reading manga; showing off for the audience; ending on a sour note

12:55 AM 7/7/10

I'm getting the impression that Curtis and Carrie might be seeing each other again. When I say 'seeing each other,' I mean, having sex or making out or whatever they do. When they 'broke up,' she told me they were still seeing each other, as friends, so they still are together. I don't know what it means that they 'broke up,' unless it means not having sex. Now he's changed his picture back and it's no longer the crying Caden picture, and Carrie says she is in an 'it's complicated' relationship. She mentioned seeing 'her babi' which is what she calls him. If it's like last time, this means he won't even allow me to get a phone call. I had asked him to call me back when he was officially dating her, and he said he hardly even had time to do that, a phone call.

*****

Continuing on the Sx/So testing: Peter has asked me a couple times recently to take him out shopping. He likes Weis's produce department more than Wal-Mart's, and he likes a few other things about Weis, so he has asked me to take him to Weis, but since my store is the nearest one that's open 24 hours, we've gone to my store several times recently late at night. This is probably a puppeteering scenario that they wanted to set up, I'm guessing, but not necessarily. Peter really does prefer to shop there.

Anyway, when we're walking around together at a place where people know me, I am doing something that I've always done for a long time: I am a public spectacle. I am showing off for an imaginary audience. Everyone around me is looking at me. I'm walking around with my boyfriend, and this is the most exciting thing that's happened all day. Showing off for the audience, for all the people who know me, instead of just privately focusing on him or focusing on what we're doing. When a cute guy is nearby, I laugh more loudly, and I use big words and say intelligent-sounding things loudly, which happened when a dreadlocked guy with shoulder-length hair was at the next register, and I had to explain to Peter how to pay by check, and I said I knew what to do but I 'couldn't explain it verbally.' The volume was raised enough for the guy to hear me. I always want everyone to think how great I am because I am walking around with my boyfriend. It's an arrogant feeling, a desire for attention, a desire for everyone to notice me. I make eye contact and smile at everyone as we walk by, and I feel like I'm somebody important, and more important than usual. This has always happened - I did it back when I was walking around with Eric, too, years ago.

Sometimes I asked myself, Who is the audience I'm showing off for? What if I was actually *WITH* the person I hoped would see me? Who would I show off for then? What if I was with the best possible person that I could be with, and there was nobody else who I cared about more than that, and nobody else who I wanted to see me, more than that person - would I still want to show off for an audience? Would I still look at all the other guys around me while I'm walking around with my boyfriend, and imagine that those guys wish they could be with me? I always want other people to be jealous as they see me, to wish they were with me. I have a feeling that this is a tendency that I will always have, no matter who I'm with. It's one of the reasons why I believed in polyamory as soon as I read about it.

There is the phenomenon of 'embracing' some idea, and being 'out' about it. Like gay people who embrace their gayness and become highly visible, 'out', flaming gays, instead of quietly hidden gays. I like to do things like that. If I find that I'm shy about something, I like to make a rule that says you shouldn't be shy about that, and you should openly flaunt it instead of hiding it. That's the rule about not shaving. (Note, the only reason I'm still wearing long pants is because they are what I'm finding in the $0.29 Goodwill section. I have to cut them off to make shorts, which is a hassle. Also, I had some drug residues on my car seat, which I should try to wipe off the vinyl, so I was a little anxious about wearing shorts again. But I am not hiding my hairy legs on purpose.) I like to find that there's something I'm being shy about and decide that it shouldn't be forbidden, shouldn't be kept hidden, so I should express it and accept it. That includes everything, such as my tendency to be showing off for an audience when I'm with my boyfriend. That is part of my self-acceptance. I say, I shouldn't think I'm evil for doing that, or evil for feeling that way, or evil because I want everyone to see me.

I've been that way for as long as I can remember, wanting an audience to see me when I'm with my friends, raising my voice so a guy nearby can hear me, laughing louder, talking differently because other people are watching, showing off.

That's all part of the sx/so testing. It's what I imagine a sx/so would be like, and it's the way I've always been for a long time.

*******

Today I picked up a manga book at Barnes & Noble. I saw something about manga - it might have been on television, but I can't think where I would have seen it on TV - I can't imagine that a TV show at Peter's house would have been about manga. But that has to be where I saw it.

Manga is a type of 'comic' book, from Japan. They would be called 'graphic novels.' They are taken seriously and read by people of all ages, not just children and not just weirdos. They can be about anything, not just superheroes or that kind of thing. They can be about mundane topics just as well.

The one I picked up was called 'Chobits.' I picked it up because it had a picture of a girl with floor-length hair on the cover.

Oh, by the way. 'What Men Want.' I picked up another book called 'The Pillars of the Earth,' I think. I opened it up to a random page somewhere in the middle of the book. A guy named Will was talking about how he would spy on this other girl, and he (the book narrator) described how he watched her go outside and bathe in the water, one time, and he watched her while she washed the 'surprisingly large amount of thick, curly hair' between her legs, and he ejaculated in his pants while he watched. Did the book say he watched her washing off her 'smooth, bare, neatly shaved pussy?' No, it said 'surprisingly large amount of thick, curly hair' between her legs. Yet another piece of evidence that not all men want their women to be completely shaved everywhere, and in fact, they can be very excited about body hair.

So, floor-length hair, another 'What Men Want' image, is ALL OVER the manga books. Extremely long hair is very common in those books. Why aren't women listening? Hundreds and hundreds of sexual fantasies, written by men, show these images of women with extremely long hair, floor length and beyond, and they're being ignored. Who cares what they want? (I do.)

Yesterday was Frida Kahlo's birthday. As we all know, Frida Kahlo was forgotten by history, and loathed by all of society, because of her horrible ugliness, those connected eyebrows and that unshaved mustache and everything. Obviously false: Frida Kahlo is famous and loved by many. Millions of people think she's amazingly beautiful in addition to being a great artist. (I don't like her art very much, by the way. I just like her for her physical appearance and the eyebrows and mustache.  Yes, I'm serious.  I really don't like her art that much.  I just like what she stands for, with hair and grooming.)

I got into reading 'Chobits' - and I couldn't put it down. I was sitting in an uncomfortable position on a bench, trying to avoid the cushiony seats, which seem to give me a drug residue reaction. I sat there for like an hour and a half reading that book, and got so stiff I had to stand up and stretch, and that was about when Peter called me on the phone and asked if I could take him out shopping. I didn't get very far in the book. But it made me see everything in cartoons for a while afterwards. Everywhere I looked, I imagined that it was drawn into a line drawing and it became part of the book.

I've looked at those graphic novels and manga books before. There was another one, and I don't remember the name of it. It must have been written in a country that practices female circumcision. There was a scene where the main character was in an art class, and a woman was posing nude. There is a feeling of shame, humiliation, and ridiculousness here. In the book, the woman fell asleep during the drawing, and when she fell asleep, her legs spread open and he could clearly see her vulva for the first time, and was very excited about it. The shame/ridiculous feeling is from the artificialness, the fakeness, the 'sexual fantasy' feeling, the 'contrived' feeling, of how she 'fell asleep,' and that's how he was able to finally see her vulva. I remember being a teenager, when someone 'falling asleep' was a big deal - Rachael and I used to talk about a time whenever our crush, Jeremy, fell asleep someplace where we could see him, and how cute and wonderful it was, and how we wished we had a picture. In this book, it was the same. Something that was a big, huge deal, something to get extremely excited over, but at the same time, unreachable and impossible. After I had sex, after having sex became 'normal,' I didn't make a big deal about it anymore, but back when I was a teenager, sex was something impossible, something that happened in another universe. The books have that feeling.

Anyway, the 'female circumcision' part of it was that the book showed the woman with her legs spread. And all that they showed was a hole, and nothing else. There were no lips, no labia, nothing at all there, except the hole of the vagina. The artist who drew the book didn't even look online to see images of women with intact labia, and draw it from those. He drew a woman with nothing there at all. It seemed like it was normal, or desirable, to expect that the nude model had no labia. That seemed strange to me. It made me wonder what country the book came from. A lot of them do come from Japan, but not all of them, and Japan doesn't do female circumcision as far as I know. The drawings are realistic enough that I would have expected more detail - they're not just crude cartoons without any detail.

Through the books that I've seen, there is intense sexual excitement, along with the 'it's impossible' feeling that I used to have as a teenager before I ever had sex for real and got used to it. Every little thing is a big huge deal, every tiny gesture, every look in their eye. I can see that in my old diaries from eighth grade.

Nearly everything in the books is a fetish. The extremely long hair is a fetish. Females who are actually computers or robots with artificial intelligence - that's a fetish. Very young people, in their early teens, as sex objects. Themes like that are everywhere in those books.

I then wondered, how would a nudist like me write a book like that, and remove all the clothing - but still somehow create suspense and seduction? The people are all naked. You can't fetishize their clothing anymore. You can't draw an image of the girl's shirt slipping down just a little bit so that her breasts stick out the top of it. You can't draw an image of her skirt lifting up just a little bit too far so that you can see the top of her thighs or her butt. All of that is gone. They are now totally naked and there's nothing to hide anymore. There's nothing that can be just barely revealed, enough to excite you, but still unreachable and inaccessible. Where's the suspense now? Where's the plot, the story, the romance, the seduction, in a nudist manga? This is my green hat thinking. (Edward de Bono: Six Thinking Hats. When you 'wear the green hat,' it means that you go with an idea to see where it takes you, even if it seems illogical or impossible.) I'm going to assume that it CAN be done, somehow. In spite of total nudity, suspense and seduction still exist. I just have to find a way.

When we remove all the barriers, the things that are 'forbidden,' and no, I don't mean ALL of them - I myself still forbid a lot of things - when you remove many of those barriers, what then becomes important when we're not worried about those things anymore? When one value need is met, another value rises in importance. You're not worried about X anymore, so you can spend more time worrying about Y than you used to. You never really had enough time to worry about Y in the past because you were so busy worrying about X, but now X isn't an issue anymore. What's the next thing we're worried about?

Some people have complained that humans are insatiable, that there's something WRONG with us, because when we get what we want, we always want something else after that, and we're never happy with what we've got. There's some truth to that - you might refer to the 'disconnected' enneagram types, the One, Four, and Seven, because they will always tend to be dissatisfied with reality, and want something else. But in a way, that's normal. It's normal that if some of your needs are met, you can afford to worry about all the other stuff that you never had time for in the past.

I am part of the 'disenchanted wealthy' class. I grew up in a wealthy family, and in my adulthood, I feel that being wealthy, or appearing to be wealthy, isn't that important. It's important to have enough money saved, and it's important to have enough income, and yes, I'm worried about money and I want to have more income - but what I mean is, there are people who come from poor families, and all they want is to avoid looking poor, and they want to look wealthy, and they want to buy big mansions and fancy cars because they never had those things, and they are ashamed of having been poor. But I grew up having the big mansion and the fancy car and so I can go around wearing a t-shirt and jeans, that kind of thing, and not worry that I look poor, at least not quite as much. That's not entirely true, but it is partly true. This conflicts with a desire to show off, with what I was describing about walking with Peter up above. But there is something that I'm talking about, the group of people who make intentional communities, and it has been said that they tend to come from the disenchanted wealthy class, the people who grew up with money and felt that money and big mansions didn't give them what they need, what they always wanted. But again, this is in conflict with wanting to show off. I'm not wearing disposable Goodwill clothes because that's how I WANT to dress. I'm wearing them because I have to throw my clothes in the garbage when they get contaminated and the drug residues don't wash out after ten washings and I still have a reaction to them. So nobody really knows what kind of public image I would put on if I could have the clothing I want, and keep it, and not have to throw it in the garbage because of contamination. In fact, nobody knows the real me at all: I've been a puppet for a very long time now. I don't even know what I would do.

There is something I was trying to describe. It's people who choose to live in intentional communities and give up the wealthy lifestyle because they are seeking some ideal that doesn't come from money. But actually, there is some conflict there too - many of the intentional communities are extremely expensive to live in, because you have to pay for the land you live on. Poor people can't afford to live in a mud hut, because living in a mud hut is the most expensive lifestyle on earth. Only the extremely rich can afford to live in mud huts in an intentional community. I was reading the intentional communities book and I was disgusted when I read that in one community in Ithaca, New York (I remembered where it was because my brother went to college in Ithaca), many of the community members had government jobs and jobs with the school, jobs that wouldn't exist without government money and government intervention. They're not the free market jobs. Only government employees can afford to live in intentional communities. Universities are created by government and paid for with government money and borrowed money.

******

I feel better than I've felt in quite some time, because I washed my dreadlocks more thoroughly than usual. I was starting to notice that whenever my hair touched the skin on my back, and on the back of my neck, I felt the tickly sensation of drug residues going through my skin. They would have gotten onto my hair from the clothing that they touched. Some of the drug residues on my McD uniforms came from wearing the shared coats during the wintertime: apparently some other employee is a prescription drug user, maybe, or maybe they smoked pot while wearing the coat, or something - whatever it was, I used to get extremely sleepy whenever I'd put on the shared coat, and I could feel drugs going through my skin. So that was how the uniform got ruined, and I think it got a lot of that stuff on my hair. I've been noticing it a lot for the past few weeks, noticing that when I washed it, it wasn't coming out. I wash my hair with only water. But the shower water doesn't penetrate the locks very deeply. The locks are thick and greasy and water runs off them. Yet the water that does penetrate tends to stay there for a long time and not get dry, so it smells like mildew.

I fixed this by taking a bath instead of a shower. I cleaned myself off in the shower, and then cleaned out the bathtub, because I've had a lot of incidents where I took a bath and there were drug residues in the bath and all I did was soak myself in drug residues all over my whole body. To avoid that, like I said, I cleaned that bathtub first. Then I filled the bath and soaked my hair underwater. I squeezed the dreadlocks and bent them and crushed them and made sure that they were completely soaked with as much water as possible. That worked very well. After that first bath, I noticed a difference in the tickly-drugs feeling when they touched my skin. I did that same thing again today, and noticed even more of a difference. I now feel more energetic and alert - I'm not being drugged constantly by something that won't wash out. This is why I've been cautious about dreadlocks in a contamination scenario. Dreadlocks can easily become contaminated and cause someone to be constanly on drugs.

****
For some reason, I was having conflicts with the voices while trying to write about the 'disenchanted wealthy class.' They were telling lies, or something. Apparently, whatever I wrote there wasn't quite true. I don't know which part of it was causing the conflict.

*****
I read about the sx/so, and my reaction was immediately that 'Sx/So is the coolest! That's the one I wish I was.' This happens any time I read about personality types. Something in the way that it's written by a particular author will make it look like one type is 'better' than the other types, so that's the type you want to be. You have to read a different author to get a more equal impression, to see that the other types are just as good, but different, to appreciate their strengths, and to accept yourself if you're an 'undesirable' type (like the battle between the sensors and the intuitives, in the Myers-Briggs forums and books, where sensors are the 'bad' ones that you don't want to be - and I eventually was shown (by 'the voices') that I'm actually a sensor, an ISFP, so I've had to accept that).

What descriptions make it seem like Sx/So is 'the coolest and the best?' They're the type that famous musicians and other celebrities have. 'Alpha Males' are the Sx/So Type Eight, and alpha males are supposedly 'the best,' someone you're supposed to go chasing after. (The voices described me as a 'beta female.' That's an inferior ranking female, not the highest rank.) They're described as having 'raw charisma.'

******
Well, sooner or later, if I can talk to Curtis, I can find out whether he's gotten back with Carrie, or what. And does that mean I won't even get a phone call at all? Every time I even think about trying to let go of him and be realistic, I get severely attacked by the murderers, who pretend that he 'needs' me, and they tell me not to let go.

They force me to rehearse things that I'm supposed to say to him. But a 'new operator' has been talking to me, someone who has a clue, or at least, that's the scripted scenario that I'm supposed to believe. Someone who pretends to be a new operator has been talking to me. They're pretending to have a clue, when actually, they knew all along how to 'operate' me properly, and for whatever reason, I'm being 'rewarded' recently - and I know why. It's because I wasted money on something they wanted me to buy, when I was on drugs and I was obedient. So they're rewarding me for destroying money on something I don't need. That's why they're letting me talk to voices that pretend to understand me better than the usual murderers - the usual murderers control me by saying something to the effect of 'Do what I tell you, right now, or I'll beat the shit out of you.' That's their way of doing things. The recent 'new' operator has been more understanding - but again, it's probably all a fake script, done as a 'reward' because I destroyed a bunch of money.

Anyway, the 'new operator' got me to say things a different way. He got me to tell the truth, and it worked, and I was able to say it. He got me to talk to Curtis and tell him that I was afraid of being hurt very badly. This was close enough to the truth that I was able to say it. 99.9% of the time, the murderers are forcing me to rehearse words and phrases that are lies, inaccurate, irrelevant, unnatural, and not goal-oriented, and opposed to my beliefs and my purposes. This 'new operator,' quote unquote, had me tell the truth. They usually force me to rehearse things that I would never actually say or do, because they are NOT ME, they are fake, they are unnatural. But they force me to rehearse these fake statements and lies and fake imaginary scenarios and fantasies in my head, over and over all day, and they won't let me think about REAL things that are actually useful. I try to think about something productive, like make a plan to do something that will greatly improve my life, for instance, buy a trailer instead of living in a moldy apartment with drug-residue-contaminated carpets all over the floor - buy a trailer so that I can live more cheaply. They won't let me even think about that at all without being zapped and hypnotized and forcibly distracted. When I try to think about it, the murderers force me to fall asleep, hear voices, see visions, and think about everything else but that, and one of the things they force me to think about instead is Curtis, and fake things that I'm supposed to rehearse myself saying to him. 'Hate' is the only word for how I feel about this. This is a crime. I call them murderers because of this.

I sometimes call them 'murdering morons' because not only are they murderers, they are also stupid, persistently stupid, all of the time, totally incompetent. The only people who are interested in using electronic mind control are the people who are so stupid that they don't know how to relate to human beings WITHOUT using electronic mind control - in other words, people who don't understand people at all! If you WANT to use electronic mind control to force people to do what you want, that's a SURE SIGN that you have little or no understanding of human beings at all. If you did, you wouldn't need electronic mind control to make them do things. That is the reason why the murderers are all totally stupid and incompetent and unable to understand human beings. They REALLY ARE stupid and incompetent about human psychology. You'd think that people who read minds and spy on people all day long, 24 hours a day, would UNDERSTAND PEOPLE. But the opposite is true. All they know how to do is destroy people.

I'd end this blog on a happy note, but it doesn't seem to be going that direction.

Quick summary, then. The dreadlocks are cleaner than they were, and I'm having less of a drug reaction. I enjoyed the manga that I read today, and fantasized about how I'd write my own manga book if all of the things that they're fetishizing were fulfilled, so there was nothing hidden anymore. New operator seems to understand me, but that's probably a temporary 'reward' for destroying a large amount of money to buy something I don't need. I like seeing myself as a Sx/So, and I hope that it helps the murdering morons understand me well enough that they become able to tell the truth when they force me to speak. And that's still not ending it on a nice note. Maybe this just isn't going to end on a nice note today.

I saw 'He's Just Not That Into You.' It seemed appropriate.

3:08 PM 7/6/10

I rented 'He's Just Not That Into You.' I was curious about that movie ever since I first heard of it, because I saw that it had something about people not returning phone calls and that kind of thing. I'd like to do a remake of this movie with a different concept, a conspiracy theory, where the people who are passionately in love with each other are prevented from communicating because an evil agency is out to destroy all love relationships and prevent people from meeting each other. The evil agency sabotages their electronic communications, while the in-person communications seem to say the opposite of whatever was said online.

Why would the evil agency want to sabotage love relationships? Maybe because people become stronger when they fall in love, and they can accomplish things they couldn't accomplish alone. They make their beliefs and ideas stronger. It might upset the status quo or change society or threaten the government if intellectuals and radicals and other 'dangerous' people fall in love.

Then again, the opposite might happen. A radical might calm down and focus on their family, instead of following the 'script' that someone has planned for them. It's your DUTY to change society, and if you get married and have kids, you'll worry about mundane things instead of doing your duty and following the script. You're SUPPOSED to be a radical, and your personal happiness doesn't matter.

'He's Just Not That Into You' - I liked it. I won't buy it and watch it a hundred times and memorize it, but I liked it enough for a rented movie that I watched once. I was confused through most of the movie because two of the main character guys looked alike enough that I thought it was the same guy. They both had black hair. The guy who didn't want to get married, who had a boat, and who was dating whats-her-name from 'Friends' for seven years, I got him confused with the 'alpha male' bartender guy who also had black hair. I don't remember any of their names and I can't remember the actors' names either, so I'm not much help on that. Near the end of the movie, like 3/4 of the way through, I finally figured out that they were two separate guys.

I liked the moment when the ... darn, I wish I could remember their names now. There's a 'cute' girl, the short-haired one, who's always confused and asking for advice about whether someone's going to call her back or not, and she's calling the bartender guy on the phone all the time - that one. I liked the moment when the happy-hour guy said 'The only thing "happy" about this hour is YOU,' and he took her phone number and then said 'I look forward to hearing from you,' and she actually stood up, and asked him to clarify whether he wanted her to call him, or whether he was going to call her. And she persisted until it became more and more clear that he didn't want to call and didn't want her to call him either.

I know how that feels, when you persistently ask someone to tell you the truth and be clear about it and get it over with. I want to hear the whole truth and I want to face it, even if it's painful. That doesn't mean that I 'want to be hurt' or that I'm a masochist. It means I want the truth, both good and bad, so that I can make realistic decisions and move on if I have to. It means I want to stop investing my energy in someone if they're not interested, so I need to *KNOW* if they're not interested, even if they're afraid of hurting my feelings. This obviously was relevant because of all the Curtis 'drama' going on right now.

(I never, ever would have even TRIED to contact him, or written him notes, or gotten his number and texted him. 'They' urged me to do those things that I would not have done on my own. I would have just enjoyed his company at work, and let him go, and grieved at his absence whenever he inevitably got fired or quit his job, because I already knew he would be impossible to contact and unable to communicate.)

I liked 'You're my exception' at the end. That was a good moment.

I already returned the movie, and I didn't watch it again. Usually I get a lot more depth out of movies, because I watch them several times and notice things I didn't see the first time. But I didn't do that, so it's only a shallow impression. The movie was good enough to not be a waste of money. I've seen movies that were awful, and this wasn't awful. It was okay.

I have to complain, of course, that all of the people were 'mainstream' and there weren't any 'weird' people anywhere in the movie. Hardly any weirdness anywhere to be found. The closest thing to a 'weird' person was the Wiccan who sat next to the 'Friends' lady at the wedding, or wherever that was, and started talking about the Wiccan religion. But that makes 'weird' people look bad. I don't like movies that make weird people look bad. It was the 'someone talking endlessly about a subject you're not at all interested in' phenomenon. This was a movie about normal people, and you have to be able to identify with normal people. I see them, I can see that they're sad or they're hurt or they're worried, these women in the movie, and I can feel sorry for them a little bit, but I also have this feeling that they wouldn't ever understand me or understand any of my problems - they could never relate to me. They would give me an 'ick' look if I ever tried to talk to them or tell them about the world that I live in. So I couldn't really feel emotionally involved in their problems as much as I would want to, watching a movie. If I watch movies about weird people who don't fit in, I feel more like I can relate to those people and they would like me in return. But these were all normal people who wouldn't like me.

Harry Potter's world is full of weird people who don't fit in, and they have to go to another secret community to find people like themselves. But even in the HP world there are weirder-than-usual people who don't fit in. So I always liked Luna Lovegood.

I don't remember if I blogged about this or not, but I also noticed that Kreacher the house-elf has some things in common with me. He mutters and mumbles mean, hateful, abusive 'bile' because he thinks no one can hear him. I've done that before. I used to do exactly that whenever I was writing to 'the hackers' by typing things and hoping that the keylogger would record what I typed. (A keylogger is a computer program that records every key you type, even if the letters don't appear on the screen and aren't saved in a word processing file. So it can collect passwords and other things you type.) I used to type things directed at whoever was reading the keystrokes. I typed hateful things to the hackers and they would respond by messing with the computer. I only do that if it seems like a real person can't hear me. But if I can see a real person responding to me, and showing hurt feelings, and giving me a real response, then I never, ever say hateful things to them. Not unless it happens by accident, like when I accidentally said 'Oh my God' when I saw Curtis with a cigar, because I had never seen him smoking one before, and it probably humiliated him, and I didn't mean to do that. Anyway that is how I could relate to Kreacher the house-elf.

I'm not sure what signals I use to decide that certain people are 'normal' and they wouldn't understand me. This is a social class thing, I think. In West Virginia, a lot of people have facial deformities, exactly as Weston Price described. People with facial deformities, the weak jaw and all that, are more likely to be in 'my class,' even if their beliefs are normal and mainstream. They're more likely to be nice to me and tolerant of me. They're more likely to be poorer and rural.

In Bellefonte, the people here are permanent residents, and I see a lot of semi-poor, semi-rural people, and everyone is a lot friendlier to strangers. You can be friendly to strangers if everyone around you is a permanent resident. In State College, however, you can't be friendly to strangers or make eye contact with strangers, because you'll never see them again. Most of State College's population is temporary. There are a huge number of college students, hotel guests, parents of students, people attending football games and other events, and other temporary visitors. If you make eye contact with strangers, you invest your feelings in someone who will disappear and hurt you. So as we walk around the grocery store and other public places, we don't make much eye contact with anyone. But in Bellefonte, total strangers will walk up to you and smile and start up a conversation, because they know we're all permanent residents and we're likely to bump into each other at this same store or restaurant next week.

These permanent residents of Bellefonte are more likely to be uglier, fatter, or have the facial deformities, and also 'bad' hairstyles. There are more long-haired men here, and a few women with very long hair like my own, hip-length hair, which I am always happy to see. These people are all friendlier to me. They don't necessarily UNDERSTAND me very well, and they might not be able to have an interesting conversation with me, or a 'deep' conversation. But they won't say 'ick.'

The college students in State College are less likely to have facial deformities, or they are less severe. They come from wealthier families, which means their parents probably had better nutrition while pregnant. They are more likely to give the 'ick' response to anyone who looks weird, non-mainstream, or has unusual grooming practices, dreadlocks, not wearing makeup, etc. They all have hair that ends at the upper mid-back or shorter, and almost never even reaches waist length. ('Waist' and 'hip': The waist is at the belly button level. Hip is 'butt' level, at the top of the legs. I say that, because in the past, I used the word 'waist' to describe the entire region of the body between the belly button and the thighs, so 'waist' and 'hip' were mostly the same thing. It just meant 'the lower middle region of the body.') For some unknown reason, they believe that hair can be 'too long.' It would seem that there would be an occasional person who, by random chance, would just decide to grow very long hip-length hair for the heck of it, but it never happens; therefore, there is some kind of 'rule' against it.

I could spend a lot of time writing about what I think those rules are, but I might not do that in this blog. I could write a separate blog some other time.

Anyway, the college students at PSU are more like the characters in 'Not That Into You.' They all look alike. And it's hard for me to have a conversation with them. (I wouldn't mind people all looking alike - in fact, the religious order requires everyone to follow the grooming rules - but they're looking alike in a way that I myself prefer, a look that I find attractive and beautiful for both sexes.)

About 'convincing people to believe.' Convincing the mainstream people that mind control is real, for instance. Or convincing them that in general, government intervention is harmful. Or convincing them that mainstream medicine is very dangerous and you shouldn't take all the drugs that the doctors will offer you. ('Healthy Normal' people don't need as many drugs as the unhealthy people do. They don't suffer from chronic fatigue as often and they don't catch every cold virus that goes around every week. So they're a lot older whenever they finally discover that mainstream medicine wants to give you lots and lots of dangerous drugs and can't really solve a lot of your problems.)

It's hard to convince 'healthy normal' people that something bad is going on in the world. The world that they see is a comfortable world that gives them everything they need, in general. They have problems, but they don't usually see those problems as being caused by a huge system in society, such as 'the government itself' and things like that. Problems are just individual, random events, something surprising and unusual.

Why would we want to convince them? Because there are a lot of projects that require money and knowledge from lots of people, for instance, building shields that work and that are affordable, so that electronic harassment victims can sleep at night and think their thoughts. And other projects like tracking down the attackers and stopping them. Or cleaning up drug residue contamination: I'm not the only one who has this, I'm just one of the few people who's aware of it, and if anybody else ever tried to clean up THEIR houses, they would see that it is an enormous, expensive, emotionally devastating disaster. It's so expensive, you can't even imagine how expensive it is, if you've got drug contamination on lots of nice, special, unique, heirloom furniture and antiques and things like that, things you can't just throw in the trash. Anyway I was saying we'd want to convince the 'healthy normal' people about things because we need help from them. This is the 'ultimate resource' concept: people are able to help you by sharing their knowledge and their resources and their labor. ('The Ultimate Resource' is a book by Julian Simon.) Expensive, difficult projects that require money and knowledge can be done if groups of people work together, but are almost impossible for one person to do alone.

(Today's focus is 'The Social Instinct,' as you can see. How do people benefit from being part of a group? How do people fit into a group?)

I'm looking at dating websites again. It is physically painful to imagine meeting a new person and starting all over again. Not only that, but now I am more aware than I ever was, long ago, that I really do like guys 'the skinnier the better.' Most of the men that I ever see are large, fully grown men. And they have short hair. I can look at fully grown men if they have long hair and beards - there's some texture, something soft that I can touch. You have to have something to pet with your hands, the same way you pet animals. Why would you want a bare-skinned dog or cat, so that you could stroke its bare skin? I like dogs and cats to have soft fur to touch. The same is true of humans. I run my fingers through and over a man's hair the same way I pet an animal. So even if a man has a body type that I don't like as much, he at least has a chance if he has long hair and a beard, because I can pet his hair. And I can look at it. It's more interesting than bare nothingness. It's SOMETHING instead of nothing. Hair has a texture and a sparkle and movement. It has multi-colors that shine in the sunlight. The people on the dating websites don't even have that.

There are some long-haired guys, but I am being prevented from going to them. There is this inhibition stopping me. It is partly because 'they' connected me with Curtis, bonded me with him, so that I am reluctant to go after any other guys until I know for sure that Curtis says 'no' and doesn't want to be with me at all, except as a 'temporary workplace friend,' a co-worker who doesn't matter very much, who will disappear whenever he quits or gets fired, and who will never speak to him again and it won't even matter. I'm assuming that that is what he thinks I am. That's how he sees me. For whatever reason, he wants to call me flattering names and occasionally show sexual interest, especially when I'm on the right drugs and I'm in 'aphrodisiac friendly' mode. But I can't get replies from any method of communication that I've used.

I'm not as pretty as his ex-girlfriend, his wife, for all practical purposes, since he's paying her child support. I feel like he's stepping down or something by being with me - I'm not as good as the one he was with before. She is very young, younger than he is. And she looks like Kira the Gelfling from 'The Dark Crystal.' That's the first thing I thought when I saw her for the first time.

I actually liked her. She worked at Weis very briefly. Then she had a random accident, and it was a terrible accident. Her son Caden knocked her tooth out by hitting her in the face with a toy - I assume by accident. (In other words I hope he wasn't hitting her because he was angry or something.) She had fragile, cavity-filled teeth, because she got pregnant as a very young teenager, around 14, I think, maybe 13, right at the time when your body is going through a growth spurt. So your own body is growing a lot at that time, and then it has to give minerals to the baby's body, too, so it takes all the minerals out of your bones and teeth, unless you are eating... you guessed it, the Weston Price diet. That is what happened to her. She then went to the dentist, and the dentist recommended... that she have all of her teeth removed and replaced with dentures or fake teeth. So she did. Curtis told me this story and I actually cried out loud, for real, because all of that is preventable if only people have enough money to buy healthy food. I don't know if she removed ALL her teeth. But she removed several. It's enough that she has a look, this puckered look to her mouth, when her mouth is closed. They weren't able to get her new teeth. So she took time off work because of this, and then they said they didn't want her to come back, unless she could get new teeth, because she was dealing with the public, as a cashier, and she would have to talk and smile to them. That made me angry. This is what Curtis told me.

The same thing is talked about in the Weston Price book. The natives all had healthy teeth, until and unless they started eating the white man's sugar and flour and white bread and jelly and canned foods. Then they got cavities immediately and had children with mild to severe facial deformities, narrow hips, and other deformities.  They talked about how it was considered 'normal' for most people to have all of their teeth removed and replaced with dentures.

If you believe that 'white teeth are better than yellow teeth,' think about what white teeth really are.  If your teeth are perfectly white, that means they're fake, probably porcelain or dentures.  I knew a lady who had porcelain teeth, and they were all perfectly blue-white, 'perfect' by the 'white teeth are better' standard.  Ivory yellow teeth are REAL teeth.  It means you haven't lost all your teeth and had them replaced with fake ones.  I've learned to appreciate the natural color of teeth the same way I've learned to appreciate other type of  'natural grooming,' like gray hair.  I LIKE real, imperfect, ivory-yellow teeth.  Now that I know about it, I've learned to actively dislike fake white teeth.  I'm not joking - sometimes I get 'voices' telling me they think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not.

(Note, every time I mention Weston Price, 'they' want me to remind people about eating bone marrow. Weston Price, and the WP website, and Sally Fallon, and other authors in this movement, along with many people on the internet, and even people I've spoken to, have all claimed that you can eat bone marrow, and it's good for you. I tried eating it, and it triggered the vomit reflex within a few minutes after eating it, and I also almost passed out and had horrible feelings that lasted for hours - actually for a whole day. For whatever reason, it wasn't edible. It can cause severe food poisoning and possibly even death. I don't know why some people claim they can eat it. There might be a different way of cooking it, perhaps cooking it at a very high temperature for a very long time, or something. I don't know. But I have to always give this warning that those books and websites talk about eating parts of the animals and organs that we don't usually eat, and if you try anything unfamiliar, it could be very dangerous, especially organs and glands that produce hormones. This is something that I want to test and troubleshoot, but I won't be doing it alone! I need to clarify WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENS when you eat the various organs and parts of the body of different animals and seafood. I know some of them are deadly, like certain parts of the puffer fish. So I must give a warning whenever I recommend the WP diet.)

That all came from talking about C's ex-girlfriend and her teeth. That was why she left Weis and isn't working there anymore. I only saw her a couple times, and I looked into her eyes, and I liked her right away. I can see why he loved her and why he'll never be 'neutral' towards her. She's always going to be part of his life.

I should post this - it's rambling a lot. I can write all afternoon because that's the easiest thing for me to do, but it doesn't mean that my writing quality is the best. This is my mediocre writing quality.

Oh - quick note. It was Vince who got his hair cut. He had slightly long very curly hair and he cut a couple inches off of it. I was watching to see how long he would grow it. He reached a difficult stage where it was starting to hang down over his eyes, and of course, it was long enough that I loved his hair, which is always when they cut it. That was the 'haircut complaint' that I was supposed to write about several days ago. He didn't shave it off completely though. I wish I could show people how to get through the 'transition stage', and I wish it was acceptable for guys to wear hair barrettes and other things that would make it easier for them to clip their hair back out of the way without cutting it, so it doesn't hang in their face during the difficult stage. Hair barrettes are about the only thing I can think of that would work with the medium-length hair that's still too short to put in a braid or ponytail. But oh well.

Sx/So - Sexual/Social instinct

9:22 AM 7/5/10

'They' are currently talking with me to find out about the Sx/So instinct, to see whether I fit with that one.  (I could be a Sx/Sp.  But it seems that Sx is my top instinct.  I'm guessing that, before long, they'll decide I'm actually a Sx/Sp.)

They were asking me this morning what social movements I represented BEFORE I got Objectivism from my brother John (zombieite on Flickr). Back then, the ideas I had came from the mainstream culture, from books and television and school.

I used to read Steven King a lot. 'IT' was my favorite. There were other books and movies with similar themes. The idea was: Magic is real. The world has strange things in it that you never imagined. Don't forget, you don't know everything. So it was a belief in the paranormal, the weird, the magical. I also had 'Don't forget your childhood' beliefs. Don't ever grow up. Don't become old and bitter and hopeless. Remember what it was like to be trusting and hopeful and honest, like you were as a child, before you were hurt by the world.

I also happened to find an assertiveness training book that belonged to my parents. It was called 'When I Say No I Feel Guilty.' That book represented something to me. It meant that we could change and control the way we talk and the way we act, if we want to get better results. It gave me specific ways to change, instead of just saying 'You should stand up for yourself' without giving any advice about HOW to do that. The book gave you role-playing scenarios and examples of real conversations people had. So I am also an advocate of role-playing, and an advocate of learning specific techniques instead of trying to follow vague advice. That influences what I believe about schools and education, about how they should teach, about WHAT they should teach.

I also was an anti-Santa advocate when I was young. I used to go around telling people there was no Santa Claus. I got in trouble for doing that, and I wrote about it in my diary. So it fit with me when Rachael gave me a book called 'The Trouble With Christmas.'

I found other books occasionally, but abandoned them later on and didn't really make them part of myself. One time my family was shopping at Sam's Club - I think back then it was called 'Super Saver' or something. I noticed a book called 'Breathing Lessons' by Anne Tyler, and picked it up, decided it looked interesting, and bought it. I then read all the books by Anne Tyler and I remember doing a book report about them for school. But I never really made those books 'me,' because they felt too depressing and hopeless. Her books always have some character who desperately tries to make progress, tries to make some kind of a change in their life, and they always fail, and go back to living the way they used to live. This theme happens over, and over, and over in her books. Failed attempts to make things better or different. I didn't want to embrace that belief system, the 'resignation' belief system: resign yourself, endure the life you have, because there's no hope of changing anything - have fun for a little while, if you must, but eventually you will be destroyed and you'll fall back down to wherever you came from. I don't like that belief system.

'They' feel pretty sure that I'm a sx/so. The ichazo's instincts are very, very important. I used to see the ichazo's instincts as just some unimportant, brief little note mentioned in the enneagram books, and the enneagram itself was more important, while the instincts were just a minor detail that you didn't really need to know. But they are much more important and central than that.

It frames how I see everything. Everything I care about and everything I do is shaped by these instincts. I 'fall in love' with some charismatic person who represents a radical belief system. It might not be a famous musician, or a famous author, or someone on TV. Instead, it might be an ordinary person who I meet at school or at work, or someone I read on the internet, and if I fall in love with that person, I take the ideas and the culture that they represent, and make it my own, at least for a while, and I keep some parts of it forever.

That might actually make me a devotee, the sx/sp, instead of a sx/so. However, for a variety of reasons I will keep it as sx/so for a while to see if everything fits.

Random topics, not enough time to write

10:24 PM 7/3/10

I'm blogging again on a Saturday night, instead of working.  (And now it's Sunday morning when I've reopened this and started writing on it again.)

pan's labyrinth and stardust
tammy's key
the haircut
reality check postponed
contaminated dreadlocks
fireworks and fairs
fridge in break room
baby music in adult voices
peter and the open relationship

Those topics may not necessarily be in the order that I will write them in.

I'm seeing lots of small fireworks displays, for the past few days, because they don't want to compete against THE BIG DISPLAY that will happen on the fourth. I've seen a few in Bellefonte as I've been driving home from work in the evening. I'm going to make a long story short, and, like every fourth of July, I'm going to mention Dan Barker and the story of Why The Fireworks Suck, When They Used To Be Great.

The story of why the fireworks suck when they used to be great:

An artist named Dan Barker created some computer software and designed a bunch of equipment so that he could set off the fireworks in time with music. He did this for a few years using donated money from the businesses in State College, but he eventually decided it took up too much of his time and he didn't get paid enough to do it. So he said that he was dropping out. The town decided that they should be 'entitled' to get his software and the firing equipment because the Fourth of July fireworks display 'belongs to the town.' It belongs to everybody, they said. He disagreed with them about that. There were other conflicts too, but I don't remember all of it. Eventually, the original designer did quit, and a group of government employees took over the fireworks display. So the song choices changed drastically - that was what I noticed the most. And it's not as well done, not as artistic as it used to be. I noticed the change the very first year that Dan Barker left. Now, it's just riding on its old reputation from back in the days when it really was good.

That's the short version. I'm writing quickly today because I don't have time. I tried to write this last night, but Peter called and wanted to go for a trip to the grocery store, so we did.

Movies: I recently rented two movies from Lyken's Market. They have only a limited number of movie choices, and it's a random collection, so that forces me to pick out movies that I've never heard of before and never had any desire to see. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. It means I don't get overwhelmed by a huge number of choices.

They both turned out all right. But Pan's Labyrinth is too scary for children. For instance, it showed a scene, early in the movie, where the main villain killed a guy by bashing his face in. They actually SHOWED him bashing the guy's face in with a bottle. That is too scary for a thirty-five year old. And it had a sad ending, and I found it depressing. Stardust was a better movie for young children. It wasn't as scary or gory. It had a happy ending. And of course they want me to mention that there was a scene where a guy was getting a haircut, and the haircut magically made his hair longer, not shorter. The guy who gave him this haircut was, of course, the cross-dressing pirate. I was able to see through the pirate right from the beginning - he wasn't really as mean as he pretended to be, and I could tell. He looked like he was going to cry when he was threatening Tristan and Yvaine.

I'm not in the mood to mention another hair-related comment that I was supposed to make. Maybe some other time.

An incident with Tammy the manager: I was rushing to get done last night, mopping the floor, noticing that it was right about nine o'clock and I was going to be leaving late. Tammy came up to me and told me that a customer wanted pizza dough, and there wasn't any out, and I was supposed to be responsible for making sure that there was always pizza dough out there. ('Tammy... not now,' I whispered, as I continued walking around and mopping while I listened to her.) She could tell that I wasn't happy about it, because she started getting defensive and making it sound like it was all my fault and I was a bad employee and I was the only one who had ever let the pizza dough run out because I was the worst employee ever... etc, etc. That's how I started to feel while I listened to her. But I agreed to drop what I was doing and go put out more pizza dough, and I promised her I'd write a note to remind myself and others to always check on it in the evenings.

A little bit later I actually went up to her and told her that I appreciated it when she told me these things, because it really was helpful and there was a lot of stuff I didn't know or didn't remember to do. She grinned and was really pleased that I had thanked her. I sincerely meant it. It was annoying that I had to drop what I was doing and go do some other thing, but the truth is that if I were the store owner, I'd want the store to make profits, and that would mean we had to have stuff out on the shelves. Reality says that she was right, even though it was annoying and inconvenient at the time. So I thanked her. She was delighted and it made both of us feel better.

She only made me feel like a 'bad employee' because I responded badly and made her feel like a 'bad manager,' the worst, most unpopular, most hated, meanest manager in the store. (This fits, because someone else had just told me that she was one of the two people who he most hated working with.) But someone needs to make sure that things really do get done, and I have always felt that our department was sloppy and had bad morale. So if someone tells us we need to do something, and if it's real, if it's actually true that we need to do this thing (instead of some stupid, arbitrary, imaginary task that doesn't help anyone), if it makes sense that yes, pizza dough has to be out there so people can buy it, then I'm going to agree with her.

So, that was the key to understanding her: She makes other people feel bad because she feels like the most hated manager in the store, the worst one that nobody likes. But she's actually right about some things and I admire her for doing her duty even when it's inconvenient and a hassle.

I won't have time to go into depth into the list of topics I wrote above that I wanted to write about. 'Baby music': There are musical intervals that people start using all the way back in infancy. I've heard baby noises recorded. There is a sound they make for 'pleasantly surprised.' It's a two or three tone melody. It starts at a high note and ends at a low note, and it's a major interval, which means 'happy.' It's a large interval, like a fifth or something - I could test it on Reason on my laptop and find out what interval it is. Babies say it by going 'Aaa-ahhh!' High-low.

I have heard adults make that exact same melody, but they put words in it, and it happens when they're surprised and pleased. I heard someone do it the other day, and I heard Curtis do that melody once too. He did it when I commented about the ring he was wearing, which had a little spider shape cut out of it. He was pleased that I noticed it, and he said, 'That's my SPI-der!' It was that melody on 'spi-der'. It happened the other day when I was getting something out of the fridge at McD and someone was about to get it himself, and he said, 'Oh, that's what you were GET-ting.' Same melody again. So I wonder if this is universal, if babies in China are making that same note interval melody when they are pleasantly surprised. The melody can be put into many different sentences. 'That's WON-derful' would have the same melody. Musical notes actually mean something. They express real feelings and they are used in language every day. When we take the words away, we leave the feelings behind and we still recognize them, and that is how song melodies are written, but song melodies are much more complex. And it starts when we're babies, before anybody teaches us.

I need to go get ready for work, and I'll have to postpone most of these topics.

The reality check postponed: I saw Curtis for about two seconds yesterday - once when he came in the front door after a cigarette break, and once when he was leaving, while Sue was talking to me, and my back was turned to him, and I glanced back when I saw him out of the corner of my eye as he was leaving. That sucked. I had left him a phone message and wanted to see his reaction. My reality check. Reality is what I need from him. I can't get reality if I write text messages and don't get an answer. I can only get reality from him if I say something to him and he responds. I have to see WHAT the response is. It could be good or bad, it doesn't matter. It's reality. Getting someone's real reaction is what I want most. So I have to wait until I see him again, and I didn't see his schedule this week, so I don't know when we'll work together again.

I also wanted to talk about Peter and about how we've talked about me having crushes on other guys, if it's important enough to mention. I mentioned Curtis to him many months ago, but I told him that this might be a false alarm again, and nothing would happen. I don't want to talk about it and get him upset if nothing is really happening. He always used to say, 'Some eighteen-year-old is going to come along and steal you,' and I always laughed at that because it didn't seem like that would actually happen. (Curtis is nineteen now. He was eighteen when we met.) I am not planning on leaving Peter or abandoning him or refusing to see him. I want to work out some kind of agreement, if I do see anybody else.

I really do have to get ready to work now.

sad day

12:49 PM 7/3/10

The work schedule's gotten messed up at both jobs this week, so I didn't get as many hours as I wanted. 'Not getting enough hours' is a new thing for me. In my old schedule, I was working the least desirable shifts - evening, overnight, and weekend - the ones NOBODY wanted. Everyone wants to be off work on weekend evenings so that they can 'go out' places, which is something I don't do. I'm still on weekends, but I'm on the mornings and evenings at both jobs, and I'm competing against other people who are willing to work those shifts. And when something gets messed up, it's possible for me to lose hours, when before, there was only one person who would work the unwanted shifts that I was working.  This week the wrong manager made the schedule, and he doesn't know how to do it, so he put people into times when they weren't available, and the same thing happened at Weis, too - the schedule was already made but then some other managers wanted to re-do it and they put people into the wrong time slots - so it was messed up at both jobs. I've been working whenever they can fit me in, at McD. The Weis schedule got settled a bit better. But that's the reason why I'm sitting here at home on a Saturday morning, able to write a blog, instead of working.

I've stopped drinking cream in my coffee. Two things have happened: the rash on my face has mostly gone away (but not completely), and my sexual arousal did too. I don't know why the cream was having an aphrodisiac effect. (How will I ever finish my online romance novel if I'm not sexually aroused all the time?) I was getting hives all over my face, and that has stopped happening. (*On re-reading this, I should warn you that this is a, what's the word I'm looking for? Foreshadowing. When something hints at what's about to happen in the story.*) I wasn't allergic to milk when I was younger, so I'm wondering if there's an antibiotic getting into the milk, because I AM allergic to antibiotics, and they give me hives on my face.

I seem to have PMS today. My period is threatening to start, but hasn't actually started yet. I feel sad and homesick. I was thinking of West Virginia, wanting to go back to my parents. I was driving my car into Bald Eagle Valley, the next valley over, through Milesburg - in this part of Pennsylvania, the mountains are these big, huge, long lines, with big valleys in between them that go on for miles and miles. Everything is all lined up parallel. In West Virginia, the mountains are these random little bumps everywhere. There aren't any big huge long parallel mountains with huge valleys, like here. I actually love the West Virginia mountains more. A lot of people say that.

In the Bald Eagle area (now that I've said I don't have a rash on my face, I just started getting some hives again right now) it's a much quieter, less populated area than State College. It's more rural and probably poorer. I felt sort of depressed driving through there. I had this feeling that I didn't know where we were going, where the society was going, what goal we were going towards. The small houses and trailers all seemed depressing and small.

I have conflicting feelings about 'the sight of greatness.' Ayn Rand wrote about something that I understand. Sometimes, you want to see something 'great,' like a large building, or a bridge, or some gigantic structure, or a beautiful statue, or something. Something manmade and big and important. However, the conflicting feeling comes from knowing that a lot of those things only exist because of government money, borrowed money, and fiat money.

Another feeling is the Harry Potter feeling. Sometimes you want to go someplace 'where everybody knows your name.' I don't mean being famous. I just mean being known and accepted and cared about by everyone around you. I don't feel connected to most of the people around me. People in my workplace come and go - every few months, new people get hired, and old people quit or get fired. The group isn't stable. I'd like to be in a group that was stable, and increasing, not losing lots of people. We'd increase by giving birth, and we'd increase by taking in new members. This is the desire to have a healthy community. The turnover ratio in my workplace has always felt too high. (So much for that 'no rash' thing. Now it's all over my face AND on my shoulders too. Maybe it actually is poison ivy residue, which I suspected after I took a walk a few weeks ago, when I might have gotten a little bit on me. But it seems to be a reaction to my food, because it happened after I ate.)

'Sometimes you want to be a kid again,' the voices said. You want to know that someone is above you taking care of all the difficult things and protecting you, so that you don't have to worry. That's part of the Harry Potter feeling, except in the HP world, it's not just one family, it's the whole community that is protecting you and taking care of you, and the whole school, and all the teachers.

I just drove my car through and looked at the trailer park. I actually like trailer parks: they're a relatively cheap way to live. I don't like the huge mansions built for hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars, so that you can go into debt (and then bankruptcy) for the rest of your life. Trailers are affordable and realistic, and you have more control over them than you have over an apartment. I've actually been planning to move into a trailer eventually. Even if I were rich, I'd want to live someplace small and affordable so I wouldn't waste my money, because the reason for being rich is so that you don't have to keep working at a slave job forever.

But today the trailer park made me feel more depressed. It seemed far away from State College, from the area that I was accustomed to living in for the past 12 years or so, since I came here in 1997. (Great, now the hives are appearing on my arms, too. Apparently this food sensitivity is going to take a little more troubleshooting work than I thought it would.) It felt like the mountain cut me off from that whole valley, that whole area, where everyone that I care about lives.

Actually, I'm only connected with one person outside work: Peter. Everyone else is at work. I have *NO* outside-work friends, except Peter. Every now and then, I make some halfhearted 'friends' with co-workers who don't really understand me, who I can't really open up with. Like one lady at McD who recently gave me her phone number - I hope I haven't lost it - it was on a piece of paper in my work uniform pocket. I like her, she's nice, but I don't think she would really listen or be interested if I ever tried to explain my life to her.

'My world,' they call it, in the descriptions of the enneagram five sexual type. I think that was in one of the books at Barnes & Noble, the OTHER book, the one that isn't Riso and Hudson. Some other author whose name I don't remember. It was actually her book that convinced me I'm a Five, because her description fit me a lot better. The Riso-Hudson description of a Five makes it sound like all of them are either scientists or babbling weirdos. The other book describes them as people who feel overwhelmed, especially by human emotions, overwhelmed by how much they need people, and by how much other people need them. I've always been afraid of getting 'burdened' by people - if someone needs you too much, asks too much of your time, wants you to be too involved in their life and their needs - and if that happens, I withdraw and I try to get time alone, away from them. And she wrote that the sexual type Five wants people to understand 'my world.' The world as I see it. The world that I live in. My life and everything around me and what it means and the story behind it. My biography. How I got here. Why I do what I do. Why I care about what I care about. Why I believe what I believe. The intimate bonding happens when you tell people these things that no one else understands.

(Rash is now on my neck and throat. I hope it doesn't form bleeding cuts and scabs. Hopefully the hives will just die down on their own before I have to go to work.)

I get voices who use the word 'secrets' to describe the things that I have to tell people. I got angry the other day when they used the word 'secrets,' because these are NOT secrets. I had a much more insulting way to describe them. I said, 'They're not "secrets." They're just things that most people are TOO STUPID to understand.' (I was in a bad mood.) I have a reason why I'm angry about it. I was thinking back to years ago whenever I was desperately trying to tell EVERYBODY that someone was hacking my computer, harassing me at the workplace, and messing with my telephone, at home and at work. Nobody believed me. My family said I was crazy and they told me that I needed drugs. That's why I'm angry and I say they're too stupid to understand. When you try to tell people that you're being attacked and harassed, and they don't believe you, that makes you angry. And it was NOT a 'secret,' not even remotely. I tried to tell it to LOTS of people. If you are desperately trying and begging and telling it to lots of people, that's the exact opposite of a 'secret.' A 'secret' is something you deliberately try to hide from everyone, because if they knew about it, they could hurt you or take advantage of you somehow. I guess technically it's a 'secret' now because I get hurt every time I try to explain it to people who don't understand - it hurts my feelings and frustrates and angers me. So technically I do 'get hurt' if I try to tell people my 'secrets.' But not because they're using my 'secret information' to 'take advantage of me' or something like that.

If I had more time, and if I could get testimonials, maybe from off the internet, I would explain the argument 'Drugs don't stop you from hearing voices.' Many voices-hearing people know about this. They have used drugs and said that the voices DID not go away, or maybe even GOT WORSE, when they used drugs that are supposed to 'treat schizophrenia.' The only thing that happens when you use drugs is you become such a zombie that you become willing to surrender, tell lies, and pretend you're not hearing voices anymore, just so they'll leave you alone and stop forcing you to take drugs. I think that's what happens most of the time when people say that the drugs made the voices go away. They didn't go away, they just made you willing to stop talking about them.

There is only one way that I can think of that drugs might affect the voices. Salicylate poisoning - the Feingold Diet talks about salicylates in food - and other chemicals and drugs, in food, in pills, in herbal drugs - all of those things can affect your hearing. My hearing ability changes drastically from day to day. Sometimes I have lots of ringing in my ears. Salicylate poisoning (it's also in aspirin - if you want to experience this, take a couple of aspirins, and you might notice ringing in your ears - I don't want to tell people to take LOTS of aspirin, because that's dangerous and it can cause bleeding and other problems, I forget what) can happen to people who are chemical sensitive, people who can't produce enough phenol sulfotransferase, an enzyme that breaks down poisons that enter the body.

I remember one time a few years ago when I bought a watermelon at the grocery store. I don't usually buy watermelons, because they're so huge that I can't eat the whole thing, and it will spoil after sitting in my refrigerator all week. But I bought one, and so I ate lots of watermelon for a couple of days, every time I had the chance to eat it, so I could get rid of most of it before it spoiled. It had enough salicylate in it that my ears were ringing really loudly during those couple of days that I was eating it. I was almost deaf from it. My hearing ability was greatly reduced. It was temporary, and it wore off as soon as I stopped eating the watermelon. I recognized it because of what the Feingold Diet taught me.

I've noticed that sometimes when I take drugs, the ringing in my ears changes. That could affect how you hear voices.

However, when I took Prozac, it quieted my ears ringing, if I recall, (I might be wrong - it was so long ago, I can't remember for sure), but the effect was that I started hearing voices perfectly clearly! I do remember that, for sure, even if I don't recall whether the ringing went away. The audio quality became sharp and had no more staticky sound to it. I was able to hear voices BETTER than ever before. Not only that, but I could remember everything they said. Usually, I can't hear them well enough to understand what they're saying, much less remember it. A lot of it is quiet mumbling, below the level that I can hear. But when I was on Prozac, I could hear everything, all of the foul, hateful, murderous, disgusting, evil, cruel, sadistic, loathesome, insane things that the voices were mumbling - I could hear every evil word they said. This was not a good thing.

About bonding with people. I was going to write something above, but I got off track and started talking about other things. I was going to say that I've only bonded with Peter. Every other semi-friend that I've had, I've let go of, over the years. I've had a couple housemates, for instance, and I lost touch with them. I just didn't feel that they really understood me or were interested enough in me.

That seems unfair and one-way. How can I expect someone to be interested in ME if I'm not interested in THEM? That's unfair. It's like expecting someone to focus only on me, and not care about themselves. So actually, maybe it means that I want someone who seems interesting enough that I'M curious about THEM, too. It happens when I get a crush on a guy. It's the 'merging' thing that they talk about with the sexual instinct. That person becomes so fascinating that I want to know everything about them. I want to know what kind of music they listen to, and even if I hated that kind of music in the past, I'll open up to it and start liking it, and I'll associate it with that person forever, so that I'll always remember, for the rest of my life, who it was that got me started listening to that particular kind of music, or watching that TV show, or whatever. I remember it was Eric who showed me how to use the internet, how to use email, how to tell the difference between an email address and a web URL (I used to think that you could type JoeSmith@yahoo.com into the URL of a browser, for instance, or send an email to www.google.com), how to play games on a PC, and he's the one who got me watching the sci-fi channel.

I haven't gained as much from Peter in that particular way, because Peter's life is deprived. He lives a half-starved life without any stimulation. He is deprived of social contact and culture. And he knows that he is, too, and he doesn't like it. It's because they don't have a car, and it's because he has diabetes, and kidney dialysis, but it's also because, for whatever reason, there aren't many people who understand Peter, either. He had one friend at Wal-Mart when he used to work there: Big Dave. Big Dave is the guy at Benner Pike Wal-Mart who greets you when you walk in, during the overnight shift. His name tag even says 'Big Dave,' if I recall. (I might be imagining this, though.)

Big Dave understood Peter because Dave is into mysticism, psychic powers, karate and other martial arts, and other things like that. He's a Native American, and Peter likes the Native American spiritual culture. Peter interprets it all as being psychic and spiritual, but at least he still believes in it. Peter is religious in a pagan way. Because of that, I can tell him that I hear voices, and it might still seem scary and strange to him, but to him, it's the voices of spirits, sometimes evil ones, sometimes good ones - but at least it's something we can talk about once in a while, if I need to. With Eric, it was too scary to even talk about - it triggered a screaming shouting argument and intense fear and anger. Peter can at least accept it, which is why I'm with Peter. But that's why Dave was Peter's friend. Dave believed in the psychic-spiritual world and he believed in studying martial arts so that you could control your mind and your psychic powers, along with your physical powers. Dave and Peter understood each other right away, by looking into each other's eyes. They could just give each other a look, and understand everything. Unfortunately they don't get to see each other anymore now that Peter doesn't work at Wal-Mart. And Dave lives really far away in the opposite direction from Peter's house and Wal-Mart, so they don't hang out together away from work either.

I was saying I haven't absorbed as much 'culture' from Peter as I have from some other guys I've been with. This is also because we just don't spend much time together. We spend a few minutes together here and there. But I haven't been going over there as much in the past few weeks.

One problem I've noticed is that I really do get bad drug reactions from going over there. Either it's from kissing and touching Peter himself (we almost never try to have sex, but we still hug and kiss each other), or from their couch and their floor - there are drug residues there, including insulin, and a few times I KNOW I've had an insulin reaction, but that was when I was helping him fix his insulin pump and I was directly touching it. And the insulin was really hard to wash off, too. It seemed to go through the skin really slowly. It had a hard time penetrating. (Argh, the 'double meaning' censors aren't happy about 'a hard time penetrating.')  That makes sense, because all of the 'official wisdom' claims that the insulin molecule is too large to go through the skin (this is untrue). The insulin molecule DOES go through, but it takes forever. So I was washing my hands, but the insulin molecules were still inside my skin, somewhere between the inside layer and the outside layer, and they weren't entering the bloodstream yet, but they also couldn't be washed off the surface of the skin. So they kept on penetrating for a long time after I washed my hands. I could feel the tickly sensation in my skin where the insulin was, and I felt dizzy and unable to think, and sick at my stomach, and my bowels felt loose - I wasn't 'hungry' because of low blood sugar - I was the opposite, I was sick and reluctant to eat, and the LAST thing I wanted to do was put food in my stomach, so I can understand why insulin-poisoned diabetics refuse to eat when their sugar is crashing.

I also don't absorb Peter's culture because Peter is sick and unhappy and on drugs most of the time, and that gives him a 'poisoned spirit' - those are the words that 'the voices' used now to describe it. He is unhappy and unhealthy. He isn't alive and full of energy the way he was a long time ago when he was healthier. It's not something I WANT to absorb. I don't want to take in all of the bad feelings that Peter constantly suffers from. It's not his fault, it really is because of drugs and illness. But, I like to absorb things that make people happy, or, even if it's something sad, it's a 'good sad' feeling. Like sad music that moves you and helps you express your feelings. Peter doesn't even have that, really. All of his feelings, even his bad feelings, are trapped and suppressed because of drugs and sickness. I know how that feels, but I've never been as sick as he is, so I can't imagine what it would be like to live like that ALL THE TIME. I only know it from times when I've briefly been sick or on drugs and numbed into a zombie.

I like to absorb people's hobbies, their knowledge, their life experiences and memories, the places they go, favorite songs, favorite stores to shop at, favorite TV shows and movies, books, people they know, clothing styles. I like to learn about their belief systems, up to a point, but I prefer that their belief systems are similar enough to mine that I don't have to fight with a drastically different belief. It's something I tried to do with Martin whenever I was being forced to try writing letters to him (and not getting any replies, for whatever reason, not even a 'Stop writing letters, leave me alone' kind of reply). I wanted to learn everything about him, including things that I normally didn't like, such as sports. I hated sports, I always did, but after reading about how Martin liked them, I suddenly had more of an interest in sports whenever Peter had it on TV when I was over there. I was able to tolerate it. ('Sports' refers to things like football, baseball, basketball, the kind of sports that are on TV. I liked skateboarding, and that's a sport, but that's because my brother John used to skate when he was a teenager, and he still does, I just don't know how much of it he's doing nowadays).

I've been thinking of making my own web page that isn't on MySpace or Facebook. It would probably be here on WordPress because I like WordPress so much. It would serve the same purposes as MS and FB, except that it wouldn't have the social networking function as much, although you can use WordPress for that. I'd have my real name on it so that people would see it if they googled me. I'd want it to be one of the top results on Google. I'd write the 'favorite books' kind of stuff on it, and TV shows and movies, but I'd also have some other pages with more detail, but not a huge amount of detail - it wouldn't be a 'book-length monologue.' It might have a medium amount of 'secret' information on it, for instance, I could put photographs that I wouldn't necessarily want my family to look at, but I probably would not put blatantly erotic photos - I don't know. 'Nude' isn't erotic. It's just nude. I'm a nudist, and nudity is neutral. Just being naked doesn't mean that you have to have sex that very instant, because if that were true, animals would constantly have sex, 24 hours a day, because they are always naked. 'They' want me to have some naked photos available on the internet, and I'm just wondering what's the best way to do that. I don't really mind, but at the same time, it won't be on Facebook or MySpace. And it won't be on my eagledove9 flickr account. My parents and my aunt and my brother are looking at that one. I actually set up a Retmeishka flickr account, but haven't posted photos to it yet. But that's what it's for, nude and semi-nude pictures, and pictures of me in general, and maybe eventually pictures of other people. Anything I don't want to upset my parents with.

By the way, just so you know: My babies will be born on YouTube. This is no joke. I am going to do a natural childbirth and follow the rules of the order, and it is going to be videotaped and posted on YouTube. Again, I am serious. There will be photos of me during my pregnancy too as my body changes. You'll believe it when you see it.

I'm writing just because I enjoy the writing process. Typing is enjoyable. The hours are passing by, as I wait for ... oh no, I thought I was going in at 4:00! I have to go in at 3:30, not 4! Argh, that means I have to leave the house at 3:00. I'm glad I remembered that!

I'll go ahead and post this then.

Oh, darn it, I didn't get to mention the one thing I was going to talk about. I was going to say that Peter knows about Martin - I told him about it, when that was going on. And I also told him about Curtis, quite some time ago - I told him that Curtis existed, but he doesn't know any details. Peter isn't able to sit still and listen without interrupting, on a subject that upsets him, and he cut me off when I started to tell him about it. But if anything actually happens with Curtis in the real world, I will tell Peter that it's going on. It isn't going to be a secret. And I didn't have enough time to write about this, but, that's one of the reasons why I've not been seeing Peter as much for a few weeks, because I have been preoccupied with the obsession, and it bothers me not to tell him about it. I will have to tell him about it and it will make me feel better. I want him to know what my problem is. We have talked about this kind of thing before. And I shouldn't say he 'can't listen without interrupting,' that's not really true. He's able to listen enough to understand whatever I need to tell him. I just have to catch him at a time when his blood sugar isn't low. He can't listen to ANYTHING when his sugar is low.

Okay, I have to go get ready to work.

Decoy Uniforms and a phone call

2:02 PM 7/2/10

(*I think they must have given me the word 'decoy' to use.  I looked it up in the dictionary.  I saw the word 'decoy' in The Amber Spyglass, so my short-term memory remembered that word.  I think they might be making a joke because of being a 'bird' and one of the definitions of a 'decoy' was a decoy duck, a fake duck.  I don't normally use the word 'decoy' and was just calling them fake uniforms, but it 'seemed amusing' to call them decoy uniforms today.  So that's probably their suggestion.  This is after I wrote all of this and saved the draft.  Every once in a while I get voices telling me something along the lines of 'I do not think that word means what you think it means.'  (From 'The Princess Bride' - the word was 'inconceivable.')  The other idea was that they were newer and more intensely colored and better than the real uniforms, which fits with the blog the other day about fake animals being more attractive than the real ones if they have something sexually attractive that is intensified more than the real ones.  That would definitely be 'their joke.'  And tucking in my shirt makes my butt stick out even more than usual, which I don't want.*)

My decoy uniforms worked out okay. The McD uniform was almost better than the real ones. The very day that I first wore my new fake uniform, the real uniforms arrived and were being distributed. But it doesn't matter. I'll need so many more of them in the future that I will still have to buy my own even if they really did order some more. People were noticing that the shirt collar was really stiff. That was the only major difference. It had a pocket on the front of the shirt too. And no McD logo. I happened to find some cargo pants, the kind that have pockets on the legs, which match the McD cargo pants.

My Weis uniform, on the other hand, wasn't so believable. First, Samantha, the deli manager, looked at me, laughed, and said, 'That's like, a GIANT apron.' My Wal-Mart apron was down to about my knees. I laughed with her and explained that I bought myself a new uniform because (making a long story short) I was chemical sensitive and I got something on my uniform that I was having a reaction to.

Curtis saw me, and scowled a little, and said, 'Your uniform is REALLLY blue.' 'Royal blue' is the Weis uniform color. Mine was a shade darker and more intense than the real uniforms. I tried to explain the same thing to him, chemical sensitivity blah blah, but instead I got nervous and I laughed at myself in a crazy way, ha ha, I'm just a crazy person raving about chemical sensitivity, ha ha. I feel that way because all of my family thinks I'm insane and the drug residues aren't real, so when I say it out loud to Curtis, I feel like he's going to react that way too. I can write things, but if I say them out loud to the real person, depending on my mood, I might feel like they don't believe me. So when I laughed at myself, he gave me a strange look and then walked away. I was having sort of an anxiety attack and feeling like he didn't like me.

He told me he DID get a message on the phone from me. I said I didn't get a call back. I still don't know if he called back or not. I got a couple hangup calls where nothing is on the answering machine. And back in the days when I used to have caller ID, I would get strange numbers from other countries, and stuff like that, on my caller ID, so I gave up on trying to use it, because of the phone phreaks using it to harass me. If someone I wanted to hear from really did call me, the phreaks could hide the number behind a fake one, or they could redirect the call so that I didn't even get it at all, or whatever. Whoever they are, whether it's individuals, a group, a corporation, the government, or something else, whoever. So I still don't know if he even tried to call me back - he didn't say.

I didn't get a lot of chances to talk to him yesterday, because there was pressure for me to get stuff done. I tried once to see him before I left. I used an excuse to go to the back room. I was making pizzas, and in reality, I really do need to go get red and green peppers for pizza, if I want to use them, so I have to go to produce and do a transfer. Technically, I don't HAVE to get peppers. I could have used some other ingredient. But it was my excuse to try to go back there. But when I went back there, there was another guy whose name I can't remember. He's not 'The Invisible Guy,' but this is a guy whose name I don't know because we usually didn't work at the same time, and I've never really been able to see his name tag. If someone told me what his name was, I'd remember it. Anyway, he was talking to Curtis when I went back there, and so I just filled out my paperwork for the transfer. But 'they' were giving me suggestions for something I could say to try to 'make conversation.' It was a question that I didn't really care about and didn't need to ask, but 'they' suggested it, and it was all I could think of to say, since 'they' won't let me speak my own words and be myself. So, as a puppet, I said what they told me to say. I asked him if his grandmother was buying him a new car.

But I was scared and excited, because I was standing at the same table where he was, and the other guy was there, and I wasn't saying my own things, and I couldn't talk very well. My voice wouldn't come out, so I spoke really quietly, in a low slurred voice, and almost jumbled the words, because I was nervous. He probably wasn't able to hear me very well. But then he answered, and he tried to include the other guy in the conversation about his car, because it wasn't socially appropriate for me to walk in and start talking intimately to him in front of someone he was in the middle of talking to. He got the other guy into the conversation so it wouldn't be just me and him talking intimately. And this particular guy WOULD notice that it was unusual, my tone of voice, and my talking to him about his private life, and that particular guy might ask him about me.

And actually I don't even really care, or didn't at that moment, about his grandmother buying him a car.

He said he hoped she would buy him one, and he talked about the brakes being bad on the car he has now. And as usual, I did the wrong thing, I sort of laughed, but not loudly, because he said if it was raining he had to start putting on the brakes much earlier so that he could stop before he got to the stop sign, and actually it was scary, not funny. It was one of those days where everything I did felt like the wrong thing and I was SURE that he was going to dislike me, especially since I was on less St. John's Wort and I wasn't friendly anymore.

Afterwards he walked out and saw me making pizzas, and he scowled at me, and I don't know if he was actually annoyed with me, or if he was just having a cigarette craving, because he did go out for a cigarette after that. I said, 'Bye! I'm leaving... right now...' I waved at him a little bit. I didn't get to see him because I was still stuck there for a couple minutes finishing things up and we didn't cross paths.

I wasn't super-friendly and smiley that day, because my uniforms weren't covered with drugs. But my car seat vinyl still has stuff on it, and the hats are a little bit contaminated, but not badly. So I'm still getting drugs onto my new uniforms. It won't matter because I will just buy more, and I've been trying to wipe the car seats off. So these uniforms will gradually be ruined too. But I reassure myself thinking that the source of it, the storage unit full of my contaminated belongings, is now being sorted out and stuff thrown away, or packaged up, or cleaned, or whatever needs to be done with it. Every time I do that, more molecules of ephedra and the other drugs go away and don't come back. Small drug residue incidents in the future won't be as bad as the original accident, because I won't be growing and handling plants and seeds inside my apartment and then spreading it all over the carpet. Any future incidents will come from other drug users, like the doctor's office and Peter.

I called him again today and left a message. The voices got paranoid and they wondered if he gave me someone else's phone number as a practical joke, since the voice mail doesn't even have his voice on it - it's just the generic phone lady's voice. I won't know until I see him. I can only tell him, little by little, what I would like to do, and let him accept it and understand it, and let him talk back to me about how he feels and what he wants.

Gary Coleman was murdered

It's like his wife saw the same TV show I saw, and copied that murder.  It was one of those 'true crime' type shows.  Some guy killed two different women by faking a 'fall' down the steps, when he actually killed them by beating them in the head.  They decided it was murder because the blood was actually splattered in tiny dots like it had been splashed.  I saw the show at Peter's house only a few weeks before Gary Coleman was murdered.  You don't 'fall' in the kitchen and actually splash blood, but one of the magazines was describing blood on the wall, or something like that.  The image I saw in the magazine was blood that she had tried to wash off, and that's what they do when they want to hide the fact that it was splattered dots from splashing.  I'd need to see an autopsy to describe the actual wounds.

Also, I can tell because his wife was, and I'm sorry to say this, but his wife was a lot prettier than he was, and she was more like a prostitute than a real wife.  It wasn't love.  She wanted money and nothing but that.  I could see the anger in her eyes, instead of grief, in the photos I've seen of her - greed and anger.  A bitter, calculating look.  Not love and not sorrow.

Also, she refused to tell his parents about it.

I should also mention the movie 'Curt and Courtney,' about Curt Cobain's murder.