The Bipolar Otaku

Well, things are working, kinda. The cable modem worked right away, but by the time the service guy got to the cable box, the modem stopped working. And the cable box worked right away, but by the time he left, both stopped working. But it seems to be back up. I think.

So that's my first blog from the new house. Not much to say, I guess.

Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow, I get reconnected.
Tomorrow, I rejoin the 21st century. Tomorrow,
broadband gets installed! Oh, and I get cable, too.

Well, I tried emailing a blog off my phone, but it must have gotten lost. Oh, I know. I'll check my outbox!

Welcome back to the world of DVDs

I finally moved my TV over. And I bought a PS2. And to
commemorate the event, Im watching Almost Famous...
Ive waited too long to watch it again. Still an
awesome movie. Love Kate Hudson. Love Anna Paquin (no
matter how small her part). And love the music...

Eh... stupid message. Should have left it lost, I guess.

But, I besides buying my PS2 today, I also put my order in for my Onkyo HT-S777C (ie. my stereo system). It's only a 6.1, and it doesn't do up-converting to S-Video or Component video, but at $700, it's a lot cheaper than all the pieces and parts that I would buy separately (roughly $3000 before cables, for what I was planning). So maybe I'll upgrade it a little bit at a time before I finally buy my big screen TV. And I will need to buy a big screen TV, because a 32" screen is much too small for my great room. I will need about a 50" (or maybe a little bigger, but not much). But buying a plasma won't be completely necessary, like I thought it would be. I was thinking I would need a plasma so that I could mount the screen right above the fireplace, thus avoiding the double-focal point that most TV's cause in rooms with fireplaces, but the high mounting location of the plasma above the fireplace would cause too much strain on the necks of the low-sitting couch potatoes. So I can wait a little while before wasting my money on a plasma (which, I believe, will go through at least 4 more generations of development in the next 2 years anyway, but even so will be surpassed in price, quality, and size availability by large LCD screens, once they start developing on more flexible surfaces). Anyway, money is spent. bling bling....

Speaking of money, Sears finally extended me a line of credit, so now I can go shopping for a washer and dryer, which would be good since I bought laundry detergent today. Now the only question is if I should be waiting for their "next" series of washer and dryer (HE4's), or if the current one (HE3's) is good enough, or what do the stores actually have, since I know that The Great Indoors in Novi have the HE4's, even though the website does not...

I feel sorry for all the cashiers who have found themselves unlucky enough to find me in their aisles this week. Not only do I always seem to find cashiers who are late for their break, but those cashiers also find me with a cart brimming over the sides with hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. Not big stuff, but usually close to one hundred individual items. Then, once the check out is done, they have to figure out how to bag all of it.

So, I raise my slurpee to them, who wear their vests proudly.

OK, so joy is hardly the word for what Im feeling. The
up side is that Im finding muscles I thought Id never
had. The down is that leaves more muscles to ache the
next morning. But, at least its getting closer to
done. And at least my internet access comes in next
Tuesday. But the best part, really, is sleeping in a
house that I own.

I never did get to sleep yesterday. I moved two car loads worth of my stuff over to the house, unpacking some of the stuff, and then got ready for Hack's wedding. And for short periods of time in between, I slid back and forth across my hard wood floors with socks, screwing around in the great room doing various slashes with my kitana, watching some anime on my laptop. Then I sat in the parking lot trying to go to sleep, until I finally realized all my attempts at napping failed because I hadn't taken any Seroquel. Yep, that euphoric feeling I've had all day was very likely a mania, and if I hadn't been so energetically lazy, I probably would have dented my credit card. Then the wedding, where I had a couple of drinks, spent all night talking with friends I hadn't seen for a while, then wen to the bar with some of them afterward. Then I drove home, took all my meds, and tried to read until I finally fell asleep. Total time awake: 35 hours.

Then I woke up at 4:30pm. Total time asleep: 12 hours. Luckily the church group meeting was cancelled (although I still could have made it there, perhaps just a little late. But instead I went to Sam's Club to get some essentials (toilet paper, cleaning chemicals, etc.). I made my first dish in my new kitchen, using my new pans and new knives, and I'm now at mom's place so I can check my email and write this blog. Now to go back home and unpack some more stuff. Total time awake: probably 9 hours.

And in the morning, I have to go pay for my couches and maybe go buy my new desk and perhaps a ladder and a pressure washer and other errands. And perhaps my friends will gather at my place tomorrow and have a few drinks, or maybe they won't. But I do have to be home to have my couches delivered tomorrow night.

So, time to go back to home and go back to sleep. Maybe tomorrow will be more normal.

Ok, so maybe I forgot how to spell it, but I am,
nevertheless, home. The car is in the garage, my
sleeping bag is in the bedroom, my laptop is on the
counter, and my only internet access is on my phone.
So time for a nap and a bath after that.

When you work day shift or afternoons, your sense of days stays pretty well intact. The day in which you start work will always be the day in which you end work. Start at 7am on Monday and end at 3pm on Monday. Or start at 3pm on Wednesday and end at 11pm on Wednesday.

When you work night shift, it is slightly different, you start so late in the day that you just consider it as part of the day in which you will end your day. Start at 11pm on Tuesday and end at 7am on Wednesday, and you call that entire work day Wednesday.

When you work afternoons AND night shift, things start getting screwy. You wake up and go to work at 6pm Thursday and you get out at 6am Friday. That work day was Thursday. Or was it Friday? Was that a day? Or do you call that a night?

I guess I'm not the only one thrown off a bit by this. One of the guys refers to each passing day as "a sleep", basing his measure of days by the number of times he gets to sleep. Another guy does the opposite and counts "get-ups". I like counting sleeps better. At least that way, you count the good part of the day instead of the bad.

I have only one sleep until I get to go home.

Back to 4th grade. A teacher who was also a police officer. A teacher who, according to my siblings, I was afraid of back then. I don't remember any such fear, but I do know I genuinely liked his class. Except for the fact that all my "good" friends from grades 1-3 were all in the other 4th grade teacher's class, so keeping up with them was impossible. Three of them even had their own private game that involved each of them drawing little faces in a pocket notebook; whenever I asked what they were doing, they just put their book away. AJ, of course, had moved last year. Brian had burned away what little remained of our friendship remained when AJ moved. So most of my friends were gone. That left me with Tom.

Tom was a tall lanky kid with messy brown hair. He was an avid computer geek, and Apples were the only computers that existed, in his eyes. We would go to his house after school sometimes, and play on his IIe.

But around the time I was in 4th grade, my brothers and sister started something. Any time I did or said anything stupid (which was often), they would slap me on the back of the head. It was light of course, not meant to hurt or anything. I kinda thought it was funry, in a way, some k¡nd of joking affection.

So, on occassion, I'd do this to Tom. Tom was at least a head taller than me, so one time by the Four Square field, I must have hit too low and too hard, because he was on the blacktop. And I walked away, not wanting to believe what I had done, as Mike started yelling "There goes the slugger!" With every step, I pictured in my mind the wind up I must have taken. With every step, I knew more and more that the I shouldn't be walking away. I'm not a violent person and I didn't mean to hurt him. I should have been taking care of my friend, who I hurt, but I continued to walk away.

I don't remember how I got to the vice-principal's office, explaining that I didn't mean it to be hard. Tom was in the clinic next door saying that I've done that before, but never so hard. Tom was okay. I guess everyone (his parents, my parents, the teachers) accepted it as an accident because I didn't get suspended or anything and we would still play at his house.

But still, for years I considered this as one of the worst things I'd done to a friend. I probably wouldn't top that until college and tried to steal a friend's girlfriend. Yeah, I guess I should start being honest... although I know I wasn't the reason they broke up, it doesn't change the fact that I always was intent on stealing her away.

I have never been a good writer. No, surely I am not a bad writer either. However, I can say that I managed consistent B's in my high school advanced & AP English and Literature classes, but I had to work to the very limit of my capabilities to achieve those meager grades. Worse yet were my in-class essays; not only was my writing illegible, but my thoughts were fractured and incoherent. I’m sure you’ve noticed that my blog entries jump all over the place. Even my college current events teacher (who was also a first-time professor when I had her, and must have had very lofty expectations from an engineering school), after the first in-class essay/quiz, remarked to the whole class that she gave my paper the only 100% because "it was what I considered the minimum acceptable in terms of an essay" and proceed to rag on the quality and the incoherence. But then again, that said very little about everyone else, who got 70's and 80's. That still cracks me up.

So my story... Near the end of 9th grade, all freshmen in our high school had to write an in-class essay. The results would be graded by our teacher, and we would get a pass/fail: fail and take the "English Workshop" class, or pass out of it. The class was a rudimentary review of middle school level writing, and it was almost a given that honors students (ie. my class) would pass out of it. I can't remember what the essay was about, but I did know one thing: my teacher despised me. So when she told me, I wasn't surprised: my essay wasn't good enough; it was fractured and disorganized, basically having no merit besides decent grammar. I'll be stranded in this workshop while all of my classmates (even Mark!) passed out. Oh well, no ticky in the tubby for me! Grr, thinking that wench's reward system still pisses me off.

So 3 months later, sophomore year starts. I'm in this new class, stuck here with all the non-honors students. They are actually the part I liked best about this class - none of the elitist academics that plague most of my other classes (the ones who will, as seniors, start a petition for a 5-point honors class grading system which I would refuse to sign) - well none except me, that is. I'm not as bad my honors classmates, I think, but everyone in this class still sees me as a brainiac, some sort of elitist, although in reality I just want to be like everyone else. It doesn't help that the first words out of my teacher's mouth are "You shouldn't be in this class." She pulls me aside and I tell her that my last teacher thought I had much to learn, so I want to stay in the class and learn. So English Workshop begins.

While the class was not particularly interesting, like I expected, the classmates were worth it. Joking around with Asa, Rosie, Kirsten, and the rest (whose names I'd have to look up) was fun. Plus, we could talk about popular novels instead of classics all the time (Asa was probably the one who got me to start reading Stephen King, and told me to read "IT" over a decade ago; I should have read it back then). We would help each other write papers (like what's-her-name's comparison/contrast of fried and scrambled eggs, an instant classic, in my mind). We would talk about rumors floating around about who's pregnant. Normal kind of stuff that wasn't at all normal to me.

But sure enough, the single semester class came to an end. The final exam was an in-class essay, and you could pick any one of three. I picked the one asking me to explain why a particular person was a genius, which was perfect to state why I liked taking that class. My thesis was that in our own little ways, each of us was a genius. I started my argument citing the dictionary she had in her classroom, which had a very fortunately loose definition that a genius is "someone who uses intellectual powers in creative ways" or something like that. Since no two circumstances are ever the same, every use of knowledge, by anyone, is unique and creative, and therefore everyone is applies themselves as a genius and thereby is a genius. The argument is probably no better than a bucket with holes so big you can drop a bucket through it, but at that particular time, I had full faith in the statement. Everyone is a genius.

After school that day, I started walking home and caught up with Rosie. She lived in the same general direction and we occasionally, during this semester, walked together until our paths parted. I asked how she did and she told me what she wrote. She asked what topic I used and I told her I did the genius one. "Oh, so did you just write about yourself?" (She might as well have stabbed me a couple dozen times). "No, I wrote how everyone is a genius." "Oh," (I hear feel her eyes roll) "Isn't that your dad?" referring to the minivan I had intentionally walked past to talk to her. "Yeah. See ya." as I turned back toward the van. "Yeah..." she replied, faintly. The class just finished, and suddenly I'm just another undesirable. I guess it wasn't surprising, not really, even though I was initially shocked. I just laughed at myself as I got in the car.

And that conversation was basically the last time I got to talk with anyone from that class. I think one of them got pregnant not too much later. I think another dropped out. I think Asa moved again next summer. Most everyone else went on with their regularly scheduled school life. My classes became more and more honors and AP level, and I became surrounded by all the same academic brainiacs in almost all my classes. Don't get me wrong, those brainiacs were my friends. But any after that class, any thoughts of every pretending to be a "normal" student were wiped from my mind. I guess I should have realized that a "normal student" in high school is just an oxymoron. At least I got an easy A, and the same teacher later signed the slip allowing me in the Junior year AP English class.

I used to think my first depression and mania came in 3rd grade. While that may have been my first major (suicidal) depression, now I think the winter of '85, 2nd grade, gave me my first taste of bipolar swings.

It seems like when I was a kid, it snowed a lot more. Maybe it's just a matter of perspective; I loved snow back then. It was something to play in, not just something that needs to be shoveled. And thankfully it was plentiful.

After one good snowfall, maybe 4 inches, we were allowed to go out for lunch recess. I saw my best friend at the time, Brian, with a couple of the girls, Lyndsay and Ryan, starting to roll snowballs. I came up to them and told then we had to build a snowfort. They were going to build a snowman, so I left them alone and started to roll the first snowball of my fort. This was going to be the biggest snowball ever, and it was. I don't know how much time I spent pushing it, but I kept rolling it until there was hardly a square foot of snow that hadn't seen my snowball. I got it stuck once, and I found a friend to help get me going again. As he started his own snowball to add to the fort, I rolled mine into place near the row of cottonwoods that edged the schoolyard. By the time I finished, Brian and the other two must have changed their minds about the snowman, because they rolled three more snowballs into place. And so, with my behemoth as the cornerstone and foundation, the snowfort became a reality.

The craze spread quickly. It seemed like everyone wanted to be part of it. Really, the fort was nothing more than a whole bunch of big snowballs in a row, but with about 30 2nd graders and a growing contingent of 1st graders working on it, the four snowballs became forty in no time at all. Of course, since we weren't allowed to have snowball fights, the fort was rather useless, but no one cared. Well, at least I didn't.

But sometime soon after, I must have missed something. The snowfort wasn't THE snowfort, but A snowfort; someone built another one.

When I saw it, I didn't know what I was looking at. They took small hand-sized snowballs and built three tall walls out of them. You could look straight through the holes between the snowballs right through the other wall. Only 5 or 6 people could be in there at once. It looked really stupid. I disregarded their feeble efforts.

But there was more that I missed. As I continued working on improving my fort, I only paid attention to the people still helping me. In a few weeks, I was surrounded by 1st graders; all my 2nd grade friends were gone. That pathetic pile of snowballs had stolen them from my pathetic row of snowballs.

There is just one nice memory I have from this time, after I realized what had happened but before the depression really kicked in. I was hunting around the school grounds for a hardened piece of ice. It had to be a certain shape, dagger-like, I think. I found just the thing on the other side of the fence that blocked the playground from the teachers parking lot. Going out to get it was out of the question - the noon-aids watched too carefully - so I needed to reach through the chain-link fence and raise it high enough that I can reach it from over the fence. Only problem was, even with gloves off, I couldn't get more than a couple of fingers on it - my hands were too big. I struggled with this for a while, until a 1st grader saw me and what I was trying to do. She took the glove off her delicately small hand, reached through the fence, picked up the ice, and put it in my hand that hung over the top of the fence. She smiled at me as I thanked her, blond hair poking out from her pink woolen cap, slight gap between her slightly too long front teeth, but still a pretty smile, angelic is the word I used in my head for. I remember her angelic smile clearly, though I never remember name, even if I looked it up. I always felt like I hadn't thanked this girl enough, that I couldn't thank this girl enough, and it felt awkward as I stood there and smiled back at her. But I had to go. This piece of ice needed to be used.

I think the use was to carve out a snowball. My snowball. The snowball. After weeks of melting, still the biggest. Why it now felt necessary to hollow out my snowball, I can only guess. Maybe because I thought it would make a good storage, in case a snowball fight ensued. Maybe I already gave up. Whatever the case, I chopped into the back with the dagger-ice and started digging inward, digging with intensity, digging with drive. I only looked up once, to find Keith, one of my 2nd grade friends, now an enemy who abandoned me, asking for something. I handed him the icy core of my snowball, and he left. Kaul, a leader among the 1st graders, asked "What did you do that for?" I already felt that by giving that chunk I was selling my soul, and I didn't need him to make it worse. I still wonder why Keith came to me that day, because that was the only day I would have given them anything. I returned to my work, gutting out the foundation of the fort, feeling worse and worse with every chip that fell away.

When recess ended, the bell rang, and I brought the heel of my boot down upon my snowball as hard as I could. It took several strikes to shatter the top. It took several more kicks to break the front. With that done, I walked away and never came back.

I was done with that snowfort. I was done with all snowforts. I never was asked to join the other, and I probably never would have gone. March was near anyway, muddy patches of grass appearing, but I knew, even then, that was just an excuse. Maybe I was too proud to go there, maybe I was to ashamed, maybe I was just mad at them, maybe I was afraid what they would do to me there, maybe I felt an outcast and really was hoping for an invitation. Looking back, I think it was fear, fear of further rejection, fear of how things could possibly get worse.

Although it would be quite sometime before I realized the impact of that winter (I'm actually just realizing it now, 19 years later), there are a lot of different lessons that I can say I learned in those few months. That you should never ignore the competition. That friends can leave you when you're not looking. That sometimes people can show up and help without being asked. That sometimes you find yourself digging out your own core. That sometimes it feels like you betray yourself in order to feel accepted. Its also the first time that I can think of when something that might have been a manic drive took over, the first time a depressive mood fell over me, and the first time I would take action on depressive mood. Even if that action wasn't directed toward my own body, it was still obviously directed at myself.

It would be another 8 or 9 months before I really felt betrayed, by my best friend, by others, but this would be the first time, which I would hold in my subconscious for years. As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. And yes, shame was what I felt when the second time came.

Everyone cheats, at least a few times in their schooling, don't they? I could probably name every single time that I did, at least not including programming equations in my calculator, which was more of a gray area (professors basically accept that they can't do anything about it).
- Changing answers while correcting my 5th grade math homework
- Writing words on my desk for German 1 quiz
- Intensionally turning in the wrong AP Chem homework to be graded (she was only skimming to see that we did it and looked at what I handed her and okayed it)
- Having my friend's dad make part of a pencil holder we were making in Manufacturing Processes (ManPro) after we screwed up our original shaft in the lathe
- Faking the text output of a networking lab, after we found the program we copied from a source on the Web didn't work (kind of double cheating, in this case)
- Using a crib which no one knew I had for my Real Time Operating Systems final project (which is how I debugged in 2 days, what everyone struggled on for 4 weeks)
- Giving credit to another group by signing their names on my RTOS project at the last minute since theirs didn't work
- Doing book reports on books I never finished (Les Miz, Edwin Drood, and Moby Dick).
I even remember being accused of cheating on a 3rd grade multiplication quiz by a blond girl named Emily. She and I used to compare progress all the time when doing homework (I was slow, but so was she), but after she went to the teacher after I glanced at her paper (to find she was killing me on this quiz), I never talked to her again. Ever. Too bad, I thought we were friends.

But the one that always comes to front of my mind wasn't "technically" me cheating, but helping someone else cheat. Senior year, the subject was AP Calculus, which, besides band, was my favorite subject in all of my high school years. Part of that reason was because I found it easy, but more than that, I found it easy to teach and I liked teaching it. The teacher had the big chalkboard, and that left me with the side board. Everyone around me would work together, and when it got tough, I'd do the problems on the board. Sometimes the teacher would decide those problems were too difficult and remove them from our assignment, but my friends would still tell me to finish the problem and would continue to take notes. I think back on that class and promist that if I could make as much money as I do in my current job, and if I could have students attentive as that whole class was, I'd quit my job and be teacher. Seeing as it would be unlikely to get either guarrantee, I won't be a teacher any time soon. Probably for the best...

Anyway, on one test day, most people were finishing up and handing in their tests. People were starting to talk, but the teacher would shut us up and remind us that some people weren't done. Then, 20 minutes left in the hour, he left. Some of us got up, walked around, talked...

"J.T." a voice called softly. Michelle, still taking her test, a tall and a very thin rail of a girl, with straight silky blond hair which hung down past her shoulders and, if I remember right, soft hazel eyes. A really good looking girl with whom I'd been in the same math class most years since 8th grade. That isn't to say that I actually knew her that well, but for as attractive as she was, she always seemed really down to earth. But down to earth or not, she was still buried deep in the category called "way out of my league".

She didn't have to say anything else; It wasn't a sound of despiration, but it might have been close. I just walked toward her, she placed her pencil on the page waiting. I looked over her shoulder at the last two problems. "Integrate by parts... Convert the cosine... e to the x gives you... " or whatever it was that was necessary. I just pointed the way to her, but she did all the work once she understood. She was finishing up the last one when I heard the door open. Then I went back to my friends and left her alone as the teacher came back in. She did pretty well, a solid B, I think, for her grade. She never thanked me, or even mentioned the test to me, at least not that I remember, and I never expected her to. The deed was done, and it was the right thing to do.

I'm not really sure why this always seems to have been a particularly memorable day from high school. Would it have been as memorable if it were someone other than her? She is not the last person I would have expected to ask for help, but then again I didn't expect her to ask me. Maybe Vince or Chris (who sat on either side of me, and asked me for help often), but not me, not during a test. Of course I am the type of guy who would help, even during a test, but I didn't think she, or most people for that matter, would realize that.

But maybe I remember it just because it was one of those times I disregarded the rules and did something I knew was more important than the fact that we could have been in a lot of trouble if caught, which really would only have happened if someone ratted us out. I can name 3 people in that class who I think might have thought that tattling was the right thing to do. As an aside, one later asked me to prom, and I turned her down, because she just wasn't my type. Actually, I found her intellectual elitism annoying and I really couldn't stand her. Anyway...

Even so, I don't think the test probably would have made a major impact on her grade. Even if she failed, the teacher probably would have given her a way to make it up; he was good like that. So maybe I all that I did was save her from a little extra credit later.

Would a failed test have made her cry? Maybe I helped her emotionally in some small way, boosting her confidence perhaps. Who knows?

Anyway, its funny that 9 years later, I start thinking I want to know more about this person. I can't remember ever knowing who her friends were, what she did (besides synchronized swimming, I remember that), who she dated, where she went to college and what she studied (though I'd bet money that she went for nursing)...

Well, whatever it is that keeps this memory afloat, this is just one of my many meaningless lingering memories of high school.

I'm reading "IT" by King right now, because he referred to it in The Dreamcatcher and evidently has many links to the Dark Tower. So far he's just going through the lives of seven social outcasts (losers, according to some) who banded together during a summer break back in junior high. Some of their stories remind me of my own, but mostly in tangential ways. So I'm sure I'll be talking about more and more of my childhood, probably interspersed stories of my home ownership experiences. Of course, most of my stories are such that I don't even understand the point of them, that tell morals that are worthless, or expose parts of my psyche that aren't particularly interesting. Maybe those stories will make things make more sense for me. Maybe those stories will make my shadows seem less dark. Maybe those stories will help me be okay. Maybe those stories will make them stop floating to the top and haunting me. Maybe those stories will just screw me up even more. Who knows. So, bear with me. Or don't, I don't care. It's my life and my blog.

Once in a while, I also love finding bits of your own philosophies or personnal set of unwritten beliefs presented in text, conveniently stated words you could never have crafted yourself.

This time, it was actually a book within a book. The book within is called "The Basis of Order", found in the book "The Magic of Recluse" by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. The outer book is about a young man who is exiled from the island of Recluse, where the practioners of order magic live, until he can prove that he won't become a source of chaos on the island. So the inner book is one he studies on the way to finding is way and deciding if he wants to serve chaos, order or try to balance the two.

So anyway, the quote is this:
Love no one until you can love yourself, for love of another is merely empty flattery and self-deception for one who cannot accept himself pretense.
While I've never really put it into words, I think I've really held this in some corner of my mind for quite some time now (probably since really beating myself up majorly in 98?). Though I sometimes try to pursue some love or another when the opportunity seems worthwhile, I still don't feel ready for it, and basically for that reason. Or is that just an excuse for when I fail? Maybe it's just that, but I'd rather not think so. Foolish pride...

You know, these days, I think I can honestly say that I am significantly better about my self worth and my self esteem than I was, say 6 years ago, even if I had a bigger ego then. But still I wonder sometimes, how much do I still lie to myself? I do it to make myself feel better, I do it to make myself feel worse. I guess I'm that sure everyone does, but I still feel bad about it.

I really need to just stop thinking or worrying about love. I tell everyone that I have, one way or another. Sometimes it's the three-groups-of-friends story [If your not familiar with that, I can categorize my friends and coworkers into the groups: those married with kids, those divorced with kids, and those never married. Theyall speak with one voice and say "Don't get married." The only exceptions are the recently married idealists.], or the heartbroken-over-the-last-exgirlfriend explanation [who, honestly, I've been over for a long time], the too-much-work-and-no-time cop-out, the simple nah-I-don't-think-it'll-work-out escape, the more direct stop-trying-to-set-me-up whine, or the I'm-not-ready evasion [as presented here in this post]. But in case it isn't obvious, I still think about it all too much. Just gotta stop... It doesn't help that people (friends, family, doctors) imply that now that I have a house, it's almost natural that some woman will somehow pick up on this fact will track me down and marry me (damn golddiggers). Well, what ever happens, I hope it is... um, how about 'blessed', that might be it.

You know, now that I've thought of it for a while, I hate finding bits of my own unwritten philosophies written in the books I read. It makes me think too much, and prove how screwed up my head really is. Really, it's the fault of my rambling during my blog writing, but if I blame it on my writing, I might stop doing it. Then, I think I'd be really screwed in my head.

I'm finding myself loving to love reading once again. Fiction, mostly, fantasy most often, but not necessarily limited to that. However, what I'm starting to find most interresting is picking apart how the author writes. Furthermore, when they use recurring elements, be they Randel Flaggs or Kilgore Trouts or persistant worlds with deep histories, I just eat that stuff up. (btw, did you catch the King reference in the blog title?)

Of course, as I read these days, I find myself thinking, I could do this... (hum to yourself "and I want to be a paperback writer...") Fortunately, reality sets in much more quickly these days, and I remind myself that I completely lack the ability to make a character seem human. Always have, honestly. I really think this has much to do with my inability to understand how other people act. Oddly enough, I can somehow understand how to make people act, though I lack the charisma to use to actually use that talent myself; I work best passing that advice to someone else.

But anyway, while I read, I do very much like that short-lived sense of "I could do that" that I find myself while reading more often. What's sad is that I've got dozens of books that I bought the last time I had a reading spurt (I used to buy 4 books for every 1 that I read). I will have to crack into some of those once I've moved them to the new house.

Well, okay, I can really only think of one thing that I think I'll really miss when my stay here is done: Christine Cushing. The Food Network Canada host of Christine Cushing Live. There isn't much else to watch at 7am while I eat breakfast, but it really is interesting to watch... More so than most other cooking shows I've seen (no bam!s for me, thanks). And it feeds into my desire to cook. But she's only on in the Maple Leaf state... er, country, so that's that.

Well, it wasn't that great a year (I was only 8, after all), but I just heard the song "1985" by Bowling for Soup [lyrics], and thought it was funny.

Well, at least I'm in one of the Executive Suites, this trip. They didn't have any normal rooms availble this week, and this wasn't that much more expensive. In fact, it's not any bigger either. They just moved the bathroom inward in order to separate the king-sized bed "room" from the sitting "room", and put a TV in both areas. So basically they jammed more stuff in here, and the whole thing looks smaller. Plus I'm on the first floor, so instead of needing an elevator, I just need to go through an unlocked door and down the hall. Unfortunately, they only have a set of sheer white curtains, so privacy from the back parking lot is minimal.

It seems like I have to say something, but I really can't think of anything. Tomorrow I drive back out to Brampton, where I will sit around and watch car doors being built for a week. Then when I come back, there will be my friend's wedding. And when that's done, I'll have a week off to try to set up as much of my house as possible so that I can live in it.

I'm still excited about that, moving into my own house. There are two things I think I really look forward to doing there: taking a nice relaxing bath and cooking a big dinner. I'm still debating about whether I want to buy a grill now, or if I should wait for next spring. I don't really look forward to sealing my deck or windows, nor am I enthusiastic about fixing a couple of shingles. But finishing the basement sounds interesting, especially if I decide on building my own wine cellar down there.

Well, tomorrow will be a long day. I should get some sleep.

Once in a while, while I look through the stats on my blog, I see a search topic that just kind of jumps out, as being important, something that should be talked about. You know, just in case the person does the same search a second time, and decides to click on your blog one more time. Well, this time, yes I think it's something that should be talked about, but really I'm not sure how to talk about it.

"living life on life's terms and bipolar"

How does anyone live life on life's terms? And why would it be different or harder to be a bipolar and do it? For the first question, they just do. For the second, because it is.

Okay, that helps completely not at all. Hmm... What if we break this down...

"living life" - While that's a given for some, it's a challenge for others. In some cases, it's a challenge because of health issues. In some cases, poverty. In some cases, it's bad environment. In some cases, mental or emotional challenge. I know that in my own life, the last - emotional distress - was the hardest part of living life, at least for most of my childhood. Considering the query was phrased as part of being bipolar, I'll assume that emotional distress is the subject that I should talk about.

"on life's terms" - To me, this seems to suggest that you have no choice but to accept whatever crap is shoved your way. Sure, life sends you some terms, but you don't always have to accept it; sometimes, perhaps, but not always.

"and bipolar" - Is it a bad thing to be bipolar? It makes things more challenging sometimes. Sometimes I think my life was better for having this disorder; it made me... um, diverse. Sure, it made things challenging all the way through. Maybe it threw me in the gutter for a long time, but really I came out thinking that it was I who threw me in the gutter. Bipolar disorder was one of life's terms that I had to accept, and actually eventually had to embrace before I had any inkling about what I was doing to myself, my friends, my family, and my life. For me, I thought carefully about what a mania makes me do. Then I thought carefully about what a depression makes me do. Finally I thought about what would happen if a mood I had while depressed were motivated by the energy if I were manic - and that's when I found something really, really bad. It's not life's terms you will be fighting against, it's your own terms. I found that whatever control I thought I had was illusory, just like any regrets that I harborred should have been transitory. But both could be dismissed when I knew that it could be done. Life is meant to be lived on your terms. Shit does indeed happen, but but good things happen too. More often, I think, if you know where to look.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with the rest of this. I'm sure it would be better if I just stopped there. Whatever thoughts I long ago had of being a psychiatrist, in my opinion, where well placed (which is to say placed in the back of my mind to be forgotten about). Well, the lecture is over, so I smile and end this post.

Whatever you do, don't bother buying any Kill Bill or the Matrix DVDs. They both have box sets planned for this Christmas. I'm not exactly sure what's so special about Kill Bill's box set (besides the fact that Miramax is going to be milking people by having the normal vol.1, normal vol.2, special vol.1, special vol.2, AND special box set), but the Matrix will be a 10 disc set including all 3 movies, the Animatrix (worth watching if you haven't yet), and a bunch of extras.

I'm sure all the hard-core fans already knew that, but us not-so-up-on-everything fans forget to look up stuff like that.

So sorry Kate... It's like a week later and I just read and replied to your comment. I'm really bad like that. Sorry! *sob*

It'd be better if SquawkBox would send me an email or something when I got a comment, but it won't unless I pay them, and I don't feel like doing that quite yet. So I set up Blogger's comment system, which will send me emails, but I'm not quite sure I like that system either. So they're both up, until I decide to do something for sure. So, if any readers actually feel like making comments (assuming, of course, I still have any readers; it's so hard to tell these days), feel free to use either. I'm more likely to reply on the Blogger ones, but I guess those will remind me to check SquawkBox too.

Met with the youth minister today, and told him I'm still interested in helping. No mention of any doubts on my part, of course, but then again, I find my doubts always seem to disappear around believers.

We were talking about different ways I could help. Someone had suggested to him, and he seemed to think we had previously talked about (although I'm sure we hadn't talked about it, even if he had the thoughts already stirring in his mind last time we talked)... Where is this sentence? Damn run on. Anyway, the suggestion was: research.

Research? We're trying to make these LifeNight meetings fun, exciting, interesting, yatta yatta yatta, and we need someone to cover research?

Anyway, I guess there will be times they are going to need someone to find basis or traditions or interesting points or stuff like that. And I guess it's up my alley ("Inquiring minds want to know!" seems to fit me to a "T", as well as being a cat that gets killed for a certain fault, poor thing).

Like last time we talked, he asked me why Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays in Lent. How many people would have immediately cited that in certain regions, the tradition of carnivals used to happen the same time around Lent, and that the carnival was a celebration that would basically be an extravagant festival based around eating all remaining meat supplies because otherwise the meat would spoil in the thawing spring. Or would have gone on and pointed out how flawed that theory was because warmer climates like the Mediterranean didn't have such a freezing winter that meat could be stored in ice. Or worse, that fish was the mainstay for those climates anyway. And because of not knowing for sure, would have done more research afterwards so that he knew, in case the question ever came up again, that it was really because meat was considered to be a more expensive and extravagant meal and that the abstinence from meat was to avoid living such an extravagant life (even though, these days, fish can easily be as, or more expensive than chicken and beef, that such abstinence doens't even make sense anymore). Really, on Fridays during Lent, we should be abstaining from eating entirely, but living that life is a bit harder to push on most people, so the church doesn't try.

Sad, isn't it? Maybe research is the right start for me.

Yay!

Today was August 9, and we signed the closing papers on June 18. That means I've been waiting 52 days. They were required to be moved out and have handed over the keys within 60 days; they will be doing it on August 15, the 58th day. Of course, I will be out of town from this Saturday to next Saturday, and then I'll be going almost directly to a wedding, so chances are that I'll have to wait until August 22 to actually go inside my house. My sister will be picking up the keys for me, instead. So my family will get to see it before I do... bummer... Plus, one of my friends is in town for the first time since we graduated, so I'm sure I'll be spending some time hanging with him.

At least I'll be taking the whole next week off as a vacation, which will give me 8 days to move as much as I can fit in my Sebring. I've got tons of stuff (mostly new stuff) packed away in boxes, and tons more that I still need to box up. Of course there's a bunch of stuff that I'll need to do upfront, before actually starting to move stuff, like changing the door locks, vacuuming the empty rooms, decide whether to paint some of them now or not, make sure all the utilities are in place. Then there will be other things to start to order and get delivery of, like my couches (which are ready to get delivered), a ladder or two, a grill, maybe some other stuff which I'm going to think immediately important to order but I know I can't fit in my car. Then there will be the chore of getting all of my accounts to reflect the new address. And then there's a deck and all the windows that needs to be re-sealed, a lawn care service that I need to hire, and who knows what else.

Woo-hoo! Much fun on the horizon! (said with partial sarcasm, partial elation)

Wow. As fast as this laptop is supposed to be, playing Doom 3 in 1600x1200 in Ultra High Quality mode with everything by anti-aliasing on, the game ran at a whopping 7.4 fps...

Now I have to figure out a decent way to get at least 30fps... I was playing at 24fps for a while (using High Quality mode at 1024x768), which isn't bad, but still is visibly choppy. Luckily tweaking guides are popping up all over the place.

I went to church today, probably the first time since May. It was good to see some of those people again, but I felt out of place. What is it that I've done since last time I went to church? Have I believed in God? Have I prayed to the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit? And If I don't do those kinds of things when I'm away from church, did I actually ever do them, or am I just picking up the habits of those I surround myself with? In other words, do I believe in anything?

I'm looking for answers, and my Slurpee is not providing them.

Anyway, I am meeting with the youth minister on Tuesday to talk about how I can help in this coming year.

While it's always fun to be with my friend's from college, no matter how much I try, I just do not belong in a club. This time it was the Post Bar in good old trainstop number 6, more commonly known as Novi. We had a few pitchers and wings and stuff at Hooter's first, which was fun. Then we went to the Post, which, to me, is fairly torturous.

First of all, I'm not an outgoing person. Clubbing is, as far as I can tell, all about being outgoing. It probably all stems from a long standing low self-esteem. Even with recent improvements, I still can't be that person.

Second, I'm not a dancer. Sure, I'll go out there and dance, but my sense of rhythm is not all that great. Now that I think of it, it's a wonder I ever managed to play an instrument or march with that instrument.

Third, after I have drank a few beers, I will have one of two reactions: A) choking and caughing, or B) scratching my nose for the rest of the night. Luckily, I didn't have reaction A, because that usually means that I can't do anything for the rest of the night. However, reaction B makes me look like a coke-head, which is also not cool.

Fourth, the only way I can really be talkative with someone I've never met before seems to be by drinking a lot. Drinking, naturally, loosens many inhibitions. But the more that I drink increases the chances of reaction A happening, so I never drink a lot. Besides, if I have drank a lot, the chances are slim that my talking will actually be coherent or interesting.

Fifth, I'm no slave to fashion. Enough said.

Sixth, I give up quickly. I'm unfortunately blessed with a very good ability to take a hint. Many people, I have seen, are quite capable at making the lack of this ability work to their advantage.

Seventh, having the predispostion that I have no chance of making the connection work, I have a certain look on my face while I'm there. Most people think this is a look of aloofness. In my mind, it's actually a look that says "This is ludicrous, I have no business being here." I tend to carry this same look at work, and many people there misread it too.

And that's why I think I don't do well at clubs. When it really comes down to it, the only way I'll probably actually meet someone and have a worthwhile conversation with them is if they take up an interest in me first. As of yet, this has never happened. Oh well.

What really sucks is part two of my alcohol reaction: the hangover. Most people deal with the hangover the next morning; I have to deal with mine about an hour after my first drink... It might not actually be a "hangover" in the technical sense (as people tell me it's just not possible), but if it just happens to coincide with all the primary symptoms, like sensitivity to noise, pounding headaches, nausea, etc. Just imagine going through that while you're still at the bar drinking. And no, the age-old cure of asprin and lots of water does not seem to cure it, either. Nor does it mean that I won't suffer from the traditional morning-after symptoms either. Don't it suck?

Driving around for more than an hour.
Sucking down a 40 oz. Diet Pepsi Slurpee.
Singing along with Dashboard Confessional.
Laughing with yourself out loud.

Although one thing could have provided a clearer sign (that one thing being a Handel's Dulce de Leche, which is not available in this where or this when), the signs are obviously leading to one thing: self-therapy, in your own classic form.

Self-therapy? For why?

Isn't it obvious? Just trying to ward off stupid thoughts that I might use to hurt myself by using others.

What??!? That makes no sense.

No, it doesn't, does it? That's exactly why it's necessary. Don't you get it? Oh, nevermind. I guess the important thing is that the head is better for the time.

Well, for all it's worth, this computer can't run Doom 3 at 1600x1200 in Ultra high quality at anything close to a decent frame rater. It might have been getting 15fps, but I can't really tell since I can't figure out how to make the program tell me the frame rate. Oh well, time to back it down to 800x600, which should be much more do-able.

So my sister's friend (whom I still haven't met) is going through surgery soon, which will render her unable to walk for a few weeks, during which time she still needs to go to school. Someone jokingly said "Looks like you have to get that old boyfriend of yours back." To which she responded (toward my sister, of course), "What about your brother? Doesn't he work afternoons? I go to school 8 to 12, it would be perfect!"

Um... I guess I am going to be on 2nd shift for quite a while... The plant's 2nd shift crew knows me and likes me, so as long as there's a need for someone on 2nd, I'll be that someone.

As for going to Livonia to drive someone to Wayne State's campus in downtown Detroit... I guess it might be feasible. Waking up that early would be kind of rough, even if it is just Mondays and Wednesdays.

But would I actually do it? I don't know. I don't even know this girl. Maybe... I don't know. I guess it somehow feels like I'm setting myself up for disappointment and being taken for granted. That might not be good. But then again, who knows; maybe it might.

I spent $3867, plus who knows how much in accessories, including a memory upgrade, an external mouse and keyboard, an external fan cooler, and good headphones. It's a gaming laptop, but as of yet, besides some time playing Knights of the Old Republic, Final Fantasy XI, and Civilization III, I really haven't spent so much time playing games as I did downloading anime, much of which I haven't watched yet.

But now it's time.

I haven't been much of a First-Person Shooter type of gamer in a long time. Sure, I started where FPS's started, with Wolfenstein 3D, then spent a fair bit of time with Descent, Doom. I spent an entire off-semester (ie 3 months) playing Doom, Doom II, and Hexen until I finally finished them without cheats, instead of going out to look for a job. But after that, I pretty much had seen enough of FPS's. Quake came out, looked pretty, but seemed entirely uninteresting. Half-Life came out, and I played that all the way through, more because it was finally a FPS with some kind of cohesive story, than anything else. But then the upgrade packs came, and I was turned off again. Then there was a little bit of experimenting with various James Bond games and Thief, Rainbow Six, and Splinter Cell, but none of them held my interest for more than a few levels. Multiplayer on Bond games was certainly fun, but online competitions always sounded distasteful. Online friends told me I had to get Unreal Tournament 2003, but the suggestion fell on deaf ears. But I'm sure you can tell where this is going....

I bought Doom 3.

Yeah, I had to buy it. Why? I don't know, I just did. Maybe I've been longing to see what a BFG look like in today's graphics.

I'm still installing it (I need to clear off some hard drive space first... too much anime). And then I'll have to try to see what kind of frame rate I can actually get with all the options on at 1600x1200 on the Alienware Area-51m, however unrealistic playing it at the resolution is going to be. But I'll post the results. Should be interesting.

I'm back in Michigan, now. I have my car back, which looks like it might finally be truly repaired (they replaced the wiring harness to fix the check engine light, and replaced the CD changer which appeared to be causing the dashboard funkiness). I still don't have keys for my house (I did a drive-by today and noticed that they still have boxes in the den, which I could see through the open window). I'm back on afternoon shift, and back at the Warren plant. Nothing happened during the shift, so I pretty much just read my book (now working on The Dreamcatcher by Stephen King) and talked on the phone. One of my buddies finally got an interview with my boss (though it was only a phone interview, since the guy is down in Ohio right now), and based on the response, it looks pretty good for him.

But, for the most part, everything is pretty much the same as I left it... My sister has finally admitted that she wants me to get out of the house. Not that she wants me to leave (leave her alone with mom, that is), but she just wants to get rid of the piles of boxes of crap that I've got scattered throughout the garage and house. In other words, I'm blocking the TV, and it's pissing her off.

I found out I have almost a week and a half of unscheduled vacation time, so I asked to take the week of the 23rd off. By that week, which just follows a week in Brampton and Hack's wedding, I should absolutely, positively, definitely have my keys, so I'll spend that week moving stuff, installing new door knobs, maybe powerwashing my deck, buying my grill and a couple ladders, having my couches delivered, getting utilities installed, and other miscellaneous things that I need to get done. Maybe by the end of that week, I'll be ready to rent a UHaul and move the big stuff (ie TV, bookshelves, desk, etc), but I doubt I'll have enough books moved by that point that it will be feasable. My books really are the biggest burden for this move. I think that only my newly purchased kitchenwares come anywhere close to as much, which is really telling me that I've spent too much money prepping my kitchen.

I guess it's about time I bitch about I, Robot. Be warned, spoilers abound. But then again, I thought it was hugely predicatable after about 8 minutes of the movie.

The movie was very loosely based upon a book of short stories by Isaac Asimov, who coined the word robotics and created the Three Laws of Robotics, which are:
1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3:A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The plot, basically, is that a top scientist at US Robotics apparently commits suicide. A detective, who once was a cybernetic patient of this scientist and who deeply distrusts, robots because of their cold, analytical determination of good from bad, explores this suicide and decides he must have been murdered by a robot found in the scientist's lab. But how can a robot with the Three Laws commit murder? As the plot unfolds, we discover that the next generation of robots is being sent out to kill the detective because he is learning too much. It ends up that a super-robot mastermind brain, who has been running the city peaceably for several years, has determined that humans are a menace to themselves and that the most efficient way to protect them is to cage them up, and is using the new robots (with the new wireless uplink feature) to destroy anyone who gets in its way. Riots ensue, naturally, but the people on the streets are no match. Of course, the robot from the lab, the detective, and another US Robotics scientist manage to shut it down, the end.

Some critics whine about the cliche-ness of Will Smith's detective and the cliche-ness of Bridget Moynahan's cold and uptight but beautiful scientist who ends up melting at cliche-ed detective's hands. My complaint is about what they've done to Asimov's robots. In an NPR interview with Asimov, some 12 years ago while he was still alive, he talked about how his Three Laws transformed the use of robots in science fiction almost overnight. Before he started writing short stories, the norm for robots was that they were tomorrow's Frankensteins, that these menaces would get out of control and start killing people. Afterwards, almost all sci-fi writers took it as a given that robots would be programmed to not be able to do harm. So, without anyone giving credit to Asimov, his Three Laws tamed all robots from then on. The closest implication that his robots could do harm was in a short story in I, Robot, where an economic mastermind robot started putting small companies out of business because they were, on the side, repeatedly undermining that robots ability to do its job.

But now this movie comes out. VIKI (the USR mastermind) smells awfully like Terminator's Skynet, in spirit, in motive, in logic, and in control. Robots are evil again, out of human control again, back to being mechanical Frankensteins. Sure, maybe the Three Laws might be inherently flawed, but it still seems that the movie crushes the spirit of the author. That is my rant; let it be heard.

I am a reader without comprehension
I am a writer without words
I am a scholar without study
and I long for an obsession

I am a musician without tone
I am a poet without meter
I am an artist without vision
and I search for an obsession

I am a mathematician without formulae
I am an accountant without balance
I am a troubleshooter without solutions
and I yearn for an obsession

I am a roboticist without drive
I am an engineer without a design
I am a designer without innovation
and I call for an obsession

I am a romantic without love
I am a philosopher without conviction
I am a seeker without a quest
and I crave an obsession

I am a thinker without ideas
I am a student without class
I am a teacher without a student
and I seek an obsession

I am a photographer without perspective
I am a collector without a cache
I am a sommelier without wine
and I hunger for an obsession

I am a gamer without skill
I am a programmer without code
I am a witticist without thoughts
and I am dire for an obsession

I am a sleeper without patience
I am a homeowner without a home
I am an orator without voice
and I live for an obsession

I am an egoist without self confidence
I am an elitist without culture
I am tranquil without peace
and I hope for an obsession

I am a logician without sense
I am a psychic without intuition
I am an advisor without wisdom
and I wish for an obsession

I am a brother without loyalty
I am a facilitator who helps no others
I am a Catholic without faith
and I pray for an obsession

I am an optimist without hope
I am a pessimist without regret
I am a truthsayer without honesty
and I suffer for an obsession

I am a benefactor with nothing to offer
I am a loner in need of companionship
I am a jack with no trades
and I am obsessed without obsessions

I wrote all of the fragments for this a couple of days ago, but I just arranged it all this morning. I must have been in a darker mood then, although I wouldn't call it a depression. I was still reading a book at the time, The Rule of Four, and the word obsession got caught in my mind, especially since Pattern Recognition and the Glass Bead Game haven't yet left my thoughts. Those couple days ago, once I started putting "obsession" into phrases, and the rest - my past obsessions and other aspects of my personality - started to flow out into words.

I think what I'm trying to say is that, despite all the things I've done, I don't believe that any of them really matter. Nothing I've done is meaningful and not a one attribute of me is helpful, to myself or to society. Yet, I get by just fine, I am provided for quite well, and have no major struggles to face.

But while I read of other people's quests, of their lives and I envy those characters and their obsessions. Whether those obsessions are internet footage or elitist games or ancient texts or a tree in a field or God or land conquests, they always have something which consumes their time and energy and money and the people around them. And despite what they must pay for those obsessions, they somehow sound so much better than the nothing I must struggle with on a daily basis.

So I keep talking about obsessions, because that's the word stuck in my head. But really, it's not an obsession that I want, it's a calling. I have thought I've heard callings before, felt love before, held hopes before, but they've just turned into more meaningless errands in my life, useless searches for knowledge I never use, more empty crushes, more wastes of time.

The question I have, when I look back at this, is how I could write it without thinking I was depressed. Have I been depressed for so long that the feeling is numb, perhaps even calming or soothing? Or has my journey through life started to turn into meaninglessly wading through the day to day non-events where the big picture has just seized to exist? Or maybe I'm just reading to much, of books, of my thoughts, of my life.

I'm alright. I think I am, in any case. I can smile. I used to think that alone was very meaningful, though I'm not convinced any more. I suppose there were a lot of things I used to think were meaningful, before those hopeful thoughts were shattered.

Maybe I am depressed. Or maybe the remnants of past depressions have settled deep in the core of my being, the fiber of my soul. Or maybe I'm being overly melodramatic for being bored. Most probably, the later.

After deciding I couldn't get any sleep, I decided to take a shower and go into the city.

I went down to Eaton Centre and finally figured out how to get into the mall parking (after circling the place twice). It's just another mall... Oh well, I guess the parking fee was just a waste of money.