12/28/07
When night approaches I become troubled because I'm left alone with my thoughts. Everything feels like the world is going to collapse and crash around me, left alone and dying alone in the uncaring cruel world that my mother always warned me about which would chew me up and spit me out without a second thought or pause to reflect upon destroying an anonymous life.

As troubling as those thoughts are when they sneak up behind me with a molly wire garrotte threatening my multiple chins I will waddle off to bed and eventually read myself to sleep. The next morning everything in the world is completely different and the night's thoughts were nothing but nightmares or simply crazy thinking on my part. Heck I acknowledge it as crazy thinking with the coming of dawn as Olympics Guy hocks up a lung and Spot sings to the cat across the way accompanied by my tinny, battery powered travel alarm clock.

What the hell is going on when I sleep that resets my brain or at least equalizes my chemistry so I am sane and capable of facing the world? Why can't I be like this all the time?

I think that I've figured out why the friendquaintance at work appeared in two recent dreams. I blame the Futurama DVDs that I received from an unknown beneficiary and presumably a well-wisher. Leela, the lead female in the series, is played by Katey Sagal who was also Peg Bundy on Married... With Children.

Ms Sagal's voice is very distinctive and would make anyone think "I know that voice". Of course this has nothing to do with Ms Sagal but the character she portrayed on Married... With Children. As skanky as Peg Bundy is, I'd fuck the character without a second thought and not shower for two days afterward because she's so fucking skanky and sexy as a character.

Anyway the friendquaintance has that je ne se quois about her that makes her resemble Peg Bundy with the clothes and the hair. After watching the first two seasons and the first disc for season three of Futurama I'm sure that my brain put two and two together, got five and it resulted in these two dreams.

I don't know if I should feel good about this or not.

When I do go back to school to get a degree I'm pretty damned sure this will be pursuing a BS in Physics with Astronomy. Maybe minor in English.

Might as well say it now that in anticipation of the stress and desire to actually do well this time around I may not be the best friend to anyone because most of my free time will most likely be spent doing school work rather than doing training the skill of strength and whatnot.

Even worse, I might be seen as a fair-weather friend only showing up to pester various college graduates for advice or assistance while pursuing my degree.

I can not urge people enough to actually read something, anything, even if it's the back of a shampoo bottle while taking a shit. Don't watch television and moreso don't watch the news on TV because you're not going to think, you're just going to react and most times the feelings evoked by television are visceral and negatve when you see stories about little girls who get a bicycle for a gift on Christmas then an hour later smeared on the street by a truck or about tigers getting loose at the zoo and mauling people or more bullshit about how this once-grand Republic should forever dwell in fear, removing shoes in supplication like the faithful entering a mosque and submitting to extensive searches to prove one's innocence.

Here's what I'm reading online tonight Thursday December 27^th, 2007.

• The Long Shadow of War. An article about post-traumatic stress disorder and how it affects a man in Kentucky. Found this through maribou.
• Alexander Graham Bell stole the telephone patent from Elisha Gray. Only Thomas Alva Edison is more of a scumbag.
• Exoplanet reflected light detected for the first time. Really amazing stuff here even though some may sarcastically declare "WOW LOOK AT THAT PIXEL". If only it was a terrestrial planet.
• Has global warming stopped? Since 2001 global temperatures have remained statistically the same.

The Long Shadow of War article drew me in because it dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder. As George Carlin likes to put it, "shell shock". When I went to the emergency room back in October I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I don't know if the doctor said it was severe or clinical or whatever adjective the medical profession uses to stress that something is more stressful than other diagnoses. Guess it only seems bad to me because it's happening to me and it's irrelevant to the world at large.

Shit like The Long Shadow of War give me pause. This man saw horrible things that profoundly affected him and disabled him as human being because of the horrors of the Republic's involvement in the Vietnamese conflict. At best I can say that I lived through about twelve years of physical abuse concurrently with thirty years of emotional abuse. Upon reflection what I've experienced can be described as being simply being part of suburban ennui, a spoiled kid who never saw anything worse than sixteen stitches in his shin (five inside, eleven outside), four stitches in his palm, being smacked around on the porch on a cold Sunday afternoon by the one person who attempted to show me any kind of mercy or comfort and culminating in psychosomatic back pain which always flares up in emotional conflicts with women. I'd like to say there's more but the rest seems to be so damned insignificant when I attempt to be objective about it.

I've never seen anyone die in front of me. I've never killed anyone. Most of the horrible things which are on par with this gentleman's experience were related first-hand from various people in my life whether they're acquaintances or family members. All I do is apologize all day, act meek and put on a poker face so I show no weakness to the world at large and when I do break down like I did so recently it's even more traumatic having to reveal that kind of weakness to another person. Makes me feel like I'm making myself available to predators because I'm too much of a coward to do it myself no matter how close I get to following through with those thoughts.

I try to console myself with the thoughts that most likely I will never physically harm or kill another human being because the only person who I have power over is myself and there's nothing stopping me from doing it to myself other than the night watchman who patrols the empty corridors of the insane asylum which is my brain.

I don't deserve to go to therapy because there are people who are more batshit insane than I am and I'm just taking away an hour which would be better served with someone crazier and more worthwhile than me. When I went to the emergency room that day I kept thinking that I'm not hurt, I'm not wounded, I'm just crazy and depressed and there are people in that ward who have their life running out of their bodies because of some traffic incident on Academy or choking their last breath after being riddled with holes down on South Nevada and yet I'm just a cheapskate suburbanite who greases the wheels of debt with a crappy job.

Since Christmas and New Years Day fall on Tuesday I'm not going to therapy which is not a bad thing. I am coping and the holidays are buoying my emotional state. Plus I have heptapod.org where I can get all this crap out and embarass myself with the stuff that usually can't come out in therapy unless prodded beyond the breaking point.