexico

The Fast Runner
Like Water for Chocolate
(I'm disgusting)

Dead Man
An Ideal Husband

Mrs. Henderson Presents
The Matador

The Weather Man
Lord of War
(sounds like a post-apocalyptic pulp novel)

The Majestic
Kinky Boots

Cry-Baby
Dracula 2000

Mini's First Time
Merry Christmas

Sexual Matrix
Babe
(what a twin bill that will make)

The Last Kiss
The Wedding Date
Dance With Death

Red Sun
Holy Mountain
(by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

A History of Violence
Blow Up

A Killer Within
The Dreamers
(another pulp novel)

Sex Sells
Masked and Anonymous
(Taco? Is that you?)

Sunshine
Under the Tuscan Sun

What a Way to Go
Lars and the Real Girl

Mona Lisa Smile
Paris, Je T'aime

Stir Crazy
Bukowski: Born In This

Eagle vs. Shark
The Chronicles of Riddick
(the next Riddick movie in the series will be...weird)

Gattaca
Frida
(I'll have the Gattaca Frida, with cheese)

Moon
Leave Her to Heaven
(sounds like a sappy chick flick)

Peeping Tom
Wanted
(for peeping, I'm guessing)

The Tenant
The Time Traveler
(short story, time traveler moves in next door, and he blasts his damn stereo)

And I've got Before Sunrise and Before Sunset next to each other, which makes sense, but I think I need to move After the Sunset after Before Sunset.

I think what we can take from this little exercise is that I have a very poor sense of humor.

Addendum: man, now I want to write a story called "The Weatherman, Lord of War" about a weatherman that, out of his ability to somewhat accurately predict the weather, holds sway over a Bartertown-esque post-apocalyptic settlement.