Black Dog Blog

Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

(Warning: acerbic)

Do you believe in God? What religion are you?
I'm God. I don't mind if anyone else is too, but I don't believe in them.

Do you believe in an afterlife? What do you believe happens when you die?
Interesting bioelectrical functions cease. You cease to be amusing*. You decompose. Intellectual and emotional infants around you comfort each other by pretending you're in a better place.
*well, depending on the method of death…

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Military dog recovers from PTSD after Iraq war

PTSD, which the military characterises as a condition that develops after a life-threatening trauma, has not been researched in animals as thoroughly as in humans. But some experts say animals can experience a form of it.

When will we get over the idea that our psychology couldn't possibly be anything like that of another large social mammal? Of course a dog can develop a traumatic disorder! Know something else? They can feel grief, jealousy, loneliness, humour and joy. Of course they bloody can.

All of those have biological uses. They're not just pretty, meaningless trappings we picked up around the same time as Gug and Mog worked out how to bash two flints together. There's a word for people who think they are the special only ones in the universe who can ever truuuly feeeel things so deeeeply. Well, there are several words for it, but I was thinking of "teenager".

I tend to work from a basic assumption that anyone with a nervous system pretty similar to mine is going to have a brain pretty similar to mine. Making allowances for my weirdly overdeveloped abstract thought and language habits, beginning from the standpoint that the other person's point of view is different but possible for me to understand, at least partway, hasn't led me far wrong before.

I think this is an advantage of being one of those strange, shadowy autistic creatures with supposedly no Theory of Mind. What I actually have is a default assumption that other people don't think like me, but that they do think. In my view that's much superior to swooping around empathising at people on the basis of what I personally like and dislike, not even realising how ridiculously I'm projecting.

"Oh you poor dear, how did you get all that red lacquer on your nails? Do you feel very ridiculous? Oh don't worry, I won't think you're necessarily a shallow bitch!" ← Learning not to do this has stood me in good stead.

The Golden Rule is not gospel for aspies. It's dangerous. I treat others, always assuming I care about their happiness, as I think they would like to be treated. Because then it's about them, not about me. Another good thing about that approach? It includes the potential for iterative improvement.

Last night, after going to bed quite upset about the family cat remaining seriously ill, I dreamed about my long-since-ex-dog, Bracken.

I was in some kind of town centre pedestrian shopping street, and she needed to wee, so I found a tree for her and that was all right. (Picture the usual sort of trees that grow in a one-paving-slab-size patch of dirt in town centres, surrounded by grilles on the ground, where idiots tend to drop cigarette butts.) Right near the end of what I remember, I saw my mother also preparing to pee on a tree, which was just odd.

Piper continues alive and alert, although lethargic, complaining of a dry mouth and barely eating (clear signs of kidney trouble, which both his humans suspected before it was diagnosed). On a positive note, we haven't seen any frothy pee after he started antibiotics. He is receiving fluids subcutaneously (in case you didn't know this, cats have a LOT of space under their skin. Loose skin is good protection from other predators who might try to grab them, and helps them squeeze through tiny places. Our neighbour Princess, a huge Maine Coon cross, has been observed forcing herself through a 6cm gap). (Apparently my school teacher genes are activating as some kind of coping mechanism.)

Giving up on our spoiled cat is not an option while he remains bright-eyed and squeaky and wants to live. If there were such a thing as kidney dialysis for cats, his mother would have him on it. We're far from rich, and he's not even a dog, but this is still a family member we're talking about.

Animals are sort of a big deal for me. I'm autistic, so it's a given that I can relate to non-human animals more easily than to humans. Furthermore, and given that it's my understanding that humans are hard-wired to need tactile contact with others, I can't touch other humans without it hurting (the discomfort is psychological but altogether real). If I'm after touch stim, I need – physically need – an animal.

The family pet is the first thing I look for each morning and the first thing I go and find when I get home from work, unless he happens to want something and has consequently come to wait by the door. He's my perpetual fall-back topic of conversation. He never comforts me when I'm sad, but he amuses me whenever he's hungry.

As it happens, I'm wired to live with two dogs, so lodging with a single cat was already less than ideal, but the thought of a house empty of quadrupedal life is… not something I can contemplate with equanimity.

Crack found in World Cup!

African-American women struggle to overcome wealth gap

Meanwhile, UN to set up agency promoting women's rights. I hope the 'gender' part of the title doesn't apply only to women. We should always aim for no discrimination based on gender, not 'gender equality' between the two mainstream groups.

Pretty ship at Tower Bridge

'Big budget' porn film shot in London hospital. Yes, apparently the offence is mainly over the fact that the film's budget was higher than the NHS's. Ditto occupational health standards. Zing.

Taiwan chocolate art exhibition. That 'jade' cabbage is beautiful. And the dice and mahjongg pieces, so cute! Exit through the gift shop… NOM.

Fluffy ostrich

Close encounters with giant harpy eagle of Venezuela, who very effectively sorts out a nasty ape that is trying to climb towards her nest. In the second clip, another young man stares out a different filthy ape and takes the mickey out of its walkie-talkie.

Meanwhile, webcam viewers freak out over human hands appearing in their shot of an osprey nest.

Respect is due to this badass lady, who chose to remain conscious during an operation to remove a tumour from her brain.

Dangerous dogs bill 'does not go far enough'. I disagree with the criticisms in the main…

Changes proposed include more emphasis on the owners' responsibility, attacks which take place on private property becoming a criminal offence, and legislation no longer being breed specific.

I don't fully understand the part about attacks occurring on private property (the interview clip seemed to suggest the opposite of what I understood from the article, and I haven't bothered to look up the details yet), but as for the other two changes mentioned, they're completely sensible. A person's race is never an excuse for criminal activity; childhood abuse and upbringing, on the other hand, certainly do shift the blame onto the family. Besides, you can't end up with a situation where you're forced towards genetically testing a litter of crossbreeds, and even ending up with brothers and sisters coming under different laws because of the exact proportion of Staffie in their blood.

The Bahá'ís just can't seem to catch a break. It looks likely that those in Iran (where, I will point out, their religion originated, unlike Islam!) are due further terrorisation and mob violence with the silent collusion of Ahmadinnerjacket's jackboot cronies.

The coalition government is sticking with Labour's Equality Act, apart from the bit about forcing employers to make public how much less they pay their women employees than men.

Inequality just isn't going away. The gap in life expectancy between rich and poor is widening, and somehow I don't quite trust the Tories to close it, even with their collective arm twisted by the yellow contingent.

'Hidden obscenity': Older men grooming teens for sex

Signs of child sexual exploitation 'being missed'

Neil Gaiman (video) on comics and literary success…

"Do you think being a comic writer means you've not been taken seriously?" "I think that coming from a comics background has meant that I have never cared at all about being taken seriously. … I come from comics. That's not even the gutter: that's the drain that the gutter runs into."

Good Omens is still the best thing I've ever read from Gaiman. It was co-written with Terry Pratchett, with the result that both loopy writers bounced off each other magnificently, to glorious results. (The worldbuilding in American Gods and Anansi Boys was enjoyable too, but only because Pratchett's Small Gods – which, unlike Gaiman's books, I can find really scary – had burrowed into my brain during a formative stage.)

I never knew Gaiman's family members were Scientologists. That must help with horror writing.

Speaking of living in a controlled environment, how do you fancy life in a village where children are banned?

Threecows!

30% of children feel scared when they see adults drunk or drinking too much, – which I suppose makes me 30% child, because I know drinkers terrify me. I'm more disturbed by the proportion of children ("nearly half") for whom drinking to excess is a normal, non-frightening sight.

I'll cheerfully admit that I don't know who Justin Bieber is, but 4chan has sent him off to North Korea. Well done, /b/uddies. Can he stay there?

When Peter Pan lost his shadow, he was still recognisable, even though most of us find shadows help us to identify objects. Children with autism, however, appear to regard the dark shapes as more of a distraction.

New Scientist: Shadows open window into the autistic mind

What I like best is that the article didn't link shadows thematically to the soul and imply that we're all soulless husks.

I'm reminded that as a child I liked cartoons better than live-action programmes. I found them easier to decode visually – and what do cheap animation studios NOT draw their characters with? Shadows…

I'd be interested to know if these were drawings of objects (the NS uses the word "drawn", but I can't find anything in the study précis either way), or photographs. That makes a massive difference to how I understand things visually, and even how I look at them.

(Context for this story: Norrie May-Welby declared genderless)

Grrrr.

A quick Google at the time of posting doesn't find many other stories to confirm it, except this poor-quality, biased piece from the Christian Institute, which refers to Norrie as "he" and has overtones that make me very uncomfortable.

edit: 22 March: A rather annoying further development.

A buddy alerted me to this. Is this not the coolest and most fascinating thing evah?

A 43-year-old neuter called norrie mAy-welby (artistic capitalisation), living in Australia, has won the right to have hir gender written as "not specified" on all hir legal documents.

First Person in the World Officially Declared Genderless (Tonic.com)

Briton is recognised as world's first officially genderless person (Telegraph)

Scot wins right to not specify gender (Times of India)

My journey to getting a 'sex not specified' legal document (The Scavenger) (note: refers to sex transition surgery in some detail)

I'm not all that enamoured of "zie" as a pronoun (although I find it more pleasing than the Spivak pronoun "ey", which I personally feel somehow lessens one), but if that's actually got legal recognition as the Tonic article suggests, go for it.

Sadly, Norrie had to undergo physical intervention (sex transition surgery that sie later realised hadn't been the right answer), followed by physical examination by 'medical experts', in order to be thus classified.

That doesn't seem right to me.

If a transman can be legally recognised as male and yet still be physically able to get pregnant (see Tom Beatie)¹, why should neuters have to have themselves mutilated for recognition?

We shouldn't.

I've had some experience with the sex and gender therapies on offer in the UK, and even the 'top' (well, only) clinic in the country is entrenched in the binary, stereotypical male-female world. You want to be a man? Cut your hair. You want to be a woman? Wear a skirt and heels. You want to be neither? Well, figure out which one you are and then come back. Give us a break, love! This is the 21st century, but gender therapy feels like it's got one foot in the Victorian era.

Hopefully Norrie's achievement will be a starting point, not an endpoint. This kind of legal gender reassignment (or de-assignment) is not something to be done lightly or for frivolous reasons, but nor is it something that begins and ends with what physical bits you have.

Just as climbing trees and playing with trains does not make a woman any less womanly, or listening to Beyoncé and having Wonder Woman as a role model make a man any less manly.

And more recognition for gender identities outside the binary might just prevent the deep pain experienced by those poor folks who later regret their sex transition surgery.

¹ edit: An Aus friend writes that in fact, Trans men in Australia can't keep their fertility and change their ID sex. Hystos are essential here. All trans folks have to be sterilized to change their sex legally here [...bearing in mind that] most women can NOT get a hysto unless it is life-threatening, because it is seen as a "human rights abuse" here. So it's kinda screwed they demand it of transfolk.

That is screwed.

My brother's parents¹ keep a tiny weekend house in the Lake District. We went there with a couple of his other friends overnight yesterday. As it happened, I hadn't been there before (not often invited, usually busy).

During the course of the afternoon I proved myself the most adept fire-builder — which was amusing, since two of them claimed first-hand experience lighting fires, whereas I had to approach the thing completely from theory. Nevertheless, the thing lit up at my hands, and a good job it did, because it was below freezing overnight. I also beat an electric pump at inflating mattresses. Old-fashioned footpower for the win?

Also, we melted the nozzle off one of the air mattresses with a hairdryer. On reflection, when I suggested the idea, I should have specified that the thing be set to cold air.

The sheer number of stars in the night sky, out there as we were among sheep-infested hills six miles from the nearest village, was very nice to see.

We got in a little stroll this morning; just ten or twenty minutes or so, because two of the party were not best suited to the exercise. Yes, turns out some people are unfit even compared to me. n00bs!

I seemed to spend a lot of time teaching people things², ranging from how fire works ("small stuff burns faster and hotter; the big logs are the ones that will last all evening, but they need to be much hotter to catch fire, so we have to start with small…" …at which point I trail off, unable to compete with Nuts Magazine, and just get the damn thing going. Fire. Fiiiiire. Pretty pretty fire) to how sheep work ("why is that one's leg bright orange? Was it born like that?" "At a guess, I'd say it was antibiotic dip." … "You don't actually think sheep speak a language, do you?" "Not a syntactic one, but if you mean can they recognise bleats? Absolutely"). (Yeah, I don't know either.)

So, yes, turns out some people know even less about countryside than I. Pah! n00bs, I say!

Also. In general, much as I like 1960s music and classic rock, I've heard enough Magic-FM, Smooth-Radio, Late-Night-Love-Letters, Stuff-Even-Radio-2-is-Too-Embarrassed-to-Play utter shite over this day and night to last me quite some years.³ I had to sneak some headphones on and blast some DragonForce during the car journey or I would have gone quite, quite mental.

¹ Yes, brothers with different parents. It's an honorary thing. No blood-letting was involved.

² "The only one who could ever reach me was the geek-talkin' sonuva teacher man", etc.

³ "Do you not think it's choonage, Herms? You biiiitch!" Sadly, my tolerance of other people's music is not reciprocated when I should want to put on Symphony X.

I woke up at some time after 11:00 this morning in bed with someone strange wrapped around me.

However, because I don't drink and I spent New Year's Eve with trusted friends at a safe location within walking distance of home: it was my own bed, I had a clear head, the house was secure, nobody had soiled themselves and the strange individual was the family cat¹, who had been at home listening to Jools Holland and Radio 2 for most of the night in order to block out the fireworks.

I don't own a fighter jet yet, but still, I call that a win for New Year. Happy 2010 to you all, my dear sweet little bitches.

¹I have the aforementioned chattel thoroughly alpha'd and well trained, which is why he woke me at 11:00 by snuggling up next to my head and begging wantonly for a tummy tickle, instead of at 05:00 by sitting on my chest and drooling into my eye, which is what he does to his supposed 'owner'.

Brrrr. I'm either ill or just vaguely run down after this week, which has been kind of a doozy. Last night I was completely out of it, and I mean unable to talk, let alone do anything else; symptoms that, when I flipped back through my mental notebook, I found next to a pencilled annotation reading "←Stress?"

I hope taking it sedentary over this weekend will get me back on my feet, but the cold weather isn't helping. I don't want to go for walks or do anything but huddle with hot water bottles. I definitely hope I won't be ill-definedly sickish all this winter, because the novelty there wears off fast, I can tell you from experience.

NaNoWriMo writing has completely stalled. I won't make the 50k, that's a given, but I'll easily get to 30k over the weekend. Heck, just writing up what I've handwritten on my tram journeys should take care of that.

All that's still to go on Part Two, after transcribing my own handwriting, is some wrapping up on Taupeshank's side. Taupe needs to realise in what ways pe's been rather silly, while Alluring… well. Let's face it. Alluring Swiper isn't learning any Important Moral Lessons any time soon. Alluring considers nerself far too fabulous for Important Moral Lessons.

Lest anyone accuse me of writing only heroes I agree with 100%, this section features binge drinking, the afore-alluded ass-headedness and a downright fist fight. Part Three features FIRE! Also bribery, but mainly FIRE. (Could fire really be a problem on a planet that's 95% water? You bet.)

Tesla, the Celibate Scientist

So apparently the ladies love celibacy. Hey, ladies! Over here, ladies! White Knight complex at 12 o'clock! I will be oblivious to your advances. I will actually blush and run away if you attempt to tongue-kiss me. SEXY, EH?

Yeeeaaaahhh, they so want me.

In today's "won't you walk into my parlour" news…

Cat Party to recruit mice, Nazi party to admit Jews, Roma, disabled people, and: BNP to consider non-white members.

Vatican to host Galileo exhibit. Sounds fabtastic. I'd like to see it.

Nice try, kid, but no cigar. Of course, he will have learned much from this preliminary attempt.

Israel taking a leaf out of the Bush administration's books. I'll be interested to see if Obama takes action on this kind of thing. America's about the only country to whom they're remotely likely to listen, and at least the "We Take the Book of Revelation Literally, Roll On Battle of Megiddo" loon squad are no longer in power.

Seal pups: look cute, but don't approach or you could cause them to starve.

Beautiful microscopy photos of blood cells and nerves.

Adults with autism 'cast adrift' in England

This, er, wow. So what are Auschwitz's five favourite singers and which Heroes character would Auschwitz be? Now we can find out. Er.

RIVAL CHILD OVERACHIEVER! It is so cute pathetic that at age 27 I still feel threatened by this kind of brat… oh man… issues. ;D

These poor kids, on the other hand, are lucky if they can learn at all.

Finally, I have to post this for you lot for the name alone. North Korea's Hotel of DOOM.

(Not to be confused with Latveria's Doctor of Doom or Disneyland's Tower of Terror, of course.)

"I felt I'd test my hypothesis and I did that by getting my cat certified by a number of the most prominent lay hypnosis organisations in the United States. It was a frighteningly simple process."

Cat registered as hypnotherapist

Look at the picture of the cat, though. That's an intense expression – every bit as convincing as Derren Brown. And less trustworthy.

'Lying down' NHS staff reinstated

Cage fighter punches out stag

Honour killings given Bollywood flavour

Uruguay approves sex change bill, jubilant blogger tries desperately not to type "You mean Uragay lol lol :D"

Cut them off with a rusty butter knife.

Derry City Council's Hallowe'en carnival encourages Satanism and has brought a curse on the city, according to a Methodist minister.

I don't celebrate Hallowe'en, but that Methodist minister has just caused me to drink some water as a proxy libation to Bau and Anubis (which I reasoned ought to count as Satan in his book). Self-important arsenoses like Rev Jonathan Campbell make Satanism look more attractive than do 19-year-old skinhead trick-or-treaters or noisy drunk people having fun.

Abortion bans do not reduce abortion rates. I'm sure pro-life mysogynists will not allow these facts to inconvenience them.

Yes they should – why don't they already?!

Berners-Lee 'sorry' for slashes, fanfiction writers up in arms

New flying reptile fossils found

• #PSA: A4 paper goes in the A4 tray. The A3 tray is for A3 paper. Next week's masterclass: the difference between can & bottle recycle bins. #
• I haz a Graze box, a day late thanks to postal strike, and it looks nummy! An easy way to my heart is to bring seaweed peanuts to my desk.<3 #
• How anyone can conceive of a 'heaven' without animals is utterly beyond me. It'd be…like living without parts of your body. #howenglishami #
• RT @programmingns Absolutely Beautiful Pictures of Weimaraners – http://tinyurl.com/ybxm2a2 #weimaraners #dogs // See also: William Wegman #
• #Bugbears Software that messes with what I've placed on the clipboard. No. You don't decide that once I've pasted it, I don't need it. No. #
• Graze postal strike boxes are great because they're long-life, but it's no good – need fresh fruit. Off to get apple from vending machines. #
• The desk of @metaltax is stacked with enticingly book-shaped parcels. #
• Reread the Deadpool issue where Blind Al explains The Box and "how you build a prison". I loved where they went with Al and I miss Weasel. #

Twitterfiction, aka why do ideas always come in 3½s?

• #vss We're listening to The Buzzcocks, feet up. She pokes me. "Ever not fallen in love with someone you should have fallen in love with?" #
• #vss His heart and soul were on that departing starship. He watched the ion trail disperse and fade. Well, at least new souls came cheap. #
• #vss I spotted the three bounty hunters before I reached my front door, and calculated where the fourth must be before I opened it. #

I tweeted a documentary for fun, since all the cool kids seem to do it.

• Listening to http://bit.ly/b00mwms8 – Adults with Autism. Very good on sensory differences. #autism #aspie #sensoryfail #
• "Autistic traits may run through the population"? Um no, autistic traits are totally inhuman and come from space DUH. http://bit.ly/b00mwms8 #
• "Autism may be partly a manifestation of an extremely male brain" (re: hormones in utero) http://bit.ly/b00mwms8 Oh stop flattering me. #
• "Autism is very highly heritable" http://bit.ly/b00mwms8 Ah, so you've met my dad. #
• [after adult diagnosis] "I have to look back at everything… Like I might have been colourblind and not known it." http://bit.ly/b00mwms8 #
• Now covering sexuality. Gross. (OK, I'm a textbook aspie.) "I couldn't handle the enormity of intimacy & closeness." http://bit.ly/b00mwms8 #
• "Lot of people with Asperger syndrome try so hard to be part of the human race… often seen as not human, no souls, no feelings." As me. ;) #
• The moral of the story seems to be that we have "potential" that employers ought to "harness". http://bit.ly/b00mwms8 #
• Getting a job – a quiet, sedentary office one – has been very good for me psychologically. I've learned so much about looking human. #autism #

I found a really interesting article on 'camp' (as an adjective) linked in the comments of someone else's journal. I finally put some time aside to read it:

Susan Sonntag: Notes on Camp

My reactions follow, all jotted as I read. You should read the article and form your own opinions first.

Now, I don't care for 'camp' as a whole, so don't expect any coherent thoughts and opinions from me here. I probably would fit in in some ways with a 'queer' (hate that word) way of looking at things, though, so I'm definitely interested to read on…

"The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature."
- The Decay of Lying

An offhand quote that caught my eye. It could be in a nutshell why I don't like art (or, rather, why I think of myself as someone who doesn't like art. The other reason being school art lessons), and why I am less and less likely to like any individual artwork the more it deviates from the strictly realistic, or at least the methodically representational.

(Yes, even if it portrays something that doesn't exist, it could have the courtesy to look right.)

As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated. The androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility. [...]

Allied to the Camp taste for the androgynous is something that seems quite different but isn't: a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms.

Read the rest of this entry »

What occasioned this post was a request made to me by a writing partner a long time ago. I declined the request. You'll see why. "Ten years later" is pushing the definition of a snappy comeback, but this post is really aimed at other guys who might have this idea.

John Boy, as we'll call him, had a male character. His Vision™ for his character, he'd decided one day, included two children whom the character would raise. His request: "Mutt, will you write a female character who'll have these children for him and then hand them over?"

As it happens, the idea of writing female pregnancy gets into some deep problems for me, and I never intend to do it. I don't recall that I'd mentioned this to John Boy in the past, so he gets a free pass in this instance on the insensitivity front.

However, when I told him I would never be comfortable writing a pregnant woman, his suggestion? "Maybe she's from a species where she has to breed in order to become a neuter." OK, so… forcing a transgendered character to breed in order to line des gender up with des sex? That was insensitive. Chaps, we're all pretty smart here. Let's all agree never to suggest this to a transgendered person, OK?

Anyhow, those are my personal issues and we'll lay them aside. Now here's the response I wish I'd given all those years ago, to help John Boy understand why asking any writer to make up a woman character, in order to give your man character instant children, is somewhat on the odd side.

Actually, John Boy, my personal horror at writing pregnancy is not my only problem with this suggestion. The main issue is that you want a female character whose entire purpose in life, at least from your point of view and your plot's, is to have children.

John Boy, your offer is rejected firmly and without prejudice, and I hope if you think about what I've said you'll realise why. My advice to you is to write a frog woman and have them spawn in a pond, or, preferably, rethink the plot idea that requires a woman to bear your character two children and then disappear.

We'll leave our imaginary ten-years-younger John Boy alone now. We just gave him a lot to think about. We're older and wiser, though, so here's another point for you to ponder…

Do you know what pregnancy does to a woman's body and hormones? I don't have much idea, for the obvious reason, but I know it's huge. To take one example that might cause a particular problem with this 'plot' idea, women don't always want to give up their children.

Sound obvious? But really, they don't always, even if they were OK with the idea beforehand. This is not because women are nuts. Your mother was a woman. Everyone's mother was a woman. And that's rather the point. We humans evolved to what we are because mothers have a strong bond with their weak, helpless spawn, who remain helpless for about 6 years and weak for at least 8 more. You don't put up with a burden like that unless you love it, and this is where your hormones, leaving nothing to chance, make sure you do. Sometimes they'll go wrong or a woman will feel able to overcome the effect, but that isn't predictable.

This is why you will read in magazines about women acting as surrogate mothers, who find themselves unable to give up children they've carried for another couple. Repeat, this is not because the woman is nuts, or a liar. Chances are she had every intention beforehand of carrying through with the agreement. I doubt she really wants to bring up, on her own, the child of a man who's in a relationship with someone else. Not even for the child support payments (seriously, no woman who is in touch with reality ever gets pregnant because she thinks it'll make her rich). But you can't always help whom you fall in love with.

Conclusion: women don't always oblige by breeding and then handing over their children, even if that's what your script says.

This post only is:
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Attribution to Herm Baskerville with an optional link back to this page. (The author would prefer that you link to this post, in case de edits or improves it.)

One side effect of my recent inability to wake up in the mornings, even with Rock Radio Manchester blaring at me from the radio alarm, is some really weird half-waking dreams. Let's see, last night/this morning:

Main feature was that my brother had been kidnapped (and you should choose death rather than mess with my brother, because it'll be a lot less pleasant than the wrath I'll visit upon you. Just, y'know, FYI). I was heading out to sort this out.

This is Filibuster. The neighbours think they named him Fergus, but they are wrong.

In the front hall I passed one of my mother's work cases, which had developed a hole. Soil was pouring out of it with a dry wiffle noise. It later started spilling white powder instead. I wondered vaguely if this was a bomb chemical. (No more CSI for you.)

Otherwise the main event was to do with ladders. I declared that the flimsy rope ladder held up by safety pins, for dogssakes, would obviously not support my body weight. My companion, who was much lighter and possibly a cat, climbed up it to demonstrate, but then the tightrope unravelled under its feet and it was forced to conclude that I was right. We spent some time looking for a more stable way to climb to the upper platform. The purpose of this was never explained.

(Have just had to pause typing while I was summoned to come and see the neighbours' cat, whom I have named Filibuster, and who has shown up in our house this morning and begun falling over on everything hoping for tummy tickles. He is usually not disappointed.)

By now I've forgotten all the lesser dreams, but they were weird too. The other 'main' dream involved my somehow stumbling into a web forum frequented or run by Jack, my internets ex.

Jack was a writing partner and, well, I see no need to tell the whole story because the upset and hurt at our eventual split has faded to the point that I barely remember his existence, and indeed am surprised that my dreaming module does at all.

(Have just been summoned AGAIN to see the aforementioned cat trying to cram himself into a box half the size of a shoebox.)

Jack was present, along with his right-hand person who never showed up except when he was there (to the point that I used to wonder if they were the same person and Jack had invented them as a sock puppet to agree with everything he said! This was later disproved to my satisfaction), and some others I didn't know.

Jack had just posted a message (or written a note; for some reason handwriting was also involved) saying he'd seen I'd dropped by and everyone, this is Mutt [my handle, or one of them] and omg <3 and wasn't it nice of me. I cannot imagine Jack being like this.¹

(All RIGHT, mother, no need to come in and tell me the cat is now sitting in the bath asking for a drink.)

I needed to reply, which for some reason involved instructing them not to use the wrong pronoun for me(!) and some other administrative issues. I was debating whether to tell them I'd been the one who saved their website from going offline by picking up the domain and hosting costs. (Honestly, reptile brain, web doesn't work that way.)

Judging by the overall tone, this dream was an indication that I'm empowered and free from all that past negativity and all that hippie stuff. All very fine and Oprah. I just wonder why I'm dreaming about him at all. I feel nothing towards him now. Encountering him again would be like getting to know someone new, not having someone grateful and pleased to see me like he was in the dream.¹

The whole web-hosting stuff may have come from my re-registering a dropped IRC channel last night, mind you… and I do still keep our old domain name active, in case any old friends should look for us there. Oh well.

¹ This would have been more believable.

He wasn't that bad, most of the time, but he had a passive-aggressive, attention-seeking side and he expected to be taken as terribly seriously as he took everything else. Don't worry, I was a severely depressed teen when I knew him, so I was probably nearly as bad in my own way.

Anyway, basically, this isn't a portion of my life I'd decide to revisit out of the blue.