I sometimes think that grass might actually experience a more interesting and fulfilling life than I do. It's not that I think that grass is actually more entertained on a daily basis, but I figure that grass can't have very high expectations. That likely means that grass ends up being happier.

In my case, I've fallen into quite an impressive rut lately. I don't end up doing anything and sleep most of the day away. Yesterday, I managed to wake up only after around 14 hours of unconsciousness and still felt sort of tired. A couple hours later, I actually dozed off again for another 2-3 hour catnap. It's not like my hours of consciousness have been productive, even grading on a scale. I haven't done anything worthwhile and it's gone beyond not leaving the house. I haven't even left my room for more than 5-10 minutes for a bathroom break or to see what there might be to eat. Well, okay, the trip to the shower might be a bit longer than 10 minutes, but we're still talking about quite a bit less than a hour a day. At this point, I'm thinking I should just stay in bed and see how long it actually takes for bed sores to form. God knows I'm in a unique position of actually being able to test that without being in a coma.

They continue unabated and I'm starting to feel the strain of it all. This morning I woke up after having this nightmare about being back in Chicago trying to finish my PhD while also, for some obscure reason, in some sort of city exploring race. I think I managed to develop a new phobia during this one. Near the end of the nightmare, I had to get back to my apartment for some reason but everything had shrunk. I had to crawl my way through the stairwell, slithering through it almost snakelike and the hallways had grown so tiny that the doors wouldn't even open all the way. I had to crawl through, let the door shut behind me, and then back up trying to work my way to my room. I've never been claustrophobic before but I think I now am, at least slightly. I finally manage to squeeze my way into my apartment, terrified at any minute that I would either cramp up or somehow be unable to squeeze my way through, only to then have a very disturbing conversation with a roommate about just how many classes I was missing or something similar. I woke up soon after that feeling pretty wigged out.

I then fell asleep tonight and had a dream where I had been wrongly imprisoned for murder. They thought that I had killed someone I went to school with and for some reason I was out of prison temporarily while they re-prosecuted me, but not in court. Instead, we were all back at the highschool (or school of some sort) and the principal there was certain I was guilty. I was getting crucified by all this circumstantial evidence that made me look guilty and I couldn't convince anyone of my innocence. Well, except one. One of the teachers there did believe me and she kept trying to help me. We got closer through the course of the legal pummeling I was taking and I think we were starting to fall in love. Of course, she ends up getting killed somewhere along the way and I woke up soon after.

This fucking sucks. I'm really sick to death of all these fucking nightmares. WTF? Why me? Not a day goes by now where I don't have some sort of fucked up dream that makes me feel shitty. As if life weren't enough of a purgatory as it is, someone decides to spice it up with a little hell.

I'm feeling sort of down lately. There's no real cause for it, or rather, no new cause to explain it. I've been sleeping sort of badly but that's pretty common for me. I had an entire series of distressing dreams last night ranging from stabbing one of my sister's friends and having to go through a police investigation to having to re-handwrite a long essay for a final exam. I guess the latter might not seem all that bad at first but my handwriting is pretty awful and I've pretty much forgotten how to write in cursive over the years. I just working on it with a cramping hand, all the while hoping what I was writing would be good enough. It wasn't much fun. There were 2-3 more dreams, all slightly disturbing, and all forgotten by now. I guess it's just a sign that I feel sort of unsettled for some unknown reason. In short, I have the sads.

Sometimes it's just hard to figure out what's the point of it all, putting one foot in front of the other, day by day. It just seems like inertia more than anything else.

I think that the only way to get through life is to rededicate myself to misanthropy. I hadn't really noticed but it seems that over the years, a bit of caring wormed its ways past my defenses and set up residence in my heart like a cancer. Slowly, it sent out tendrils which twined their way through the walls I had built and weakened my defenses. The only way to prevent something like this from happening is to build bigger and thicker walls with more auto-focusing deathbeam lasers on the battlements. Yes, I do believe that an increase in loathing is the only hope for salvation in the end. People suck and cannot be trusted. They only exist to make your life more of a misery than it was to begin with.

It looks like I'm back online for the time being. I borrowed my sister's laptop which is identical to mine in order to copy off the contents of my harddrive to an external. At least this particular computer related SNAFU won't end up resulting in data loss like so many times in the past. I guess that's something to be sort of happy about.

I've spent a lot of time thinking during my little hiatus and I'm not sure I've quite come back to a perfect equilibrium, but it's better than it was. I feel like I have a lot of things to get off my chest, but I don't want to vomit out a disjointed spew of emo-like crap. I'm sure none of you want to see it and I'm not even sure I would want to write it. Instead, I think I'll just let certain things drip out with time. Anything that doesn't end up making it to the page, probably wasn't all that important in the end anyway.

I'd also like to just say that I do appreciate the fact that some of you took the time out to drop me a line during this. Some of it was unexpected, but still very appreciated. Now that I have some stable net access, I'll get around to sending some belated replies.

Well, I wrote an email to the person from yesterday disclosing everything. I always told myself that as horrible as my life was, there was at least no way it could get worse. I should have seen this one coming and realized I was wrong. Everything is a misery and I'm just all twisted up inside. People put down animals to put them out of their suffering. Why in the world that same compassion isn't be applied to human beings I'll never know. I feel like a leper.

A couple days ago as I was heading out to the con, I skimmed across one of the multitude of facebook memes out there. I'm not even sure who was answering the questions now, but one of them caught my eye. It asked the person to list when they had last cried. As I was driving, I thought about it for a moment. The last time I had cried was ages ago, years and years. I remember thinking to myself that despite everything that had happened in my life, at least I wasn't crying about it. If I went to answer the meme today, the answer would be a couple minutes ago and off and on since around 3-4 hours ago.

Life hasn't been easy or pleasant for me. I don't even want to talk about all the dreams killed and parts of my life ruined. I've tried to hold it together the only way I know how, by trying to grow a thicker skin. The only way I could keep everything at bay was to try to push it back and tell myself I didn't care. To basically be grumpy and callous about it, and build a wall around myself in which I could try to save what little I had left. Earlier today, that all went to pot.

I've never had all that many people close to me in my life, or even all that many friends in general. When I was young it was because or shyness or never knowing how to be social and let people in. As I grew older, it was more about keeping people at a distance. Only those who are friends or who are close to you can really hurt you. As things have gotten worse in my life, the wall only grew thicker. I had already lost so much and it was like I was hoarding what little was left.

I had a really unpleasant conversation with a friend today and it just cut right through me. It went like a hot knife through butter and I'm still feeling raw and turned inside out. It made me look at my life and realize just how little I have and how that is probably just lies anyway. Everything just seems pointless. If I could, I really wish I could just put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. I just can't deal with it. What's the point of trekking another day through this god awful miserable pointless piece of shit of a life? I wish I were dead.

I never cried through all of the medical issues and the disability, mostly because I just tried not to look at it. Everyone talks about the social stigma of my condition and I've always tried as best I could to keep it under wraps. How I've wished it could have been cancer or something instead. All I could do was try to dam up all of my feelings and not think of it. It's all flooded over now and I just can't deal with it. The tears aren't stopping anytime soon and I wonder if I'll ever get the cork back in the dam. What's the point of going on.

Sometimes, I really wish I were an alcoholic.

After a few hours sleep on Sunday, I roamed back to Elizabeth in order to try to get the car back. I had googled driving directions and set off with my dad in tow. The basic process is you go to the tow yard, collect your registration and insurance from the car, go to the police station, get a pass to pick up your car, and then go back to the yard to pay the fine and get the car. There were all sorts of small fubars in this process. Everything from not having current insurance cards in the car, almost not having a key along to open the door, the tow yard only accepting cash, and the lazy pig-like police officers of the city of Elizabeth. Lets focus on the last of these for a moment.

In general, I've always had a good deal of respect for cops. I almost always give them the benefit of the doubt and in my experience, they've been good people doing an often obnoxious and thankless job. All of those positive feelings were put to the test on Sunday. When I got to the police station, the goomba at the window was downright rude. He was obviously put out that he actually had to do his job instead of just goofing around. There was some old tub of lard sitting behind him, straining the springs of a chair with his feet proped up on a desk and bullshitting with those around him. It looked like some scene out of a movie. I thought there was some sort of physical fitness requirement to be a cop nowadays. Bloato back there looked like he'd get winded unwrapping a candy bar. Dickless at the window wasn't hugely better. He was just snippy and a general pain in the ass. When I passed him the information, he saw the expired insurance card and said 'This is shit'. Eventually I got foisted over onto another cop who displayed about as much interest in my issue as the first asshole, but at last didn't make exageratedly slow movements and sigh a lot at having to actually type on his keyboard and look at documents. Eventually, I managed to get the slip of paper I needed and then it was back to the tow yard.

$120. That's how much it fucking cost for the tow. $120. Do you believe this bullshit? Not only that but they don't take credit cards to boot. I was just lucky I was able to scrounge enough cash together to get the car out of hock. Oh, and I didn't even get around to mentioning what I got towed for. I got hit with a $54 ticket for 'blocking a driveway'. It turns out that as long as the curb slopes down, it's considered a driveway even if there's a damn handicap parking spot right there. The whole property was fenced and it never occured to me that they could still be referring to it as a driveway. There were no farging cars on it and weren't even at 3am the night before. So basically, I went from up $20 from playing cards to possibly being down $154 by the end.

I still haven't decided if I want to go to court and fight the ticket or not. My tags, according to the state of NJ website, gives me the right to park in _any_ handicapped spot. I don't see how it can possibly be my fucking fault if they put one in front of a driveway. On the otherhand, I'm not sure I can tolerate any more interactions with the city of Elizabeth. The city is a fucking sewar and their public employees are gibbering assmonkeys. All I know for sure is I know which house it is and one of these days, I'm going back there to break some windows.

Towed for parking in a handicap spot.

Everything feels like the suck lately. Well, except for the laptop. That's actually worked out pretty well. Other than that, I'm just feeling bleh lately. Pain issues have kicked up a notch of late and there are all sorts of minor irritations that need to be taken care of.

• eBay: I was selling a buncha things there and managed to screw up on the international postage so that in at least one case, I ended up charging less to ship to Canada than to the US. In the end, a whole swarm of international vultures showed up and I've been schlepping these items all around the world. It's not exactly a loss, but I'm making next to zilch on it after all the fees and crap have been accounted for.


• SSI: I have to trek down to the social security office next week for some appointment. Apparently it's going to be a regular event more or less and a condition of continuing to get cash. It sounds like a complete fucking waste of time and effort to me. If Jesus had popped down and Healed me in the interim, I'm sure I could have just called them and let them know. Until that happens, they can just assume that I'm still all fucked up.


• Meetup: I thought it might be spiffy to run a Smirk and Dagger tourney at the meetup in a couple weeks. I went through the whole planning thing and even contacted the head of the company to get some prize support for the event. Despite that, the response from those wankers at the meetup has been less than enthusiastic so far. It just makes everyone look bad. No good deed goes unpunished.


• Direct TV: Well, okay, I don't care too much about this one but it's still sort of obnoxious in an objective sense. The guy was supposed to come between 8-12pm yesterday to install the service. He calls at around 11:30 to say he's on his way. Wait. Wait. Wait. Notta. At a little past 2pm he calls again to say he's no longer coming. Of course, no one at the company is willing to take responsibility for this. Assholes.


• Existential: And I guess this is the biggest problem of all. My life at the moment serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. There's no fucking point at all to it. The pathetic part is that this might apply to plenty of people in this world who also spend their lives treading water or revolving slowly in circles. Going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. What the fuck is the point of living when your life is pretty much a sham? From a eugenics standpoint, I should have jabbed a rusty screwdriver into my eyesocket by now. Completely fucking useless.

I've been feeling down and blah for around a month now. It's not like I'm ever a chipper person but this seems to be a bit more extreme than my normal doldrums. I'm not sure exactly what's causing it, though I have more than enough reasons to feel generally glum. I feel lonely even among groups of people and I have this real urge to act out and be a jerk. Well, okay, more of a jerk than normal. God knows this isn't the first time I've gone through a stretch like this and I'm sure it won't be the last. Sometimes I feel like this is actually my baseline condition and I simply surface back up to normal every once and a while for a change of pace.

I doubt I'm going to put a gun in my mouth anytime soon, but I might just put one in someone else's mouth. I feel grumpy.

The past day and a half or so has been frakking awful. I'm never left knowing why but it's only now that I'm really feeling better. It really seems that the level of pain and discomfort I experience has very little if anything to do with how much codeine I end up taking. It's all just a craps shoot and I end up looking at snake eyes more than is good for me lately.

I'm still feeling quite down in general. Nothing much to be done about that either. Considering the mood I'm in, if I run across any end the world devices over the next few days, I wouldn't give the rest of you a snowball's chance in Hades. Sure, it's unlikely I'll happen to find a doomsday weapon I can actually use, but it's a fair warning. You might want to get your affairs in order just in case.

No need to watch the Superbowl people. The outcome has already been determined. Intricate and exhaustive analysis has shown that there will be a Bears victory this day. So instead of being forced to spend hours watching the game and crap commercials that will never be as good as you remember from superbowls past, you can find something more entertaining to do.

I'm really starting to understand how the seeds of drug addiction get planted. In the fecund loam of pain, just about anything which offers relief would grow. If it could only last forever.

And sometimes, rage is nothing more than the byproduct of desperation.

One of the Bills had gotten a jury duty summons a week or two ago and we had been discussing it recently when I came to the conclusion that I would love to be on a jury. In the past, I've always chucked out the notices, but now I almost wish I could get a another chance to serve. I want to go in and with great obfuscation, actually get to hear a case. This would obviously mean that I would have to fail to disclose years of education and cling to claims of ignorance about most things. Then I can have my dream of staring in my very own version of 12 Angry Men, in reverse. To be the lone holdout from setting the defendant free, I would weave cunning and incisive arguments which point to guilt. Things like 'Well, why would they charge him if he weren't guilty?' or 'He looks exactly like that serial killer, (insert closest serial killer's name here). He's probaly killed a bunch of people and gotten away with it.' Slowly, I would persuade the other recalcitrant jurors and they would eventually come around, acknowledging my superior arguments and we would return with a unanimous verdict of guilty. I could then punch my fist into the air in victory and wait for the next jury duty notice to arrive.

I'm probaly the kind of person that defense attorneys and criminal defendents have nightmares about.