Unsolicited Advice

I spent most of the afternoon trapped on a train today. Normally, this does not bother me much. Public transit is nice. I can't be shouted at for loafing; I am on a train, so clearly I have left the house and gone to do whatever thing needs doing. But I also can't be expected to do anything about it right at that very moment, as there are a limited number of things one can tend to on a train, and I can't do anything to make the beastie get where it's going any faster. I am In Transit, and everyone can kindly fuck off for a little while. When I feel lousy I also feel like rabbit-punching everyone around me who wears a backpack and has a poor sense of personal space, so I had my earbuds jammed resolutely in. I had a lot of Very Loud Things turned up Very Loud Indeed in an effort to ignore all this. Very loud. Louder. Why is it not getting any louder? WHY HAS MY MUSIC NOT BEEN ENLOUDENED. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT IS AS FAR AS THE VOLUME CONTROL GOES. THE OTHER PEOPLE ARE ST...

I have the weirdest anxiety dreams. The Sandman has realized that it doesn't do any good to send me the normal ones, because I don't react right. I've never had the one where I'm out in public in my underwear, probably because I come close to that IRL on a regular basis, and don't care. The last time I had the one where we were being chased through a mall by zombies, I just sort of looked around at the survivors and went 'welp, let's go see what we can loot from the sporting goods store'. I've had the one where nobody tells me I'm supposed to get up and give a talk to a jillion people until right before it happens. I get up on stage, smile and say hello, tell the audience what the event crew just pulled on me, and witter on about whatever I know about the topic, which is usually not zero. I just had one where I was back in college, and they sent someone to my dorm room to tell me that they Vehemently Objected to something I'd posted in ...

All right. I am... mostly alive again. I had to clean for a Realtor who didn't show up on Monday, went back to bed at about six in the evening, and spent most of the subsequent 36 hours asleep. It kicked off with oblivious injustice at a volunteer position, over which I was furious. That was a bit of a surprise. Being that angry requires a lot of energy, and even being in a state where I can look at things reasonably objectively and realize I'm goddamn right requires a lot of background resources. It's been a long time since I've been capable of doing that. I credit the L-DOPA supplements, which seem to be fixing a lot of stuff in general. By the time I was halfway through the sequence, though, a random comment from an internet stranger immediately knocked me into a terrible shame spiral, where I was ready to believe that everything I thought about how other people probably saw me was wrong. It's one thing if people think I'm weird. I really don't care a...

My new phone needs a name, I've decided. The old phone didn't really have one. I called it "the droidbrick", to distinguish it from its predecessor, "the flip phone," which was in turn differentiated from its antecedent, "the Nokia brick". It was a remarkably simple creature for something that claimed to be a smartphone. It ran Android, so Google Play recognized it, but pretty much the only things Google would install were Solitaire and Sudoku. It tried, but it was more convinced it was helping than it was actually helpful. I don't name things until they're complicated enough to get cranky. The new phone has crossed the threshold into chaotic behavior. I expect it would be stochastic if I could know and understand its state down to a sufficiently nitpicky level, but up here on the user interface, it has already started displaying unexpected reactions to the stabs I take at the touchscreen. Other, simpler devices have gone wrong on me ...

People make me think things. Brian Molko makes me think really filthy things, which I am willing to admit in public mainly because he's pretty plain about being okay with this. He clearly understands this state of mind, as he has a reputation for entertaining himself on tour by sleeping around. On the other hand, I am an adult, and I understand that sometimes we think things that do not need to be immediately ejected into the open air; he appears to get that too, as I have never heard him comment on-mic on the attractiveness, or lack thereof, of any other human being. I assume he's not shy about sharing this information with specific people in whom he is interested, or he wouldn't get laid nearly so much, but discretion about the details is generally a good thing. He also makes me think things that are probably equally dangerous to be dreaming about on the train. Writers are a lazy species, in that we all understand it is much easier to write about things that are alrea...

fuck fucks fucking fucked I had to teach it all of these, lest my messages end up featuring far more waterfowl than I intended. piss hell damnable furball misremembered Groucho It keeps wanting to guess "site" instead of "show", which I suppose I can understand, but also just about anything plausible rather than admit that it's "snowing", which is almost charming in its human-like denial, but inconvenient. On the other hand, it knows a lot of proper names, including some of the T stops, and managed to get "Aleve" out of a Swype scribble at one point. There may be hope yet.

I bought a new phone today. No, that's not an April Fool's joke; the screen on my droidbrick went wonky earlier this week, and finally died stone cold dead in Central Square the other day, right as I was about to text my boss about whether I needed to put in an appearance at the office that afternoon. I put a lot of effort into convincing myself that I could buy the cheapest thing I could find on Amazon and wait for the Pony Express to drop it off. If I ordered it with overnight shipping it would show up on Monday. People who call on Friday are okay with having calls returned on Monday, right? I could survive some errands without it. This charming idea lasted until I got to Kenmore, when I realized A) I can't work the alarm like this, B) I can't text my roommate or get any of my messages bounced from Twitter or Facebook, and C) I will murder the three teenagers screaming at each other in the seats behind me if I do not have music to turn up very very loud . [It...