dogs.

my hands are cold.

my hat is old my teeth are gold i have a shoe i like to hold...

my hands are cold. drenched in blood and turpentine?

i hate dogs. we have dogs. well, garret has dogs. so i have dogs. i think they should go out and play. i want them to run and play. even though i don't like dogs. i feel bad they are in a little fenced in place. but they are big dogs. big-ish. big and strong enough to give me trouble. they don't listen to me. they run and play and won't come back. and i am not a good dog chaser-tackler. so no more play for them i guess. i feel bad about it but i don't know what else to do. Lick'rish snapped the links on her choke chain yesterday. So no more leash. and no more Run-with-no-leash, because they won't come back.

Entropia. Groups. Social navigating.

First, I want to repeat my favorite explanation of humans/aversion therapy.

There are stupid people that think that if you have problems with getting anxious around humans, or freaking out in the grocery store, or whatever- the solution is to simply be around people MORE, go to the store MORE, and you will see that there is nothing to worry your silly head about and tra la la la, la la, vomit, eye-roll, punch.

This is how Psych-os might help a client with a fear of spiders or elevators. You make them look at a picture of a spider, sit in the same room with a spider, and so on until they are petting a furry tarantula, and letting it run all over them, and saying- hey! wow! spiders are great!

It works because the elevator does not crash, the spider does not rip their throat out.

Humans are not spiders, and if i go to the store MORE, or endure a longer conversation with a human... well, this does nothing except to rip my throat out ten times instead of seven. It just carves the wounds deeper, no chance to heal, the closer the serial-killer gets to the surface.

Not productive at all, as it just reinforces all my beliefs instead of proving them irrational.

I am still not over plasma-girl and my desire to stab her. So, clearly, humans in real time (and in the same room) are too big of a poisonous snakey-spider.

But Garret thinks talking to online people is good. Because he says if i just read books i am meaner, less coherent, and expect people to have more mind reading capabilities.

Online people are slowed-down-spiders. So sometimes they are not so bad. But I still have a lot of tantrums from the frustrations of them.

Like in this game I play, Entropia. There are a bunch of players grouped into a "society," of which I am a part. Some I like, some I feel neutral-ish toward, and a few I can't stand.

Now, I think most people feel dislike towards at least a few people... but this does not seem to significantly impair them. They just are like-- uh, yeah, I hate that dude, and they go on about their day.

I do not know this trick.

It seems like a useful trick.

For the most part, I think I have coped ok with the people I can't stand. But this is due to them either not being on that much or to us both mostly ignoring each other.

However, I then went and joined a team with seven other people. (All from the "society.") The 8 of us are in a hunting competition that lasts about 4 weeks. Week three just started and I am really having a hard time.

I shouldn't be, it's not like we have to talk all that much. But we still have to talk some. I can not completely ignore my teammates. So, I keep getting frustrated because I hate one of them. I shall nickname the hated one Spider.

So why do I hate her? At first, I thought I needed to untangle some deep WHY in the web of my hate. But it's not very deep or complicated.

The Aspie rants I have read about evil NTs... the kind of person they mean by that stereotype. I think that is all she is and why I have such a problem.

It started out as dislike. She was nonsensical. Then I noticed a couple lies. (Or she incorrectly answered direct questions, if you prefer, but my brain calls that lying.) That strengthened the dislike. For the most part we ignored each other. She knew I disliked her, she'd acknowledged it, but she did not seem troubled about resolving things.

I feel like i made a couple of efforts. And then there was some stuff i disagreed with her about, and i tried to explain that i was not pouting just because i hate her, that ok, yeah i hate her, but i was disagreeing for other reasons.

(I had a problem with another person in the society, who also talked a lot of non-sense. It turned out they were just very good at playing human, and when pressed they were able to communicate with me, and I finally understood them a bit. And so it worked out, and I consider them a friend now.)

With Spider, that never happened, each attempt at communication just makes me increasingly frustrated, as it is harder and harder to believe there is anything inside her skull but blood.

Here is the part that is most upsetting and hard to make sense of--- when it is just the two of us, we are our barely civil selves. Then, when another team member comes on, she's VERY nice to me. I find this very disturbing, this playing to an audience.

A friend of mine (named Candy CAKE!) helped me with this because i thought i was going crazy (er). Candy said she was at a party once and this girl#1 was talking to her and then a girl#2 came in the door, and girl#1 left in mid-sentence to go talk to girl#2 who was a very popular person.

So this story clued me in to the possibility that Spider is like a vapid middle-schooler. And she wants the "popular guys" in the society to like her.

But still, i am not so sure, because that is so silly i can not type it with a straight face.

And i don't see how pretending to be nice to me would make anyone like her. Like, they are going to think, wow she's so nice, even to cantankerous crazy girls, she should be my new BFF??? I like other people because they are funny or clever, not because they go around showering others with insincere wishes and compliments.

Whatever her odd motives, it is very taxing to be around her. The fakeness is unsettling. If she is not going to turn out to be clever or have sense, I wish we could just go back to mutual dislike.

I have been in the elevator too long. A week and a half left, lets see how much more i can bleed.

Freudian Types

Not that I put a lot of stock in Freud. But, since what I mean is basically a Freudian slip in written form, I call them FTs.

Over a year ago, I had a brief writing frenzy. I was away from my computer when it really took hold. Furious scribbles on a plane, scraps of paper. When I got home, I tried to write on the computer, but it stopped. So I went back to pen and paper.

For a couple weeks, I did nothing else, I could think of nothing else. I just kept filling up paper. But around the 3rd or 4th pack of typing paper, I started trying to sort through it all, typed up some bits.

I had written without reading, just gushgushgushrace on the pages. And I discovered all sorts of cool stuff. Ideas tangled into ideas.

Most of my misspellings were not simply spelling the word wrong, but trying to throw another word or idea in.

Mid-word capitalization was also significant, and odd spacing. Those ones don't transfer to computer typing, holding down a shift key, or a space bar, is too deliberate for them to slip in... but I have found that the spelling kind does.

If I am really trying to get an idea out, I look at the keys, not the page, and don't correct any mistakes until the end.

When I look back, it's easy to tell what is a spelling mistake and what is an actual FT.

Hehe, that sentence was a good example. Here's what I typed raw:

when i look back it is reasy to tell whick whicj are spelling mistakes and when are actal fts

So, I guess you could call reasy and whicj FTs, but they are not really interesting enough. Real easy and which just. Actal is an actual mistake... I think. I suspect subconscious deliberateness since I found it funny. Whick was a tangential thought about Ick, since I first explained FTs to him.

Spellcheck found 2 FTs:
tangeled: tangled into and gelled
delibratness: deliberate brattiness

She's a real character, that one!

I just read this blog: http://www.thewayandvirtue.com/emotional-deficit/#comment-126 and so I was thinking about so-called emotional deficit.

In particular, the reason I will cry or have a tantrum about some character in a book, but if a "real" person has a child die, or tells me of some tragic injustice, I don't care. I don't feel anything for them. I'd just as soon shoot them in the face.

They are not real.

That is the short answer.

I don't know why they are fake. Perhaps they are not fake to each other. I am supposedly bad at reading people. Perhaps there are hundreds of little communications that I miss, that flesh out the literal-three-dimensional into multi-emotional dimensions as well.

In a book, a good book anyway, people are Real. You know everything important about them. You know WHY they choose to do each action. This makes it very easy to pick sides, to like them or hate them. You know how you are supposed to feel.

So part of the reason "real" humans are fake, is because I don't understand them, I don't know them, I don't get them, they are flat, boring dolls.

I don't have oodles of feeling for people I DO know either, but I definitely have more. The more I know about someone, the more likely it is that I might care.

An interesting category is online people. People I "know" but not really. Just words on a page. This makes them very like a book. Each paragraph more Real than a fake-3D-person.

The state of being where you can see that you SHOULD, but can't grasp humans as real, is often what i mean when i say i feel disconnected.

logic-know says: real.
feel-know says: not.

This should not make sense.

Because CATS are ALWAYS real. So a person should feel the same. I have never met a fake cat or a fake dog. People are warm and breathing just like that. So, if only as an animal, they ought to register as real, as a presence.

Textures

There are many rules.

Plastic for oil and grease. Plastic forks for spaghetti, spoons for grits with butter. Metal for cold things, but the metal should be smooth, no tiny nicks. The taste of cold metal is as important as the ice cream itself.

Garret thinks a fork is a fork. And does not understand that there are good forks and bad forks. He judges food by TASTE and disregards texture. Which is like picking out shoes only by color and not by size. Strange.

Orange juice TASTES much better than Milk. Milk doesn't have an interesting flavor at all. But orange juice is ROUGH and Milk is SMOOTH. Milk is a silky cocoon, orange juice is a sandpaper pick-axe.

Garret and I went to the grocery store last night. We don't have a lot of money, so we need to get cheap food. He gets frustrated because I am not happy with the cheap foods he likes.

I confess, that I am using money, or lack thereof, as an excuse to drink milk and eat crappy food. My body feels icky.

The thing is, when I want to eat a Smooth-Spicy, other food will just make me mad. Before I figured out what I was doing, years ago, I used to eat and eat and eat. I would be full but still thinking I was "hungry" because I was craving a certain thing.

Now I understand that if I WANT masaman curry, I should not eat pizza, because that will not help. So now, if I want masaman curry, and there is none, then I just don't eat.

Garret and I fight about this. He thinks I should eat every day, and gets annoyed when I don't want to. I get mad because I don't want to end up eating everything in the house, because, since it is all the wrong thing, I might keep pacing and eating in search of some curry that isn't there.

I do agree I need to drink water everyday. I have been bad about that, and did get dehydrated. But it is just so COLD, and the water comes out of the sink so COLD, and even if you turn it hot, the faucet is COLD and the water that comes out first is COLD and it makes my fingers go numb and I hate it I hate it, I will drink more water in the summer.

So, I do not know what to do about Garret and food.

Also, I don't quite think he believes me about the milk/gluten stuff affecting me, making my body feel blah. He says he does, but I feel somewhat... patronized.

My brain-tongue feels dulled. Licked sick.

It takes me a long time to construct a sentence, because my Head just trip-skips aHead, from song lyric to movie scene to book line... and for the most part, I love this. Because it is a twisty path to follow. A Headlong rush down rabbit holes. Head, long, long, long path to get to... where? the Cheshire cat says it doesn't matter which road you take if you don't know where you are Headed.... i am lost right now in the fun, but such an effort to stay linear, on the path of the end of this sentence, trying to screen out lines from Fight Club-- telling me it would heal if only you could stop tonguing it, way back from when i typed- licked sick. i have missed a dozen side-tunnel-stories trying to type this end here, and there are too many twists for the breadcrumbs, what's the way back, what's the way back? lost in the caves forever.

Angry sleeping. Homicidal ideation. and Mental music videos.

I woke up in fists. Hands and feet, right and left. Left-hand is the most angry though. If this were a book, that would be important. People in books rarely notice irrelevant information. Sadly, this is not a book, and most of my passing curiosities will never be explained, or useful in figuring out who murdered whom.

Though, if I were in a book it would not be a Mystery novel, because I hate those, and, really, who would be a murderer in my own book besides ME?

(Damn. I just realized I had a FT a minute ago. It took me three tries to spell important. Impotent kept getting mixed in... Much to my chagrin, my left fist has now relaxed, now that I have acknowledged it's feelings. Blah. Fine! Mr. Left-Fist, i am listening now. Yeah, yeah, it's important that you feel impotent, having no control makes me angry. Helpless. You, as the left fist, are the most angry- since you are the non-dominant hand, and so you feel even more impotent than the right. Grrr! If you weren't the hand I'd slap you! This is SO not where i was going with this blog... and now my beginning is all wrong, since i DID figure out the point of the Left-fist thing...)

Ah. Well, I guess you can see my problem with Mystery novels.

Robin Williams, in the voice of the genie in Aladdin, says Well, I feel sheepish in an attempt to get us back on track.

You see, that movie, Aladdin, was on in the waiting room of the plasma place, which is where I last had an internal-rage-tantrum.

Garret was donating plasma, and he took me with him. I read in the car for the first two hours, but then the sun went down, and it was too cold to stay in the car. I tried. So I went in and got the spot in the corner with my back to a wall. It was loud and tense, but I was doing okay. Trying to think about other things, trying to read my book, and I calmed down a bit.

But then this girl had a death wish.

Because there were literally dozens of empty seats, and she wanted to press in right on top of me. Standing up! With her foot on the chair RIGHT NEXT TO ME.

I stared at her a little. But she wouldn't go away. And my body was vibrating with adrenaline, and sitting in that cold wash of rage that floods my blood. And she wouldn't go away.

And I got very angry.

I finally stomped up and across the room from her, and I hated myself with every step. She challenged me, she threatened me, and I was a coward. I didn't twist my fingers into her hair and slam it into the wall, I didn't punch her in the face, I didn't stab a pencil into her neck. I wasn't even brave enough to yell at her, to tell her to get out of my space.

I was afraid. There were a lot of other people in the room. They would have attacked me, stopped me. I am a weak and cowardly person. Oh, and also a bully, because I am not sure what I would have done if there had been no witnesses. I probably would have still been a baby, but the likelihood of fighting her would have definitely gone up if she was alone.

So I just stared at her, and got lightheaded.

Garret finally came out and we went to the car. And I screamed at amanda some more, and tried to shame her into action, but she was still weak.

Garret put music on for me, which was a rare thing, since he doesn't like music. First he made the mistake of trying to tell me it was reasonable to not want to be put in jail, but he must have noticed reason was not the best way to calm me down.

Luckily, Jack off Jill was in the CD player, and it is excellent music to set homicidal fantasies to.

(Can't find just the song on YouTube, not without a bunch of stupid pictures. It doesn't look right if you watch-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJaPcdRGc-o )

I listened to it on repeat a zillion times.

For homicidal ideation to be a successful deterrent to actual homicide, it helps to really immerse yourself in the fantasy. My brain is not easily tricked into this though. It knows that girl is not really dead and still wants to go kill her.

But I have a nice mental-music-video made up. And it is soothing to watch. There is a duality in this song that helps me, appeals to me. The chorus is- Drown drown drown myself, drown drown, drown myself.

I have to drown myself inside myself quite a lot. Most of amanda is not fit for human consumption, and i have to keep her locked away. i drown her, shove her down, smother her under the surface... this song knows the secret of that, and the trick of it.

You must promise-- shhh. not now, not now, someday. someday, someday when I am queen you can... and of course the best part of the music video in my head is when the RAGE finally gets to stab back with each drumbeat, and the ocean gets turned inside out, and the drowning is literal because of all the other people's blood.


Hush, baby.... Hush, baby.... Hush baby, go (back) to sleep.

How are you?

It's a fairly basic question.

Or so I hear.

But it gets me every time.

Stumped like rain forests, as Francis might say. It surprises me, how I continue to be surprised, over and over, by the same things.

a baby playing peek-a-boo.

Now, some people, hesitate over this question because they know the answer is supposed to be, "fine" but perhaps they are not fine, they are depressed, and sometimes you cannot say you are depressed when people ask, because they are not really asking and don't really care.

This is not my problem.

I am perfectly capable of telling someone-- I am ragingly homicidal, not that you care.

My problem is just that I become confused by the question. Each time. Even though I have worked this all out before...

How are you- still hits me each time as-- How is it that you are? How ARE you? How are you YOU? How are you existing? How do you BE?

And so I get very distracted by that answer and my How.

How are you feeling? What is your current physical or emotional state? Questions like THAT don't slow me down at all. But even though I KNOW- How are you- is one of those questions, I can't skip to the end, I have to take the scenic-synapse-route.

What's up? Is another one that throws me off. I have seen human #1 say-- What's up. And then, human #2 replies with-- What's up. And then they change the subject...

So I think-- What's up-- might be my least favorite one, because it can just mean hello. But then other times it can mean-- How are you?

But, back to peek-a-book.

The really LOVELY thing about synapses stuck in a loop?

Looping back lovely things is lovely. is lovely. is lovely. is lovely. is lovely. YAY CAKE!!!!

CAKE. pony? Chicka!

Each of those three-- CAKE, pony?, and Chicka!-- trigger a happy-slap to the brain.

Cake and pony both have to do with a time I was sad, and then a friend cheered me up. The memory of the YAY!! of the moment, somehow got attached to those words for me. Very Pavlovian I suppose.

Anyway, cake and pony started from a specific event, and they are now on their way to being Chicka's. Chicka does not have a story attached to it, it is just a word I yell or mutter when I am feeling happy. After awhile, the happiness must have stuck, because now Chicka has the power to incite happiness, not just express it.

Garret and I can be driving/riding in a car. I might feel annoyed or neutral or anxious. Then, he yells, CHICKA!!!

instant HAPPY!!! i laugh. then, sometimes if i am mad, i swat it off like a fly and try to focus on what i was CHICKA!!! laugh! on, on... on what i was talking about before Garret deciCHICKACHICKA!!!! laugh! what? what i was CHICKA!! laugh. ok. yes, yes. chicka. ok, chicka.

My brain may have to run a lot of laps around Whazzups and How r u's... but it can remain entertained by the thought of CAKE!!! for a good twenty minutes.

I have a frightening temper, but it can not stand in the face of someone sweetly asking me, Pony?

And I can still feel a delightful little jolt of surprise when people pop out from behind pillows, and I get to laugh myself sick as a baby, content to watch the trick for hours.