boojit

Dear Diary:

I was over at Bob's [Costas -- ed.] last night and something happened that really freaked me out. Bob showed me his pornography collection. That in itself is not a really huge deal, but it turns out Bob has like the 5th or 6th biggest porn collection in the United States.

Even that wasn't really that big of a deal, but then he started showing me some of the movies and he talked extensively about them, just like he does when he's on TV breaking down the Olympics.

"Now this film, from what is now Latvia but what was then the former Soviet Union, is a perfect example of a truly spellbinding performance -- a performance so endearing, it affected viewers of all nations regardless of their political standings. Always a huge favorite in eastern Europe, it became an underground sensation in the United States when American porn acress Kanista Summers tried to defect to the Soviet Union, in order to work with the director and producer of the film you are about to see. Ladies and Gentlemen: The Voyeur and the Lesbian."

Anyway Diary, it was just really fucking freaky. I have to go, bye for now.

Dear Corey:

Please update your blog.

Regards;

--booj

The theme is: "Avoid thinking in absolutes." The moral is: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." The corollary to the moral is: "With the right equipment, it can be one hell of a toboggan ride."

The reason for this rather Vonnegut-esque beginning is to give me some focus, because I don't know how to start. So, here's the idea:

The theme is what I want to be thinking about as I write; it's the idea that seems most pervasive when I look at what's wrong with me. I want my writing to reflect that. In other words, I don't want to get done writing 800 different posts only to realize I spent half the time making bad jokes about psychotherapy and the other half bitching about why Verizon is a shitty, shitty, SHITTY phone company.

The moral, as everybody knows, comes at the end, and is sort of like the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box. I don't want you to be disappointed when you get there, so I'm letting you know now ahead of time with minimal up-front investment. GET OUT NOW WHILE THE GETTING IS GOOD.

The corollary is the other 98% of the content. At least, that's the theory. In practice, who knows. I'm new at this. Let's forget about that part for now, and get back to the theme.

"Avoid thinking in absolutes."

It's pretty boring and lifeless, I know. Even as a theme for some retard's retarded web log about his retarded life. You'd think I could dress it up a bit, add some pizazz or a big word in there or something...come on.

I realize this. Believe me, It's depressing in itself when you realize a major part of your fuckedupedness is something so goddamned simple. You imagine yourself to be all complex and mysterious, so in a strange way you want all the answers to be complex too. It is like being given a riddle that you spend a tremendous amount of energy on solving, only to find out it was just a trick question. Ha! That was funny, you really got me there!

No, that's not what I want. I'm looking for something more like...climbing a steep mountain to find the Swami at the very top, and when I get there I'll ask him something like, "what is the true meaning of existence?" and his answer will be something so profound -- so mind-bogglingly deep -- that it will instantly change my whole perception about life and shit, and I become at total peace with the universe.

See this is the exact type of thinking I should avoid. Not. Helpful.

Swami or no, I still spend a lot of energy looking for complicated answers to my problems, and I get more depressed when I find only simple ones. You know what I mean, things like "exercise more" or "set realistic goals for yourself." Let me tell you how depressing it is to go see a therapist, telling them all your dumb problems and how everything is so terrible and awful and unsolvable, and then they say to you, "How much do you exercise? You look like you need more." GEE, THANKS, HERE'S YOUR $200, THAT WAS WORTH IT.

So finding only simple solutions and being dissatisfied with those, I've tried extremely hard over the past few weeks to make things more complicated than they really are. I've set harsh directives about how I'm going to change my life, and set for myself exacting, complex specifications of what I'm capable of doing and what I'm not. I've said things like, "I NEED TO SIMPLIFY MY LIFE." Which is true enough, but then I go too far. "WHAT THIS LIFE SIMPLIFICATION IDEA CALLS FOR IS A 500-POINT PROJECT PLAN FOR THE INITIAL PHASE WITH A 4-6 MONTH IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE."

The result of that work has been an even deeper push into depression and full-bore despair.

Then, just a few days ago and completely coincidentally,  I found that my favorite writing tutorial is publicly available on-line. One doesn't usually find help with one's life problems in a book about the written word, but flipping through it I came across this well-known passage and it was kinda one of those moments where you go, "Oh yeah, this thing. I know this. It is a good thing to do."

Omit Needles Words.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

-- William Oliver Strunk Jr, The Elements Of Style, 1918

Wow, did old Strunk ever say a mouthful there. If you were to apply this notion to everything on the Internet, you'd probably have juuust about enough left over for your book report on "BUGS THAT CAN'T FLY (AND ALSO SOME BOOB PICTURES)."

So, my new theory is to use this tool I call "Strunk's Razor" not just (hopefully) in my writing, but in my thinking process as well. What I need right now isn't a 500-point plan with bar graphs and milestones. I need a maxim -- something with "no unnecessary parts" and that "every word tells."

I need something so that when I start viewing the world in that "depressed boojit" way -- when I'm hating everything on the planet and everybody on it, and I feel like I'm the biggest fucking hateful useless bastard piece of shit ever created -- that's when I need something simple.  Simple enough just remind myself where I'm going, what I'm doing, and how I got here.

"Avoid thinking in absolutes."

That is the theme for me, for right now, for how I want to write these pages, and for how I want to start viewing the world.

It's a start. 

Ok time to buckle down! Write about how crazy I am! Here we go!

Ok maybe tomorrow.

But to set the tone for the forthcoming posts of horrible boring misery, here is a poem by a very famous poet:

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

--Philip Larkin (1974)

My crazydoctor started me on a new crazymed yesterday: Remeron. Here's what crazymeds has to say about it:

Pros: If serotonin and/or norepinephrine are the answer for you, Remeron will pull you out of the deepest, blackest depression like no other medication will.

Cons: You will literally eat sugar straight out of the bag to satisfy your cravings for sweets and carbohydrates.

Remeron's Typical Side Effects: Most of the anticholinergic effects common with psychiatric medications are infrequent with Remeron. Instead you get intense hunger for the wrong foods, and with that comes weight gain, dry mouth and constipation. Then you want to sleep a lot. It's like you may as well be smoking pot when you take Remeron.

and:

At any dosage it will make you crave doughnuts. Seriously. You will want to invest in Krispy Kreme stock (or maybe something along similar lines that isn't tanking); as Remeron's antagonism of the H1 receptor and stimulation of your serotonin production gives you the munchies for carbohydrates and sugars like you were 16 and smoking the best pot ever in the parking lot of a strip mall with a 24-hour doughnut shop beckoning you with glazed and jelly-filled ecstasy. People dipping spoons into a bag of sugar and eating it as is - not unheard of when on Remeron. This stuff is nothing more than legal marijuana, and if I knew crap about biochemistry I could probably prove that crazy statement. From a purely molecular-chemical perspective THC and mirtazapine are nothing alike. But there's just something about how the two drugs work that is really close. And people who have self-medicated with pot respond really well to meds that really push the norepinephrine, and hard. Strattera, reboxetine, Cymbalta, and the more potent TCAs. And Remeron.

So anyway, i don't know how to feel about that. All i know is I agree with my doctor on one thing: the Effexor hasn't been working. I'm slowly weaning myself off of Effexor, and it's a slow go because of Effexor's discontinuation effects which suck ass. Also, I know that I don't get anything from seritonin action but stuff that works on norepinepherine really seems to do something, which is probably why Wellbutrin worked so well I think (except for the migraines). That's why I've been on Effexor but the going theory is while Effexor does work on norepinephrine, it doesn't do nearly as much for that as it does for seritonin. Hence me being all crazy and depressed.

I still plan to write more about what's going on and what happened. Suffice it to say for the meantime: I quit my job, almost left my wife (thank god she is too crazy herself to get out when the getting is good), and basically went down the tubes. Detox, crazy hospital, blargh blargh blargh. Now I'm just kinda sitting at home trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. One thing is for sure, things they are changin'. The nice thing about being all super-depressed and full of misery is that the idea of just completely changing everything doesn't scare you very much. Hey, you can't be any more miserable than you are now, right?

Thanks for showing up. First I'll be just copying over some posts from my livejournal, and then I'll be starting a (hopefully) regularly-updated blog about my depression, my crazy fucked-up family, and starting my life over from scratch. Thrown in with the occasional vitriol directed at stupid people that I think are stupid and also I want to tell them that they are stupid.

My dog cost me yet another $100 today. This is after spending close to $3000 on him 2 weeks ago, when he got into a bunch of fucking beefrib bones from the barbecue and long story short they did an emergency operation on him, pulling out 1/2 gallon of goddamn bones. Stupid goddamn dog.

Then today he had this big golfball-sized lump on his side (totally unrelated to the surgery), and it didn't look good. Long story short, $100 bucks to tell me that it is basically nothing but if it isn't gone in 2 days, bring him back (for more money).

Oh, and he has another goddamn ear infection.

YOU BETTER BRING IT

Session Start (AIM - b00jit:j-mart): June 12 10:00:40 2004
b00jit: one of our customers is named "Bob Loser"
j-mart: no way
b00jit: my boss is like, "it's actually pronounced 'lozer'"
j-mart: I bet that guy had a tough time in school.
b00jit: i'm like, "he's not fooling anybody. He's fucking Bob loser"
b00jit: how do you just not get that name changed right away?
j-mart: Bob Loser
j-mart: You might as well be called Bob Idiot or Bob Nodick
b00jit: i mean, how do you just go around your whole life, correcting people...telling them it's pronounced "lozer"?
b00jit: Bob Loser
j-mart: Loser....party of four....Loser...Party of four....your table is ready.
b00jit: man, that guy really is a loser. The fact he has gone his whole adult life and hasn't changed his name...that makes him a real fucking loser
b00jit: how do you be a woman and marry into that?
j-mart: I wonder what happens if your his wife and ...besat me too it.
b00jit: "im going to become a loser!"
j-mart: I'm goig to go hang out with the loser side of the family....
b00jit: AND THE WINNER IS....BOB LOSER!!! COME UP AND CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
j-mart: Bob Loser....Your fired!
b00jit: Mr loser, I'm sorry. You only have 6 months to live
j-mart: hehe
b00jit: "Calling Mr. Loser...Mr Bob Loser. Your car is being towed. Also: you left your lights on."
j-mart: bob Loser.
j-mart: poor bastard.
j-mart: I wonder if he's really tall and whether he's the biggest Loser the family line has ever produced....
j-mart: http://genforum.genealogy.com/loser/
b00jit: Bob Loser steps up to the starting blocks. He's waited a lifetime for this one race...Losers first, last, and only chance at Olympic gold. Loser sets...
b00jit: Loser false starts...he resets.
b00jit: You can cut the tension on this track with a knife
j-mart: http://www.nv.cc.va.us/home/rloser/
b00jit: and there's the starting gun. Loser is off like a rocket. He's well ahead of the pack.
b00jit: coming into the first turn, and Loser looks good.
j-mart: Bill, I'm really impressed with Loser's start here. His stride is decent and he's really being agressive. I don't think any of us expected quite this good of a start from Loser.
b00jit: We're halfway through the race and Loser is holding on to his lead. Can he do it? Can he be the first U.S. Loser to capture gold in an Olympic event. I say "U.S. Loser," because there was a Loser on the French synchronized swimming team which took gold in the 1924 Olympics.
b00jit: loser is still ahead here in the final stretch. Boy, is this an exciting event. He's closing on the finish line. I don't think anybody can catch him now, barring some sort of catastrophe...
b00jit: AND LOSER HAS JUST WON THE G....WAIT A SECOND!! WAIT...AT THE EXACT SECOND HE WAS ABOUT TO CROSS THE FINISH LINE, HE HAS STOPPED IN HIS TRACKS AND IS LYING IN A CRUMPLED HEAP ABOUT 3 INCHES FROM THE FINISH LINE. MEDICAL PERSONNEL ARE RUNNING TO ATTEND....
j-mart: too far...

Session Close (j-mart): June 12 10:30:36 2004