last of 2016 30 day challenge- Day Twelve

moment of silence for a special RIP

2 more days left until The Pinky Press Review goes *poof*. Every possible tweak shutting it down has been tweaked except the public archives. I won't be saving them. The paid part was a nice 18 month run, with 12 subscribers and nearly 2600 views. I imagine if those had been higher I would probably think a little longer about letting it all go, but honestly, even with all the blogging I do I'm surprised I let it go on as long as I did. The pro account is now cancelled, which means I can no longer manually rank and super tweak my content, including widgets and other coding, which is what made my paper unique, so I see no reason to hang onto it. I'm not going to keep relaying the same rubbish other free papers shuttle into their content curation off twitter.

In the meantime I have all the Gaston lyrics in my head, thank you so much, Disney. "No one hits like Gaston, matches wits like Gaston, in a spitting match nobody spits like Gason- I'm especially good at expectorating..." You can see all the lyrics here. You're welcome.

I got even, though. I have successfully brainwashed Bunny to Crayon Pop. And then we promptly had to listen to 10 more versions of the same song, so I'm dizzy with lyrics crashing around my head this morning.


It was so cute listening to Bunny trying to tell me she does that in 'gynassix' (dance moves), and she had to show us all the balance moves she's already being taught. On a chair. We quickly moved to spotter position, but that kid is pretty good, didn't bump or slip once.

Srsly need to pink it up a bit.



Was so wiped out after our 24 hour Bunnython that I totally fell asleep about 30 min into the Walking Dead. Woke up just in time to see Daryl crying in Rick's arms o_o so I'll hafta rewatch that sometime today. Can't tell you how many people I'm running into irl that are #TeamNegan. The show veered into an almost intellectual slant on philosophizing apocalyptic scenarios, and I'm enjoying the bigger picture puzzle. I thought about live tweeting, and actually nearly did, but my right arm and hand were hissing so loud at me last night I could barely even get a jacket on and off taking Bunny home, almost couldn't buckle my own seat belt, so I knew I'd better not push it. Seems to be a little better this morning.

Along with the rest of 2016, I'm throwing out social obligations and pressures. Aspienado stumbled a lot through most of that stuff, and I can see that intensely downsizing my interaction level over the last 10 days hasn't hurt any of my numbers at all. In fact, I've been extremely surprised that some of the numbers have actually jumped a little. Part of sellsellsell tactics that are pushed on social media are interaction techniques. Well, 4 1/2 years later, I can give you a solid thumbs down on drowning your feed out in chatter. From what I can tell, it all boils down to hubbing well (ease of accessibility is key), which most people still don't even know is a thing or how to do right (and they still smash it into a networking plan, which is self defeating) and acknowledging. It's important not to look like a bot running scheduled updates, which a lot of accounts do in between the chatter.

Honestly, I think what gives me the most incredible boost is that I have real friends, and I love them. I don't think I'd have learned all the good things I did without them. Aspienado might suck at small talk, but I'm the one who remembers your tweets and can find them again, even years later. When I say throwing out social obligations and pressures, I mean added self inflicted guilt over not clicking 'like' on every single thing I'm tagged in, or (and this is a funny way of looking at it) responding to a stray text from an outlying family member who otherwise never ever speaks to or contacts me. If it's not life or death, tossing a random hello at me is probably like tossing a leaf in the wind.

The real me is somewhere no one can find. No one ever asks me where I am when I time out. One way I keep Bunny asleep through the night at my house (very mobile sleeper) is with the Spa channel from Sirius Radio on Dish. That kind of music is super awesome for sleeping. I was looking for the instrumental version on youtube and ran into this version. THIS is my head when I time out. Years ago I used to attempt to describe my 'light on water' experience. My experience staring at light on water is instant nirvana. No one else exists. I don't miss anyone, don't think about anyone, don't question anything, don't even remember anything. I don't *think*. I just exist, and it's the most peaceful thing you can't even imagine. That people spend thousands of dollars trying to achieve this in a variety of ways (I laugh at meditation) tells me this is a valuable trait in autism.



Here is where the song itself comes from, the saddest success story ever told. If you don't know the entire Karen Carpenter story and how it broke through a mountain of solid ice, leading the way for millions trapped in depression, then you need to.

->lyrics<-



This is one of the best articles I've read about the retelling of this story in the continuing layers and intricacies of Karen's life in the public eye and how viewers judge what they can't see going on and how that has impacted the entire world. Karen died alone, but definitely not in vain.
Todd Haynes Deconstructs An Ideal Tragedy In SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY

One of the reasons this story has stuck with me ever since it happened is because my daughter was born shortly after Karen died. I don't like venturing too much into personal things that aren't mine, but at the time I was watching one sister slip through high school with a regular sized bandana cinched through the belt loops in her jeans in lieu of a belt after another sister had been pulled out of school before graduating for not eating. There is a short span of time I can snapshot in my mind that beautifully reveals the unexpressed stress going on in my family, including my brother, mother, and father. For all of us to be so messed up (my words) and still survive- all us kids are still here with our own kids. We came through something together that no one else will ever know or understand, something we ourselves never really talk about together, just an incredibly sad spot buried in anorexia, alcohol (me and my brother), religious and political obsession (my dad) and depression on the verge of exploding (my mom). Thank goodness we all grew up and started having kids.

Thank goodness we are still here. I am probably the only one who has thought this every single day without fail. Ever since my car accident (yes, the one where my dad pulled me out of emergency rescue without so much as a sign of relief that I was even still alive and walked off after mom deposited me on a couch to keep internal bleeding), I have never taken my family for granted. We are a sad story, and we love each other very much, even if we couldn't say it when we needed to. Thank goodness our own children have taught us how.

Mom went on ahead, and it was hard, but it didn't undo us. We are not estranged from each other like some families do, even though I am the oddball that holds the rest at arm's length. Sometimes I feel sad about that, but though the fates are cruel and make it nearly impossible for me to handle venturing forth (living with multiple allergies and epipens means I don't casually visit where people own dogs, plus other factors), I like twisting fate into my own devices and bending them to my own will. As long as I am still here, Pinky will continue to find ways to say the things that matter.

The Pinky Press Review was clutter in my closet. Part of this month's 30 day challenge is clearing out the clutter so I can get to the real work.

the shallow water

Alternative Gothic Santa Christmas

by leather_and_lace

In case you're wondering if blogger will publish a completely empty page that hasn't been touched yet, why yes, yes it will. Sorry about that. A few people subbed in email or on the feedburner for immediate delivery may have gotten some kind of alert.

The last thing I was dreaming as I bolted awake (thank you, daylight savings, I'm back to bolting awake before 4 a.m.) was a neat little gizmo for media sharing that digitally mimicked a projector screen, meaning  you could click it to roll it in or out. My dad had the whole setup when I was little, projector, home screen on a tripod, boxes and boxes of slides. The setting up the pole and screen holder seemed to add a magical air when Dad would pull the screen down out of the retractor.

click to get lost in pinterest

By the way, actual projector screens are still a big thing. I had no idea there was such a big selection. I mean, I see them on TV in corporate spy type movies, so I guess there's a whole world of screenmanship I miss in my daily life.
Projector Screen Store

Ok, some of you are probably trying to tell me that digital projector screens are already a thing, and I hear you, yes, I've seen them. But this was very differently coded for user friendliness and ease of control, plus it allowed sharing of as many media files as one wanted without the cumbersome loading slowing down a page problem. Some of you are still jumping up and down trying to tell me this is already a thing. I know, sweethearts, I have tried out and used a few on different blogs over time, it's not a new idea. In fact, I miss the much older ones that no one supports any more because they are too hacker friendly.

click to get cool Christmas cards

This wasn't iframes, it wasn't an html embed, it was completely new and different. It allowed input anywhere you could put text without having to use a widget plugin (I've got your attention now) (yes, wouldn't this be fun for highly restricted editors like facebook or wordpress headers), and it could be manually manipulated by the reader without losing place on a page or opening up a new page. It was as simple as 'click to read more' but with its own editor for viewing pleasure.

Say you'd like to share items from several sources (stop thinking storyboards and slideshows, hang on, I'm word fumbling over coffee) without having to manually input code. All you would have to do is make a click trail of what you want readers to be able to access in digital storage, and your click trail would 'load' the projector. You could choose whether to allow downloading and even photoshopping within the projector, it would have its own inbuilt tracker (who viewed) and shout box, and some of you are facepalming because I'm still describing what's already out there. No I'm not. You guys are used to browser hosts doing this.

clicks to an awesomely cool site

Ok, lemme make it simpler. Imagine if you could snip a chunk of facebook that you really like and share it outside of facebook. Just pull it out like a plugin and put it on a blog or on twitter or into an email in one or two clicks without having to code. Imagine having doohickey powers without having to know how doohickeys work.

I feel like I'm epic failing this dream share. I keep asking myself what was so amazing about this dream, how do I express it in a blog post. I keep wanting to find that one sentence that makes me feel like I adequately related this cool vision and every time I write more, I see all the stuff crowd in that misleads. I think what I'm saying is that the intuitive built-in coding would allow such ease of use and access without compromising safety that the world would just be blown away, and it would change media hosting and sharing as we know it. Static storage would become quaint.

much more coolness when clicked

Back to an older dream about the browser landscape. I'm getting email offers now to sign up to be paid (kickbacks) for browsing. Did I call it? Someone's been working on this, and I dreamed it. If they really do ever come out with a shareable mapping tool for personalization and monetization, it starts with this kind of stuff.

I just wanna say to everyone still not getting this season of The Walking Dead- this stuff is already all around us. What Daryl and Dwight are going through isn't uncommon. Let go of your safety nets and go under the surface imagining mental breakdown and reconditioning. You want to know why abuse victims won't leave their abusers? You want to understand how they're trained? Watch this season of The Walking Dead. What I came away with last night during the Dwight and Daryl story is the basis of how Rick will survive and why he'll behave the way he does. I'm very seriously excited for this season like I never have been for any of the previous seasons. Enculturation is my favorite thing ever in my whole sociology/anthropology degree.

We live in a culture of imagery for a reason.

surviving fandoms

*le sigh* Back to a real life post.

I blame these guys.

"Pine Processionary Caterpillar"
click for info

Really, I have no idea, but there's such a big health warning all over most of the stuff you look up about them (especially for kids and dogs) that I can only conclude that my house being covered in them for 2 weeks is making me sick, because even though I have a leaf mold allergy, I have never been like this in October. Itchy eyes and scratchy throat, yes, hacking super sticky globs and nearly choking, no.

At any rate, we're going on 18 days now and it's progressed into lungs over the weekend and it's not going away any time soon, so once again I will drag myself up to clinic and see if I qualify for antibiotic now. In years past I've been on antibiotic every other month, but I've gotten so healthy now that my glands barely even get tender for a day and the rest of me always looks really impressive for someone complaining of specific problems at my age.

I remember my parents dragging through chest gunk because they were too stubborn to go to doctors. One year my dad coughed for around 6 weeks and dragged around looking awful. He's still busy, tried calling yesterday and he didn't call back till he got off the tractor. 87 years old.

So all that is kinda quelling the birthday chocolate cake waffle with coffee cream cheese dip thing, I can't smell or taste anything right and nothing sounds good because I'm gunky gross, so I'm putting it off until some of this clears out. If aliens abducted me right now they'd be wowed over what a super productive sticky mucus machine I am.

Brief crabby whine sentence stating that I'm super jealous of people who don't have to live with allergic reactions. You guys suck whining about stuff when you can easily 1- breathe, 2- eat what you want, and 3- not have to live on round the clock antihistamines nearly all year long.

*clear*

Ok, moving on.

I'm going to keep watching The Walking Dead. It's just now getting good. In fact, I can now honestly finally say I respect what they're doing with this show. Watching Rick breaking from his internal point of view, reality blowing apart, not knowing which fear was real or imagined, all his emotional connections blowing apart until he was alone with only death- I hope that ep wins awards galore.

THAT is PTSD, guys. That is exactly what happens to people who go through moments of super anxiety not knowing what to believe or hang onto, moments when you can't make decisions because you can't even trust your own brain to keep giving you stuff to hang onto. Not all of us are in an apocalypse like that, but when you're driving on a highway and have to remind yourself to check whether you're really driving because you can't tell...

That scene was an art form that I thought was exceptionally well done. You need to pick up on what happened in that scene so you will understand Rick's point of view going forward. You might not like a few things Rick does in future. He might be a mess and fall off the hero pedestal. He might wind up a wild dog killing everyone. Or he might wind up psycho enough to take out Negan. But for awhile he might be a very weak unlikable character. Are you a fair weather fan?

Allowing ourselves to be too overwhelmed by our emotions to handle something and shutting down is turning our back on dealing with stuff. I had to learn at a young age to shut those emotions off, or set them aside for later. Human brains are fantastic for survival if we learn how to use our emotions as tools. It's good to process through them, but if they are in the way in time of crisis, especially if freezing up costs you or someone else harm, the best way (for me) to deal with that is step into role playing and then look at what happened later. It's really hard, but if that's the only way you can escape a difficult situation, like domestic abuse or surviving abduction or something, then that's what you do.

Whining about a TV show focusing entirely on how an apocalypse shreds us emotionally for not playing fair showing us something gruesome that hurts our emotions is a little bit antithetical to being a fan. I've been through fandoms full of the staunchest fans booing and hissing because something didn't go their way and they want it refilmed, and some even spend years making life projects out of how unfair a television show was. Seriously not kidding. I watched a lot of people shut down years of friendships over political side taking nonsense the last couple of months. Well, that's how fandoms are, too. It's cool if you don't want to watch a TV show, but going on and on about how unfair something is and you're not going to watch any more is kinda silly. Just stop watching it and move on. It's just a TV show.

The really interesting thing is watching some of the fans go through what Rick did, just bust apart and say no mas. Fans mirroring the scene. That is an incredible amount of power to give a TV show over your life.

Just saying.

From me to you guys. Hang in there. It might be worth watching Rick come back and eat Negan.

My #TeamNegan Thoughts

This is an intense write-up, and you are responsible for closing this page if you trigger easily. I'll give you a chance to close this real quick without glancing by sharing my hottest tweet last night, over 4000 impressions in 30 seconds flat, far outstripping my other tweets, which really surprised me since I was low-level tweeting.

My second hottest, so you can't just glance down and peek at your triggers before closing this page, was this one, ripping a fast 1300 impressions in about 30 seconds flat.

Most of the rest of my tweet impressions ranged from 80-300.

SHUT THIS PAGE NOW IF YOU TRIGGER EASILY.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would like to remind the queasier Walking Dead fans that there are Negans all over the world right now actually doing that, and this has been going on for thousands of years. Your job in this human race is to SURVIVE. Slavers and purveyors of every atrocity have beset our history right and left, and we are not only still here, but so prolifically overrunning the planet that those of us at the top have to stay inebriated trying to forget we have it so good while we wallow around thinking life sucks and is unfair.

I'm #TeamNegan because that is reality. Hard, cold, cruel, and not fair. I'm not saying he's good, but he's a challenge, and if you ever find yourself up against someone that cold and brutal (and many do all over the world DAILY), you are still in control of how you respond, what you believe, how you play it, who you protect, how you prioritize your actions, and most of all, how you forgive yourself for not being strong enough to stop the cruelty.

We like to blame victims in mainstream America. Take a good long look at these victims.

This is why I am pro offing the cruelty without negotiation, without talking, without considerations. I have seen cruelty. That kind of cruelty is broken and there's no fixing it, no bargaining with it, no winning over it any other way.

Define what cruelty is. Study cruelty. Recognize that cruelty destroys ALL of us, even at a distance, from the lowest crime lord to the highest dictator.

You guys really do need to know that being hit that hard even just once on the head is so stunning to the brain that the rest from there on out is a blur and conscious attempts at anything is nearly impossible. Lesser impacts knock people out, less damage screws people up for life, so for anyone to remain defiant after that first blow is all fiction. The shock to the brain is so immediate that the rest is practically not even suffering.

Also, I've seen brains stomped out. Doesn't take that much to make a mess.

One thing they got right was the twitching, but there would've been a lot more of it, plus some contorting.

I know this isn't comforting after what we saw last night. What you got was like a roller coaster ride through a spook house, shocking images pulsing into your brains inducing emotional reactions. I'm dead inside. Not a single bit of that bothered me. I've seen the real thing and that wasn't real.

If I were a dictator, I wouldn't be a shock jock. I'd club the base of the skull at the top of the spine at a hard fast angle and simply just stop a person. A body will go completely limp that way, no weird twitching and contorting. People would think I was real nice compared to Negan. I also wouldn't preface it with long drawn out word games. Using terror to break people is inefficient. You wind up with wild cards. I'm really hoping the writers plug into that.

Anyone wanting revenge on Negan- he's already been broken. Something is really wrong with a person who can do that and enjoy it so much, and relish other people being psychologically damaged by it. There is no revenge you could ever do that would make a person like that repentant or beg for mercy. There's no getting even with someone who's already so broken that they can turn all that off. If I had a go at Negan I'd simply make a solid cut and just watch it all drain out. No words. No smiles or gloating, no winning. Just simply make him stop with a minute or two of consciousness before brain death started setting in, so he could feel himself dying. He probably wouldn't even fight it, assuming he's tied down. He'd think he's winning for not going through equal recompense, but does that even matter? Just make him be gone.

Getting worked up about scary stuff will be your downfall if you are ever caught in a bad situation. Becoming so afraid that you can't move or think is bad. Survival is priority over everything else, by any means. If that group had blankly stared back at Negan without reacting he'd have gotten pissed off because they'd be ruining his game. Rick going into shock like that is a real thing, that is happening to people all over the world right now in very dark places. You need to see it so you can start thinking NOW how you will survive if you're ever up against that kind of cruelty.

Personally, being ordered to cut off my kid's arm (which I'd actually be able to do, hate me all you want) I'd have whirled around with that hatchet on Negan's throat so fast and then claimed lordship, to hell with the bloody battle, just let people start scattering. Kill the head vampire, right? Who knows what could have happened. Negan actually kept positioning himself for Rick to make an easy kill, did you notice that? And Rick could not kill him. That is my biggest complaint with so much of this show, that victims are too timid to kill their abusers, but I have to remember I grew up really differently than a lot of people. When we go into reflections on how people could ever support Hitler, you guys just watch this show and see how easy it is to intimidate people into allowing abuse to continue, and even stepping up to assist with and enforce the abuse. These were probably all decent people before the apocalypse. Think NOW about what you already close your eyes to going on all around you, because believe me, we are all surrounded by a culture of abuse that is perpetuated by drugs, sex, and entertainment. Slick a palm, you can't trust anyone. Use this show to really start looking around you, ok? Open your eyes.

I could go on, but I see no point in it. I saw a lot of shock on the twitters last night, people swearing off the show- what did you expect? This stuff isn't cute. Just because there are toys promoting the show doesn't make it a fun little cartoon.

As you walk away from this post or the show itself, keep one thing in mind- there are people in real life going through real stuff like this every day somewhere in this world, and yes, even here in the U.S.A. There are people disappearing, being taken hostage, being forced into a variety of slaveries, and some of them are doing everything in their power to survive.

If you are not aware that human trafficking is one of the biggest international commerce trades in the world, you live in a pretty nice bubble. Never relax your vigilance. Keep eyes and ears on your loved ones at all times. Never take safety for granted.

The real life Negans out there watching that show last night probably laughed their heads off. Yeah, didn't even think of that, did you?

the ironically funny curse of Rick Lagina

Someone in Bangkok wants to know why Rick Lagina doesn't get married. Search phrase- "why rick lagina doesnt want to get married" Seriously, I'd quadruple my traffic overnight if I'd just write a few sentences about Rick Lagina once or twice a month. All it took was two posts mentioning him a year ago and he's still my top search referral.

If Rick Lagina dies WE RIOT
I can't believe all my best keyword traffic is Rick Lagina

29% of all my keyword traffic comes from people running into those posts during searches. These searches are worldwide, many of them rabid to know more about Rick Lagina's sex life. Highest impressions (vs click-throughs) on GWT analysis are from "Rick Lagina death" or "Rick Lagina dies".

Guys, Rick Lagina totally beats out "dr evil leo" (srsly, next top impression), Khanlock, Megavolt, and "Benedict Cumberstitch". And then we see "Rick Lagina bio" ranking ABOVE Benedict Cumberbatch in searches where Pinky blog comes up, and you know how much Benny C I've got in here.

I'd obviously be a fool to never mention his name again. Mildly facepalming over whether catching up on the last season in a post full of screen shots would be worth a little extra time this month. I've actually been wanting to make more memes. It still looks like I'm the only person in the world who's ever memed the guy.

Kinda looks like Doctor Strange's mysterious brother or something, doesn't he? No wonder people are going crazy over Rick Lagina. Here is Ben on set filming Doctor Strange.

And now I'm the only (so far first) person in the world to link Rick Lagina and Benedict Cumberbatch into a combo search field. You're welcome.

Here's a clip from The Curse of Oak Island. I reeeeally hope they find something. I have every episode saved on my DVR. Season 4 renewal has been confirmed. The premier date on the History channel has not yet been announced but will likely be later this fall, like last year.


The Autisable guy asked in passing on facebook how long it takes us to write up a post. This took about an hour between coffee, fact checking, and linking. Don't forget that the season finale 2-parter for Fear the Walking Dead is on tonight! @bonenado is really into that show. I'm still in countdown mode for The Walking Dead, #teamNegan.

Oh, yeah, and super awesome Syfy live tweet last night for The Crooked Man, that rocked and now it's deflating into people mistaking it for a Trump hashtag, so I'm not going to link it.

And now I need some Stephen Strange and more coffee. Don't forget to set your line ups and have a great day.

Pinky crack

omg, that title alone will hit paydirt in a search engine...


That was defcon level coffee. Ready for my day now, which requires more physical therapy and the moving of mountains, both metaphorically and metaphorically.

My latest addition to Planeta de Yablo is a creative only world, no mobs. I am recreating world spawn and will spread out across the planet, similar to ongoing construction in Texarkana. That's a weird inside joke that you'll probably only get if you've driven through Texarkana in the last ten years. Or live there. And the fun part is I've named this world Potatohoe. It will be similar to the isolated world of Krikkit. I started a spaceport idea long ago on a Pinky world (I think) and then promptly lost it because I didn't write down the coordinates, and I'd like to continue that idea. Anyway, I may struggle with trying to replicate a giant potato on that golden worldspawn room. The tower to the left will become the space elevator. Don't worry, haven't even gotten to the actual spaceport theme yet, completely different futuristic look to it. This is the basic homage to the World Potato and a spaceport elevator tour in a tourist mecca. Don't forget, I live in the heart of hillbilly + tourism. As someone living 4 miles (as the crow flies) from the National Tiger Sanctuary and a gamut of zipline, helicopter, and hot air balloon tours over an expanse of ruggedly forested gluttony that includes Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, I feel qualified to create Potatohoe.


I'm actually kind of stuck on a problem in the first world (I get 3 in my realm). I had pulled my deeply scarring and emotionally wringing experiences of singleplayer StarrStrukk into realm, switching from survival to creative, but I've recently switched back to survival for sploit to practice in while we chat and totally boinked up some of the admin commands, so now I've got to go back in there and apply tutorial research to straightening my mess out. But not today.


I've lately gotten so spread out in minecraft singleplayers, realm worlds, and multiplayer that I've decided playing minecraft is like eating candy on Halloween. ALL THE CANDY, right? I finally calmed down a little and wiped out all my singleplayer worlds. I have all the survival a person could want in multiplayer, and cool stuff to do on a friend's realm (includes story mode and mini games), so I am focusing my own realm on quiet creativity when I need to escape into my aspie cave. No pressures. Plus I need to get back into the cool redstone tutorials.

Word just in that the other metaphorical mountain moving might not happen today, so I'll continue to move other little mountains around my house instead.

Third cup of coffee (my bad), little cuppa yogurt (my good), laundry folded and time to get ready to truck out the door.

TWD therapy

This post is full of graphic images for purposes revealed at the end of the post. If you are not a Walking Dead fan and cannot handle these images, the words-only version is here. All pix click to sources, which may contain spoilers.

So this month we're doing manual therapy (hands on) on the sympathetic nervous system (direct nerve input to interrupt the fight or flight feedback loop), and every bit as much a bitch as all the other work I've done over the last 4 years, but seems to be working. If you are at all interested in techy body mechanic stuff, this is the best article I've found so far.

Physical therapy action mechanisms and effects on pain management

And here is a book.

Integrative Manual Therapy for the Autonomic Nervous System and Related Disorder

This is stuff that's been around awhile and very hotly debated for years. Many doctors don't see the point in wasting time on it and generally send patients straight to injections and surgeries, which are also hotly debated and fail to alleviate as much as 50% of the patients who suffer more invasive procedures. I first brought it up 5 days ago and I have 2 sessions left to go.

My thoughts on this 'waste of time'-

• I've lost 2 pounds, mostly because of the overwhelming residual pain, but it's staying off and I'll take it.
• In spite of that, I've quite suddenly felt like stepping back into my old workout routine and am now doing my daily walking, stretches, and core strength again. This includes basic arm work that I had to stop doing over this last year.
• At first I wasn't sleeping well because of the pain flaring up again (likely in response to the worst part of allergy season), but I'm now sleeping really well and my pain level is waaaay down again.
• The maddening itching, numbness, and referred pain that I've been tolerating along my spine for over 2 decades has stopped completely a couple of times, and mostly hums along at a much lower level this month and I barely even notice it.
• Headaches flared up during this round of therapy but I figured out it was from laying prone, switched back to sitting and the headaches stopped.

I think the mechanism in simple terms is like using very particular pressure points with deep tissue movement to gain the attention of nerve response and break through a stuck in a rut fight or flight default to reset and train the feedback loop back into parasympathetic acceptance. Basically, instead of taking a muscle relaxer to force my nerves to let muscles relax, this is a way of directly talking the nerves into letting them relax anyway. It's about cutting through unnecessary nerve chatter without actually cutting the nerves.

People talk about meditation and medical marijuana and acupuncture and more, but there's a lot to be said for hands on direct communication with a nervous system. To me it feels like when someone calms a spooky horse down, there are certain ways to move and act that cut through the fear and distrust. If my nervous system is always on edge because of a disorder, and I can bypass pills, needles, and surgery getting relief, YES.

For one time readers and noobs passing by, I was ejected from a violently flipping vehicle years ago and healed poorly at home without any assistance or pain meds, covered it up and passed for normal as much as possible for 2+ decades, developed a wicked severe case of persistent unrelenting fibromyalgia, and finally slid into the dark abyss of immobility and disability. After much consultation and documentation, I am that weird patient who reacts counter intuitively to meds, and now a medical team is watching me come back from hopelessness to functionality over 4 years of physical therapy, along with changing my diet, which was key because I have also turned out to be diabetic.

In short, physical therapy works, at least for me. Compliance (key word) with a really good physical therapy team, complete with specific documentation and goals, has been turning my life around, and while I'm not cured of fibro or diabetes, I'm no longer as dependent on a caretaker as I was for several years before the therapy started.

Physical therapy is very grueling, and there have been a few walls that we've had to back up and figure out how to go around or get over. It takes the kind of commitment that an athlete makes to training. Physical therapy isn't a one stop fix it shop, like car mechanics. It's an ongoing process that measures and directs regaining functionality, and I'm finding that if it is measured by pain levels going up and down, people tend to quit and say it doesn't 'work'. Well, there are ways to slow down and try different things and it can still work. Communication with the therapist is vital. I am one of the very few patients my team has that still comes in voluntarily to keep improving, despite pain flaring up so bad that I have to take breaks.

I know there are lurkers hanging on through the sucky long hard dark nights in terrible amounts of pain and sometimes fear and hopelessness, and I just want you guys to know I've totally been there for years, and it really is possible to find real help. Keep trying. I have to ask my doctor for referrals to physical therapy (I'm so thankful he's on board with that), and it helps that my neurologist is willing to try that first before desperate efforts like surgeries. Once you start the surgeries, there is no reset back to pre-surgery. Nervous system surgeries involve intentionally damaging very specific nerve bundles in order to muffle pain, and this is fine if there's nerve damage and there's no other way. Also, that's how they fixed my heart rhythm problem, fried an overactive nerve, so I'm not anti-surgery at all. I'm just saying if your doctor isn't offering it, ask for it. If your medicare or insurance allows it, they legally cannot tell you no, but you do need to negotiate with a good reason for it. I usually have specific goals- I want to be able to put dishes away in my cupboard and it's hard to reach up without spiking pain or dropping something, so I'd like help with getting stronger and someone showing me how to move properly. Once you get the hang of setting your own goals, you might be surprised how quickly the medical field falls into step with you. It's more a matter of saying the right words than expecting someone to fix you when you live with ongoing vague symptoms that no one knows quite what to do with unless specific corrective procedures are clearly indicated.

I'm not sure how much more therapy I'll be allowed to keep referring into, hopefully as long as I can keep showing it's worth it with improvements. Medicare allows several months of therapy every year, and many insurance plans have physical therapy allowances, although they can be pretty stingy about it. I once complained years ago that my insurance was willing to pay for a $10,000 surgery but not another $1000 to prevent it. There are definitely flaws in the American health system and, sadly, most of our health care runs on plans outlined by insurance companies. For me it boiled down to what I was willing to pay out of pocket, and yes, we did go bankrupt over it, but I'm not in a motor chair. I was this close to qualifying for a motor chair, guys. Not saying I won't wind up there, but I am saying not yet.

Ok, the TWD part. My current therapist is a rabid Walking Dead fan, so our 45 minutes flies by with conversation about it. Naturally, a lot of it wound up around Negan, and this is my 2 cents.

My first two TWD articles were The Walking Dead- What would you do to survive? (currently 12.944 views, thanks guys) and The Walking Dead- Overthinking Zombies. I won't rehash those or recap where we are now or anything like that. Let's cut the crap and go right to Negan.

I am a Negan person. I've been really ticked off for several years at the fail going on around just shooting the people who stall survival. I'm a shoot first and walk away person, judge and jury without batting an eye or handing out apologies. I don't feel bad or guilty or sad. This is autism spectrum growing up on a farm killing things and surviving.

The writing is all about jerking the viewers around, so of course they've got Rick coming up against the biggest baddie of all so far, ripping open the question- WHAT WILL RICK TO DO SURVIVE? We've watched Rick go through shock and recovery and organizational planning with plenty of psychological rocks being thrown his way, and now we're going to see how far Rick will go to not only survive, but hopefully keep his people safe and possibly even continue to thrive.

Negan is a brutally logical guy. He is like the Klingon Empire and Vulcan logic all rolled into one. He has established secure trading routes by sheer force of will and he keeps order with a chain of command that doesn't hestitate to show force to keep fear instilled in all the outlying groups.

Here's the thing. Negan has heard of Rick. Rick's as famous as Negan. Rick's gang blew up Terminus, so how could they not be? Negan knows Rick's people are a force to deal with and that they will stay loyal to Rick until he breaks them.

The fastest way to break group loyalty is to destroy feeling safe in a group. Negan could kill Rick and simply take the group, but he's likely going to own Rick in order to level up as almighty Emperor in the new Apocalypse Realm. Once he quashes Rick, he'll have order under his thumb again.

Owning Rick means emotionally breaking him.

Ok, now we can talk. If you don't break someone properly, you create a wild card. Breaking people is an art form, a psychological skill set that I don't believe Negan is capable of. I don't think Negan has the first clue how to psychologically rebuild purposely broken people, and that's why he uses fear to keep them loyal. When you break people correctly, you don't need fear, they are loyal anyway.

That will be Negan's undoing. (I could be completely wrong, but who cares.) His brutality will unleash a new kind of brutality in Rick that we haven't yet seen. Biting a guy's neck open is just survival. Beating someone to death with your bare hands is just survival. Rick's going to have to use his brain now, and it's got to be about more than survival. It's got to be about dethroning and taking over a kingdom.

They've had a little practice with group democracy in Alexandria, and we saw how quickly that fell apart. In the really olden days of human history, crime lords established territories before they became governments. Will Rick grow the strength (or psycho) it takes to steal a domain and reestablish it the way he sees fit?

In the meantime, we see individual wrestling with self doubt, which undermines group cohesion. I know Morgan means well, but pulling the emotional rug out from under Carol after she's become a solid survivor is akin to psychological sabotage, and Morgan was no different doing it than Gabriel, he's just a better killer when he needs to be. Morgan and Carol might be the ones who make it difficult for Rick to win over Negan. I will be very disappointed if the writers don't show Carol breaking down and becoming a loyal Negan follower, since he represents the kind of survival she once thought she needed to become and here she is already in the middle of an emotional breakdown. I will also be disappointed if we don't see Morgan rise up against his newfound principles and make a stand on what kind of life deserves to be lived.

My personal feelings are, should anything apocalyptic ever really happen, if I run into anyone killing their own people just to keep power, I would shoot without the slightest hesitation. My inclination is to see all people as resources, and to throw mental resources away like that is psychologically cannibalistic. People who eat their own are no better than the apocalypse they are surviving. My personal goals would be to collect and allocate human resources into their best fits for group survival, and if that means some do all the protecting because others just can't kill, fine. Some people are made to be warriors, others are not. Someone playing king of the mountain doesn't win the human survival game, and Negan is on the brink of creating a new monster that he won't be able to control.

In the days of human tribalism, the way to win territories was to kill the warriors and take the women, children, and whatever goods and flocks they had, and then set up new tribal leaders on the conquered territories. We keep watching Rick's group hesitate, and they keep getting picked off by every conceivable mental aberration out there. Will this be the season they stop rationalizing their killing? Will Negan be the catalyst for them finally letting go of trying to negotiate first?

I really don't care who gets killed with Negan's bat. Well, I care, but I'm not the kind of fan who'll stop watching the show because I get upset over a character I'm invested in getting killed off. The show is about death. It's about surviving death. Anything beyond that is just chain yanking by the writers. If Negan is the bringer of more death, then I want to see who stops Negan and how they do it. And I don't want to see him kept alive sweet talking people. I want to see how ugly that kind of person really is, and how people survive that kind of person.

Negan is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, if you want to check him out. With my prosopagnosia, I often get him mixed up with Todd Stashwick.

Personally, I'd love to lobotomize Negan and keep him on a leash... He's a good resource, tall enough to reach things I'm too short to reach. And I'd pimp him out. Gotta rebuild the population.

One thing I've been waiting for on TWD is a biker gang employed by someone hooked up with USGS maps creating a really big network of information gathering and sharing. Just a thought, guys, could go all kinds of directions. It's totally possible that Rick could become a vital hub in a growing local government system, but dang ol' Negan needs to go down first.

My fave Walking Dead parody from a couple of years ago.

I am really coming to loathe spring

Ignore yesterday's post. Gonna blame that one on the antibiotic.



You know you've come a really long way when you can throw a spoonful of cocoa powder into a cup of hot milk, not add any sugar at all, and be fine with it.

Actually, you mix that cocoa in the cup with a dash of water first and heat it for 20 seconds in the microwave, THEN add the milk and heat it some more. I make mine half canned milk, it's richer. Anyway, helps the cocoa blend in to break it down like that.

~hours later~

You know your head is wacked when you suddenly remember you haven't had any coffee.

Aside from needing groceries, I have no other plans today. It's enough to just survive this stupid coughing. I bathed and dressed, and now curling up in a little nest on the couch while I watch Sherlock sounds nice.

~minutes later~

Really tired of this waking up coughing thing. Still don't have my voice back, been 3 days now, I think. April is always my worst tree allergy month, but this one is too reminiscent of the year I wound up on advair. So far I haven't resorted to inhaler, but I've actually thought about it.

My worst new food allergy reactions pop up during bad seasonal allergy months, so April and August/September wind up being ER months for me if I don't keep a tight lid on it. The last thing I want to do is wind up on a prednisone rescue because I'm diabetic and pred seriously spikes blood glucose, so I may be sticking to a very restricted meal plan for a few weeks.

nutrition is taken for granted

Recapping 2016 so far-
December- serious tech fail
January- bronchitis
February- social media transition (depression)
March- intense physical therapy (nerve fail)
April- croaking off bcuz super allergy season

Can I be whiny now?

~more hours later~

Cranked some pred, pepcid, and benadryl, decided very abrupt and lengthy coughing spasms to the point of nearly puking means histamine cascade, because I'm already on antibiotic. The last time it got this bad (2009? 2010?), I wound up in ER 4 times in one month and pretty much lived on advair the rest of the year. Making the executive decision for round the clock benadryl and twice a day zyrtec. You'd think that would turn me into a zombie, and maybe by the end of the month it will, but for now, it's just a relief. Several years ago I had a Jack blog (Jack's Page), and one of my running gags was that benadyl may cause excitability. I was doused in the stuff and still sitting up all night doing artwork and collecting gifs other people made.















Not at all liking that I'm starting to get that cough compulsion again. It's only been an hour since the med load. I've been practically swilling chloraseptic. Pretty sure I'm not supposed to be using that much.

Sorry, this is me trying not to be nervous. My blood pressure is crazy, but it would be way scarier if it were plunging, so I'm not worried. Just means my body is dealing with something, like, oh I dunno, my immune system FREAKING OUT.

Live blogging at its best. I'm trying to stay off twitter so I won't scare the straights, plus it's hard to stay cool and polite when I'm already on the cusp of social fail without this kind of pressure, plus I really don't want someone tagging @bonenado to get his attention just because I'm tweeting. If I wanted him I'd text him, or call his work. We still shake our heads over that one day I was using twitter to handle a pain crisis by being silly and someone actually thought it was an emergency and tagged him. If it's really an emergency and I'm in a public place like Walmart, I'm pretty sure me or someone else will be calling 9-1-1, and I'm also pretty sure I won't be tweeting instead of texting Scott. Anyway, that was the day I decided twitter can't handle the way I handle my worst days.

There is nothing in the world that shows you how to handle crap like hanging out with young adult bloggers who have CF. There's a kid I follow on twitter (I say kid, could be anywhere from 15 to 25) for no other reason than that the tweeting style caught my eye, and I was like, wo, this person is tweeting silly stuff from a hospital bed and nobody even has a clue. The continual stream of shared conscious distraction was cute and witty and plainly stated for anyone paying attention- "I'm sharing myself because I'm not sure if I won't be able to soon." It was obviously a lifestyle, going in for maintenance and setbacks and stuff.

Whispers in the dark, all our minds tweeting and tumblr-ing and FBing, and feeling like part of the world because our thoughts are all out there together, even though some of us aren't really talking to anyone but ourselves. I love blogging. I can talk to myself all I want in here.

I think it's calming down again... I didn't cough once the whole time I was on here again.

There is a unique airway sensation that feels like suddenly everything is becoming too wet, and before you can do more than notice it, the coughing fit starts, and the more you try to actually breathe, the harder and longer every cough spasm is drawn out, until the throat just locks into spasm and stays that way, as if you're choking to death and trying to clear something out of the way, and it's only a response to all the tissues suddenly wetting up. If it would just stop for a few seconds, the air would get in and out just fine, but since the entire airway system is suddenly extra wet, the entire airway system is what's setting it off with an uncontrollable reaction.

When I had CMV one year, there were about 3 days where I felt like I was drowning in lung fluid. I wasn't croupy, wasn't coughing up anything productive, airway was actually clear, but the tissues wetting up in response to the virus (CMV is a particular kind of mono that can hit your organs) kept saying otherwise. It was about the most traumatic kind of illness response I've ever been through, and ever since that happened, one of my airway responses to histamine spiking is exactly that. It didn't used to do that. I used to get croupy and you could hear the asthmatic crackle in my chest, and I actually managed to live for a couple of years with continual mild asthma before I found out that's what it was. Now it skips that and goes straight to feeling like someone set off a sprinkler system in my throat, setting off sudden horrible gag reflexive coughing.

There's no cure for a hyper responsive immune system. All I can do is force everything to calm down as much as possible. I'm packed and ready everywhere I go to handle out of the blue emergency airway response, even in my own home. I have lived at this level of readiness for so long now that I can't even imagine not having an epipen and bottle of prednisone and inhaler more than 20 feet from my body at any time day or night.

Some of you see me get cranky over TV shows where people hesitate to kill the bad guy and then things get worse. Pretty sure if any one of the people anywhere near Negan were hiding that they live at this level, he'd already be dead because they'd have just shot him as soon as he turned his back. I know if it comes down to it, like in a zombie apocalypse, I'm not going to wrestle with hesitation when I've already been living with spur of the moment staying alive on the fly before anything bad like that even happens.

I once sat in an ER with my blood pressure at 210/110 calmly flipping pages in a magazine while I was in full blown SVT galloping in my chest, 180 bpm. I would sooner shoot a guy like Negan than sit through the anxiety of watching him murder someone, and I know I'd be able to do it because I've lived through stuff Negan never had to. I do not understand how a whole group of people can be so docile just because someone tells them to be. You're gonna die anyway. Making deals with the devil for a few more days or maybe even one more year is fantastically lame.

By the way, I've watched someone clubbing puppies to death and know what it's like seeing brains squished out only a couple of feet away from me. I was about 9 or 10. Anyone who can calmly do that, much less enjoy it like Negan, is way past Lord of the Flies. Imagine seeing that happen to your child. I wonder how fast Rick and his gang would've stood back up if that had been Carl.

~45 minutes later~

Oopsie, wasn't watching the time. Was deep in a wiki page on Negan when @bonenado walked in, and I hadn't even put supper in the oven yet. I just wanted to see how Negan dies. Just shook my head and walked off. Walking Dead is such a chain yanker. Just do it, ya dopes. Stop this Days of our Lives crap.



This is my brain on a big load of antihistamines and pred. The fluid in my ears is all "Should I stay? Go?" and looking at me like I'm supposed to know what's going on. Um, sure, have some coffee and kick back, what the heck. Maybe ease up a bit on that weird itchy eardrum thing, though, thanks.

I need to walk away from this. There's actually cool stuff I'm not sharing yet, might be awhile bcuz gotta take care of thangs, but a few of us are getting pretty Lexxcited about it. This is me irl slugging through everything going wrong all the time but cool stuff coming out of it along the way. And dang it, suddenly sneezing my head off after taking all that. This is ridiculous.

as I'm pinned down with arrows

pic clicks to Deadicated Fans
click --> for the Mining Dead server in Minecraft

I'm subbed to Stone City Blog, and one of the first things I see on my phone every morning is an emailed post written by someone in prison. This morning's was a great rap style poem called Raise The Bar. (This is NOT the same as the Raise the Bar Cypher or Tamar Braxton's thing. Way better.) This one was written by Jonathan Gordon, and he's also got a blog called From the Bottom of the Fish Bowl. Much respect.

I'm in occupational therapy now. The only difference is I'm now seeing specialists in arms/hands, and they ASTYM down to fingertips. What I am doing right now will determine if next move absolutely has to be surgeries. I guess they're finding out with people jumping into nerve compression surgeries too quickly that the compression cause isn't always addressed, so the surgeries wind up not helping that much. Right now we still don't know if my neck is partially causative, and still waiting on neurologist to talk to me about my MRI. I was told yesterday I'm one of the more complicated cases.

One question I was asked several times yesterday both on paper and directly was whether my pain was preventing me from sleeping well. Duh, right? But ~*yeah*~. So after a bunch of assessing, we barely had time for a light ASTYM from elbows to fingertips, and by light I mean I'm used to much more rigorous tooling, and was very surprised how easily I could drive and carry groceries afterward. And then last night? I. SLEPT. Less than ten little bitty minutes assessing and shredding the fascia in my hands and around my wrists and elbows, and I slept like a boss. Very much looking forward to what other improvements I may see up to the end of March.

This week being so hard in several ways, and once again, Minecraft being a godsend... Totally fumbled this bit but that opening scene is pretty cool.


Ok, this is the road I've been working on in multiplayer, eventually it's going to go across the water, too. I love cobblestone, lol.


As my friends (3 of us are claiming territories and created a boundaried town so visitors can't plunder us) were noticing I seem to have this *cough*LITTLE*cough* obsession with organizing all our chests, so they've dug out a basement, filled it with chests, and my passion is now being directly utilized. Any time I feel the need to super focus and bury myself for a few minutes in something useless but actually useful, I can go down in the basement and sort stuff to my heart's content. Several years as a lead in retail and a year executive cheffing in food, not to mention the glorious summer I had overnight run of a 4 story hospital as the only stat available in housekeeping, oh, and 2 years of hotel desking (I really am a natural born workaholic, I loooooove organizing),  you can imagine me disentangling incoming raw materials, cooking and smelting into refined goods, and repack for shipping off to other areas. I love minecraft. And then if I need a breath of fresh air, I can run around the mountains looking for sheep to shear and go on a few wild n crazy blitz hunts while I'm at it. I've also got this whole mining thing going in a couple of caves, and I'm paving a road from a mountain top out to the ocean bit by bit, so there is plenty to turn to when my day is plummeting.

In the meantime, jokes flying around my family about all the things I could have said on the webs. Scott agrees one response in particular would have been awesome, but yeah, it's a good thing I don't put snark first any more.

Anyway, you get the idea- aspie obsession needs a direction and application. Finding a safe place with safe people to do that is such a huge tension reliever, and so far I've not only been able to stay on track with the rest of my real life doing chores and making meals and keeping my bills and scheduling straight, but finding a new surge of energy and joy doing it. I seem to be doing more stuff in a 24 hour period than I was a month ago, which is a really good sign with depression.

I know it's been a drag watching me angst about being public and balancing real people on social medias (those have actually been my highest ranking posts). I can also tell some of you are a little miffed with my new static front page that forces you to actually click again before you can glance over what's new in my content. (Email subs and feed readers don't have this problem.) I know you guys like feeling anonymous, and I've apparently taught you well, because about 80% of you regulars now barely even show up on trackers (being logged into google hides you, didn't I say it? You're welcome), but the bot traffic still shows up just fine and only accounts for way less than 10% of incoming, so I know you're still out there. I don't know if the static 'about me' page will be a permanent thing, I'm not really liking it sitting in the way like a closed door. I may switch it on the top bar menu next week so it doesn't come up right away but shows up as available to click.

Still finishing out a very hard week. It doesn't matter how many years pass, the pain never fades when you lose a child in the family. Life goes on, of course, but even after 12 years we all went into a hush this week on cue, very automatic, and then sweetly came together and cried again, all alone in our houses, but together on the webs in a little private spot. There are just some things that can't be properly shared out loud. By direct association, I am part of a worldwide CF family and always will be. Every person whose life has been touched like this, whether it's CF or cancer or any other long term terminal situation- I know.

We are here to watch each other die. We are here to learn how to die well. We are here to learn the love that walks in the dark with others who can't escape it, and to lead the way for others who follow behind.

And that is my focus. #amwriting

This parody rewrite is pretty wrenching if you see it from the POV of a person going through medical stuff, and especially growing up with a terminal dx.

fandom refocus- drudgery of cleaning house vs elation of creativity

I've pared down my following number on twitter by a thousand now. This whole time I had only one tiny twinge of regret that lasted about 10 seconds. I feel like I'm doing twitter taxes or something when I think about it. My followers list never quite reached 3200 at its highest, so I'll just call my gross followers 3100. (That's not counting all the followers who dropped off over the last year when I didn't follow them back, or the spam/porn accounts that got deleted.) It's only down to 2875 right now, even though I've actually lost hundreds more in the last 2 weeks, because so many new ones keep following so fast, so I guess my net loss is only 425, even though I've unfollowed a thousand now.

. 

Btw, several people are going to cheer when they hear a certain person unfollowed me, and while I'd like to be sad about it, I've actually done my very real crying over months of emotional entanglement that goes back 3 years. My psychologist wasn't at all happy with that relationship eating away at me. I'm happy she's found a soulmate in a younger copy of herself, may they live in peace and love the rest of their lives. I kept saying I can't stay stuck in that rut, and I guess I've finally been let go. That's probably a very euphemistic way of saying it took forever to peel off and escape the continual emotional strain, and if worse comes to worst, it can always wind up in Pond of Death. I'd rather not take it to that extreme, but I imagine it would get a lot of traffic. I've been surprised how many people have tugged my sleeve over the last couple of years and asked what the hell I was doing playing that head game, because my stagnation over the distractions was very visible to people who know me better than that. You know what though? I didn't unfollow back. We really were friends, and I really do still love her very much. She knows that. I know she knows I know she knows that if she ever blocks me, it really is over. Unfollowing is ok. I'm going to take it to mean we're on a break for awhile. Sometimes Valentine's Day just turns out like that. But if I do get blocked after this, I'll never look back. I actually told her at the beginning- You're the last one. I'll never try to have another new friend again. She had every heads up about my history, all my honesty about who I am and where I'm wanting to go, and I had every assurance I had her full support going real places and doing real things. I don't think she realized she didn't want that kind of friend. You know, the kind who actually cares enough to come find why someone went dark over and over, and then takes it seriously when someone says they don't care if they die, and they're going to drink theirself to death. (I know that was awkward- Themself, themselves, theirself, or theirselves) If you don't want that kind of friend, don't make that kind of confession. Don't pull people into the dark expecting them to feel happy watching you throw everything away. Depression isn't a joke, and I don't appreciate being yanked around like that. Aspienado is a sucker and really fell for the shock effect. I suffered. Choosing to model a life of depression as an entertainment gimmick to the public just isn't cute, especially when I, the person who best friended you, am dealing with addictions and personal demons, and really especially when you flash a business card on twitter and the strange twistedness gets even darker. Srsly. Lotta potential traffic on this one. See, this is why I can't have friends. I get played in public, I play the recording back in public. A kind person pointed out to me this year, very gently, that maybe being a public person naturally precludes real friendships because the very nature of what I'm doing attracts trolls.

stuff, thangs, maybe deleted

On the bright side, @WalkingDead_AMC followed me last night, and they NEVER did that while I was actually doing the live tweet review. I'll take it.

Meanwhile, I started a seed world in single player called 'StarStruck' and have built my first house. It's already getting more elaborate, but I really enjoyed constructing this and it didn't take that long. Almost couldn't peel away for Walking Dead last night, so I think it's safe to say I'm a minecraft junkie now.



I originally accidentally started a super flat world and was doing pretty well with it, the potential for baddie attraction out on the wide open plains is very tempting for super combat skillz, but imagining a year of flatness dulled that excitement pretty quickly. As in immediately. So I deleted the whole thing, including the yellow brick road I was building toward the Emerald City I was going to make (building Labyrinth from the ground up would have been a great exercise, too, I may actually start a flat world over one day), and seeded another world. Now I live on a mountaintop and have plans for a futuristic city in a Taiga biome (I've also learned to write down coordinates and teleport, so it's getting hella fun) (you really need to do that because the minecraft world is too humongous to just 'explore'- The immense size of the minecraft world...).

Sometimes the talking just needs to stop for awhile.

Iz trew. I ripped out about 8000 words over a 24 hour period and still got chores done and food cooked. The last couple of weeks have been extremely liberating.


I've noticed there's this meme dichotomy on twitter. One meme promotes unconditional love, flaws and all, the other promotes getting away and clearing out the toxic people who drag your life down. It's been interesting watching several accounts who promote the unconditional love thing block other accounts for very trivial interaction hisses. Blocking is for spam and abuse, guys. Y'all playing with your block buttons like they're toys and then pouting when other people don't put up with your own sass (I've been dealing with several of you), what a silly tangled little world your heads must be. Am I the only one I know on twitter actually seeing a real psychologist? Actually dealing head on with addictions and emotional puzzles? Actually angsting over the word "friend"? When someone brings a definite skill set to the table and yanks my chain making promises of loyalty and future coolness, it gets really weird realizing I'm tied up in a dark room watching someone drink themselves to death watching the same TV shows over and over, feeling like I'm being held hostage as a prize for the world to be jealous over or something. Yeah, I'm a webmaster in a world fandom. You know how many people noticed everything that happened? And asked me why?

_

Just saying. Naive aspie falling over myself because someone wants to be my friend. Yeah, this one hurt, quite badly. I'm still reeling away while I work on getting back to a more focused place in my head. I had completely stopped writing for my own fandom. That's how bad it got. Well, public friendships are over. No more new private friendships, that's not even a thing with me any more. I've got friends, yes, and the ones I already have have access, yes. But they know better than to drag me out in public to make me dance when they pull my strings. That's over.

more stuff, more thangs, maybe more deleted
Maybe I got thangs to do.

thinky planny stuff coming back online, sort of

Pinky Robot is orienting to time and space again. Just realized my deposit was last week and I haven't even looked at bills yet. I marveled about being so on top of all that the last 8 weeks, bills all done ahead of time and stuff, and now I'm coming to in this weird braincation week after the big Christmas splat.

I got calendars for Christmas. Funny, huh? My kiddo was awesome and got me this one.

I've also got a calendar of islands in the bathroom and of landscapes on the wall behind my mobile office work station. I'm going to pick up a tiny calendar for my kitchen today, find a new place for it since I obviously never look at the old one and discover I missed turning the months all the time.  I started missing appointments again even with 3 calendars and a planner, so now I'm up to 5 calendars and a planner. We'll see how it goes, not having to walk into another room just to consult one, and having to write my scheduling in triplicate-duplicate. Did I mention @bonenado has his own calendar? Oh, and those of you trying to get my attention about blahblah smart phone calendars and reminders blahblah, NO. I spent years on jobs scheduling into computers, there is no sadder mess than incorrect data entry and the time wasted fixing it. If I have to push buttons for a quick glance, it's no longer a quick glance, and tech scheduling doesn't keep me oriented to day/week like a paper calendar and a TV schedule do. Go try your own brain fail and get back to me.

As I'm reorienting away from the things I let distract me from GET TO WORK! and FOCUS!!!, I am leaving behind the reason for the Pond of Death. I'll say it plainly, I've been getting trolled, and someone with my experience was caught playing the fool to several chain yankers. I've never been the sort who appreciates emotional negativity being used as a control tool, and for the life of me I really don't know how and why I stepped up into the role of puppet, because that's not who I am and it's stifling me, so I'm no longer playing the head games. This whole trying to be nice thing is backfiring in nasty ways, and it's back to the old PR mantra- "Don't respond."

And I don't care who makes the rounds saying what. I got caught in the web of attempts at explanations years ago over an expertly organized and choreographed train wreck with me at top billing to a whole table of actors in a public venue with 25,000 people on floor and a world fandom witnessing (I've recently been told there is more underground video than I was aware), and I learned hard and fast that no one wants to hear the sane side of anything, because so many fall for the bedazzlement of train wrecks. That's the magic of trolling, it makes people *feel* stuff, and they emotionally respond. Once that happens, they're invested, and then they automatically become bad guys when they realize they're also caught in an infinite loop (along with the target) and try to wriggle out. What's even more ridiculous is getting caught in a chain gang. Well, I'm not caught if I don't respond. I'm sorry I'm watching friends go through the ridiculous redundancy of serial trolls (true colors will out given enough time), but all we can do is live and learn. Some people like being yanked because it feels like they're getting attention, others figure it out and move on. We all have our paths to take.

Back to real life.

So I wept my way through The Long Kiss Goodnight yesterday. I really do just weep nearly all the way through that one. By the way, there is nothing like a good weep to clear out a sinus infection. Sorry, TMI. But that one touches a few nerves. My past isn't nearly that intense, but the whole bit about the kid IS. Waking up one day and realizing you're that parent who dragged your kid into some pretty bad stuff is a horrible memory you never get over. What's worse is realizing how many different ways it happened. The rest of my life was spent protecting my child from unbelievable possibilities of horrific proportion. Yes, in the book. Still working on it.


After that (and a few chores around the house), I started the Sherlock marathon. I generally don't share my blow by blow thoughts about TV shows, but I'm going to tell you guys something I've never said anywhere yet. "A Study in Pink" bored me to tears the first time I saw it. It was too easy. I had a taxi figured out almost immediately, and the whole convo with the cabbie had me yelling at the TV. They're talking like they're the 2 smartest guys having a chess convo about a deadly game of chance, and I'm mocking it the whole time. First of all, Princess Bride all over again. Second of all, who trusts a killer to tell any kind of truth? Third of all, I've mentioned my mom poisoned me growing up. (Eat that one, script writer.) My first instinct would be to grab both bottles, open both pills up, mix the contents, scoop them back together into the pill casings, and then challenge the cabbie right back. By the way, I know a real gun when I see one, too. Oh, and if the cabbie HAD been a real thinker, he'd have noticed immediately that the passenger he picked up had left her case behind in the car. What cabbie doesn't notice something left in his cab, that's his JOB. If I'd been sitting there with Sherlock and the cabbie, I'd have pumped a few more questions out.

In case anyone thinks I'm anti-Moffat, I hold him in the highest esteem as one of the highest ranking writers on the planet, case in point, he's mesmerizing the whole world and his TV shows are the first to world sync live viewing. I'd love to have that kind of power.

Anyway, I've picked mercilessly on every Sherlock Holmes show I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through with @bonenado (he loves Sherlock Holmes, years of all variations of Sherlock Holmes), actually have to leave the room for the American series version (@bonenado loves it). You know what caught my eye in this series? The whole starter being about John Watson's blog (genius), and the car windows. The layered lights reflecting in the car windows, the constant mirrored reflections, all the detail that went into the filming, and verily I was pleased and couldn't wait to see the next show. Modernizing Sherlock like that converted me, a staunch anti-fan. Mrs. Hudson is really awesome, too. I'll hafta stop before I start gushing about the whole thing now, just check out the trailer if you haven't ever seen Sherlock yet.


Sidenote- This series, which I discovered only just this last spring, has given @bonenado and I reams of new stuff to talk about. I get to ask him tons of questions and he gets to be the Sherlock Holmes expert. It's been really good for my marriage. Just saying.

My braincation will be slightly interrupted the rest of the week. I say slightly. Today is a major trip around 3 different towns running errands, tomorrow is a Bunny day, and the rest of the weekend is New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. If you still don't see me much on the twitters or facebook, it's because I'm trying to bury my face back into my marathon when I'm not committing my attention immediately elsewhere.

A friend introduced this group to me last night. Pinky Robot strongly approves. I'll just leave this here with my ode to Shakespeare's 116th sonnet.