The ongoing list of songs to play at my funeral after I kill myself

The Parting Glass - Irish traditional
Fare Thee Well, Oh Honey - traditional (Long Road to Freedom)
Leavin' - North Mississippi Allstars
The Lakes of Pontchartrain - traditional

The traditional New Year's post

I would be angry with 2013 except it doesn't look like 2014 will be any better.

In the end, I don't really have much to say.  I observe my life to be pretty shitty.  It has been the entire year, and there is no hope for the future.

I consider every way a scientist can be measured as successful, and in every way I am a failure.  I have no graduate students, my lab is generating no data.  I am unlikely to make the paper requirement for tenure.  It is highly unlikely I will secure any sort of funding.  My grant that I submitted was deemed in the lower 50% of all grants submitted and not discussed by the review panel, aka "triaged".  I only get one more chance to get funding with that grant.  I built my lab to do that work.  I didn't expect to get funded my first time out, that would have been ridiculous, but I was hoping to do well enough to get real comments so I could have a better chance the second time.  Now I won't get real comments back.  So my next attempt will go from "shot in the dark" to "snowballs chance in Hell".  In addition, this is the single worst funding climate in HISTORY.  EVER.  And the way the economy and political climates are trending, it will only get worse.  Therefore it is highly unlikely that I will keep my job when I come up for tenure.

That is very bad, because I am living beyond my means.  I am more than broke.  I am running up debt.  I have had to borrow money from my mother.  I'm a fucking 34 year old professor at a large university and I have to borrow fucking money from my mother.  While I love my house, I can't afford it, and the housing market doesn't appear to be getting much better.  So when I do lose my job I won't be able to afford making house payments while I look for a new job.  Bankruptcy.

My social life is faring worse than my professional life.  There is not a single woman I would want to date who would want to date me within 125 miles.  Most of them out there are either Jesus-freaks, divorced with children, or dangerously insane.  And I'm no catch, that's for DAMN sure.  The odds of finding someone are beyond remote.  They are statistically insignificant.

I am going to die alone.

To make matters even worse in this arena I have an incredibly STUPID crush on a woman in my department.  There are just about a million reasons nothing could ever happen, but the most damning one is that she wants one thing in the world right now, and that's to get out of Oxford as soon as possible.  She ain't looking for anything that doesn't involve her leaving.  But that doesn't stop me from YEARNING.  From PINING.

What does this all mean?  Well, I'm going to say something that people probably aren't going to want to hear, but it's the truth.  It means there is an effective limit on my lifespan.  You see, I'm depressed.  Pretty bad.  But you see, it will get much, much worse.  Every major depressive episode I've had has been linked to one thing:  rejection.  Whether perceived or real, when I get rejected I become depressed.  And as I've gotten older, each depressive episode has taken me one step closer to suicide.  It's something in my early 20's I would never have considered.  But each time, I get just a little bit closer.  The little voice in the back of my head that says "you know, you don't have to take this bullshit, you could just be done with it," gets just a little bit louder.  In a shade under 4 years time I will likely lose not just my job, but the career I have been working towards my entire life.  That is level of rejection I have never experienced.  It is, or will be perceived, as a complete rejection of my life's worth.

I fully expect when that occurs to fall into a depression deep enough that I will kill myself.  Even now, looking upon that theoretical point, I simply cannot see a way I can move forward past that point knowing I failed at the one thing I set myself to obtain so long ago.  How every minute of every day would be filled with thoughts of "you failed".  At the age of 39, moving back in with my mother, bankrupt, alone, a failure at my life's goal.

The depression would cause me to kill myself.

That's truth.

So that's it.  No looking over last years post.  No resolutions, silly or otherwise.  No stupid floral prose that I am so damn prone to even though I hate it.  No predictions.  No hope.  Just the most probable outcome of the next 4 years.  That's it.

That's life.

I HURT

I HURT

Depression is the AIDS of the mind

I have no idea why I am writing this.  I don't even know if it will make sense.  I suspect not.  But no one reads it, so who cares.

It's a very provocative title, isn't it.  Just smashing two diseases together like that.  But there really is a logic to it.  You see, AIDS really is, at least to my thinking, quite possibly the worst disease in the world.  Because it is smart.  Too smart.  Different diseases attack different systems in the body.  Your pneumonia goes at the lungs.  Helicobacter at the stomach.  The thing about AIDS is that it attacks the immune systems.  The part of the body that is supposed to fight it.  Say you were in a gunfight.  You could try to kill the other person by shooting them in the head or chest.  You could try to slow them down by shooting them in the leg or foot.  AIDS is like shooting the gun out of their hand.  They are disarmed, and vulnerable to whatever you want to do.

(as a side note, I always thought the most insidious computer virus would be one that attacks antivirus programs)

Depression is like that, but for the mind.  You psyche is under constant attack from mental trauma.  You got shortchanged at Starbucks.  The potato chip bag was two-thirds air.  You got into a car accident.  Your wife leaves you.  Constant invasion by negative thoughts.  But your mind has built-in capabilities to fight off those negative thoughts, to make sure they don't do permanent damage.

Depression removes that defense system.  Suddenly all those negative thoughts get through.  And then they begin the beat-down.  They attack your self-esteem.  Your ability to cope with day to day stresses endemic in modern society.  The buffers against bullshit are gone.  And all those delicate little illusions that people cloak themselves with in order to make it to the next day without going categorically insane are ripped away.

So what is this magical mental defense system?

Hope.

Depression removes hope.

I have no hope left.

For me, this time around, it's come from the fact I can't get a date.  That sounds very flippant, but it's so much more serious than that.  It's not "man, I can't find a date to do something this Friday night".  It's "I'm positive that there is no person within 200 miles willing to look at me in any way more than just a lump of disgusting flesh".  It's a perceived rejection by the entire female gender.  And that has led to the sure, bedrock knowledge that I will pass through this life alone.

Think about that.  Knowing that for the rest of your life, everything that happens to you will happen by yourself.  No one to share your experiences with.  No one to share your triumphs and defeats.  That you will never again feel the touch of someone's lips on your, or their hand on your skin.  That you are effectively in a bubble.  Isolated in a way that human beings are not meant to be isolated.

It removes your desire to keep living.

There were two times in my life previously where I was what I would consider to be suicidal.  Not that I came close to killing myself, but I had a thought process that led in that direction.  The first time I knew I couldn't kill myself, but I actively wanted something bad to happen to me.  I remember walking down the curb of a road towards a gymnastics meet, hearing a car drive up behind me, wishing that the car would swerve and take me out.  The second time I began planning exactly how I would kill myself (for the morbidly curious, a Colt Dragoon pistol, roof of the mouth, in the middle of the night in the lab I worked at).  If things had not changed in my life (and Colt Dragoon pistols not been so expensive), I honestly don't know if I would be alive today.

This feels different from those, which is not to say it's no less or more dangerous.  It's just different.  While there are moments when I'm filled with utter, crushing despair, usually when I see a beautiful woman and know that I'll never know the touch of one again, most of the time I feel...nothing.  I don't mean I feel fine, I mean I feel nothing.  There is no emotion left in there.  I feel like I'm a wind-up automaton loosed upon the world.  As if I'm going through the motions of living, but I don't know why. 

Consider what it is like to know that for the rest of your life your thoughts will only be your own.  Your actions will only be your own.  You life will just be you life, with no significant impact on those around you.  It's not despair that makes me what to stop living, it's that I just don't see a point to going on.  It's pointless.  Life in a bubble means my actions have no external consequence.  So I just don't get it, I don't get why I should continue to live.  I do.  Every morning I get up.  I go to work.  I come home.  I go to bed.  The same thing day after day, the daily life of a bubble.  It's not that I scream my life is not worth living, it's that my life has no worth, so why is it that I'm living?  I just don't understand why I continue to exist.  I have no impact on this universe, so why don't I just blink out of existence?

I sometimes talk to my mother about how I'm going to die alone and all she does is reply "You think so, but I know you'll find someone someday".  I ask her how she knows that and she just says "Because I know it" or "Because I have faith" and I just scream back "THAT IS NOT AN ANSWER".  It's not.  It's like I'm pointing to a pothole saying "there's a hole here" and she's saying "I'm sure it'll get filled in" and when I ask her how she's saying "I'm sure it will".  That's not a goddamn answer.  You can't just believe something because you want to believe it.  To other people it's hope.  To me it's retarded.

I have a hard time conveying this.  From where I am now, hope and bullshit look like the same substance.

I know people try to help.  They say I impact their lives, that they'd be sad to see me go.  But I also think they know how little it does help.  I appreciate that they try, but kind words don't make my house any less empty at night.  Reality is reality and there is no fighting it.

So again, I don't know why I am writing this.  It isn't cathartic.  It doesn't make me feel any better, and it doesn't change anything.  And I don't mean to inflict any of this on my friends.  But I guess this is just a way of explaining where I am right now.  Trapped in a bubble, kind of wishing I'd stop existing so I wouldn't have to stare at the inside of it.

A new year?

I put it to you, is it really a new year?  "New" instills some aspect of change, but try to find something different about this year.  I see none.  The past year was like the year before, and this coming year will be like the one just elapsed.  I find myself in a new locale, with a new job and a new title, but all the same miseries and sorrows and aches and hurts are still inside my head.  And they never seem to go away.

They never.  Go.  Away.

My head, the sponge of other people's art that it is, recalls moments that have made an imprint.  Jack Nicholson saying "what if this is as good as it gets?"  The line from the Paul Simon song "From what I can see of the people like me we get better but we never get well."

I can tell you what has changed for this coming year.

I have no hope left.

Last year my one goal for the coming year was "try to make it through the year without killing myself".  And coincidentally enough, that almost didn't happen.  I really can't tell you how far or close from suicide I was.  I didn't see a line on the ground.  All I can tell you is that I had it planned out.  I knew exactly how I was going to kill myself.  The implement.  The situation.  I'm lead to believe that is not a good sign.

So somehow I made it through the year.  I suppose the goal for this next year should be the same.  And it seems like such a harder goal for this year.  I have no hope left.  No hope that the anguish of this life will lessen.

It's one thing to live a life in pain.  It's quite another to live a life without hope.  But I guess I'll have to try.

See you next year.  Maybe.

Alone In Bed In Montreal

Strange things happen to me when I go to conferences.  I won't say I go crazy, just that my mind starts to behave in strange fashions.  I don't know if it's because I have to spend an extended period of time away from home, or if it's because I have to spend time in contact with a number of strangers, or because my usual mechanisms of self-distraction are not available, but my mind becomes overactive.

One thing happens is that I often end up writing a lot.  Which is a consequence of me spending a lot of time thinking.  I think when I'm with other people, and I try to find time to be by myself so I can think some more.  I think, and think, and ultimately end up writing my thoughts down.  Which is what I am doing right now.  Another things that happens is I become emotional.  I don't mean burst into tears or hysterical emotional.  I just mean that somehow I feel my emotions more acutely.  Perhaps it's just another symptom of thinking more.  But I find myself feeling things and having flights of fancy that I wouldn't have under everyday circumstances.

A common occurrence is that I will, I hate to use the term, fixate on a person I meet at a conference.  It's not obsessive, more like a very strong crush.  In actuality, it's not something that's bad.  People normally meet other people, find themselves attracted to another person, maybe have a bit of a crush.  I'm led to believe this happens to people all the time.  I guess what's different for me is that it happens way more frequently at conferences, so it seems to stand out.  Maybe that's because I'm meeting new people at a rate much higher than I normally do, so the chance for sparking is higher.  But I'm always on the lookout for abnormal psychological behavior in myself, and it worries me when something stands out.

Her name is Coralie, and she is a grad student from a Caulobacter lab in Geneva.  My interaction started innocently enough.  I was putting up my poster before the Caulobacter meeting and two girls were wandering around looking at posters.  They were looking at mine and I just said "hey, that's me, do you want me to take you through it?"  They said sure, so I ended up explaining the project.  That was kind of it.  Later on one of the girls presented a talk that had some work that explained a very confusing piece of data I had.  I was pretty excited.  After the talks I tapped her on the shoulder and said "when you get a moment you need to come see my other poster, I have something you are going to want to see."  In a little bit she came over.  I showed her my data and how thanks to her work it actually made sense now.  I explained how I wasn't going to do anything with the data and my boss and I think she should take this work and expand it a bit and it would really help out her paper.  She seemed relatively happy with the idea.

It was then that my attention began to focus on her.  Normally at the end of a poster-type conversation, the non-poster person politely makes some excuse to be elsewhere and awkwardly leaves.  But she didn't.  Everytime the conversation began to wind down and I thought she was going to excuse herself, she was spark the conversation back up again.  About this, about that.  Half-consciously in response, I turned on what charm I had.  We ended up chatting for, oh, 45 minutes?  An hour?  Quite some time.  She's a slender beauty, with a very expressive face, and she laughed at most of my jokes.  It was very pleasant.

During one of the later talks our eyes met from across the room.  She scrunched up her face and flicked her eyes towards the speaker.  The maneuver could be interpreted one of two ways.  Either "get a load of this boring crap" or "hey, stop looking at me and pay attention to the talk, silly man".  Either way, I laughed, and that seemed to go over well.  I can count one hand without using all my fingers those special types of moments I have had with someone.  They are precious to me beyond dollars and doughnuts.

So now I follow.  I am led like a lamb.  I try not to be the creepy stalker.  I wave if I see her, and if I get a chance to say a few words, I say a few words.  But in my head I yearn, and in a room of over 200 people I am not satisfied until I know where she sits.  I itch and hop until the bun of her hair or the orange peel curve of her chin provide relief.  What does she think of me?  Based on her reactions there could be a possibility of her being attracted to me.  It is a non-zero probability.  But more than likely she just thinks I'm a nice guy.  And I'll take that.  So often people think I'm the asshole, that if she goes back to Geneva and thinks "wow, I met this really nice guy named Patrick", I will consider that a win any day of any week.  But as I lie here alone in bed in Montreal, wanting to taste her neck, I fancy the idea that as I wish she was lying here beside me, maybe she is lying in bed wishing I was there beside her.  Wouldn't that be something?  Wouldn't that be something.

A letter

Dear Flight Attendant whom I think flirted with me on my flight from Indianapolis to Charlotte,

I'm sorry I didn't properly say goodbye. I kind of left you in the lurch at the back of the airplane there, and it was very rude of me. I can only say you caught me off-guard. I've never really been flirted with before, or at least not by someone who was a complete stranger. If it was indeed flirting (and general consensus and my gut instinct says it was), it totally surprised me and I kind of panicked. So I'm sorry about appearing rude. I'm also sorry about not trying to get your number. I don't think anything could've happened, since you said you lived in St. Louis and that's very far away from where I live, but in retrospect I'm really kicking myself that I didn't at least try to get your number or email or something. It's a regret that I'll carry with me. Finally, I want to thank you. I've had flights with more leg room, or free movies or free first class meals, but being flirted with by a very attractive woman made it the best flight I've ever had.

Sincerely,

The shy idiot in 19C

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.

CotD: Bloodthirst edition

Again, apologies to Taco for stealing his format.

Coyote and I were talking and he was telling me about his movie idea where a bunch of nerds travel to California to kill Michael Bay. I wanted more directors to die. We further brainstormed. Then I came up with this idea.

fett: Easy video game tie in's. Oh man, a Doom like level where you wander around Skywalker Ranch murdering CGI villiansprites.

CoyoteExile: Want. A level where you kill everything that moves inside Platinum Dunes Studio. Robo-Bay boss fight at the end. Robo-Bay will of course be so overly complex you won't know which end is up.

fett: It'll be a fight in mid air, as he is suspended by helicopters, and when you come close everything goes into slow motion.

CoyoteExile: Random shit in the level like potted plants and water coolers will just explode for no reason.

fett: I want a level where you have to stalk and kill Francis Ford Coppola through his own vineyard armed with nothing but a compound hunting bow, a wine bottle and an mp3 player containing the One From the Heart soundtrack

CoyoteExile: Done!

CoyoteExile: A Brian de Palma level where it's just 1 20 minute cutscene with no cuts

fett: And, to be perfectly honest, a Spielberg level where you find him sitting on a golden throne sucking his own dick

CoyoteExile: Win

On the dread of night

I'm going to write about something very personal, something I've shared with 3 people (who aren't doctors) on this Earth. I don't know why I'm suddenly going to expose something deeply personal not only to friends and casual acquaintances, but to the Internet at large. Maybe it's time. In any event, here goes.

I suffer from night terrors.

What are night terrors? Let us check Wikipedia.

A night terror, also known as a sleep terror or pavor nocturnus, is a parasomnia disorder that predominantly affects children, causing feelings of terror or dread. Night terrors should not be confused with nightmares, which are bad dreams that cause the feeling of horror or fear.

Night terrors are biologically distinct from dreams. Night terrors occur within 30 minutes to 1 hour after sleep, well before the REM cycle where dreams occur.

In my case, I can pinpoint the time when they started. It was in graduate school, though surprisingly not from graduate school. No, they are the result of the bat infestation I had in my second apartment. If any folks from graduate school are reading this, you may remember the episode at best as a crazy hijink, or at worst as a weird episode. Little did you know it had larger implications in my life. Over the course of six months, I discovered 5 bats in my apartment on separate occasions. I mean IN my apartment, not in the attic, though that's where they came from. I could hear them, like mice. We never found out where exactly they got in. The climax of the situation occurred when I woke up at 2 AM to find a bat circling the ceiling of my bedroom. It scared the shit out of me. Ever since then I have had a deep-seated phobia of bats. I can't watch one fly without having a panic attack, and even thinking about them now has my skin crawling.

Again, some people found the situation odd, some even envious because they thought it was cool. They didn't know what the situation did to me. After those incidents, I slept in my recliner in the living room with all the lights on, with the TV on, out of fear. For 6 months. After 6 months I managed to turn the lights out and turn the TV off, but still slept in the recliner. That lasted another 6 months. After that I managed to retrain myself to sleep lying horizontally on my futon in the living room. I say retrain because at the start just lying down on the couch would send me into a panic attack. That's how I slept the rest of my time in graduate school (about a year), sleeping on my futon in the living room. I never could go back to sleep in either of my bedrooms. The door to my back bedroom, where the flying incident occurred, was closed for about 2 years, I never went in that room. It effectively closed off a portion of my wardrobe that was in that closet that I couldn't get into. The night terrors started at shortly after the bats.

What else contributes to night terrors?

These night terrors can occur each night if the sufferer does not eat a proper diet, get the appropriate amount or quality of sleep (eg. Sleep apnea), is enduring stressful events in their life or if they remain untreated. In addition to night terrors, some adult night terror sufferers have many of the characteristics of depressed individuals including inhibition of aggression,[4] self-directed anger,[4] passivity,[5] anxiety, impaired memory,[6] and the ability to ignore pain.

Pretty much reads as a laundry list of my life, doesn't it.

What are night terrors like? I can only really describe what they are like to me. I go to bed. After tossing and turning anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours (I also have insomnia, as well as restless sleep and probably apnea), I manage to actually fall asleep. 30 minutes later I wake myself up screaming. And I don't mean yelling; I mean screaming at the absolute top of my lungs. I am lucky to have a well-insulated apartment because the downstairs neighbors have yet to complain. Most people that have heard of night terrors know about the screaming. What people don't get is why the screaming exists. It is because I wake in absolute...mortal...terror. And I'm not talking about the terror of a really scary movie, or the terror of narrowly missing a car crash. I wake up in the absolute highest fear that I am going to die that instant. It is the highest level of fear I have ever experienced. I wake up screaming, my heart racing, sometimes sweating, in dread that I am going to die the next second.

This happens to me every night.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, for a few years there my night terrors were under control with the use of medication. In fact, that was the original reason I started using antidepressants (first Prozac, then Lexapro). The fact that these drugs also helped fight my depression and anxiety were just happy byproducts, though they did not come without their price. Namely, the side effects killed my sex life, which was one of the (many) reasons my relationship failed. Nonetheless, the drugs worked. Instead of having night terrors every night, I would get them once every 6 months.

A few months back my fellowship ran out and my job status changed. I became an actual employee again, and I got real benefits again. Which is a good thing. Unfortunately, with the change in insurance I have to switch doctors. Which actually isn't a bad thing because I absolutely hated the pretentious fucking prick I was seeing at the health center, and now I get to see a real doctor. The unfortunate part is that to get into the good clinic in town takes time. My introductory appoint is scheduled for August 23. Because of this, I am off my medication. Not just my antidepressants, but my blood sugar medication as well. The effects of the antidepressants are gone, going through the withdrawal symptoms were fun, let me tell you. Plus, after being dumped by the woman I thought I was going to marry, the depression has come down on me like a hammer.

The night terrors have come back. Every night.

I guess I am writing this because I hate it. And I hate you. I can't tell you how many people, including my ex, would tell me they could just lie down and within 5 minutes be asleep, and then wake up in the morning feeling great. For them, going to sleep is a reward. For me, it is going to war. I can take hours to actually fall asleep, then soon afterward wake up feeling like my life is ending. After calming down I manage to fall asleep again, but wake up 2-10 times a night to go to the bathroom (a symptom of the diabetes). My ex would drink coffee before going to bed. If I drink anything within 4 hours of bed I'll be up all night pissing. Sometime around 6 in the morning, after my cat has woken me up, I'll actually be able to fall asleep and get RESTFUL sleep. This is why I sleep to 11 every day, because it is only after 6 AM that I can get restful sleep. I may sleep 9 hours a night, but only 4 or of 5 of it counts. And every morning I wake up feeling like someone has spent the night beating me with a bag of hammers.

Sleep is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be pleasurable. It's such a simple goddamn thing, like breathing or eating it's something that everyone does every fucking day. But every part of it fails for me. It'd be like someone having to work like a maniac at breathing, or beating their heart. It's for this reason I hate going to sleep each night, because it's not sleep, it's war. And you know what? It's not fair. It's not fair I have to go through this. It's not fair that I am denied a basic human function. And I'm pissed off. And that's what a blog is for. A placed to put your pissed off. So here it is, for all the Internet to see. It's here on the virtual shelf. I don't sleep, and I'm pissed off.

This just in

Bruce Lee was awesome. Really...really awesome. His fighting style gave the impression of barely contained rage, and all his moves finished with a pose that indicated it required every ounce of his will to hold back his limbs, lest they fly from his body and pummel every living thing within a 10 mile radius into a fine mist. You and I need our muscles to make punches harder. He had to use his muscles to hold his punches back.

Guh-wa?

So, yesterday I sent a somewhat bitter mess age to (but not necessarily at) Neil Gaimen via Twitter. I honestly didn't expect him to respond. He did.

So my post (they aren't tweets, goddamnit, I refuse to call them that) was as follows:

@neilhimself It must be easier (note: not easy) to write knowing someone somewhere will read it. Anonymity kills my drive.

His reply:

Each thing comes with it's own set of problems. Just write.

It's a fair point. I can't imagine the type of pressure he is under to consistently churn out quality material, given such a large reader base. And the advice is good for writers. The problem is: I'm not a writer. I'm not. I'm just a guy that occasionally has ideas.

Why do I feel these urges, to put down ideas in some form that resembles prose? I'll tell you why. It's the same screaming desire that causes some people have to children, or climb mountains or paint pictures. It's the desire to have some part of me remain immortal. For my name to carry on beyond myself into something tangible after my death. I'll never be athletic enough to accomplish some act of physicality that would be notable. I'm not good enough at my profession to be anything other than a footnote to science. The world of children is so unlikely as to be statistically impossible; in all likelihood I'll die alone. So I entertain these vain fantasies that somehow I'll put together a novel that will reach publication, and that some time after I am dead some person will go, "hey, have you heard of this book? It's not really well-known, but I like it."

But it's all such a damnable lie. I am not a special snowflake. I'm not, nor am I ever likely to be, a person of note. A person that makes a difference. I am just another one of the 115 billion human beings that has been born to this Earth, just another foot-soldier in the march towards entropy. Obviously I'm in good company. The vast majority of humanity joins me in simple anonymity.

So why bother? Why bother trying to write something? Even if I somehow scraped the words from under the sofa and behind the fridge and lumped them into a book, who would read it? The probability of publication is slim to none. The only eyes to see it would be those of my very close, and very tolerant, friends. So why bother? I have ideas, is there really any difference between letting them die in my head instead die in a file?

The urge to write comes, and thoughts like these kill it, and I don't know which is right? So I ask you: what's the bloody goddamn point?

Grasping at straws

Though things ended poorly, and much of my memories for the past two years are now cloaked in bitterness, there were good times there. Great times. Time that can change and outlook. I should endeavor to hold on to those. Life is deep pits and passing fits. It's hard enough to find bright points out there without retroactively erasing all that was once good. I will save them, incorporate them into me. They are mine. Not hers. They are mine.

Don't it drag on

"Don't It Drag On"
- Christ Smither



Autumn's driving me crazy
I could cut my hair
I'm just a lazy man falling in love again
Too much time to spare
You know I got nothing to sell you
Takes me hours to say there ain't nothing to tell you
And when you don't call at all
You show me how well you know me now

Monday morning
It's all I can bear
Monday seemed seven days long last week
This one's only halfway there
Noontime crawls past Tuesday
Wednesday only gently abused me
We'll just slide on through
The rest don't get to me now

Send me no love
I know I'm cold
But the last young lady that leaned in here
Made me feel so old
I chased her all day till she lost me
Don't think I don't know what it cost me
To be a young man and suffer
Like a broken-down lover now

Yes it's crazy
I could cut my hair
I'm such a lazy man falling in love again
Too much time to spare
You know I got nothing to sell you
Takes me hours to say there ain't nothing to tell you
And when you don't call at all
You show how well you know me now