Insanity

The only times I ever really doubt my sanity is when I'm on the verge of sleep. It's been a pretty common phenomenon for me to experience Hypnogogic hallucinations when I am falling asleep, and in the past year, they've increased in frequency.

Because of this, I tend to hear and "see" things that aren't there quite often. (I say "see" because my eyes are always closed, but I visualize them so vividly sometimes that I'm surprised when I have to open my eyes when I wake up.) For instance, I had a few hallucinations at work once, and I thought that inmates were escaping and creeping up on me to attack me. Then I woke up and realized I was hearing the clock ticking above me and it altered my perception.

Well, lately, I've been feeling things as I'm going to bed for the night, or getting up for the day. Yesterday morning I thought I spilled a jar of peanut butter on my shirt, and I was concerned with how to clean it off and if I could salvage any of it. I could really feel it on me though, that greasy peanut texture. I could smell and taste it. I woke up and realized I was just lying in bed. Then I started falling asleep and started hallucinating about peeing in the toilet and I woke up, afraid I might wet the bed (I didn't, by the way. Never once wet the bed, somehow.). Then I hallucinated again about holding an apple in my hand. All just as vivid as the last.

I rarely remember my hallucinations, but the past couple of days have been so frequent and disturbing that I've started wondering where the line is drawn between my conscious recollections and my unconscious wanderings. Again. I wondered a few months ago while I was dealing with the irritability associated with excessive sleepiness. You know, who am I if I am two different people depending on how tired I am.

The brain functions on many levels, and there are many levels that coexist psychologically as well. I'm wondering who I am at the core, beyond the irritable and lazy instinctual side of me, and beneath the complicated but confident exterior that functions from day to day.

Or do we even have a steady core at all? I'm reminded of the one and only book on cognitive psychology that I've ever read, "The Mind's I" that talks about such topics. Do we have a core that's just clouded by our minds, or are we the sum of our many layers?

Am I a brain? or, do I have a brain? If I were a book, would I be any single page? Any single explicit theme? Would I be the cover? Or would I be a chapter? Or a whole book?

Am I an eyeball? A brainstem? A collection of organs? A torso? A machine? A cluster of nerve endings?

It's all gray area for me right now. There is nothing solid to hold on to, yet at the same time, this nagging voice inside says it knows exactly who it is. This voice describes me more like a powerful computer, that just happens to have an old analogue monitor that takes a few minutes to warm up. Before it gets warmed up, it can only display a few colors, but once it's primed and ready to go, it has a great resolution and contrast ratio.

Did I just turn into a total nerd?

and I had so much to say...

Where to start? I've spent the last few days detoxing and going through withdrawals from the Ritalin. I think. Maybe I'm actually sick, but the mood swings and body aches seem to fit in with my medication schedule. See, two weeks ago, I was regularly taking two 20 mg tablets twice a day, four hours apart. Of course, 20 mg doesn't go through the system in four hours, so for a short period of time every day, I'd have quite a rush from the little overload.

The good thing about that, is that I would be in a great mood, wide awake, and doing a great job at work. The bad thing is that once my body stopped getting that high every day, it made me irritable and sick.

At my last appointment, I was given a month's supply of extended release Ritalin, which was 30 mg spaced out over an entire day. It worked for about 3 days before I started getting dangerously drowsy at work and then getting body aches. Over my weekend, I decided to just not take anything and then try to go up from nothing, instead of coming down from the high dose.

Well, I haven't made up my mind yet entirely on what to do about the meds. Can't reach the doctor 'til Monday, so I have to get through the weekend. Yesterday and today I just took 10 mg in the afternoon and left it at that, but I had tonight off so I don't know how it would have fared in the work environment.

Laurie's cancer has returned with a vengeance and she's undergoing much more serious treatment this time around. Surgery is planned for this summer and she's doing three chemo/radiation treatments a week. Gotta hand it to her though. She's still working full-time on top of all of that. At Walmart, no less. Her commitment never ceases to amaze me.

Friend of mine at work lost his job the other day. Wish I knew exactly what happened. Apparently they've been trying to fire him for years, always looking for a good reason. He misses lots of work, has lots of health problems, but in my opinion was quite capable of his job. Unfortunately, he has quite severe narcolepsy, fell asleep on the job a couple times, and was demoted. The last time we spoke, he said our boss surprised him by asking him how they could work together to improve the situation (when before it was usually something along the lines of "get out, you're fired" which was always taken back). That was probably about a month ago.

Probably could all have been prevented if they let him work day shift. My network of spies say he has enemies higher up.

Last of the news is nothing exciting to anyone but me, really. I installed Fedora 10 on a Powerbook G4. It wasn't perfect, but now I have everything working except for the sound (I had it, but when I rebooted, it stopped working again.).

I did it for Rachel, who really hated Mac OS, and a little for myself, to get more familiar with using Linux. She needs a laptop for school and hopefully I can get it to emulate some Windows-Only software for her so she doesn't have to buy an expensive new laptop.

Also, just finished "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow. Great book. Recommended.

The Best Swimsuits for Your Body

Courtesy of msn.com

This kind of bullshit pisses me off so much. Why the hell do you advertise the "big all-over" swimsuit with a model that is CLEARLY NOT BIG AT ALL! Not one of those models can be considered big (The second girl is by far the biggest and I think she's smoking hot. Just as attractive as the other girls, if not moreso.) yet that slideshow is SPECIFICALLY FOR girls that are trying to find swimsuits for their size and shape.

And what's worse is, I can't think of a single person I've ever met or spoken to that doesn't agree with me on the whole "Models are unrealistic and portray an often unattainable so-called beauty to kids that shouldn't have to deal with it" thing, and this talk has been in the media for years, so why the hell hasn't it changed? Are we seriously that brainwashed that no one can start up a company for girls of all sizes with MODELS of all sizes that I can remember off the top of my head (because, of course, if I can't remember it, it's not worth remembering for anyone... or something)?

Anywho, I know I said I'd post a bit of my book, but unfortunately, Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, created the crappiest program in the world, Microsoft Works. I used that to write my book because it was the only thing on my computer at the time. It is like a really really stripped down version of Word, except it is completely incompatible with every other program in existence. The only way I've found to get my book back intact is to buy *cough* and install Works, then save the damn file as a notepad file and open it with something more decent... like notepad.

Still no job

The job service that I applied at still has nothing for me. As a result, I did squats for a few minutes until my legs hurt, then I ate leftover chinese, then I played Resident Evil 4 for like... 6 hours.

Yes, my day was proper exciting it was. Actually, the best part of the day was when my roomate came home with a present for me. She bought me a new computer chair. Until now, I was sitting on a wooden kitchen chair, but now I have a neat rolly chair that actually forces me to sit up straight, so my back might actually get a little better, posture-wise.

Anywho, this Xenu character from Scientology. Is he the devil or good guy for their Sci-fi religion? Wikipedia is awfully ambiguous about it. Apparently he's the dude that led a bunch of people to earth in an airplane and blew them up with nukes and psychiatrists. Those dead people are why were are miserable today, apparently. So I can't tell if Xenu is like the ultimate evil or the redemption or what.