"Mono no Aware"

 I don't like to talk about how I'm doing because 1) I don't want people to think I'm doing it for attention and 2) there's nothing any of you can do about it anyway. 

But someone asked how I was doing, so... here it is. I'm not fully in the red, but I'm a very dark orange.

I want to point out that these intrusive thoughts are nothing new. I've had them, if not all my life, then at least since puberty. It's just my brain chemistry and/or structure, I guess. Most of the time I'm able to ignore them, but as my emotional strength is worn down they become more disruptive. About half the time they're just cringey "Hey, remember that embarrassing incident from long ago? Yeah, let's make you feel that cringe all over again." The other half of the time they're casual bad things like "What if you told your friend 'Fuck you, I hate you'? How would they react? I bet they wouldn't be your friend any more." 

As for the suicidal thoughts, they're mainly just a dark version of intrusive thoughts and not actual desires or actions. It's like an evil spirit whispering in my ear "You know, if you just killed yourself, all this would be over" and I tell it to fuck off. I have no plans or desire to do so, but the imp of the perverse is ever-present. So to be clear, while I think about suicide a lot, I rarely think about committing suicide, if that makes any sense to you. It's my own private memento mori.

Weird philosophical aside which links into my main thesis at the end:

In Japanese art and culture there's a concept known as mono no aware (moe-no no ah-wa-ray) which basically means "being aware that all things eventually pass/die/fade away and being wistfully sad at the knowledge that life is just like this and there's nothing you can do to change it so you need to just accept it." It's kind of a cross between memento mori and Zen philosophy. It's why watching cherry blossoms fall from trees is a popular activity in Japan; they aren't just beautiful and dying, they're even more beautiful because they are dying. 

Anyway, ever since having to put my beloved Daisy to sleep back in August, I've been having these intense feelings of mono no aware every time I see a picture or a video of a cute animal. Please understand that I still enjoy looking at them and I don't want people to stop sending them to me; it's just that after I see these picture, I'm gripped by this intense feeling/realization of "that pet is going to die and it will devastate you."

When people die, it's usually on a timescale of "happening decades in the future" and that makes it more palatable to us, even though it doesn't make the loss any more painful. But it's the sudden, unexpected losses that hurt the most, because  that means someone was taken before their time and before their loved ones could prepare for that loss. For example, someone dying of old age in a nursing home, or from a protracted illness, is less shocking than someone taken by an accident or by violence. 

It's for this reason that I cannot fathom the pain felt by parents who lose a child.* I don't know how they manage to move past that pain, and I don't know if they ever do. If they don't, I surely don't begrudge them their grief, although I wish them surcease from their pain. 

Pets are different from people in this regard, though, because unless you are very old or the animal is very long lived, it's practically a certainty that the pet will die during your lifetime. And I don't know why Daisy was different -- I've had dogs before, and I've mourned their loss, but her death affected me more strongly than all the others did -- but she was different, was more special to me, and now every time I look at a pet I just get that powerful sense of "You are going to hurt so much  when your pet dies. Why are you doing this to yourself? Why open yourself up to guaranteed pain, again and again and again?" 

I look at people who post pictures of their pets regularly. I look at content creators who have made their pets the center of their lives on social media. I look at all this joy, and I can only think of the pain it will cause them. 

I know that there is an argument to be made for "the joy you have with them outweighs the grief their deaths cause". I know that giving animals a good life is a worthy thing to do. I know that by saving an animal's life, you often save your own. 

I just can't feel that anymore. All I see is a dagger aimed at my heart. I don't understand how other pet owners don't see that... or if they do, how they cope with it. 

It just seems like large portions of my life are colored by mono no aware, and I hate it. I wonder how much of this is grief, and how much of this is just me reaching the stage of life where people I know start dying and the knowledge that this will only increase with time. 

 

End of aside.  

 

So, yeah. I'm upset by my loss and the fuckery that is my life because the insurance company is still dragging its feet in paying to restore the master suite. It's gotten to the point where mom just decided she'd use dad's life insurance payout to make the thing livable and then hope that USAA will reimburse us for it. They don't care that this is where we live, where we need to feel safe and secure and in control; to them we're just numbers on a page and they don't want to pay out so they'll drag it out for as long as possible. Maybe they were hoping the house will be wiped out by a hurricane or that mom will die before they pay, and then they can cancel the contract or something. 

I fucking hate insurance. I hate the CONCEPT of insurance, because insurance is basically me saying "I bet I'm going to have an accident this month!" and the insurance company is saying "I bet you won't!" Why do people bet against themselves like that? You'd be better off if you put that money into a fund that you used to pay for emergencies. (Of course, I say this knowing full well that I lack the discipline to put money into savings like that and not touch it except for emergencies.)

Because of all the furniture from the master bedroom is piled up inside the house, we can't get to the Christmas decorations. I don't much care about this but mom is a huge Christmas fanatic and she's pretty devastated. "It looks like we won't have a Christmas this year," she said to me recently. It eats me up inside that she's unhappy. 

Because of this stress, I'm not sleeping well. This makes me tired, so I either take a nap in the afternoon or I drink coffee to try to get some energy, and both of those things push the time I get tired later and later, so I get to bed later, so I wake up feeling tired, so I take a nap or drink coffee, etc etc. 

I'm also overeating because I'm a stress eater. Having a full stomach sends a signal to my brain that at least I'm not going to starve to death today so that's one less thing to worry about, and of course I'm eating junk food because sugar is my drug of choice. 

I also can't seem to get motivated to do much of anything except watch TV or play video games because escapism is fun and easy whereas anything worthwhile is difficult and draining and I feel like life has already drained so much of me that I resent giving it more. 

I could say more but I'm tired of talking about this. You get the idea. It all stems from the fact that this year has been fucking awful for me and if things don't get better soon I will probably end up in the hospital. 

I don't know what I want to gain from talking about this. I don't specifically want sympathy (although it is appreciated), nor do I think anyone can give me advice on how to make things any better (although if you think you can I would love to hear it). I guess maybe I just needed to express my feelings in some way, to shape them with words and release them into the world, in a manner more coherent than "Life is pain, and then we die" or "Shit be fucked, yo."

* One of the few turns of phrase I'm really proud of is what I used when a friend had a miscarriage: "This slippery, spherical tragedy."

Maybe it only makes sense to me, but in my mind I envisioned trying to pick up a bowling ball with soapy hands: I just couldn't grasp it. That was the metaphor for me being unable to fully grasp the weight of that loss.

Apologies for my Absence

I know I haven't been posting much lately. Part of that has been due to increased familial demands on my time / general holiday craziness -- there's a reason why I typically take a break from blogging in late December -- but part of it has been health-related.

I don't know when it started, but at some point I didn't have as much energy as I used to. Not only was I lethargic, but my brain felt sleepy; I couldn't think as quickly as I used to and my creativity steeply declined. All I wanted to was just chill out and quietly read or play on the computer instead of writing or working on Operation Blazing Sword / Pink Pistols.

At first, I thought it was just seasonal depression brought on by the anniversary of the dog attack and the usual holiday blahs, being compounded by all the awful political infighting and name-calling that's happening across social media.

Then at some point I had a realization: I had gone through this exact scenario before and I'd fixed it with a daily iron supplement. And, oh yeah, I'd stopped taking daily iron because the doctor I'd seen after the dog attack told me I didn't need it and should go off of it. And just like before, I've been craving meat (usually red meat) and having trouble thinking clearly and expressing myself properly.

I find it a bit strange that it took about a year for me to begin suffering effects from whatever mild anemia I have, but whatever, my body is weird in general.

So I took an iron supplement the night I made the connection and the next morning, I wasn't exhausted all morning and half the afternoon. I actually felt well-rested. I had not one but two really neat ideas (one political, one geeky) that basically crept up and dope-slapped me upside the head.

I feel like MYSELF for the first time in literal months.

So yeah, to hell with that doctor. I'm back on iron (don't freak out, it's only 50mg a day, not a massive dose) and I'm feeling good again. The cobwebs have been cleared and I'm thinking once again.

I expect to begin posting actual good stuff soon.


(Please, no comments from the Cult of Cast Iron regarding how all I need to do is cook my food in cast iron pans. I need more than whatever piddly amount leeches into the food.)

A Quickie With Salem

I'm afraid I will have to phone it in this week. I had planned on offering up my thoughts on Deadpool, but halfway through the movie I started experiencing some unpleasant sensations in my gut which led to a week of fun.

See, my refrigerator is a little old and busted. It ices up probably more often than it should, and I hadn't noticed until it was too late this time. I'd probably eaten one or two meals of stuff out of it that was being stored at maybe 50 degrees F by the time I noticed. Then, while it was unplugged for a day and a half to melt all the backed up ice, I was eating a lot of junk and fast food. Follow that with the bright idea of starting Friday morning off the right way with a big bowl of healthy oatmeal.. and my entire digestive system just ground to a halt. I spent a couple of days curled up in my recliner because lying down hurt and moving around hurt, and I've spent the last couple of days fighting my way through work and thankful I do so from home so that I can occasionally stop what I'm doing return to a fetal position.

I'm feeling considerably better now, if still not 100%, but I will do you all the service of refreshing my mind on Deadpool by going to see it during my week off of work that starts tomorrow, so that I may bring you a proper verdict on the movie. I swear, the sacrifices I make for you all. I'm glad you're all so grateful.

Anyway, in the meantime I'd like to bring just a few things to your attention that caught my attention the last week or so and that I wish I had more prepared, coherent thought about:

• British national treasure Stephen Fry was run off of Twitter after a minor, imagined offense this week, and fortunately unlike Joss Whedon, he has the good grace to claim he didn't just fall down some stairs. At an awards show, a friend of his was presenting an award dressed rather eccentrically, and he joked that she looked like a 'bag lady.' The comment was immediately seized upon as being misogynistic and one of Twitter's most valuable assets was relentlessly attacked for ribbing a pal. Personally, I think Fry has the right idea. Between their flailing stock prices and hemorrhaging executives and the institution of their Police of Vice and Virtue... what? Oh, sorry, their "Trust and Safety Council", Twitter is a sinking ship, and I'm glad. All it does is amplify misunderstandings and give bad actors an excuse to attack. As much as I harp on Tumblr, I'd rid the internet of Twitter if given the choice between the two.

• Next, we have long-time Gay Rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, being boycotted and branded transphobic and racist by an NUS LGBT Officer for supporting freedom of speech and standing against the practice of no-platforming. A man who fought for gay rights in a time when you'd still stand a not-insignificant chance of being lynched for being gay. A man who once tried to perform a citizen's arrest on Robert Freakin' Mugabe. I'm starting to see a real pattern here.

• Finally, a positive note: Something I've been saying for at least 3 years has now appeared on Everyday Feminism dot com! I'm not even archiving this one. I want them to get attention for having a moment of self-awareness, and I'm hoping it grows. Social Justice is giving bad people an excuse to act badly, and a cudgel to beat people they don't like with.

All right, everybody. I'm out for now. I've got one more night of work before I'm on holiday, and I'll somehow drag myself back to see Deadpool one more time just for you lot. I just hope you all appreciate the sacrifices I make.

This Wire Goes Where?

It is with heavy heart that I retire the last internal component of my original gaming computer, first built some 5 years ago now.

It is with fond memory that I recall making the decision to first build it. When playing Assassin's Creed: Revelation, I was put off by the framerate dipping into the low twenties, rendering the game virtually a slideshow and thus unplayable. I began putting together an order for parts with money set back each month, and made the order late 2011: an Nvidia GTX 560 graphics card, Intel i5-2500 processor, and 16 GB of DDR3 RAM. When finally completed, it was capable of an average of 37 frames per second on the maxed-out benchmark of Batman: Arkham City, and blazed through the aforementioned Revelation with all the settings topped out.

In the intervening years, a new video card, the XLR8 Nvidia GTX 770, was acquired, along with a new power supply as the old one physically didn't have the capability to run it. Not that it wasn't powerful enough, but that it simply didn't have the required plugs. Some additional RAM was added, but my poor system was finally reaching a moderate level of obsolescence. New games couldn't be maxed out anymore, and like history repeating itself, Assassin's Creed: Unity and Syndicate were barely playable. I was lowering the resolution from the standard 1080p (still far higher than the average gaming console can achieve) and turning settings down to low, and still getting mixed results. Well optimized games - Mad Max, Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor, were running fine, but Arkham Knight and the aforementioned Assassin games, which were already a mess, were a nightmarish mess of stuttering and blurred textures.

Come Christmas Bonus, I put in an order. The new Skylake generation i5-6600, DDR4 RAM, and a motherboard named after an explosive, the B150M Mortar.

Upgrade day is always stressful to me. It's a damn good thing I never went into medicine, as nothing works the first time I close up the case and start it up. In this case, it was quite literal, as the whole thing failed to power on. After cracking the case back open I noticed I'd neglected to attach the mains power to the motherboard... and the front LEDs... and the power switch. I'd forgotten to plug the power switch into the motherboard.

This rectified, I set about reinstalling Windows 10, which went successfully until, at the insistence of an otherwise brilliant techie friend, I manually reinstalled the drivers for the motherboard. The activity on my solid state hard drive went to, and stayed at, 100% until the computer crashed.

After a fresh reinstallation, and trusting Windows to handle the drivers, I'm back on my feet and happy to report that I'm now getting the same performance at 1080p on Ultra settings for games that were previously at 720p and Low settings.

All that said, it's set back the review I was going to write for X-Files, which is probably a good thing. That first episode was... well, someone linked me to the gif I'll provide here, which promises that the subsequent episodes have a little more to provide than the frenetically-paced mess that was the first episode.

And remember, it's never a successful rebuild unless you have screws left over!

The Tooth Truth

Back again this week with an update. Previously, I wrote about my fear of dentists and pending appointment, but gave little update to the actual outcome. Well... it's time to talk teeth.

On my first appointment, I was... nervous, to say the least. I managed to overcome this nervousness enough that I didn't bolt as soon as I heard the first piece of equipment come on, but I don't think I've ever felt so tired leaving an appointment as I did then. After filling out some paperwork, I was ushered back to the hygienist's chair, where a very friendly Hispanic woman in her mid-forties greeted me. She was the hygienist, and she first listened to my sob story. Apparently, dental fear is very common, and I'm hardly alone in having such huge gaps in my dental work.

On the subject of huge gaps, I did indeed have a cavity in my left molar.What really surprised me is that what I thought was terrible discoloration and possibly a cavity on my back right molar was actually a silver filling. I could not, even under duress, recall ever actually getting a filling done, so I have no idea how long it was in there.

I have a bit (massive understatement) of gingivitis. My gums were pretty puffy and red. The first appointment was a debridement, where the hygienist spent roughly an hour carving buildup off of my gums, occasionally handing me interestingly shaped bits of it as an example of what she was removing. Her good humour and willingness to walk me through the steps of what she was doing, along with them letting me keep a headphone in, got me through that procedure, if only barely. I was tensed up, eyes shut, hands clenched to the chair, back arched for a great deal of it. By the time I was out of the chair, I could barely stand, let alone walk back home from the office.
So after telling my sob story to the dentist as well, he inspected my jacked-up grill and came up with a plan. My molars could easily be fixed with a couple of fillings. The front teeth, he warned, might be a little more complicated, but could still be repaired with fillings; however, depending on the depth of the decay and how near the root it got, may still require root canals. Appointments were made, and I went home to discover later that night that I could, indeed, now floss my own teeth again. And I haven't missed a day since.

Going in for the fillings on the molars was surprisingly easy. The second appointment for the front teeth was a little nerve-wracking, but for the first time it wasn't the drill or the butcher dentistry I was afraid of -- merely the cost. Could I afford a root canal right now? Probably not. Fortunately, the decay hadn't hit the nerve yet. Two of the teeth got indirect pulp caps, but the fillings were successful across all four teeth, and for the first time in years my incisors look like complete teeth again.

Four weeks after the fillings, and my gums are still marginally sore, especially where the composite resin goes under the gumline (and I despise dental cord - the stuff they shove into your gums to push them away from your teeth), but after being looked at by the dentist yesterday, he says they're still healing normally, and he thinks I've dodged the root canal bullet. The best part is that, while the out-of-pocket was a little higher than the original estimate because of the pulp caps, I don't think they billed my insurance, so should an emergency arise I still have a fair sum left before I hit my maximum yearly benefits.

And speaking of emergencies, we're keeping an eye on my wisdom teeth, because I get the occasional twinge in my lower right jaw, and they're all sideways pointing towards the front of my jaw. But unless one of them tries moving any further than they already have, I should be out of the woods and down to regular cleaning and maintenance.

I think, maybe, I'm not so scared of the dentist anymore.