LINE OF THE DAY, part XLI

(from wendigo, a commenter on Cracked.com)

The spiders had been acting odd.

As far as I was concerned, everything about the damned pests was strange. This was different, though. On the first morning, day one, they started emerging from their hiding spots and abandoned their webs.

Black Widows, Orb Weavers, they all exposed themselves to any number of would-be predators.

You could barely walk through your yard without entangling yourself in the near-invisible threads they'd cast out into the breeze. It was as if a thousand tiny, inverted fishermen had dropped their hooks into the sky.

The web (of course) lit up with chatter. It was happening anywhere you'd expect to find arachnids. Within minutes, all the "Ask" sites and insect expert message boards filled up with annoyed queries.

"What are they doing?"

"Is this happening to anyone else?"

"Is this happening everywhere?!"

The true shock was still to come, as the creatures simultaneously reeled themselves UP those threads. It was an Indian Rope Trick to stupefy entomologists the world over.

The consensus at that point? Well, at least they're gone.

Then the sky began to cloud over.

Some caught on quicker than others. A few folks in my neighborhood, not necessarily ignorant folks, looked upward and determined a storm had set in. Myself, I immediately recognized the wrongness of it all.

The sunlight was being blotted out, ever so slightly, by one tremendous dome of webbing.

A plane came down over the hills near my house, its engines clogged with soft gauze and mashed spiders.

Five days in, birds started disappearing. Their songs all but ceased, and the only sign of their existence was the stray tiny, hollow bone that would drop from high above.

Dark spots could be observed with the naked eye. Using powerful binoculars or a telescope showed the viewer a myriad of small, cocooned bodies floating motionless in a lofty, darkening haze. Sparrows, Crows, Hawks, and even Bats became entangled in the grim construction.

Flights were cancelled soon after the original rash of crashes. Pilots thought they could simply break through the paltry web-work of such insignificant beings. Nearly ten thousand dead passengers and crew said otherwise.

The last plane to be cleared for take-off was the rare exception. There was a roar, a violent shrieking of engine blades, and then it just stopped.

It hung there, diagonally, until the entire thing was cocooned above our heads.

The bones that fell to the ground after that did not belong to birds.

It was after a week that "Arachnocalypse", as a term, had been officially coined. Newspapers and television networks spat the phrase out at every opportunity, and it took its rightful place alongside "Snowmageddon", and the rest.

For what it's worth, I think we could've made do, as a species, without use of the sky. Even though the haze grew thicker and our world grew darker every day, there were rain storms and natural collapses to give us small breaks in construction.

The rain, by the way, would come through cloudy and slick. I didn't want to know why.

The real problem, the one we couldn't work around as easily, was the spiders that remained on land. The jumping spiders, the hunting spiders, the tarantulas, all of those who seemed to have evolved past web-weaving.

They could produce some silk, but beyond that they were at a loss. You could almost feel sorry for them, standing tall on leaves and branches, preparing for an ascent that was never coming.

I heard stories about scorpions doing the same thing, but I never saw any proof for myself.

It was almost as if they knew. It seemed to drive them mad. When they weren't stoically waiting for their strands to take root above, they attacked and bit without any sense of reason.

I lost my pet, a loyal and loving Bulldog. She came in one night covered in clinging spiders, bites all over her body. Within moments, before I could even think of who to call (Vet? Poison hotline?) she collapsed and stopped breathing.

Daddy Longlegs... I don't even know if they were in on the plan, whatever it was. They seemed to cluster in homes, crawling over people as they slept, creating vast hordes of staring, though seemingly eyeless little horrors positioned on faces and chests.

When the things weren't engaged in frightening us to death, they would simply gather on ceilings and randomly "squat" upward as if it were some elaborate spectacle the human brain couldn't comprehend.

On the thirty-second day, when the Governments finally began working on possible solutions, everything changed yet again.

The Widowers crawled out from places unseen.

A Widower, about the size and shape of a man, seemed to have no interest in joining the growing, breeding masses in the skies. The black, armor-plated arachnid creatures only displayed one common goal.

Ensnaring us.

Daytime, as dark as it had become, was the only time it was relatively safe to go out. At night, Widowers could be all around you... in the trees, in crevices... and you'd never suspect. The last thing you'd see was the red hourglass on their abdomens.

That, and not-quite-human hands scrambling for your hair, your loose clothing, anything within reach.

Abandoned buildings were just as bad as the outdoors. I was with a group... I want to say this was about two months along... and we all took shelter in an old doll factory when it grew dark and we couldn't walk any longer.

The dismembered baby dolls, with their dark streaks of venom and plastic flesh wounds should've turned us away. Still, the webs they levitated in seemed old and abandoned. We figured the Widowers had their run of the place and long since moved on.

I didn't wake up to screaming.

It's weird to say that.

I wish I had woken up to screaming.

Instead, I lazily opened my eyes around what I assume to be Midnight. I reached out for a bottle of water, only to draw back a hand covered in burning, dark yellow venom.

I don't know if you've ever seen a bug trapped in a spider's cocoon. All they can do is silently rock. Back and forth, back and forth, bending at the middle. Sometimes there'll be a single free limb or antenna that waves around, trying to feel out any sign of help.

It's the same with people.

I'll have to live out the rest of my days remembering that sight. I'll have to live with the fact I ran away and left them there. People who had pulled me out of a burning truck. People who fed and clothed me when I had nothing.

There was nothing I could do. Logically, I know that.

The red hourglasses were already descending around me, and no matter what form it takes, an hourglass means time is running out.

My time.

Everyone's time.

SOMETHING OVERLOOKED BY EVOLUTION...

     There are certain kinds of pains I just don't understand and by not understanding I mean, why do they hurt so much when nothing can be done about them?

     Take tooth pain for example. Pretty much any pain involving the mouth, like abscesses, is dreadfully bad. We've only had anything resembling modern dentistry for, at best, a few hundred years. But we've been anatomically human for almost 200,000 years. Why should tooth pain be quite so exquisite? What's the purpose of it? Sure, something could be done about it now...but what about then?

     And then you have other types of pain that seem to serve no purpose as nothing can be done about it like kidney stones, splinters, broken bones, and giving birth.

     Pain should have a purpose. It should be there to remind you that what you're doing is damaging or potentially so. It's good that fire feels hot because you don't want to be exposed to it. It's good that ice feels cold for the same reason. The initial pain of a splinter is fine. It teaches you to be careful but the continued pain that is felt until you or your body can push it out is just overkill.
      Broken bone pain seems unnecessary too. Yes, nowadays we have casts and splints but what about when you broke your leg back in prehistoric times? You were tiger food now and all the while you're waiting to become a meal, it hurts like fuck. Your body and mind get to have one final, totally unnecessary conversation about how you shouldn't've done what you did à la Scrambles to Chopper: (body) "I told ya! I told ya!" (mind) "I know! I KNOW!!!"...but with pain instead of words.
      And like tooth pain, I don't even know the point of the pain associated with kidney stones. Whatever causes them to form in the first place certainly doesn't happen overnight so their being painful just seems so spiteful on the part of your body, doesn't it?
      Why is childbirth painful? One would think that giving birth, being vital for the continuation of a species, would be a most pleasant experience in order to encourage females to want to do it again. But nope, dorko body here has decided to trip all its pain sensors instead.

       I guess I'm referring to two major types of stupid pain here: inexplicable and fatal. Both are senseless but the latter is especially cruel. Unfortunately evolution could never set up a system to deal with fatal pain because, well...you need survivors to pass along traits. Still, you'd think some sort of mercy would exist for cases like this. At the very minimum such a system could be present in the bones and/or the nervous system.
      Breaking a leg in prehistory pretty much meant death. It means death for any animal today to lose its primary means for locomotion. The same is true for severing an artery. Wouldn't it be much more merciful to the animal (or human) if opiates or some other feel-good chemicals could be released from bone marrow if a bone broke or from the brain if reports of pain went above a certain threshold or if blood pressure dropped below a critical point?

      Let the inevitable end for the animal feel euphoric instead of horrifying. Why shouldn't being mauled by a tiger feel fantastic?

THE SMURFETTE PRINCIPLE...

     What was Gargamel thinking when he created Smurfette? And yes, I know he stated his intentions but what I'm getting at is...how was it supposed to work? He clearly didn't think this through.

      The Smurfs are magical beings born under the light of a blue moon. They don't reproduce...not even asexually through budding like a hydra. They're utterly sexless and given how long they live, I can only guess that the reason Papa Smurf is called that is because he came upon more than one human (Homnibus maybe?) who referred to him as the father of the Smurfs he fosters. It was probably the beard...

      The Smurfs show gender types (Vanity and Hefty are extreme examples) but nevertheless remain sexless. They almost certainly lack reproductive organs because that's not how they come to be. I would imagine if they were ever shown speaking a language of their own that it would not have any gender reference (outside of maybe living versus nonliving things). I can only imagine animals and especially humans confused them with their two halves of the same whole thing going for them. If there were a Superiority Complex Smurf, perhaps that Smurf would think their kind to be better than the other forms of life because they have no need for such thing as separate halves and crude babymaking.
      So again, I reiterate, how exactly was Gargamel's plan supposed to work? His plan was flawed from the start when he assumed their species played under the same male/female rules most lifeforms obey. I know how it played out because I watched the cartoon: the writers clearly assumed all the Smurfs were dudes and had no qualms about the idea that a multi-hundred to possible multi-thousand year old society which has never had a Smurfette before would suddenly find itself full of pent up attraction for something they couldn't possibly even conceive.

      And yet again and again throughout the series the Smurfs are gaga for her.

      Maybe it was the hair... Some envy perhaps? :-)

      The only thing I think I could accept is that the attraction to and lust for Smurfette is not because she is a female Smurf, an impossibility as far as I'm concerned, but rather a Smurf not born like other Smurfs. She's unique and different because she was not born of the light of a blue moon. They're attracted to her rarity, not her femininity despite how the cartoon portrays it. Either that, Papa Smurf went a little overboard in his attempts to undo Gargamel's spells and made her irresistibly charismatic to the other Smurfs. At the moment I forget if Papa Smurf was relative immune to her "charms" or if he acted like he lusted after her too.

      Also, if Gargamel could create a Smurf, however stereotypically feminine, from a magic spell, why didn't he just make a bunch of them that way considering how interested he has been in turning them into gold and/or foodstuffs? Nothing in the spell used to make her seemed particularly expensive or difficult to obtain, unless the "hardest stone" for her heart was in fact a diamond, something Gargamel certainly would have difficulty affording...

DELIBERATELY CIRCULATED

     I mentioned in a previous post that I've been carrying around various modern coins for the past several years because I want to see how they'll look worn down. Modern coins don't circulate anymore because their purchasing power has declined to the point of making them worthless except in aggregate. The largest regularly circulating coin in our pockets is the quarter-dollar and even that coin's purchasing power is now equivalent to that of the cent 100 years ago so imagine what that makes our still produced cents, nickels, and dimes. The average price of an item at my store hovers between $2.18 and $2.25. There's no place for anything below a quarter anymore and possibly (arguably) under a half-dollar.

     Anywho, because of this, I'm convinced that our modern coins will never become worn down from circulation so I'm doing it for them by carrying a select few in my pocket every day. I walk three miles a day to and fro work and am constantly on the move at my job so these coins "circulate" pretty well. Unfortunately I never made note of when I started doing this. Only the 2010 cent can be traced to around April of that year since that's when I first found one. The latest additions to my long-term patience project have been the 1978 Eisenhower dollar (replacing the 2007 SAE I was carrying for a few years), the 2009-P nickel, and the four different 2009 cent designs. I want to carry a 1978 half dollar but I bring half dollars in every night to work to give out in change so I'd hate to accidentally give it out.

     Photographing these coins in a way which will reveal their relief and wear is difficult as they are highly reflective. I feel I got some acceptable, though not great, results by propping them up on a nickel and  having the light I was using diffuse through some translucent plastic. Their current states will be presented below.

     Coins are designed to last about 40 years in circulation so this is truly a long-term patience project as I have called it :-)

Click on the images to ENLARGE

1978-D Eisenhower Dollar: about a year's wear

 The last of the "big" dollars. It's also my birth year so I have a certain fondness for the coin. :-)

1999-P Susan B. Anthony Dollar:  3-4 years wear

 I chose the 1999 SBA dollar because it was the only mini dollar ever made because it was wanted. The 1979, 1980, and 1981 were rejected by the public before production ceased entirely. Coin-Op businesses and mass transit authorities slowly drew down the stock of coins and in 1999, more were needed. The mint balked at first since it had been preparing the Sacagawea Dollar for release in 2000, but when the mint was sued, they relented and produced about 50 million 1999 dated dollars. Proof that they were not anticipated was their lack of inclusion in the 1999 mint and proof sets. They had to be released as a separate issue. For this reason alone, I continue to advocate that such sets should be released the following year just in case something like that happens again.

2001-P Jefferson Nickel: 3-4 years wear

It wasn't my intention to carry the 2001 nickel. It was one of my filler coins in case I needed it to switch out with a desired nickel at work. Turns out I went months without needing it so I added it to the circulation pile using the rationalization that I've never seen a worn-down shallow relief Jefferson nickel.

2005-P Jefferson Nickel [1st issue]: 3-4 years wear

2005-P Jefferson Nickel [2nd issue] : 3-4 years wear

2009-P Jefferson Nickel : about one year's wear

 I doubt I'll ever see any of what will likely be the final design of any U.S. nickel wear down either. I chose a 2009 dated one because it is infrequently encountered in change. Coins of 2009 had drastically reduced production on account of the "Great Recession" - is that what it's officially called now?

2009 Lincoln Cent [1st issue] : about one year's wear

2009 Lincoln Cent [2nd issue] : about one year's wear

2009 Lincoln Cent [3rd issue] : about one year's wear

2009 Lincoln Cent [final issue] : about one year's wear

 All the Lincoln bicentennial designs collectively I feel will never circulate so I'm doing it myself. I don't know why I delayed so long to circulate them. As single year designs, they were natural choices.

1974-S Lincoln Cent : 3-4 years wear

 I've never seen a worn-out Lincoln Memorial cent and the series began production in 1959. Only the first few years tend to show any wear at all leading me to conclude that cents stopped circulating around 1964. Even though cents continue to be produced by the billions annually, their lack of purchasing power causes them to be hoarded rather than spent so the coin's attrition rate is nearly 100%. Many cents get used only once and remain around in jars and dishes for month's at a time before getting spent again. I'm guessing this process got started in the 1960s and only accelerated once vending machines and pay phones stopped taking them. I've never seen a vending machine accept cents in all of my living memory (about 30 years). I chose 1974 because I feel that this year got Lincoln's design perfectly. The pictured coin is beat up, but if you should find a 1974 cent in your pocket, appreciate its sculpture. The mint did a fantastic job that year in my opinion. I chose the San Francisco mint because I don't see the S-coins too often so it'd be less likely I'd accidentally spend it.

2010 Lincoln Cent : 3 years wear

Again, I highly doubt this coin will ever receive noticeable wear in circulation so I'm doing it myself. Also, I'll find out if these copper-veneered zinc cents even CAN take heavy amounts of circulation wear. Zinc corrodes quickly when exposed to moisture, turning powdery. The copper on cents made since 1982 is microscopically thin. The coin already looks gray in some spots along the rim so we'll see what happens. A fun thing to note is the denomination ONE CENT is actually raised on the banner leaving the possibility that as the coin takes wear, it will disappear like the date on Buffalo nickels and Standing Liberty quarters of yesteryear.

1999-P New Jersey quarter : about 3 years wear

      Again, I don't think any of the state quarters will ever receive appreciable wear despite the quarter being the "workhorse" of the coin-based economy. In my opinion, quarters stopped circulating around 1991 [for the nickel, I would say 1971 and the dime, 1982]. Clad quarters have been around since 1965 so the earliest dates should be worn flat now, but I've never seen a clad quarter worn flat. The ones from the 1960s have considerable wear but very rarely have I seen one where the rim has worn into the edge lettering. By the 1990s, they start showing little wear at all despite being over twenty years old in some cases.
     Anyways, I picked the NJ quarter because that's my home state. When the NJ America the Beautiful quarter is released in 2017, I'll start carrying one of those too.

2007 Silver American Eagle : 3-4 years wear (currently halted)

      This was the first coin I carried around. I got it as a freebie for renewing my subscription to a coin newspaper. I didn't want the coin so I thought to carry it around. I was the victim of rising silver prices though. I was supposed to get three, one for each year 2007-2009 but the 2009 never came because of silver's rising price. The coins cost more than a year's subscription at that point.
      The coin being pure silver, is very soft, so it takes wear easily. Even after just a few years several details have been lost and E PLURIBUS UNUM on the banner on the reverse is showing signs of disappearing.

Angel Token : a few week's wear

      I remember getting one of these in a received piece of junk mail. I found this one walking to work and decided to add it to the pile as a goof. My only example of exonumia in this project :-)
      The design is the same on the reverse though slightly scuffed as that was the surface in contact with the street. I'm sure it's bronze-plated but I don't know what the core metal is. It feels too heavy to be aluminum and isn't magnetic ruling out steel and nickel.

If I'm still blogging in a few years, I'll do an update :-)

ARCHITECTURAL FANTASY...

     My dreams occasionally feature common themes across them. One theme that pops up frequently is that of hidden rooms in houses (and no, I have no idea what it means...can't say that I care really). Sometimes it's even to the effect of an entire house hidden within a house.

     How these things are not noticed from the outside is beyond me but upon waking, I find the concept most fascinating.

     A simple example would be one an unused door, say behind a swinging bookcase, reveals a narrow stairway between the outer wall of the house and the wall of the room. The stairway is just about as wide as a person so the fit is snug but atop it will be a small open room and a window looking outside. In one dream, the room, not much larger than the small bedroom of a two bedroom apartment, there was a chair, an endtable, and a television on top of some shelving with either books or a videogame console. Honestly I forget.
     The puzzle is how the furniture got up there since it would be too wide to carry up the stairs. It suggests, in this case, that it was brought there a piece at a time and assembled on the spot. There was another narrow staircase but I did not go up it to see where it led and a small door leading to what I felt was a toilet, but I did not check. I guess the idea was that this was a room where you got away from the house's remaining inhabitants for a while. But still, pretty cool.

     Other dreams featured what, upon reflection, must've been impossible architecture. The thing about my dreams is, so long as I don't think about what's going on too much, they'll continue. If I try figuring something out well, I guess that's too much brain activity to remain in a dream. Dreams like these I tend to "go with" because I'm in awe of what I've discovered.
     I remember one such dream where virtually an entire house was hidden within a house. Well, I shouldn't say "hidden" so much as, rooms would reveal seeming inaccessible places you could get at, but not through the known doors.
     Think of a videogame where you can see parts of a level you have not reached yet. The old first-person shooter Doom would do that a lot. It would also create "enemy only" areas which you could see but could not access without using the "no clipping" cheat.
      One example would be another stairway room like described in the previous dream, but it overlooks the kitchen this time instead of being wholly isolated. Or there'd be stairways leading up (or sometimes down) to rooms otherwise not attached to the house's "normal" rooms. In other words, a house within a house. And these rooms would be fully furnished too but in a style or with older appliances suggesting the current owners were unaware these rooms even existed.
      Some of these dreams suggest that these rooms were built and furnished first and then the rest of the house was built around them kind of like how banks are built around bank vaults.
      The hidden houses would be accessed through crawl spaces whose access could be found under a carpeted floor or by finding another such trap door in an attic and climbing down a laddered shaft to reach them. Another access would be a hidden half door or sliding wall inside an apartment closet leading to another closet which, when exited, reveals a mirror imaged version of the apartment but unlike the main apartment, there's no door leading to the outside...or is there? I seriously don't know. It's not like we get to continue our dreams the following night...

     Weird shit, but damn I want to live there or become rich and eccentric enough that I could have such a place built.

FACEBOOK CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

     It's been a while since I've done a Rejected Facebook Statuses dump. So let's begin, shall we?

DATING SITE MATH

      I only have two "equations" so far, but then that's what the addendum tag is for.

The first one is straight up math: P_i ∝ R_d
     DEFINITION:  the interest a profile generates is directly proportional to the reader's distance from said profile.

      That happens way more often than can be explained by mere chance.


The second one is more difficult but here goes:  ∵ D_i = ∅, P(R|M) = 1
      DEFINITION:   because intent to date is an empty set, the probability of getting a reply to one's message equals 100%

      In other words, if the purpose of your message to a woman is merely to compliment her on an aspect of her profile and not actually an attempt to seek a date, you can be assured of a 100% reply rate (e.g. I thought a recently viewed headline on PoF "My heart's not a d!ck so don't play with it" was funny, but the kind of guy she was looking for was clearly not me. Nevertheless I wanted her to know that her headline made me laugh).
      That type of reply dominates those I have received over the past nine months of my attempting to date online. How very disheartening...

THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part XI

      I daydream and fantasize a lot. It is a very useful means for dealing with frustration, anger, sadness, anticipation, and other consuming emotions. The daydreams are very cathartic and occasionally that catharsis requires that I kill someone. The thing I find interesting from a psychological point of view is that I never touch the person I'm killing in my fantasies. It's always through the use of something else be it a proxy (i.e. allowing someone or something else to do the job for me); psychokinesis and/or telekinesis (think Sylar or Force Lightning), weapons (like whips, chains, arrows, and guns); supernatural stuff like finger spears (think Lust or the T-1000) or the substantiation of my shadow (think Pride); or any other awful thing I can think of that's usually inspired by something I saw on television or in the movies (pyrokinesis and cryokinesis). I wonder what that means...what it represents? What would represent the greater psychopathy? Making physical contact with the pretend victim or putting that barrier between them and me? I guess actually touching means I can't run away from the fact that I did it and not touching allows for denial later on. Whatever clothing I'm wearing in the fantasy usually has my hands looking as though they've turtled into the sleeves and when those hands are revealed, it almost always portends something terrible about to happen. What is it with the obsession with my hands?

Lust - Fullmetal Alchemist

THOUGHT STARTER

      I've heard some weird things about the character Tom Bombadil from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and when I read this paragraph on the wiki page devoted to the story, I became quite intrigued by the possibilities to storywriting the highlighted line offers:

Other possibilities (compatible with the above theory) are that he is an abstract concept; possibly the embodiment of Arda itself, a veritable "Father Nature", or some kind of 'spirit' which, unlike the Maiar, was of a non-divine nature. Not only does the Ring have no effect on him, but Tom himself seems unable to affect the Ring in return. This shows that Tom was outside the divine plan and struggle and had no position in it. During the Council of Elrond it is suggested that the Free-Peoples entrust the Ring to Tom, but this is rejected due to the probability that he would lose it, because according to Gandalf, such things had no hold on his mind. It is also stated that if Sauron were to regain the Ring, Tom Bombadil would be the last to fall. It is also stated by Galdor that 'Power to defy our enemy is not in him, unless such power is in the earth itself. And yet we see that Sauron can torture and destroy the very hills.' implying that Bombadil is in some way connected with the very earth itself.

      What an interesting idea! I wonder how such a thing would play out in say, Christian mythology? Unless humanity itself could be considered "outside the divine plan" by virtue of having been given free will by God. If that's the case, then this idea is already boring. But I like this idea, perhaps crudely explored in the Matrix trilogy, that there's someone who simply is, but is not a result of our being. Sure, God created the world and all upon it, its inhabitants and life, many and varied...but not this one thing. A separate consciousness, if you will, that can explore and investigate the universe created around it, but which had no part in its creation or purpose. I don't know where I'm going with this. I feel it, but I can't describe what I'm feeling. Maybe you felt it too :-)

A MAN RESPONDS...

      This profile was recommended to me by another OKCupid user. The man's answer to the WTF female profile I posted back in September? You decide :-)

      While I don't agree with everything he's saying, I feel where he is coming from...that anger.

My self-summary

I'm tired of American women, their quest for perfection and their appraising me as if I were some piece of meat, or a sperm donor with a fat wallet. I'm tired of woman in their mid- to late-thirties thinking they will find a guy their age or younger to have kids with them.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!!!

       This is an actual profile that I am still reading on OKcupid. I had to break for a moment. My brain is hurting and I have no idea if this is for real or what but holy shit!

ADDENDUM: This profile actually shut down the overthinking, insists-on-categorizing-everything part of my brain for a time. I may have actually reached a higher meditative plane...if only I had some question in need of answering - I may have found it! I may have to remember this entry whenever I am in need of a mind-cleanse :-)

My self-summary

graduated from college at the age of 12 with a double masters in molecular biology, specializing in the effects of phakopsora pachyrhizi on asian soybeans in non-indigenous continental U.S. + northern renaissance art history, but opted out of scientific endeavors or antiquarian commentary in order to open up a light bulb manufacturing company (mostly halogen) in india at 19. though after wearing lehenga cholis grew tediously uninspiring, seeing as i'd given up touring (classical pianist child prodigy) years before, sought out a PhD in neo-classical composition (particularly the ever popular silent symphonies for dogs) as well as opened up a culinary school for wayward vegan orphans.

pretty fucking dull. huh.

RAINING LIKE, WELL...Y'KNOW

      Fairly dumb, but I think one of the reasons I like cats more than dogs is because I know what a cat fucking looks like. I know breeders have turned up some pretty strange-looking cats but the fact is, you really don't see them. The cats that turn up in shelters and which are showcased on TV tend to all be the same size and build. Their fur colors and patterns are a bit random, but it still looks like a fucking cat. They come in basically two varieties - shorthair and longhair - and I rarely see the longhairs. But they all have the same faces and eyes and approximate weight range.

      Quick! Picture a dog. If you were coming for a visit and I told you that I had a dog, until you've seen it, you will have no idea if it is a small yip-yip dog or a gigantic mastiff and anything in-between. You won't know anything about its temperament; its level of energy; etc. Dogs are mysteries. I thought cartoons might be of some help but even they depict breeds. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a generic dog. Dingos maybe? But what do dogs look like if they are free to breed? What is the standard dog build and size? Even people don't come in as many shapes and sizes as dogs do. I can't picture a dog in my head and I've seen several in my life. I draw a blank. I have no expectation of a dog whereas I have one for a cat.

      Even something like "generic dog", the Google results can't settle on an answer. I see a German shepherd, a beagle, and a golden retriever...and that's just dog breeds I very easily recognize. "Mutt" is all over the place too. But "generic cat" turns up pretty much the same basic body plan in all the image results.

      If I had a point to this entry, I have since lost it. Enjoy your fragment...

PROBABLY THE DUMBEST OF MY CONCERNS...

      I went to my old apartment for the last time yesterday to remove the blinds my Mom had bought us and I wanted to make sure I harvested these black screws that anchored themselves beautifully into the shitty drywall comprising our window frames. Harvesting them, like I'm some sort of farmer in the early 19th century who would burn his house down before moving to recover the then expensive nails to build his next house with wherever he was going.

      I don't know where I got these screws from and I can't imagine why I would ever need them again in such numbers but damn it, I wanted them so I put them in a bag along with other things I was taking to my new home from that apartment and wouldn't you know it, that bag had a hole in it and all but one of those screws fell out at random points throughout my mile-long journey. It is both a testament to these screws and to my clearly deranged mind that I would even consider taking an out-of-my-way route home tonight from work just to see if I might stumble upon one or more of them in the predawn darkness.

       I must now cherish the two which remain and hope that I will never again need them for anything more than starter holes in drywall. My new blinds went up alright without them, but nearly every hole required that screw to get the ball rolling. I am a weird boy, yes, I admit that...

MAKE OF THIS WHAT YOU WILL...

      I'm guessing my lack of rest has finally caught up with me. All last week, despite my best efforts, I could not get to bed on time. Thursday, I was already tired from being over an hour late to bed the day before and managed to not get to bed Friday until over two and a half hours late. At least the temperatures were well below normal for this time of year but my sleep Friday was restless and littered with nightmares all revolving around the same theme of spree killing and fleeing those pursuing my arrest. The last dream is the one I remember best.

      I was in some sort of lab. All my coworkers were wearing the traditional white lab coats doing whatever sciency stuff my mind was not really concerned about revealing. I felt myself possessed by some demonic force. I fought it, trying to warn my coworkers to stop me before it is too late. Whether I said this my mind or I worriedly muttered it aloud only to be ignored by those whom I was near to, I don't know. But soon thereafter, I pulled out a semiautomatic pistol and fired upon my coworkers, killing them and then set fire to the lab using a flammable liquid. At this point, the possession ended and I realized I had to get the fuck out of there because no one was going to believe me. I fled the building and ran and ran. I made it into some woods before coming to a dead end. I turned around to discover my pursuers had cut off my escape and awoke in terror. I think that was the third iteration of that nightmare that day. I vaguely recall a previous one where a shapeshifter framed me in a similar scenario.

INIMANDVS VIII

      Being mad and sad at the same time is always an odd experience which gives birth to thoughts I did not know I was capable of having. It bugs the shit out of me that my creativity is so locked with these down states. The feelings are so self-destructive, yet I'm in awe of their occasional brilliance. This down state produced nothing brilliant, but it was an interesting thought nonetheless...to me anyway.

      Digby is the highly volatile fuel currently powering these states. Again I find myself wishing suffering on her which I admit bothers me. I mean, how can I claim to be in love with her if I am actively wanting her to pay for her perceived sins? I am fast walking up to the abyss that will become the official dividing line of both my crush on her and the sheer amount of my life I have wasted trying to get a girl I want to want me. I am currently about three months away from it being twenty years since the first girl I wanted, Patient Zero, rejected me. This milestone should be an insignificant one, merely a footnote in one's personal history, but since she would actually be the first in a series of unbroken rejections, it has come to be a representative symbol of just how much of a loser I am and continue to be. I feel myself scrambling for something, anything that will allow me to rationalize the past four years as not a waste but I cannot see how that could be done.

      Digby has served to reinforce my feelings of ugliness and while some of you might object to this assessment, I stand by the notion that "If nobody wants you, it's the same as being ugly." Digby has reinforced the feeling in me that I am outranked by everyone and by that I mean not only with her specifically --- believe me, it hurts me to no end to see EVERYONE I work with talk to her all buddy-buddy like (I thought that was an exaggerated observation made in sadness, but I have yet to see anyone I work with not talk and laugh with her). There's not one person who loves me more than her. They all know how much I am hurt by her, but not a single one has shunned her for my sake. That's not something you can ask for or even demand from friends, it has to spontaneously happen such an act of solidarity but God-forbid they not get their chance to bask in her glory. Believe me, I understand the desire...I still feel it daily but am denied it. I suffer alone in a kind of Purgatory, forced to endure an existence whereby I must abide an absence of her affection and approval all the while remembering what it once felt like to have (however briefly back in April 2008). I wish I mattered enough that hurting me would result in some, if not all, of the people I consider friends or allies shunning the one who hurt me but that will never happen.

      But the other aspect I was alluding to is akin to the three-body problem in physics. If it is just me and one other person in the room, that person will talk to me and engage me in conversation. However, add a third person to the mix, no matter who that person is, and I will become the odd-man out. I'm never more important than another. I have yet to find an exception to this...even when I am with my Best Friend (though to her credit, she won't practically forget I am even there). It's like no one notices or they don't care that I am no longer speaking. Add a fourth person, and those three will form a group which I will be (almost) completely shut out of. Understand, this isn't maliciously done on their part (I hope!)...it's just what happens. It's a very lonely feeling... I admit I am weak when it comes to conversational skills but it remains nevertheless, a lonely feeling.

     On a simpler note, Digby reinforced the notion that I am not worth being told "No" to; that I am not enough of a human being to be afforded that basic courtesy. And yes, I get it, it's not an easy thing to do but if you're not interested, you HAVE to tell the person asking you out especially if the man asking you out is lonely and feels he lacks options. Every day you don't tell him you're definitely not interested (none of this 99.99% shit either because that 0.01% WILL be clung to) is another day strengthening the emotional connection to you. And you certainly don't agree to go out on a date, stand me up, apologize saying that you'll make it up to me, agree to go out with me again, and subsequently stand me up again. I believe that Digby and I are compatible. I'd be at a loss as to how exactly to plot that out on a chart or graph or how to produce conclusive evidence of it. I hate relying on the "understanding" of it that I claim but I don't know what else to say. I know it's a fairly rare feeling and it's occasionally frustrating. There's a woman I work with whose twelve years my senior that I also know would be good for me (whether I would be good for her is an open question) and I would totally go for her if she weren't married and with four kids. But not every girl I've wanted has produced these feelings.

      Some of my crushes were admittedly strongly lustful, a couple were rather fanciful. That's the way it goes. But I have walked away from girls I've wanted. Rabbit just might be the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, even more than The First One, but the more I spoke to her, the more I understood that it would never work and it hurts for me to admit that because goddamn is she hot. I cannot even begin to fathom the amount of win she would represent as a compatible (and more importantly willing) girlfriend. It's arguable Digby came to this same conclusion before I asked her out, but remember, she never told me no. It sucks walking away, but I think it important that I mention that this does happen.

      However all this depressing shit led to me wondering if it were possible to mathematically determine one's attractiveness because another one of those dark realizations I had was that I have been working in my store now for ten years. I have easily worked with about a thousand girls (yes, some would have to be discounted due to age/marital status). Not a single one has ever expressed interest in me and not a single one I have been interested in has ever reciprocated it. And this is to say nothing of the likely tens of thousands of female customers (same restrictions as the workplace ones) I've had over those years as well but I won't count them for this argument though I probably should since two of my customers did flirt with me for a little while before the one rejected me and the other moved on. When I was in college, I had three girls take an interest in me, all of whom were ultimately rejected whether the reasoning was sound or not (mostly not...I was an idiot, I admit it and handled them all poorly).

      What I was thinking was you get your attractiveness or Desirability Index (in the form of a percentage) by taking the ratio of the [(number of girls who accepted me ÷ number of girls I've wanted) + (number of girls who have petitioned me ÷ estimated available local population)] / 2.

      So my tentative numbers from college would be [0 + 3/4000*] / 2 which would give me a Desirability Index of .000375 or approximately 4 hundredths of a percent. This number is entirely unfair I admit and in sore need of refining. I guess a better number for the latter argument would be assuming a percentage of the local population based on the number of girls I actually wanted (even if only a little). Let's say that number is 30. Now it's safe to say that I would accept more girls who expressed an interest in me than I would accept if I were the one doing all the work. But what should that factor be? Two, three, four? I'll say four in that I believe that there are four times as many girls I would give a chance to if only they would ask for one versus the number of girls I'm willing to take a chance myself. Using that metric, my Desirability Index improves to [0 + 3/120] / 2 which would make my DI** 1¼% which is better but still quite shitty.

      Well, it's getting late (for me anyways). I must go cook dinner. If this stupid idea has potential, I'll elaborate on it upon request though odds are, I'll explore it on my own without prompt. Good day reader(s)!

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* student population of my college is listed at approximately 8000 students. I'm assuming a 50/50 split of the sexes to get 4000 potentials.

** calling it DI makes it sound hipper.

MORE LIKE IDIOTPATHIC RHINITIS IF YOU ASK ME...

      I'm still coming out of it: some lingering itchiness and occasional sneezes still but I'm coming out of it. I've had what may or may not be a severe allergic response since last Friday night. Again with the same symptoms of an itchy left nostril, copious amounts of may-as-well-be-tears mucous, and violent sneezing fits. The new magic number seems to be six...six sneezes in a row before it finally gives up...each sneeze more violent than the last. I actually pulled a muscle just above my pelvis on my right side sneezing so hard and on Sunday I was holding on to a railing while sneezing and pulled a muscle in my left arm as well. Both are feeling fine now, but it's (sarcastically) good to know I'm capable of that. I wonder how long it'll be before I crack a rib or two doing that? The one (sarcastically again) fun new one was this sensation of electricity crackling all over my face, nostrils, and hair as though I were building up a static charge that would release itself in a cascade of exhausting sneezes which make my fingertips go momentarily numb and disorient me. I love my life! (yes, that was also sarcastic)

      Still, I go through the same shit when people see me like that. I've had these sneezing fits and runny discharge since I was eighteen. Yay! Fourteen years of this shit. We all just assumed they were allergies...a present from my body now that I had reached adulthood. It was usually treated with the go-sleepy-now medication diphenhydramine hydrochloride better known as Benadryl. I don't think it ever actually worked, I think just going to sleep for a while allowing my body to calm the fuck down is what was doing it. Yet, people still suggest I take this allergy medication or that one or this home remedy with no science to back it up or some other miscellaneous proposal. I can't explain it to people and I'm sorry to all those whom I have snapped at over the years in frustration. I'm not actually mad at you, I swear. It's just maddening, is all.

       I get all sorts of suggestions to stop my sneezing and I have to tell people that there is in fact no such medication. There is no pill or elixir (short of a bullet or cyanide) that stops sneezing and I'll go on the record saying this is probably a good thing despite how frustrating sneezures can be. I'm sure ONCE in a while, sneezes do serve a valuable, potentially lifesaving purpose. Figuring I should probably have science backing up my angry rants, I went online to search for proof of this assertion that my former allergist had already told me. I learned fun new words like rhinorrhea (snot folks!) and pruritus (intense itching laymen!) in addition to stumbling upon a diagnosis that immediately distracted me from my goal called "Nonallergic Rhinitis" aka "Vasomotor Rhinitis" aka "Idiopathic Rhinitis". Hmmm...what could that possibly be?

      Read for yourself why don't you? Go ahead. I'll wait...

      You see, I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to people and things which annoy me and going into annoying sneezing fits seemingly at random is something that I would pay attention to in detail in an effort to isolate a cause. I understand the pathology of it well from start to finish. While I'm tempted to conclude that it is ultimately a sickness since the day after I last showed symptoms my...uh, rhinorrhea is discolored like it is when I'm sick, I find it odd that the progression of the symptoms is identical each time which points me back to an allergic reaction. After all, have you ever had an identical illness? No, probably not. I doubt you've paid attention to them, but you'd've noticed that each cold has its own fingerprint of misery which it inflicts on you. You'd've also noticed that your whole body gets in on the act be it aches and pains or a fever or chills or stuffy nose or runny nose or thick mucous discharge or general weakness or any one (or even all!) those symptoms with varying degrees of strength associated with them. Not this reaction...it's just in the nose. My body only gets weak from the amount of energy it puts into sneezing and producing the runny snot and I do get hungry when I get that way.

      The thing is, while I know from scratch tests that I'm allergic to cat dander, cat dander does not make me sneeze. If I pet a cat and then scratch my arm, the arm will well up where I scratched or if I rub my eye, my eye will itch a bit (but not intensely), but that's it. I don't get a runny nose and I certainly don't sneeze and believe me, I'm weird. I've held my cats to me and inhaled. Cats smell weird, but they don't make me sneeze. I'm pretty much not allergic to anything else. The only thing else I've gotten reactions to is the crud that accumulates under the registers at work. If I accidentally scratch myself on anything under there, I get an itchy welt that persists for up to a week, but that might be an actual infection and not an allergic reaction as my cat dander hives don't turn red.

      No, the only trigger I can pinpoint with some sense of confidence is a lack of adequate rest over a period of (usually three) days. I'm guessing that produces the yawning which produces the tears which drain into my nose which cause me to sniffle until "something" goes wrong and I start getting this feeling like a bump in my left nostril rubbing against something the wrong way (almost like an ingrown hair) that causes more sniffles and mucous production which ultimately manifests as sneezing fits (sneezures) which last anywhere from one to three days (may have to up that to four, possibly five depending on how I feel when I wake up later today). Now perhaps that "feeling" in my left nostril is a polyp: I don't know because I don't know what a polyp looks/feels like but it's the only alternative I can't definitively rule out by myself.

      The only other possible trigger is significant rainfall in the preceding day. This current one, we had like three inches of rain. However, the preceding one, rainfall did not happen although there was a significant temperature drop which was listed under that possible causes. But I'm not confident of either of these possibilities: they seem more like red herrings to me. Of the other possible symptoms I can rule out alcohol and spicy foods straight away. I did scratch my arm after handling newspapers with no effect. Strong emotions are probable but given that I've gone through numerous downs (and occasional ups!) without any "allergic response" to it, I'd have to say they're a non-factor as well. Barometric changes is interesting. I'd need a weather history for my area with that level of detail to rule that out. (I just did. Inconclusive. Seven months ago, the pressure was relatively constant while there was a stunning change just last Thursday preceding the storm). Bright lights I'd have to rule out since I'm under them constantly after coming in from walking in darkness for forty minutes. And while perfumes and cigarette smoke annoy me, they don't affect me like that either and I can vouch for that having been around cigarette smoke for years and having had numerous women (including one who was probably hitting on me...crap! another name for the list! I forgot about her till just now! Hey, she used to know one of my cousins...Facebook, you're so awesome...now find me my high school crush goddamnit!!!) who were heavily perfumed.

      Anyhow, while nonallergic rhinitis is a diagnosis of exclusion, I feel compelled to accept it. How frustrating is that? What is sounds like is basically, my body's just going into sneezing fits for the hell of it. My immune system just wants attention because it has so little to do. It's throwing a tantrum and believe me, I wish I could give in to it (where's an aerosolizer with rhinoviruses in the solution when you need one?). Nonallergic rhinitis sounds autoimmune to me. Great, even my own body rejects me... It's great to know what it possibly is but it sucks even more to know that nothing can be done about it except for extreme solutions that I must (unfortunately) always reject like cutting off my nose and going for the Lord Voldemort look or moistening a Q-tip in nitric acid and burning the accursed itchy area away (I could still smell with my right nostril so it's not like it'd be a total loss, right?).

      You really do get some medieval thoughts going through your head when you get this way. :-)

THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part VI

      I guess I ought to be making specific tags for these entries to make it easier for me and my imagined¹ readers to read my various serial entries?

      The other day I noticed by accident that my eyes see differently or more accurately, I finally comprehended something that I had been suspicious about for some time now. I was bored and sitting in such a way that one of my hands was covering my right eye. Both eyes were still open, but I could now only see from my left eye. And it was strange, but I swear that I was perceiving the world more possessively...more...selfishly. I felt more negatively emotional, more self-aware, more focused, more arrogant, more spiteful, more intuitive, more...certain of things. And when I removed my hand, things felt normal again. It was weird, so naturally I got curious and did it again producing the same results.

       I switched eyes and then noticed I saw the world more calmly. I felt a greater sense of compassion and desire to understand. I also notice that looking at the world through only my right eye leaves me feeling weary (whereas the left eye view leaves me feeling spirited) and with a sense of sadness. I feel more responsible (in the sense of knowing what needs to be done) but it doesn't come with a sense of urgency; but rather, being burdensome.

      I've also noticed that I've been seeing the world lately more through my right eye and that it seems to be coincidentally linked to my recent rise in my overall mental state (now about two months old). Usually I feel myself left-eye dominant. I'm not using dominant correctly I don't think because every test I take suggests I am right-eye dominant. What I am referring to here is the sense of which eye I'm actually seeing from. Yes, we see through both eyes, but I've noticed that I feel as though I'm seeing more, or rather, that one eye is taking on a greater sense of the seeing leaving the other eye simply to fill out the view. When I would  feel my left eye as dominant, covering it up as described in previous paragraphs gave me the sensation of straining to see whereas leaving only the dominant eye uncovered, aside from removing depth-perception, produced no such feeling of strain (this strain/unstrained feeling is in addition to the senses described previously).  Nowadays, my right eye feels as though it is doing the work of seeing and the left eye is in support. In the past week, I've had two minor depressions (both lasting less than a day - one, in fact, lasted only six hours), and in each of those two instances, I've noticed my vision "shifting" to the left eye. I'm also "left-eyed" when angry.

      It's bizarre and I don't understand it considering that my brain's two hemispheres are connected so while each eye is connected to either side of the brain, the halves share information so it's not like one side can keep information from the other. There seems to be research that has been done which corroborates (albeit less insanely) what I'm feeling although I am cautious to apply it too liberally to what I have been writing about this entry.

      The left eye wishes to bring about suffering. The right eye, understanding. The left eye (right brain) "feels" like it is being oppressed by the right eye (left brain) and yearns to be separated from it. The left eye is the willing villain. The right eye is the reluctant hero which would endeavor to stop the left eye if the left eye could ever get a body of its own.

      The trouble with all this is that it's hard to pay attention to what it is I'm doing without risking affecting the results or worse, playing to the results. Nevertheless, I will try to notice when I'm talking to someone, which eye I'm using dominantly while speaking to them. I find I prefer being to the left of Digby when speaking to her and that would correspond to my right eye (something I've read recently suggests that I am doing myself no favors preferring to speak to her from that side); that I prefer holding the phone to my left ear which makes it harder for my left eye to see since my hand is now visible blocking some of its view; that when I'm confrontationally mad at someone, that I prefer to face them, keeping them slightly to the left of my field of view (ideal for the left eye);  and that when I'm mad but don't want there to be a yelling fight; but rather, a more "reasoned" one, I'll either keep the person to my right peripheral field or if I must face them, keep my head down with the left side tilted slightly downward (ideal or at least better for the right eye).

      I wonder now how I handle ordinary conversation? For those of you who actually speak to me face-to-face, try to notice which eye I'm looking at you with as it just may indicate the trustworthiness of the advice I am offering. Something fun to keep in mind, for the future.....

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¹ I'm referring to people who may have found this blog and not those who were told about it

FUN WITH THESAURUS

      Have you ever come across a girl so pretty it almost makes you angry? Not angry in the sense of you want her and can't have her kind of way; but rather, angry because it feels as though an injustice has occurred.

      It's like this girl is so pretty that in order for her to exist in this form, a hundred others had to be born ugly in a gesture of compensation by the universe. She's so pretty that standard adverbs like "very" and "extremely" are too imprecise to convey your reaction from the look you've been afforded. She's so unprecedentedly pretty that she upsets the curve set by your previous infatuations. She's so unbelievably pretty that you feel practically compelled to crush on her simply because you don't know any better...like it would be disrespectful not to. A girl so disturbingly pretty that she will diminish us all upon leaving this world. A girl so portentously pretty that she must surely be the answer to an age-old profundity. A girl whose indelible face clearly has an output in the high 900+ milliHelens range.

ridiculously pretty

      A girl so frustratingly pretty that you cannot help but run an entry of grandiloquent expressions in an online blog about the subject into the ground... :-)

DREAMING LIKE THEY DO IN CARTOONS...

      Most of my dreams are blasé. While this one was no exception, I found how it was carried out to be amusing as well as a bit disturbing.

      I was dreaming that I was talking to Bronx on the phone and that I fell asleep...IN THE DREAM... I heard my phone ring again, got startled and woke up...IN MY DREAM...and apologized for having fallen asleep on her; that I didn't know what happened. No offense to Bronx, I love talking to her. She's truly a delight so I don't know why my dream heaped such an insult upon her but I had a dream in somno...what the fuck?!

      This definitely tops the black&white dream I had years back and may actually top the dream which I woke up from and went back into upon falling asleep again.

      I'll need a consensus vote for which of the three is the weirdest to experience.

THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part V

      I had this bizarre thought the other day for a creepy explanation as to the origin of Santa Claus. Santa's an elf as are his workers. Not the Tolkien-type elf of course, just some generic one. I'm not even sure if Santa has pointy ears as they tend to be hidden in his hair and cap. Of the many problems inherent in the Santa story, what of these elves? And Mrs. Claus always felt like an afterthought or someone shoehorned in later to the story to help reconcile certain things.

      Santa is posited as a magical being so what if the whole workshop thing were more like a bee colony? The elven workers are generally portrayed as male and they can be, it's not really important but they never seem to have real families, more like master/apprentice type relationships. What if they are all of the same mold and Santa is their queen? Santa is so fat because he is full of elf eggs (or larvae) which he lays and they subsequently hatch into worker elves. These elves are incapable of reproduction like worker bees. They're born knowing what they need to do and perhaps like bees, rotate through various duties.

      Santa is generally considered immortal and he may very well be...as a concept. Santa might eventually grow old and need to be replaced. At this point, a new Santa Claus queen might be born using a version of royal jelly, but of an elven variety as well as Mrs. Claus drone. The two mate, Mrs. Claus, having fulfilled her purpose then dies. And the new Santa Claus, full of elf eggs, takes over the duties of being the queen of a new horde of elf toymakers. The old Santa either dies, is killed, or wanders off into the cold North Pole lands to succumb to the environment and the tradition continues.

       While this doesn't explain the ultimate origin of Santa Claus, it does provide a sufficiently creepy tale to tell increasingly disillusioned children, no? ^_^