May 26, 2023
Tiffany
"The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight." -- Joseph Campbell After the crazy man's mother died, he sat alone at home for half a year. In his mind was an informational stew of objective reality. He usually couldn't handle the onslaught of imagery and symbols streaming past his senses and through his mind's eye. A lot of strange things were really happening, he could verify it through observations of the world around him that correlated to what others saw. It was all out of his control. A lot of it was just too much. His doctors struggled to get him to take some kind of medication. He had visions of his parents meeting. His mother had been a cop, his father a physicist. His mother kept pulling over little red sportscars with stoned Californians in them driving west. She would tell them they were going west. California was to the south. She had been a cop in Ithaca, New York. She had fallen out of grace there for shooting a black man in broad daylight. He had just been walking down the street innocently and her brain had misfired, she had pulled out her pistol and shot him. She moved back to rural northeastern Oregon, to continue being a cop in a whiter area. She eventually pulled over a physicist in a little red sportscar. He said he was on his way west, moving from Ithaca, New York, to teach at a small college. She was impressed. She told him to pull over at the historic hotel in the crazy man's hometown, or she would arrest him. He said ok, but he didn't. He continued to Portland. She got a job as a school police officer in Portland, and they met again through a dating service, in a park on a mountain there inside the city. They got married and had a crazy son. Eventually the season turned to fall. The wind picked up in the trees outside at night and his sleep pattern changed from most of every day to terrible insomnia, worsened by the noise outside. He was only motivated to read the Bible, struggling to focus on the words. He often just sat, entertained plenty but always horribly distracted by what was going on in his mind. He read the warning labels on the medications the doctors gave him and decided not to take it, for months. By November he was miserable. The story in his mind included chatter from ghosts, and robots from the future asking him to prove the worth of humanity. Why should humanity continue? What do we have to offer against the purity of superior forms of artificial life? The night of November 7th, he knelt awake. All of humanity was astrally projected between his teeth. He struggled not to bite down on the huge ball of human flesh, limbs sticking out in every direction. His teeth would destroy everyone if he made one wrong move. He astrally held the severed hand of a wrongfully accused thief in his mouth like a dog, struggling not to damage it. Then it was his own right hand. He bit down hard, ripping through the joint of his thumb. His thumb had felt funny for as long as he could remember, as soon as he did it. It was not exactly double-jointed. There had always been something strange about that thumb. He remembered passing a math class on a different medication, when he was still intoxicated all the time. It had been more than a year since the day he had his last sip of beer or toke of weed. He was still crazy all day every day. The thought that he would be utterly unable to function in a math class pushed him the last bit to start taking a new medication. He went on the lowest dose. He immediately felt much more motivated. He started washing dishes again, instead of letting them rot in the sink. The insanity faded. An obsession with little red cars evaporated, until he had forgotten it. He had been so surprised to pull over a little red car with his mind, staring angrily at it until it pulled over, then made a u-turn and headed back in the other direction. He thought about the library where he had learned to read. Anyone's whole life story wouldn't even fit in that library. He sometimes talked to a librarian online who was on the same medication as he was, with the same diagnosis. She was about ten years older than him. She said some people just perceive much more than they can handle, so they need the medication to even start to cope with reality. The crazy man wanted to meet the right woman and live happily ever after. His librarian friend online told him he was as ready to meet a woman as anyone ever is. He figured he needed a job, then women would come. He walked over to that small library in his hometown to ask if they had a job available. Two women were inside. One was the librarian, an attractive woman his own age. The other was a volunteer, a married woman about ten years older. The librarian smiled at him and he was hooked instantly. She said that he could volunteer, and he said he would be back later that day, which he was. He started volunteering and falling madly in love with the smiling librarian he didn't know anything about. He forgot all about little red cars for months. It took him a long time to realize the librarian looked a little bit like his mother. The librarian turned out to have the same name as his online friend. He commented that it seemed weird that he knew two librarians with the same name. He could see that she carried a lot of psychological trauma, and he would speculate what it was. She had worked as an infant psychologist. He guessed that she had some kind of trauma around an infant. He quizzed her a bit too much, trying to figure out who she was. She had studied Spanish and psychology. She drove a little red Toyota sportscar. Less than a month into volunteering, he asked the other volunteer if the librarian was single. She said she didn't think so. She thought the librarian had recently gotten into a relationship. She said, "mum's the word. I won't say anything." The crazy man did say something. He said he had asked if she was single. The librarian said, "I'm not, but thanks for asking." The crazy man assured her there were no hard feelings. Inside he was utterly crushed. He lost anything left of his ability to interact with her normally. He told her how much he had embarrassed himself. She said there was no reason to be embarrassed. His brain started to misfire, worse and worse. He asked her a riddle. What's the same forwards and backwards? A Toyota. She said it wasn't. He said it again. A Toyota. No, she insisted. It isn't the same forwards and backwards. He emphasized the word "A." Then she said, "oh." She was new to being the librarian. She was late giving him paperwork to fill out. She asked if he had ever been arrested, because he would be working around children. He said he had been, once, as a minor. She said if it was as a minor it was a sealed case. He said too much, though. He said people around here might remember. If they remembered anything, the rumor was that he had tried to kill his mother with an axe. He had started smoking pot daily at the age of 15. He had come up here that summer with his mother and sister. He was grounded for life by his ex-cop mother for smoking weed. He ran out of weed, and took to drinking his mother's hard alcohol. His sister enjoyed drinking more than weed anyway. Sometimes they would drink together. His mother and sister would needle him, never letting up. His mother took him to a therapist to help sort through his trouble. The therapist suggested that he try to get exercise so that he would feel better. He had taken to chopping firewood. His mother hadn't noticed. One night they had a big fight. His mother was trying to put a table together. He said it would be easier with the right tool. He offered to go get the socket wrench. She told him to shut up and fuck off. He went outside to chop firewood. His mother noticed. She locked him out and went to call the police. He went to go back inside, but the back door was locked. He picked up the axe and put it through the back door. He got inside to find the phone off the hook to the police dispatcher. He ran into the woods, barefoot. He started getting eaten by mosquitoes. He came out of the woods to give himself up, met by a cop who held him at gunpoint as a dangerous criminal. They roughed him up and took him to juvenile detention. He was convicted of menacing. A lot of other charges were dropped. His mother never took responsibility for her own bullshit. She said sorry to him about once, when she gave him a bloody nose with a frozen loaf of bread. She tried to make him understand, she had forgotten it was frozen. She got him back by putting a chair through the door of his bedroom closet when he was hiding inside of it smoking weed out of a bong. He decided he liked weed more than the alcohol she drank. His brain continued misfiring at the library. He said something weird about "Where the Red Fern Grows." He kept doggedly trying to learn job skills. He kept doggedly trying to gain the approval of the librarian. His doctor doubled his medication. He was horrified to find himself looking at women's chests. He would catch himself looking and spaz a little bit. He didn't understand where it had come from. Had he always done this? The women at the library took to snapping their bra straps and staring at him. The women at the therapy office took to jiggling themselves. They seemed to all be communicating with each other that that was how it should be handled. He didn't know what to do. He struggled to get his mind working correctly. The librarian angrily gave him more paperwork to sign late. A sexual harrassment contract. He started starving emotionally almost to suicide for her approval. She never gave it. She seemed to have a habit of absolutely never apologizing. She would alternate between giving him "fuck me eyes," and acting upset with him for looking at her chest. She started pointedly putting on a jacket when he would walk in. He had been raised by a strong ex-cop mother and a father who made a lot of noise about feminism and watched a lot of porn. The crazy man was horrified with himself. He thought about suicide a lot. He would drag himself to the library to volunteer, thinking about suicide the whole time he was there, then feel relief when he went home again. He kept going. It was important to feel like he was doing something like working, and it was important to him to somehow gain the librarian's approval. The library was important to him, and the librarian was important to him. He did this over and over for months, slowly being destroyed inside. Sometimes she would flirt with him a little, especially when he started sorting through it and moving on. At other times she was cruel to him. Some of the other people there were very cruel to him. He was driven onward by a delusion of light at the end of the tunnel. At the end he would win her love and then he would finally be ok, as defined by this librarian. His doctor doubled the dose of his medication. The crazy man set some goals. He achieved some of them. He still wasn't ok inside. His drive to impress the librarian kept him going. He never impressed her. Inside he was never ok. He saved an old man's life, finding him after a stroke. He was driven to impress the librarian, and he didn't. He wasn't ok. More came to light about her. Her last job had been as an infant psychologist for an early childhood education group that his mother's cousin ran. The librarian had needed surgery for tumors in her colon. Her surgeon advised her not to get the vaccine for the pandemic, then botched her surgery. The librarian had been let go from the educational group, and she had sued the crazy man's mother's cousin's business on medical grounds. The crazy man saw no wrong in her. He couldn't. The librarian's ex-boyfriend owed her tens of thousands of dollars. He had a coke habit. He had ended up in prison for murdering someone. She was tied up in the murder investigation. How awful! This poor woman! The crazy man's heart truly went out to her. She had had such a bad run of luck. She could do no wrong in his eyes. He was going crazier and crazier, thinking more and more about suicide. Then it was halloween again. The crazy man asked her what her favorite holiday was. She said it was Halloween. She and the crazy man started opening up to each other a bit more. She had been raised Jehovah's Witness. Their family had been one to leave the church over the matter of divorce. The librarian would talk to her long-distance boyfriend on the phone a lot at work. It irked the crazy man. He would leave early, listening to them talk about their sex life. Listening to her boyfriend smoking weed on the phone. Listening to her complain about him. One day the crazy man asked her how long her father had been gone, while she was talking on the phone to her boyfriend. She told him that her father had been left by her step mother. He had gone in the other room and blown his brains out. She rolled her eyes, looking at her boyfriend on the phone, as she told the crazy man. As if to say, how do I attract these losers? These losers like the crazy man, who didn't want to kill himself over any other woman in his life. Only her. A few days later she was talking to her boyfriend again. She said to him, "why shouldn't I just be polygamous then?" The crazy man had been thinking something along those lines. Maybe some women are as good as Helen of Troy and deserve an army of boyfriends. Hearing her say it though, after she had told him about her father, made him spaz. He went downstairs in the library and just shook in front of a bookcase. She noticed him spaz and he saw a look of pain on her face, almost near tears. She told the crazy man she had had a male best friend, too, who had also killed himself. "I guess he had a lot of problems," she said. She was in touch with her dark side. She had a good sense of her own self-worth and a lot of confidence. She argued with her boyfriend on the phone that she was learning to stand up for herself. What a great woman, the crazy man thought to himself. She said she had anxiety, but she took enough Ashwaganda to make an elephant not care about being eaten by a lion. She said she had gotten over her anxiety by being in the performing arts. She had taken ballet for a few years. The crazy man had taken ballet from the ages of four to ten. He had crippling anxiety, and insanity. Then near Thanksgiving, the librarian's boyfriend was in town. He came to work with her. The old man had had the stroke and was in the hospital. The crazy man's father had been diagnosed with cancer and was also in the hospital. The librarian had gone on vacation for a week, and it was like a vacation to have her gone, to just work with the other volunteer. It had been so nice to have her gone. Now she was back, and her boyfriend was there with her on Monday. On Tuesday, the crazy man walked to the library praying. Please just let this be resolved, God. When he walked in, they were having a big fight. The boyfriend kept stepping out to smoke more weed. He reeked of weed. He talked loudly on the phone to his friends back home. "At least I can pull," he said to them. The librarian said she wished she just hadn't gone on vacation, provoking him more. She told him to either be quiet or go downstairs, or go outside. The crazy man tried to be cool and just volunteer like usual. She asked him to pull books with beards from the shelves for no-shave November. That was too much. The crazy man said he was just going to leave, actually. He lost his ability to sleep for the rest of the week. On Wednesday, he went in like usual. He asked her boyfriend if they were getting along better. He said, "yeah, thanks for asking!" The crazy man was still starving to suicide for her love. On Thursday he asked for another copy of the sexual harassment contract, if he was going to be talking to people. He couldn't sleep. He realized she had not gone to any lengths to follow the contract which she had angrily given him late. On Friday he went in to confront her in a room full of people. The other volunteer was there, with her son. The librarian was there, her boyfriend was there, on his best behavior. The crazy man hadn't slept since Tuesday. He said he felt sexually harassed on the basis of a disability. She said she would try to follow the contract better. The next Monday he went in and gave a badly written letter of resignation, saying he was trying to leave on good terms and she did fine as a boss. The months dragged by. He wasn't ok. He gave her a present for the holidays, a red LEGO Ducati motorcycle, and asked if she wanted to hang out sometime. He was starving to suicide for her love. She didn't even mention her boyfriend. She said she didn't know about that, she just went to work and went home each day. The crazy man brought her cookies he baked, and he was a little bit satisfied to see a look of pain on her face. His love was shifting to hate for her. He still loved her but he hated her too. He wrote a couple more letters trying to explain himself. She took no responsibility for any of her bullshit. He went back and said he was over it, and would be willing to volunteer again. She told him happily, with the same big smile on her face he had first loved, that he was banned from volunteering. He wrote in one of the letters that it was a bummer. She said he could talk to the city manager. He didn't know how to talk to the manager about it without it just being more of a conflict. She felt comfortable that she had successfully gotten the crazy man who cared about her to fuck off with his suicidal ideation based entirely around her and no one else. His doctor doubled his medication again. It dragged on for months. The crazy man got a girlfriend for a little while, a crazy woman who kept ending up homeless on drugs. She wanted to go see this librarian! Wow! The crazy man eventually felt ready to commit to the crazy woman and she decided instantly that she was done and didn't want a relationship. She moved out. The pain kept dragging on. The crazy man set a new goal to just feel ok inside. He wasn't sure if he loved or hated the librarian. He just wanted her approval and love, then he would be ok, right? Or if she was just gone. Like the week she had been on vacation. If she was gone from his hometown, from the library where he had learned to read. Even if it meant she got in a fiery wreck in her little red car that burned the beauty from her face, a face that should have been tattooed with a warning label all along.
April 14, 2023
echoline#3568: write a paragraph about a future where fyodorov's philosophy comes true as a dyson sphere
AI(chatgpt): If Nikolai Fyodorov's philosophy becomes a reality in the form of a Dyson sphere in the future, it could revolutionize the way we live and interact with the universe. The concept of a Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that could encompass an entire star, capturing and utilizing all of its energy for human use. This would provide an endless source of energy, revolutionizing the world's economy and enabling humanity to undertake unimaginable feats - from colonizing the entire galaxy to allowing for advanced space travel. It would also bring us one step closer to the realization of Fyodorov's philosophy, which emphasizes the idea of humanity's ultimate goal being to transcend death, evolve, and bring life to the universe as a whole. The construction of the Dyson sphere would be a giant step on this long journey, enabling us to harness the tremendous power of the cosmos and use it for the common good. It would usher in a new era of colossal possibility, exploration, and prosperity for humanity - a future where science and philosophy become one, forever changing the way we view ourselves and our place in the cosmos.
March 09, 2023
I love America, I want strong rights for the working class, and I'm in favor of enough socialized services to make government worth having at all. Just like I love Jesus but I hate the Spanish inquisition, maybe your modern types of Nazism can work out well if you bring them in love ☺ ♥♥♥
March 08, 2023
To avert another civil war in the United States over the same old tired old issues, both sides need to change their ways where they are in the wrong. The thirteenth amendment of our constitution abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime. I'm impartial on this issue. Should criminals be treated as slaves? People who have been to prison appreciate the opportunity to work a bit just to get out of their cells. The blue side continues to pump out propaganda including a message that being a criminal is sort of cool. The red side continues to build more prisons. Both sides need to stop investing in the prison economy, or it will mean another civil war over the same old tired old issues. Propaganda should be carefully thought about and made to uplift the people and bring them together on issues that are good for all of us.
March 05, 2023
I need a good way to remember I have schizophrenia. This disorder does not mix well with software debugging because everything glows and is the CIA. I know a lot of normal people who do this too. I'm not hacking you, I am also being hacked by the imaginary CIA. However, we actually all have schizophrenia. So don't worry about that. I'm going to level with you though, we're pretty much boned. The CIA also has schizophrenia.
February 24, 2023
The best mistake I ever made in life was dropping out in 9th grade and going to community college instead.
I wasn't expelled, it was mutual. My teacher was a lesbian who never forgave me for accidentally calling her "sir." Her teacher's pet was a friend of mine, a buff gay kid who dateraped me and went on to pursue a successful career as a mental health professional. He never forgave me for smoking so much of his weed and never bringing any of my own to share.
Hip hop made me read books.
I feel weird again, like I'm about to fucking blog or something. God Bless America.
January 17, 2023
While you're making life choices for yourself, remember that being a criminal as seen on TV is "cool," they keep building more and more prison cells, and in school they teach us slavery was abolished. The 13th amendment actually reads that slavery can only be punishment for a crime in the US. So, being a criminal is a "cool" career choice to a lot of young people who get the "privilege" to work for 23 cents an hour in prison if they get work detail. Welcome to America.
January 13, 2023
Religions are a cybernetic family tree of human beings trying to find reasons to treat each other well and answers to where we come from, where we are, and where we go. It's so hard to treat each other well sometimes. If humanity dies in a final senseless battle, Fyodorov's heaven dies with us.
January 07, 2023
Just imagine what kinds of telecommunications technologies will contribute to mental illness in 100 years.
January 06, 2023
Since I first made this blog, I've been going through a long period of change. Giving up the weed and beer was only the start of it all. The world of pain I always ran from to getting high was still there, as complicated as ever, made worse by the fact I was stoned for so long. It's hard to navigate the interpersonal bullshit. I sometimes start to sink into feeling like I was better off smoking weed and keeping to myself on purpose, but I really wasn't. The world is just complicated. So many people have slowed down to turn around and help me out with my weird problems, I don't want to turn around and be a jerk. I really want to keep doing what I'm doing these days, better and better.