Privilege bubble

So, I've recently come across kiva.org (via the route of "grazing off each educational series on YouTube, landing on CrashCourse, landing then on the vlogbrothers, and then browsing through their entire humongous archive".).

Kiva is a website for microfinancing coupled with crowdfunding. While the borrower (usually in some 3rd world country, but potentially anyone is allowed) still lends his/her microcredit from a bank in their home country, you can share the credit burden with that bank (and multiple other loaners), usually at portions of 25$.

The awesome part: Since you're technically a "shareholder" of that debt, you get the 25$ back after the borrower has paid it off - and you're free to reinvest again. It's like donating, only you get to donate over and over again. And the risk isn't that great - at best, you get your money back after a year or two, and in the worst case, you have lost 25 bucks - enough to annoy you, but not enough to hurt you even if you aren't exactly rich. (and that probability isn't high - microfinancers usually have really good repayment rates, way past 95 %)

It's totally satisfying - you lend out your money, have a good chance to get it back AND you help some other person better their life. Try it, if you haven't yet.

The interesting part comes to you after browsing those extensive crowds of families and budding entrepreneurs. Each loan comes with a little blurb telling you who this person/group is, why they're borrowing that money, and a photo of them at home or their workplace. People want to buy seeds for the next crop (or rent labor to work the land), buying goods to refine and/or to sell (such as clothes, in bulk, or wood to work with), or pay medical expenses, connect their houses to electricity, or very often, just a damn toilet that isn't the same place you get your drinking water out of.

Browse enough of those people, and you start to lower your expectations. After about an hour, I came across Shufaa, a Kenyan woman wanting to buy clothes for resale. Her blurb tells me about her:

"Shufaa is a married mother of four children, all of whom attend school. She lives in her own house that has electricity and piped water. Her greatest monthly expense is food."

After all those other people wanting to exchange candles to solar led lights and upgrading their shitbuckets to latrines, I'm all "damn girl. Electricity AND running water - you got it MADE.".

...And then I realize: I'm sitting at my computer in my 60 m² apartment in Germany, sipping my espresso latte, and feeling suddenly very, very fucking privileged to be a white male in a developed country.

Does this remind us all that the world is an awful, rotten place? Hell yes. But even without leaving my privilege bubble, I can make this sucky world a better place - one tiny step at a time.

Drug Test - Part II

So, the post "I went of my psych drugs was followed by an immediate hole in communication for about two months. Does that mean something went very, very wrong, as the whole internet was already predicting for me? Well - first of all, you clearly haven't checked my posting habits over the last decade, second of all - while that experiment was not of the "crash and burn" variety, although I have to say, BURN was a significant part of the experience.

Turns out, I'm lucky about the "antidepressant" part of the thing. I've felt a little listless now and then, but overall, at least at the moment, I could probably live completely without it, so the years of psychotherapy weren't completely useless! Hooray! Now, if it weren't for all the rest of those pesky side-effects.

As I've already mentioned, the pills have additional anti-histamine and sleep-inducing properties, so I was prepared for withdrawal on that side. What I hadn't counted on: I happen to have a hiatus hernia. So far, so unspectacular. I actually had almost forgotten about the heartburn, mainly because I found out about said heartburn when I visited a lung doctor about a seemingly never-ending bronchitis a few years back.

Short version: Stomach produces way waaay too much acid, said acid gets stored in the stomach part above the diaphragm instead of under, then gets evicted when I breathe, and flows a) into my lungs, and b) towards my mouth and nose when I sleep. Which then blossoms into minor heartburn, and what feels like a nasty cold.

Now, what happens when you stop your heavy anti-histamine medication cold turkey? Turns out, the my stomach acid producers decided to kick things into overdrive. About a week after stopping the stuff, the reflux was so severe that I almost completely lost my appetite, and my whole esophagus was feeling like it was on fire - not to mention I was completely hoarse and sounded like I had a severe bronchitis. And "trying to sleep in the evening" just completely didn't work unless I went to bed at 20:00 so I would actually fall asleep around midnight. 

I could have lived with any single of those effects, but the combination was wearing me down, even though the rest of my body was feeling better than ever. And - losing so much of my appetite that I didn't even want to eat anything in the morning? That was definitely a knockout criteria for me. So, I  swallowed my pride and restarted my drugs - on a 25% dose so the upcoming side-effects wouldn't hit me with a mallet.

That worked for about three days, very well. On the night to day four, my rebelling digestive system that really needs to get back in line, was evidently thinking that It NEEDS Its Precious, Precious Shipwreck Of Drugs, and decided to rev things up, and for the surely upcoming input of Sweet Merciful Mirtazapine, all other unclean substances must go. Aaaand we better skip the gory details and fast forward to the next afternoon, when I told my Mom to haul my completely dehydrated carcass to my doc and he shall fix my intestines by FORCIBLY REMOVING THEM. Okay, there may have been a teensy bit less dramatization on my part - I'm crazy, not stupid.

Thankfully, instead of harping to me he was supportive of my decision to go off medication - he knows my antidepressant-side-effect-conga I endured for the last four years, and more importantly knows that I don't do stuff simply because of the spur of the moment. I have new prescription for my stomach acid (stronger than the last time I took that stuff, but without the nasty headaches and sudden surprise diarrhea! Science does march on. Yay!). But - I look forward to both a colonoscopy AND a gastroscopy in the near future. Uuuuurgh.

BUT: I never went and upped the dosage after that - I had no need to. And, by now it's the 16th of May, I have now completed the 6 weeks adaptation phase, with reduced side-effects. Oh yes.

The side-effects gone are:

•  the extreme vertigo that imprinted on my elbows and legs in the form of bruises because I simply walked into doorframes instead of through them most of the time
• the oppressive aversion to sounds of all kinds - as soon as there were two or three different sounds (such as, traffic, music and conversations), I had problems concentrating on anything, because my brain was screaming TOO LOUD GET AWAY I WANNA GO HOME. During those times, you notice that our world is just very, very noisy. Also: Train stations? Fun times. Not.
• the scatterbrain part. Getting groceries is way less fun if you have to stop at every ware, check your groceries list twice, and still wind up with weird items because they happen to stand in the same isle.
• the loss of concen....whuh? It's like the effect of about two coffee I won't have to drink. And I can calculate stuff in my head again! Sure, I'm still abysmal at it, but that's more the lazyness and out of training part than a "too ples to issssss - foive, I think maybe?".

the side-effects which are still plaguing me include:

• the brakes on my creative juices. I have to literally force myself right now, because while I'm still able to write, all the fun of it is sucked out of me. Baaah. On the plus side, that probably means the world is save from yet another collection of horrible, horrible fanfiction stories. For now.
• something which sneaked up on me during the last three weeks - the munchies are still there. Boooooo. Oh well. At least my weight isn't spiking as fast as before - gaining 5 kilos in 2 weeks, with no sign of stopping is kind of scary if you're used to be skinny as hell.  I'm still not anywhere near obesity, but my skinny body is now interrupted by a very ungainly lump in the middle - I feel I look like I swallowed a large pumpkin. 

*Le sigh* Maybe I really need to diet again. Hm. Oh. Hey! That would be the perfect, poetic revenge to my upstart digestive system. Mwa ha ha ha ha!

Drug test

Soooo....I am potentially in the midst of doing something very, awfully, fantastically, monumentally stupid.

As the large majority of you readers know (yes all two of you - and the twenty webcrawlers periodically visiting), I'm the not-so-proud and definitely not-happy-about-it receiver of an affective disorder (the unipolar kind, not the rollercoaster kind).

My own personal brand of insanity comes in two flavours:

1. I tend to see life rather in a negative outlook, and people, the outside world or everything requiring effort is actually requiring MASSIVE amounts of effort everyone else is casually shrugging off. This is a permanent effect, called dysthymia. 
2. If there is a sufficiently bad trigger (a loved one dies, a workmate from hell, a dark and cloudy winter, or just many small things cumulated over a longer period), I get hit by a depressive episode on top of that dysthymia, also called double depression. Which has all the symptoms of the former, amplified a lot, and simply makes your waking hours akin to living hell. Not that you can escape by sleeping, because either a) you can't sleep at all or b) you want to sleep all the time - which also falls in the direction of bad ideas, since hypersomnia can worsen your symptoms (though on some days, you'll do it anyway, since flopping down on your bed or couch is literally the only thing you can manage. For the non-depressive people - it's simplest to imagine a fate like this. (Warning. This link goes to TVTropes, and will spawn numerous tabs and murder your freetime.)

My worst episode was back in 2014 and actually put me in a hospital for a few weeks. My last episode (a mild to medium one) started in about October (it was, sadly, of the "dying relative variety and thus kinda justified), and has been gone for a few weeks now. (Sunny spring weather certainly helped with that). And on Friday morning, I realized - I accidentally went off my meds for two days.

Well, whoops. Usually, I get withdrawal symptoms fairly early in the evening, telling me I'm supposed to take my mirtazapin / remeron. Said symptoms include twitching, vertigo, and a heavy inclination to stuff your face with carbohydrates - it takes quite a while to figure out the connection "if getting the munchies --> take your sleepy meds". In my case, this "a while" took me about 10 kilos of body weight. And that? Is on the LOWER end of the spectrum with this drug, so I'm thankful it didn't went further.

Not so this week - I was on a chain of business trips, which all took longer than expected - and I fell facedown on my mattress on Wednesday and Thursday. Which apparently distracted me from any probable drug symptoms or the first withdrawal shit. And this is probable the first time my hell-job was actually doing me a favor.

So I took the Friday afternoon to look around the Net for anything resembling "discontinuation of mirtazapin", or NASSA (this is the class of antidepressives I'm on). Mainly, the educated response on the internet for stopping your meds suddenly is broadly categorized as "Just don't", "No, Never do this" or "YOU GO TO HELL. YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE! AND YOU WILL BE ASS-RAPED BY GIANT PORCUPINE PENISES!!1!1!!"

There's just that one thing: So far, I'm coping quite well. Sure, I have the sniffles, and I didn't sleep so well last night (since I stopped a drug that mainly has antihistamine and sleep-inducing qualities, I'm not surprised much). So, I went to my parents and my sister, told them what I had in mind, and to watch me if I'm behaving episodal. Also, I made myself big honking post-its on my monitor to remind myself every night to watch my own behaviour (that's trickier than it sounds, but after years of psychotherapy, I'm getting better at it).
I do know that mental drugs aren't that simple and the good mood I feel now can quite probably be a ghosting effect with an abrupt crash at the end. But if there are any clouds on the horizon, I will turn back to my dosage (that means 1-2 days of running into walls and doorframes, but hey, at least I can sleep afterwards) and will patiently endure my doctor's 'tsk-tsk'-noises, and all the horrid side-effects that goddamn crappy stuff makes me go through. For now, for today, though - I enjoy being free for a few hours or days.

So, Teshik - let's see if you survive a) the 3 weeks of flushing out the drug, b) the 6-8 weeks of adaptation, and most importantly c) the goddamn putrid shit life will throw into your face to drag you down again when you least expect it.

Let's also see if I'll be able to post about my progress in, say, a week... And anyone who has seen my posting habits can now safely expect my very next post somewhere around September 2019.

Summer Games - Job Edition

Work is a cornucopia of silliness, and thus can be blogged about again and again and again. This time: Those odd little mini-games we play at work. Your office is no place for fun and/or games? Think again.

The Greeting Game

This one is more fun the larger your office complex is and the more strangers there are. Depending on your countries, but more importantly, the "culture" in your workplace, greeting customs can be quite different.

Greeting your direct coworkers usually involves some more intimate greeting:

• waving towards the office/cubicle area, with a "(Hi/Mornin'/ 'Ello!)"
• shaking everyone's hand, girls first, short eye-to-eye and smile
• shaking everyone's hand, no eye-contact, because you're already talking to someone else (going-through-the-motions)
• short pat on the others arm or shoulders

If you encounter strangers / indirect coworkers somewhere, such as in the hallway, it's more like this:

• eye-contact, short smile and a greeting (Hello/G'd aft'noon)
• eye-contact, smile and a curt nod
• eye-contact and a curt nod without the smile
• avoiding eye-contact by pretending to be in thought/reading paper/smart-phone diddling

I found it fascinating to note that those customs can vary wildly from company to company, or even between different departments of the same company.

The fun part comes later - since you're usually not tied to your desk all day, you encounter those people several times each day. Greeting them the same as before? They'll think you're some kind of amnesiac or just plain vapid. So, after a few years in the office, your brain devotes a non-negligible part of its awareness to a moving database whether or not you've seen That Cute Girl With Those Ugly Buck Teeth, Man With Obvious Wig, or Frazzled Dude With The Same Stupid Tie Every Thursday.

Thank God we're not doing anything important with our brains all day, huh?


The Small-Talk Game

Let's face it. Most of your coworkers wouldn't have anything to do with you if you met them in "real life", so to speak. And you'd do likewise, because people just tend to be different. But since you're all squeezed into more or less vacuous cubicles, office rooms or what-have-you, you have to communicate with them somehow, or risk becoming an antisocial jerk.

This situation probably goes back into prehistoric times. Once upon a time, Oog and Zog were trapped inside a tiny cave for several hours because of a nasty case of Tyrannosaurs outside. What can Oog and Zog possibly talk about, Oog thought?

- Talk about shiny stone? But what if Zog not like shiny stone?
- Talk about dino outside? No. Zog surely not want talk about dinos. Oog and Zog run from Dinos every ugh-ing day!
- Talk about worshipping bear-totem? No, no, no! Last religion war only month ago! Bad Oog!
- Talk about woman with big gazongas, down by river? Not good. Oog not want Zog to want gazonga-woman too! Or more bad, what if Zog not like gazonga-women, but other Oog-Men? This would even mean the Awkward.

Then, a lightbu...err, bonfire went up over Oog's head.
Oog: So, errm - nice weather, huh?

Ever since then, people have talked about the weather, in order to pass a simple 30-second pause in the conversation. Because silence surely can't mean people are simply doing their job or don't have anything of interest to utter. This behaviour seems so ingrained in office culture, or culture in general, that I postulate: If ever a nuclear war or a giant meteorite happens to wipe out everone but a few pockets of life, buried deep underground, people will still have conversations like this:
Moleman One: Wow...sky sure is, erm. Rocky today.
Moleman Two: Yeah, tell me about it. And this artificial climate control, that keeps the same exact conditions down here - way too warm and wet, if ye're asking me.
Moleman One: Yeah, I know what you mean. Too warm, totally.
Moleman Two: But it's not the heat. It's the humidity.

And if I live to see that future, the next seconds involve MoleTeshik bludgeoning those two into greasy spots in the cave floor, now that those pesky ethical restrictions about killing stupid people are gone. Because, seriously? I like talking about the weather, one, or twice. But not all the fucking time.

The Information A-Bomb Game

Bosses positively LOVE this game. It involves one person arriving in a hurry at the desk of the other person.
Offender: "Hi there did you know what (random department or company) has done now?I'll tell you: they totally changed (some kind of their modus operandi)! Isn't that (good/bad/awesome/green with yellow stripes)? Yeah that's what I thought. Listen, since you're the one here who has (some vague connection with the topic/ little to no knowledge about it) because (of your study paper ten years back / you worked in the same office with that guy for two weeks / your name rhymes with the topics anagram), I think you're the perfect (guy/gal) for the job! It only involves (a shitload of work you won't realize until it's too late). And since you're only (totally overworked) and want to (make the carreer move / get a raise / keep your job). It would be impolite to refuse, since (I'm your boss / I'm your bosses' boss / I play golf with your boss / I can blackmail you). Thanks for your enthusiasm! See you later!!"  
He/She then hurries out, to avoid questions or resistance.
The Offended: *blinks* Oh Fuck-a-doodle.

The Toilet Game

Sorry girls, this one's for men only. The Pissoir in the Men's bathroom saves space and quite frankly, negates the necessity of sitting down on what may or may not be a surface laced with strange, disgusting and infected bodily fluids of undetermined origins. And I'm generally thankful of that, because, I don't know about the ladies, but in the men's bathroom, men usually are pigs.
In the office, people tend to behave better than in the average disco, so it isn't that nessecary to have a Pissoir. Every self-respecting loo still has one or several, for some odd civilizational reason I can't comprehend right now.
But it also gives anyone in the general vicinity a very thorough view of body parts everyone usually keeps hidden under at least two layers of clothing during office hours. Well, unless you have a very lax dress code on your Casual Friday, or you're saving your underwear for more important stuff. (In which case: I don't even wanna know). And do you want to see those body parts of your same-sex boss or coworker while he shakes of the last little drops of pee off his dick? Well, I don't.

Future's gonna suck

You know when sometimes, you wake up, and some sudden thought gets stuck into your head? Yes, this just happened. And when it's even more bizarre since I happened to think about future economic apocalypse.

As many of us are already, painfully aware - Capitalism without brakes is just like Communism by force was - a nice theory, but sucks ass in practice. The so called Information Age adds another layer onto that - many jobs that were necessary in the Industrial / Modern Age (which only ended about 15 years or so ago) will be (or are already) utterly obsolete. Such as, the typewriter. Or the data typist. Or really, many jobs centered around repetitive computer input/output. Statistical analysis? We have a tool for that. Software Development of basic functions? Most of these are already around by the hundreds. Even those Service jobs at call centres mostly reduce the poor slobs working at it to "reading the screen to the customer, and hoping he does not ask something out of category".

Now, in the idealistic capitalistic world of Adam Smith, those people will migrate elsewhere. Problem is? They are just like the ice bears when it comes to global warming - they have nowhere else to migrate to, since we already automated everything else.  Consumer industry? There's a machine that can do everything you do, better, and faster, and it doesn't complain when it gets replaced when its back, knee and shoulders are inevitably going kaputt. Farming? Pshh, yeah, same story. And when we, the customers, turned to Amazon, eBay and the giant internet machine? We deliberately turned our inner cities into barren wastelands - why buy a book for 13.99 when it's on sale for 2 bucks lower, and I don't even have to leave the house for it? Or have to deal with the stupid sales clerk?

Problem is, the same mechanism has a not so unexpected downside - we are not only the customers, sometimes, we ARE that stupid sales clerk. Who suddenly finds he/she/it got blown out of business, and nowadays picks packets in a nameless logistics centre - for about half the wage as before. And it's only a matter of years when that process will be, ultimately, mercilessly, automatized as well.

Of course, there will always be necessary jobs that can't be made obsolete. But there will be less than you think. For example: take, on an average day, a sample of a Google News page. Take one random article (Sports is especially noticable, but any general story will do). Compare the articles on one story, by different newspapers. Notice similarities? As in, word-for-word copies? Yes, most stories are made once and then sold to different distributers. That happended before too, of course, but Google News or other content aggregators make it transparent for us readers. The clincher: not only is this story being written only once and copied a thousand times, it is, more and more, written by software programs. (I've just taken a random article about it I found on the go. You'll find more, I promise.)

So, even jobs thought challenging on a mental level are going to be replaced. That leaves us with several categories of people:

• The Rich - Hey, if you're one of the 1 per cent, you can afford to care less about the rest of this shitty planet. Also, to manage your portfolio, you'll have prioritized access to a staff consisting of...
• The Intelligent - Those who are creative and brilliant enough to understand this world of increasingly complex interactions, processes, and technology - or at least the part needed for their jobs. A future remnant of the ever-diminishing upper-middle-class, those are the people creating the machines for ....
• The Slot-Fillers - as long as the automation of everything is not complete, you have people who read off the screen to give you your insurance information and recommendations (which are really generated by the programs behind it), or pick items in Amazon's gargantuan warehouse bellies (until someone replaces those as well). Those people will be increasingly pushed on the sides, the metaphorical polar bears. Since automatization or rationalization means you will only need a fraction of past labour in the future at steady or increasing output, chances are, everytime your job is gone, you will join the leagues of...
• The Underqualified Unemployed - Adam Smith invisible hand promises that supply and demand will magically heal the landscape until the economy makes our lives aaaaallll better. Unfortunately, there are flaws in this theory thingy, because people are not rational, or the system is not as eternal and self-healing as originally believed (which is one of the major reasons we still can't quite grasp climate change despite the fact that it's been here for over a decade now, but I digress). The problem here is that childrens television lied to us - not everyone will be a rocket scientist, even if (s)he really, really wants to. And that sales clerk that got shifted first to picking books, is probably not the next Nobel Prize winner, his/her other qualities notwithstanding. Have I mentioned business decisions such as hiring/firing'll come out of a data warehouses then? Which simply do not care if you're a nice person if you fail the ever-rising quota?

Now, if we look at those categories, we see where the next problem lies: the Underqualified will grow in proportion, and in return, the demand lowers dramatically (Bums won't buy Bugattis). This raises the competition for the companies, since the available market shrinks down because people can't afford stuff anymore. This in turn raises unemployment again,... yeah, you know where this is going.

At the moment, there is one major distraction from outright economic collapse - almost every state that's not named Greece has opened their budgetary floodgates to "jumpstart the economy". This has been the case, since, oh, 2008 or so? Peculiar, this, no? Especially since this dramatic flow of money more and more fails to bring the desired results, since Money won't solve the problem anymore if no-one dares to spend it. And even powerhouses like China are showing signs that no matter how much money you'll pump into it, the endpoint has been reached for quite a while now.

The most terrifying thing of all this, however, seems to be the fact that no one, on this entire planet, seems to have worked out how to defuse this economic time-bomb. Not the US, nor the EU, or China or Russia or Argentina or I-dont-know have come forward with something different.

And NOW we're gonna combine this time-bomb no one knows how to defuse with the fact that we need to stop turning our planet into a scorched wasteland, preferably in the next decades before it's too late. And we're not talking lower emissions, we're talking zero or negative emissions until 2100 to even stop further warming.

Welp. Good to know we're utterly, thoroughly fucked.

(Not) A Funny Story

Okay, it happened. I am now officially one of those guys. Y'know, telling people of my story so that they won't end like me, *oooOOOOOoooh* *eeeeaaaatYoooouuurVeeeeegetableeeeesss* 

So yeah. My blog's been abandoned for like, over three years. Where the fuck have I been, my loyal readership of zero? Have I been eaten by dingos? Was I abducted by aliens? Have I even - GASP - gotten a life? Fear not, my nonexistant fans, for both the dingos and aliens are safe from me for now. I just happened to be mentally ill.

After finally remembering ye olde passworde for this little slice of the blogosphere, I first looked back to the last post (in 2010) about real life issues, and immediately cringe. Not only was this post all about me neglecting my internet persona, it also has this funny aneurysm moment right there:

...To be honest, I'm not surprised I left this blog unguarded, so to speak. But I am quite shocked that in the last twelve months, I haven't been able to write more than one blog post, and about a dozen half-assed attempts still rotting in my blog post buffer. No fanfiction. No programming project (for fun, I mean). No short story. No nothing.
Which is strange, because: I really like writing. I do. It's my creative outlet. More importantly, it's my source of stress relief. And I really could use that at the moment...

Euuurgh. This has "warning signs" all friggin' over it. Buuut, I managed to get through 2010. And I kind of survived 2011. Then came 2012, and I simply keeled over one day. Have A Nervous Breakdown, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Receive 200 Bucks.

My work had been stressful from the beginning, but I had always shrugged it off with "well, it IS a highly-paid job", so I tried to be a good trooper and march on. Because I did not want to be weak. And "everyone else" seemed to go with it too, so why should I be different? Even as my doc told me my symptoms do sound like a depressive episode, I refused to listen, because, why do you tell me that, I only have these neck pains, and could I get some more prescriptions for massages and pain pills, pretty please? And soldiered on for another three months, wenn suddenly one morning, I simply could not get out of bed anymore. So when I've finally mustered enough strength to get to our family doctor, he gave me a "told-you-so"-speech that barely even registered with me, because I didn't even feel anything anymore. Just fix me, Doc, I wanted to say. He prescribed me nice little Anti Depressants, and because he is a good doctor, he made sure two things made a dent in my mind: 1) Make sure someone watches you in the next days, and 2) Those things will actually feel WORSE before it gets better. And BOY, was that second part true.

Back then, I was going around like a Zombie. No real emotions but an overwhelming sadness would register, I'd just feel numb all the time. Until those Happy Pills kicked in. Let's just imagine, for a moment, all your emotions you feel over a year. Happiness, Frustration, Anger, Fear, Sadness. Now, let's compress those feelings into a neat little air balloon, waiting to burst. See, the thing with those Happy Pills is, they don't actually make you feel happy. They just prick the bubble, so you can't distance you from all those pesky emotions, like you did before. Now, imagine your very personal emotional Rollercoaster from Hell.

After a few weeks, the rollercoaster was kind of managable, and I could get back to work. And yeah, getting back was hella uncomfortable and awkward. I mean, do YOU want to tell everyone at your workplace that you basically ticked out? That you wept for hours, without an end, for no reason at all? That you could simply not do the simplest things, like picking up an used hanky from the floor? That I had to force myself to eat once a day? Hell, I've lived through that and and I still have a hard time believing it.

So, why am I writing this now, when this episode was back in 2012? Because the damn black dog is back with a vengeance. I did not only manage to work myself into a depressive episode, I managed to be one of those who get chronical dysthymia. Hooray. Currently, I'm in the midst of what is called a "moderate episode", which means roughly:

1.  I have good and bad days.
2. On Good Days, I can get out of bed.
3. On Bad Days, I just want to sleep. All day. Every day. 
4. On Good Days, I shower, get dressed, and have breakfast.
5. On Bad Days, I could not care less wheather I'm in my jimmies all day.
6. On Good Days, I make the housework. 
7. On Bad Days, I beat myself up because I won't do the housework.
8. On Good Days, I am an actually decent person who happens to have depression.
9. On Bad Days, I believe I am a fraud and the worst person who ever lived.
10. On Good Days, I can actually think rationally.
11. On Bad Days, I can't even read a single paragraph in a newspaper.
12. On Good Days, I am thankful that depression can be treated.
13. On Bad Days, I curse the medication and believe the pills make things even worse.

Today, I feel like an actual human being. Today is Good.

Drinking Game: Stargate Atlantis

So, I've just watched the entire series. So much for "I'll only watch an episode or so" a while back.

Although the series is good, the Television Without Pity education rears its snarky head every time I watch a series by now. Which inevitably leads to me discovering certain, amusing, patterns. Thus, the drinking game. No, I don't drink. It's still funny. So, without further ado:

Spoilers for the series, DUH!

Drink a shot everytime:

• the Atlantis crew dooms the entire galaxy by their stupidity or to save their few piddling people
• Rodney shows his massive ego
• Rodney's ego is causing shit to explode
• Ford has a line
• Ford's line could be cut entirely, and nobody would notice
• the team is waking up in a Wraith holding cell
• Weir: "I cannot allow that to happen."
• the Athosians and/or Teyla are accused of something
• the Athosians and/or Teyla are proven totally innocent later
• Rodney hacks into a computer/network/replicator/whatever
• Rodney: "j-just---give me a minute!!"
• Rodney: "W-wh-wh-whoa-whoa-wait!!"
• Rodney states something is utterly impossible in a given time frame
• double if he achieves it anyways
• there is an explosion in the control room
• Teyla: "blah blah - my people!"
• Teyla has nightmares
• Teyla and Wraith mind-control each other
• Teyla is left in charge, even though there should be a coordinated command structure
• the A plot is caused by someone blundering into yet another secret lab of the Ancients
• the danger in the A plot is entirely Rodney's fault
• Ronon uses his gun
• double if it's in the nick of time, just as a team member's about to get killed
• Ronon is captured or kidnapped, and miraculously gets his gun back afterwards
• Sheppard is totally ignoring his orders
• double if Weir secretly couldn't care less
• Teyla is blatantly running around with her offspring, just to show that the brat's hasn't been eaten by dingos yet
• the team temporarily allies with the Wraith
• the team is totally surprised when the evil zombie vampire aliens who eat humans decide to screw them over
• double shot if Todd's doing the allying and screwing over
• the Pegasus Nazis - pardon, Genii - make an appearance
• double if Kolya's involved
• triple if Sheppard swears he's going to kill him next time for sure
• Mr Woolsey is inept
• Mr Woolsey is socially inept
• Rodney is socially inept, but gets what he wants anyway
• the gal of the episode is totally into Sheppard
• double if he's oblivious until it's pointed out
• a Stargate SG-1 member appears
• double if the SG-1 member is at odds with his Atlantis counterpart
• triple if they value each other by the end of the episode
• if SG-1 already encountered the same (plot) device previously
• nobody in the goddamn stargate universe remembers that Earth has zillions of livestock animals that could be used to feed the goddamn Wraith

Enjoy. All over-intoxications, hangovers and/or waking up next to strangers will be your own damn fault, however.

Language musings

My work is stressful. Usually, when I get home, the first thing on my mind is "everything but thinking". Which invariably ends with me parking my ass on the couch to watch the telly.

It seems, last friday, my brain did not appreciate this kind of "switch brain on, switch brain off" behaviour. Plus, the stuff in the tv was even more brain-cell-killing than usual, so I guess my brain started working in pure self-defense.

It started off as one of those musings about "yeah. I wanna learn new languages someday." You know, one of these half-assed things you tell yourself you'll do once you have "the time", "the money"? Like rock climbing, doing sports, calling your great-aunt? Yeah, if you're anything like me, you'll never do any of those things.

I lazily surfed the web for some good vocabulary trainer. byki seemed like a good idea, what with the shared lists and stuff. Then I found Rosetta Stone software, which I found awesome - until I saw the price tag attached, that is. Because as much as I like to learn Spanish in a very natural way, I'm not paying 699 US $ for it. Because for 699 $, I fully expect this software not only to teach me foreign languages, but also to shine my shoes, wash my car, and do my taxes.

Conclusion: I'm either too cheap or too poor to learn languages. Plus, I'm lazy. Time to reevaluate my assets. How about a quick-and-dirty-method? You're a programmer. Not a particularly good one, but it's enough to draft together a little app to teach yourself. By combining the list idea of byki and the "learn-by-show-and-tell", and some easy vocabulary lists, some stuff that means the same in every language. Can't be THAT hard.

Yeah, that's the point where the linguists in my readership probably burst out laughing. You know, if there actually were linguists in my readership. Or if I HAD a readership, but anyway.

The thing is, I wanted some basics, to make yourself comprehensible in a foreign country, a kind of Pidgin, if you will. For example, "[Ich-sehen-rot-Auto-vorn-links]" (=[I-see-red-car-front-left]) is not correct German, since you lose all the conjugations and stuff (It would be something like "Ich sehe ein rotes Auto (da) vorne links"), but people would be at least able to communicate simple concepts, such as "Can you point me to the airport", or "help, I need to find a police officer!". Or at the very least, "Where's the bathroom?" - because, do you really wanna take a dump in the middle of the Champs-Élysées just because you can't figure out how to get people to point at the nearest loo? I mean, tourists have a bad enough image as it is.

The problems, however, start at the very core of the language, with such as words as "to be". Because, "I am in the garden"/[I-be-in-garden] translates easily into German as "Ich bin im Garten"/[Ich-sein-in-Garten].
But: "yo soy en el jardin"/[yo-ser-in-jardin] won't work, since to a native spanish this would imply "I am the garden." So unless you don't want some Spanish to think you're trying to invent a new verse to a certain Simon & Garfunkel song, you have to use the correct verb "estar".

So, essentially, to get a list of common simple words that won't have a double meaning. Well, that's a necessary database approach. This bloats your entries however. Plus, you lose stuff, since if you don't learn that "be" means both "estar" and "ser", you won't use it, and get confused if the natives do. So you'd need links. This all combined with the original idea of using simple pictograms so you'll learn the word naturally instead of simply translating it. And this is not even counting pitfalls like double meaning or false friends....This might need a teensy bit more work than I thought it would.

Meh. Now my head hurts. See, kids? This is what thinking will get you.

Procrastination Alert: Stargate Atlantis

I have many, many things to do. But, at the moment, I'm not in the mood to do any of them. And in order to avoid a "Teshik finally snaps and finds himself a cosy clocktower" mishap, I took out a DVD I hadn't watched since I bought it two years ago, Stargate: Atlantis, Season 1. Back then, I just kinda forgot I had said DVD set, mostly because the series start was kinda meh (as are most series', before they find the right tone) and the German dub wasn't helping matters. So I watched the pilot again, this time in English, and because I want to tear my mind away from semantic webs and knowledge representation, I'll write a recap about it now.

If you haven't seen it by now, watch out for spoilers below, because DUH! But considering the series came out in 2005 or even earlier, you probably know more about those characters and stories as I do. Think of it as a TwoP-recap, or probably, a not-so-good facsimile thereof (Dear Sars: Please don't sue me. Also: something or other about imitation and flattery and shit.)

So: we start out with a Whoosh of a little alien shuttle over a giant ice landscape, which reaches a giant star-shaped city. According to the caption, the city is called "Several million years ago". Good to know they don't want viewers who haven't watched SG-1 knowing where the hell the context is.
Down in Several-Million-Years-Ago City central, a man and a woman stare at each other INTENSELY. I wonder if this would be explained if I'd've watched SG-1 Season 9 and 10, which I haven't yet. Partly because: if I watch an ep of SG:A, I watch an episode. If I start watching the remaining eps of SG-1, I wake up weeks later, because I watched the entire series.
Anyway, after the man breaks the STARE and leaves, the woman (who I kind of think is going to be the Ancient lady SG-1 dug out of the Antarctic snow and revived with oh-so-convenient aphasia a while back) stares at him as if he will never come back. Seems like that, since he takes the entire friggin' city up in the air and leaves (cool shot, by the way). Will they see each other again? I mean, they are two important characters, right? And more importantly, where exactly do you find a large enough parking space for a city?

Guess not. We're now in Antarctica, present day, and there's a science station reaching far underground. The international and ethnically represented science crew (read: there is at least one black person in establishing group shots, and probably some asians), Dr. Weir, our intrepid heroine starship captain, pardon, leader of the Atlantis mission, passes around an Indian (maybe?) guy investigating a dog-sized booger...sperm...tentacle thing that will be important in a few seconds, and heads towards two guys bickering over a chair like some old married couple. One of them has one of those Scotty-accents, which to my non-native ear sounds as if someone takes the vowels in normal english speech, and twists them at a 45 degree angle. That's our medical guy, Beckett, and he's miffed about having to sit in the chair all the time. Since that thing isn't cushioned, and we're talking about a mostly metal chair in an Antarctic underground base where it's probably freezing, I empathize. Frozen tongues against a pole are one thing. Your frozen nuts on a chair? Quite another.
As his canadian husband explains, this is because he has some genetic anomaly that allows him to access Ancient technology, so if they want to study it, he has to sit in it, as Canadian Guy (Rodney McKay) was born with run of the mill homo sapien genes. Poor man. There's some teasing around that genetic fact, but thankfully Dr. Jackson (current status: not dead, but it's still early) interrupts them to tell them where Atlantis is. You see, they've searched Stargate combinations in this galaxy so far, but it seems the Ancients really wanted to get out of the neighbourhood, which means : different galaxy.

McKay is ordering his man-wife to the chair again, who's all "I'm a doctor, not a chair-sitter" in this accent of his. The good news? He gets the chair glowy. The bad news? That booger-tentacle thing goes glowy too, but this wrecks some expensive equipment before zooming to the surface.

Meanwhile, O'Neill and a pilot called John Shepherd are flying across the antarctic with a helicopter with strained small-talk. I'm rechristening Mr. Shepherd "Mr. DeeDee" here, by the way, because of reasons soon becoming obvious. Both are getting a real topic to talk about when they get word that Booger Thing is heading right for them, and they should land ASAP. Too late though, and evasive flying along the Canadian, err, I mean Antarctic mountains occurs.

"Ah tœld yer Ah was the wrang perrsann" Becket whines. Weir orders him to concentrate on shutting off the weapon, like, good they have her because they won't think of that on their own. I already pity the galaxy they end up in.

More dramatic flying. Finally they lose the thing for a few seconds enough to land and shut down the engines, but the thing goes after them, they jump out - and the booger titters out exactly one feet before O'Neill. (In Beckett's words: "Ah thænk Ah dæddeitt!?"). DeeDee is all "what the hell just happened?", but O'Neill is all like "Yeah, giant alien boogers trying to kill me. Must be Tuesday."

Token Black Semi-Regular Without Character Or Backstory reports the guys safety. Hi Token! Bye Token! Jack and Daniel meet up soon after, while letting DeeDee roam freely in the ÜberSuperSecretSpaceBase, like: Security concerns, anyone? You'd think a goverment organization who deals with mind-controlling aliens would have thought about some procedures in order to limit exposure, or if they're cleared, as Jack does with a handwave, to limit the culture shock and the "Ooh, can I touch the dangerous radioactive substance"-problems. And you'd think wrong. Maybe it's just their kind of social Darwinism approach. "If yer too stupid, you die - or yer Daniel Jackson, then you'll be back after awhile anyway." The SG-1 mains leave, and DeeDee stands in the middle of gawking background scientists. You see, they have the impression that DeeDee is not so bright. I share that impression.
Why, you ask? Because while Daniel briefs Jack on the whole "I'm sorry Mario, but your Lost City is in another galaxy" part, DeeDee wanders with such a purpose towards the Chair Controlling The Giant Death Boogers that I'm surprised I can't actually hear the Dexter theme song. Of course they need him to show he's genetically speshul, but this is just dumb.
DeeDee growls at Beckett, who whines like the man-wife he is, but he's the one guy who's smart enough to ask him for security clearance, so, points to Beckett. After Ancient Whooooo? and Stargate Whaaaa? for a bit, DeeDee sits down, and of course, he doesn't even have to think about stuff to light everything up. Whatever you do, don't think of picking your nose, DeeDee!

After that bit, Weir (the main character gal. Remember her?) wants DeeDee on the mission. Shepherd however has declined, and so it's up to Jack to pep-talk the guy, who's understandably a bit confused, what with the subterranean alien light show chairs that shoot glowing death sperm and stuff. But Jack misinterpretes "pep-talk" with "threatening to fire the guy who just saved his life if he won't go", and if I were DeeDee, that'd have been the signal to cut my losses and run. I mean, he doesn't know he's a main character, he could as well be the guy who gets eaten by zombie vampire aliens in the first episode, right? Better safe than sorry.

Ah, it's time to flesh out the characters. Weir is on the telly, telling her boytoy that actually, she's doing spacetravel and stuff, and they won't see each other for a while, because the reception from Pegasus Galaxy to Earth is less-than-stellar. (ba-dum-tch!) Her exposition monologue is intercut with our main characters (and Token Black's) good-bye waving to their respective loved ones. Boytoy wants to phone her, but she's unreachable.

Cheyenne Mountain! Establishing shot again with internationality. I mean, there's a spanish guy talking to a british guy! In Spanish! For a whole sentence! There's also a guy unable to understand some other guys, and really, when you go on a military mission, could you at least agree on one language first? Jesus, these guys are so doomed.

DeeDee obviously wasn't smart enough to stay at home, and wanders through the Bennetton commercial, I mean mission team (they also have two Russians! And a German guy! Who I bet won't ever be seen again!). Weir gives a passionate pep-talk (an actual one), saying everyone here is the smartest, and the bravest, for volunteering for this. Except for DeeDee, who was bullied into it. They only have one shot because of the immense power a GalaxyJump takes, so they send in the robot, check if there's oxygen and stuff, and everyone follows, no power to get back (they hope to find power over there, so it won't be a definite Journey Without Return, but the possibility is there).
She gives the team one last chance to pussy out, like, when in the history of TV has anyone ever done that, and they begin dialing. If you never watched Stargate, imagine one of those old analog phone with a dial wheel. only larger, and with a hole in the middle. Before they start, DeeDee shows his incredible intellect yet again by antagonizing his superior officer, like, way to go, genius, and whoosh, it opens. It's dark over there, since the Stargate on the other side is in a room. Boy, I hope they ordered the thing around a bit in some deleted scenes. Could you imagine, all those people going over there and find out the room has no exit? That would be so awkward.

Weir and Military Guy go through, Token and Deedee follow, after the former tries the latter that Stargate rides are like hell. If that's supposed to endear him to me, it's not working.

The room on the other side is huge and quite satisfyingly SciFi, which is good because they're going to spend a lot of time on that set. Along the way, they discover a) Spaceships and b) the whole city is under water. What did I tell you about not getting out? Awkward. At least the parking space riddle is solved, but the coastal neighbors complaining about the tsunamis every time you land the city would be so very annoying.
It gets better: The reason the Ancients are not here? Well, they went here, colonized a few thousand worlds, but an enemy came and conquered them all. So the Ancients drowned their own city, returning to Earth, spreading the Atlantis myth in the process, because Pegasus galaxy was obviously a Very Bad Idea. Nice to find that out NOW. This tells us a nice Woman in a Hologram, using Power like nobodys business. McKay orders that stopped, because he found out, the city is not only under water, its batteries are also almost dead and parts of the city are already flooded, more to come in a matter of days or hours, depending on the energy usage. Can they go back to Earth? Nope, wouldn't be a series if they could. But Wormholes in this galaxy are possible. So they do just that.

It's night on the first planet. They pan out and find suspicious creatures lurking in the dark - children! Shoot'em! Okay, they don't. Their dad, who has let them loose in the middle of the night, appears too, asking if DeeDee and Guys are traders. Yeah, let's go with that. The natives bring them to their village, where obviously another major character awaits, Token Alien Team Member. This one's female, and is even called Taela. Were they even trying? That's like Teal'C with boobs. She's named Teal'ca for the rest of this episode then. Teal'ca isn't much for trading, because unlike AlienDad, she knows big dangerous weapons when she sees them, and since those three are still holding them like they wanna swiss-cheese everyone, I won't blame her. In fact, in underlines she's one of the few smart people so far. DeeDee makes sure I won't forget he's stupid by blabbing about ferris wheels, so I ignore him for the moment.
The next morning, they notice a Big Honking Space City right on the other side of the lake, even though the natives live in tents. As if that wouldn't clue anyone in that this city is actually A Very Bad Idea, they want to investigate. Teal'ca warns them that the Wraith will come. The Who? Teal'ca is confused, since every single world in the galaxy knows and fears them. (Good, that means this series will probably have less "Burn The Witch" episodes if everyone knows the Gate system). And if you go to Z'Ha'Dum, you will wake the Wraith. Or something.

So, the team naturally explores the deadly ruins. Except for Token, who has to bring a status report back to Weir. Cheer up, Token, at least that means the black guy isn't the first guy to die horribly.

Weir and McKay establish if they won't evacuate, they will drown quite soon. Scene.

Teal'ca shows DeeDee a nice cave they hid in during the last Wraith season, and revealing they're not as backwards as they seem, lighting a torch with a laser-y device. There is a moment of Unresolved Sexual Tension, but quickly estinguished by exposition: Seems the Wraith are more or less the Morlocks to Teal'ca's Eloi, waiting for a time until the planets in the galaxy repopulate, then cull the herd. Nice. And true enough, three needle-ships turn up to complete the Time Machine picture, only they have teleporters beaming people up instead of drawing their victims underground. Ooh, and turns out, they can also create illusions to cause fear. Have I mentioned how doomed these people are?

They actually manage to take out one of the ships (I hope there weren't too many civilians already beamed aboard, because ouch), but Dad, Military Guy, and Teal'ca are soon whisked away.

Weir and McKay are just giving the evacuation order as DeeDee returns with Token - and the surviving villagers. This even though he knows the city is going to flood in the near future. You know, I think he may not be all that bright. But before anyone can slap sense into the guy, the shield collapses, rocks fall, and everyone dies. Kidding. The Atlantis AI seems to decide in order to save those people from drowning, it has to go back up - and so it does, spectacularly.

But even though they have balconies now to marvel at the ocean - they still have to rescue two of their regulars (at least Teal'ca is - Military guy's probably the Redshirt of the episode). Weir doesn't like the idea of barging in and sending everyone to their doom, and DeeDee predictably doesn't want to leave the one woman behind who shows cleavage on this show - oh, and Military guy too, I guess.

Meanwhile, in Morlock Central Hub, things are looking bad. The Wraith, as I've said before, are not only eeeevil aliens, but eeeevil zombie vampire aliens. Take that, Goa'ulds. They take a Random Redshirt Villager and zoom out. Both Teal'ca and MiliGuy try to assert they're the leader, but only the latter is taken serious. Teal'ca pouts - because now, she has more time to get eaten? Alien cultures are weird sometimes.

Oooh, cool part. After establishing the gate of the place the Wraith come from is floating in space, they get the little shuttles working, which can also cloak, and go after them. Zoom! Space-y!

Turns out the Zombie Alien guy isn't the leader, but a green-skinned and red-haired alien woman is. If you're thinking "Orion slave girl" right now, you're kinda right. But also very, very wrong. She establishes what we already know (they eat people), and furthermore, she can also force people to do stuff, like MiliGuy spurting out there's an Earth, and it's filled with not thousands, but Billions of nice and tasty little Homo Sapien frolicking around, waiting to get the karmic revenge on the whole eating-animals thing. Not only they are doomed, but we are now as well. That's just peachy.

DeeDee manages to find the prisoners, and by way of screaming MiliGuy, finds the Morlock Dining Room as well. Unfortunately, MiliGuy has just time to die before Deedee starts to shoot the Bad Gal. Bad Gal recovers, though, by eating MiliGuy some more, and he dies. Man, I'm so glad I didn't bother learning the characters name.
DeeDee, after being captured for a tiny bit, gets rescued by Token and skewers Bad Gal with a...thing. I dunno. It kinda glows. Bad Gal is dying, but she gets the last laugh: She's only a caretaker, and when she dies, the Wraith awaken. ALL WRAITH. So, we have established, Atlantis crew is doomed, the whole Pegasus galaxy is doomed, Earth is doomed, and by the way, the Wraith population has just risen by 100.000 per cent. Well, at least the stakes aren't too low.

By the way: I was kidding about the Zombie Vampire Aliens. Do they have to take me so seriously?

Innyway, they make it out of the ship, and towards the shuttle, although I have to say, if DeeDee is the only frickin' person who can fly the damn thing, you'd think he'd take cover and get his ass into the ship as soon as possible. Or at least, his colleagues would shove him inside for reasons of self-preservation. And yet, he stands out in the open and fires his machine gun. This is getting ridiculous. Does "Ancient Genetic Marker" actually stands as a euphemism for "mental retardation"? Maybe the Ancients just died out because they randomly wandered over the edges of cliffs.

Anyway, the Wraith have taken quite a few of their needle ships and positioned them outside the stargate. Meaning, cloak or not, as soon as the gate activates, all they have to do is shooting blindly and thus hitting DeeDee and crew. Plus, you should remind yourselves that one side of the gate is floating in space, and is probably targeted at a very high velocity, what with all the bullet the Wraith are shooting and whatnot. The other side of the gate is kind of a very small room in which to hit the brakes. (The ships enter the gate room through the ceiling, which actually looks very cool). What is a DeeDee to do? He shoots flying Alien Boogers, of course. He doesn't have munition for all of them, but he manages not only to hit the gate at that speed, but also braking without damaging the room or his passengers (but you can fanwank that the Ancients knew about basic safety protocols and installed a dampening field or somesuch).

One major, MAJOR gripe though: They only found the Wraith because Token looked at the chevron combination. What is taking them from just finding the coordinates and going after them, wave after wave after wave? And why taking the risk of this in the first place? Fly back to where you came from (Teal'ca's planet), and open another wormhole as soon as you're through that one, so nobody follows you!! God, this is dumb.

But oh well, we end this with Weir congratulating DeeDee, Teal'ca ensuring her regular character position by almost snuggling with him (almost. We probably have to live through several seasons before Teal'ca gets some, if other TV shows are any indication), and McKay and Beckett bickering like a good husband and husband. I hope they have more scenes like this together, solo McKay tends to grate on my nerves.

By the way, Weir isn't exactly the leader type here. She gets yanked around by McKay and DeeDee, and has to ask O'Neill for help when people actually say no. I guess we can rule out another Janeway here, but Lady needs to put down her foot, or they'll just walk all over her. But this could just be a buildup to a future coming-of-age-episode of sorts.

So, if we take the four-person-theme from Stargate, we have Weir as the non-authoritative peacenick, a Daniel substitute. Let's see how often she dies. Then, DeeDee is the obvious O'Neill guy. We don't have to bother with Teal'ca, and McKay is kind of the unsympathetic monster equivalent of Carter, just like in the evil parallel universes.

Whaddaya mean, I forgot about AlienDad, and Beckett? AlienDad is some sort of Bratac, or Selmac, and Beckett's a phonetically challenged version of Dr. Fraiser. And Token, meh, why do you think I call him Token Black Character? All in all, the cast has promise provided the writings not that full of holes like parts of the pilot, but it's no SG-1. Yet.

...

.....

...goddammit. Now I'm gonna have to watch Stargate SG-1 for the next few weeks.

Errr....I'm....back? Maybe...

*yawn* *smack, smack* Ah, what a delightful little nap. I wonder what time it is. Oh. Sunday. In May? In Two-thousand-fucking-ten?!? Wasn't it just November a minute ago? I feel cheated. Oh well.

Time to log on into ye Olde PC of mine...wonder whats on the email. Hm. Spam... spam...spam - ooh, "enlardge you're mennly provess!"[sic] - special spam, spam, spam, online game whining i've been off for several weeks, spam, spam, same o-game deleting my account due to inactivity...eh. whatever. Not important, anyway. Hm. I've forgotten something. Is it my laundry? No. I mean, yes, there is a big huge fucking heap of laundry in my bathroom gaining sentience right now, but that's not it. Man, that's gonna bother me all day. Is it something at work? No, cell phone would have gone off two hours ago, at least. I vaguely associate shame and guilt with that feeling. Hm. What could it be...*looks down* Nope, wearing pants, nope, no underwear on my head. ...This time.

Dammit. this can't be anything important, can it? Have I payed all my bills? Yes. Watered the plants? Ehhh...at least sometime this decade. Fed the birds? *watches bird poop onto his own waterbowl* - well, certain output requires certain input. *sigh* Check. Dentist appointment? No, I'm forgetting that on purpose. Hm. It'll come to me eventually. I'll just pass the time cleaning up my internet favorites. *sniff, sniff* eww, what's reeking like rotten fish in here? Oh. My blog - and that little internet forum where I'm still moderator...

Oops.

Err.

Hello, My name is Teshik Nakatani. You may remember me from films like "Burn, deutsche Telekom, burn", "I am totally going to finish that fanfic this year, honest", and the instant classic "Whine, my life sucks, waaah". And I think I just recovered from a near death experience of my web persona.

Web persona death are quite common, due to the anonymous and, let's face it, flimsy nature of the internet. People in forums post quite often at first, then more and more infrequent, and after a while they simply fade into the background, never to be heard of, again. I'm willing to bet that 80 per cent of the entire blogosphere is made of blogs containing 5 posts or less, abandoned at least several month ago. Web pages, social networks, you name it. All of them are susceptible to the dreaded Real-Life-Desease.

The Reasons are numerous. You got a new girl - or boyfriend, or broke up with him/her. You may realize that posting vids of yourself on YouTube might be hazardous to your carreer. You get a new job, start or finish college, the person collaborating with you on that web project quits, you simply run out of money for your hobby, nobody reads your beautiful webcomic/blog/whathaveyou, yadda yadda blah.

Real-Life-Disease is deadly for your Internet avatar. Worse - the longer you stay away from the web, the lower the chance you go back to it. To avoid the where-have-you-been-questions, because do you really want to talk about that awful breakup with your partner you just barely weathered? Or because whatever drew you into that particular web corner isn't just so interesting anymore. Admit it. The novelty's worn off, and you're bored.

Never say this will never happen to you, because it will. And probably, it has. Think back to the webpages you used to check regularly one year ago. Two years ago. Five years ago.

To be honest, I'm not surprised I left this blog unguarded, so to speak. But I am quite shocked that in the last twelve months, I haven't been able to write more than one blog post, and about a dozen half-assed attempts still rotting in my blog post buffer. No fanfiction. No programming project (for fun, I mean). No short story. No nothing.
Which is strange, because: I really like writing. I do. It's my creative outlet. More importantly, it's my source of stress relief. And I really could use that at the moment, considering:

• I've finally managed, after seven fucking long years, to acquire my diploma in Computer Science and Business, (BOOYA, MOTHERFUCKER!)
• and I'm now employed as a system analyst and make, in my opinion, a real cool amount of money every month. At least, compared to the jobs I've had before, and the jobs my friends and relatives have at the moment.

So, I would have so many many reasons to bitch about work, uni, finishing uni, or the fact that the fucktards at the uni administration managed to lose my goddamn diploma certificate - TWICE - but for some reason, I didn't feel like posting about it. It isn't even that I don't have the time left to write something, I just didn't. Weird.

Is that what happens if you turn thirty? All the Creativity and Fun gets sucked out of you, and whats left is the perfect work drone for your employer? *shudder* I hope not. Let that be a lesson to you kids - don't let THEM ever talk you into accepting that you're older than sixteen, or you could end up like meeeeeeee! *zombie shuffle* *people fleeing in terror*


So what's the point of this blog post you ask, dear reader? Bah, since when do I need a point? Oh yeah, this time. I wanna thank WyattChris, Storygirl83, tim and chrishalliwellfan for administering CPR to my web persona by congratulating me on my birthday - which was a frickin' month ago, and I didn't even notice. Thanks guys - you got me thinking.