Fear

It's curious how we fear clowns. After all, the official origins of the clown are not steeped in horror. In Greek plays, the clown character represented peasants or other poor people, badly dressed and bumbling. He existed to give a moment of humor to an otherwise serious play. The clown character was used to ease tension, not cause it. This evolved to other stage productions as drama spread throughout Europe. In the Harlequinade, Clown was the bumbling foil to the more sophisticated Harlequin character. Still funny. Still viewed as mostly powerless. What changed?

Perhaps it's just an aspect of our collective apprehension. We often, as a culture, understand what to fear. There are things we just grasp. We fear abandoned factories and no one ever told us they were scary. With clowns, it is how and what they have evolved into that sends shivers through us. At any given circus, a whole gaggle of clowns will emerge from a car too small to hold any of them. We're told they can do this due to contortion and sleight of hand tricks, but part of our brains wonders if there is more to it. We watch rodeo clowns stumble around and keep bulls and wild horses from hurting fallen riders. These clowns brave injury and potential death. Perhaps they have nothing to fear from it?

Instead of presenting themselves as the bumbler or the uneducated peasant, today's clowns seem to have a sinister comprehension of things beyond our common knowledge. It's as if applying the greasepaint evokes something else in the wearer, something darker. Or maybe we just know we all deserve it. For centuries, the poor, the broken, and the freakish have been persecuted by the normal and acceptable. Maybe donning the visage as Clown opened a much-needed door to something menacing and through it marched a vengeance the world deserved.

Not our Friend

My roommate wrote a blog post about humidity not being our friend. At first glance, I thought he wrote 'humanity' and, you know, it still applies. Then again, maybe that's just the heat talking.

Last night was really bad. My room was smoldering and sleep was almost impossible. The heat starts to make my body think it needs to eject things so I spend a good deal of my time feeling nauseous. Two more months of this, at the very least. On one hand, I hope I survive. On the other hand, I just hope for a quick death as an escape from the heat.

Something Something Heat

I'm writing this now because the AC is on and I feel like I can write without dying. I felt like dying earlier. I had a panic attack and I think that elevated my heat level. My roommate helped me out with some cool things. Now I'm in that post-panic attack exhausted lull.

My stomach is still trying to flip out, but hopefully as my overall body temp goes down, that will settle. It's kind of a vicious cycle in the summer. I eat more veggies because it's hot. This leads to stomach issues. The stomach issues get worse . . . because it's hot. Sigh.

The Fates are Vicious

I have a friend who is struggling with imposter syndrome. I find that I'm in the same boat, especially when it comes to doing things I KNOW I can do. I tend to obsess about them, over think them, and then feel deeply emotional about the whole matter once I'm actually delivering.

It is important to boost your own confidence and not rely on others. At the same time, people, please be supportive of the talents of the people you love. Tell them when they've been impressive. Tell them when you are grateful for what they did for you. Tell them when about how remarkable they are.

Because, yeah, it's important to know that on your own, but everyone has their off days. Sometimes a little boost from someone else could make all the difference.

Wonderful Technology

My nephew is in middle school, which means he needs to start building his vocabulary. In helping him with this, I made sure to include one very important detail.

If you do not know how to pronounce a word, type Pronounce and then the word into Google search. It will let you hit a little sound bit that says the word out loud.

Listen, you have no idea how important this is. For a lot of kids, you may learn the bigger words, but it's possible no one around you has ever said them. Pronunciation may be something you just construct in your head and most of the time, it's wrong. At least, if you were me, it was wrong. Having a way to learn how to say the word as you learn the word is very, very helpful.

Goals

It rained yesterday.  The weather cooled down enough for me to finally get decent sleep. When I sleep, there are always issues. For one thing, I wake up stiff. For another, I may have a lot of disturbing dreams.  Last night was no exception.

I dreamed my mother was alive and wanted me to meet her new boyfriend. Like most of the other men she's selected in the past, this one was full of stupid options, arrogance, and lacking a job. I hated him on sight. I was angry with her for choosing him. I was a hellcat to both of them, giving no quarter as I let him know how things would be.

When I woke up, my body flooded with relief because I knew I'd never have to deal with that again. That's a shitty place to be. A good goal in life is to avoid having habits that make people so angry or sad they feel happy to never have to deal with that aspect of you after you die. Surely most of us can manage that.

Best Part of Summer

THE AC IS ON. THE AC IS ON! THE AC IS ON!

It's actually amazing the level of emotional relief I feel when the AC comes on. It's like for a while the whole world won't be a sweaty, sticky mess for a while. I'll live!

I really don't handle summer well. Except I handle it fine right now because the AC is on.

Midsummer

Today started out well. We went to town and got some stuff to tide us over the weekend. Eating gets weird for us during the summer and planning ahead helps that a lot. We can kind of spin out emotionally when we're having to make decisions about food on the fly.

The evening wasn't so great. One of my chat programs is being a bastard to me and the cat kept sitting exactly where my hands and eyes needed to be. The chat thing still isn't resolved and the cat is in an even more annoying place. Sigh.

Maybe things will be better tomorrow.

The Beauty of Spite

So some Christian organization has decided to haaaaaaate Good Omens and started a petition to get it canceled. The punchline? They petitioned Netflix instead of Amazon Prime. Hahahahahahahahahahah. HAH!

I hope Netflix writes them a fun letter back. Why didn't they go after Sabrina instead? Maybe that petitioned Amazon about that one. Or maybe they are still trying to get Amazon (or Disney or ABCFamily or something) to end Handmaid's Tale because it makes Christians in charge of society look bad.

It doesn't matter what my day was before this. That little tidbit made my day. Spite is good for the soul.

Health Notes

I had two hot flashes the last two days. This may be due to the rising heat of summer or it could just be my body messing with me. Whatever the case,  they were bad. I experienced a lot of nausea with both of them and had trouble shaking that. Tomorrow it may be warm enough for us to put on the AC. If we do so and I still have another hot flash, then it's just some chemical whatnot that my herbs can't handle. If not, well, then it's probably just due to the awful heat.

Aside from those unpleasant hours, I've been emotionally okay. My body is recovering from the fall, if slowly. That is helped by me trying to get as much sleep as possible. Maybe in a day or two, I'll be back to just my normal level of pain. Hah!

Heart Ur Curvzzz

As a person with an overabundance of fat, I was happy to see the body positivity movement start. Don't get me wrong, on some levels, I still am. The idea that people can find love and joy in however their body looks is a good thing. It is. But as many fat advocates have pointed out, it isn't enough.

For one thing, the positivity movement tends to focus on and have visibility on women who aren't really all that heavy. They are usually what Roxane Gay referred to as "Lane Bryant fat" because while they may be heavy, they can walk into any Lane Bryant store and basically wear anything in there. This isn't something a lot of fat people can do.

This is actually difficult to write because I don't want to dismiss what people at that size (or any size) go through in terms of how they view themselves. I get that a person with 20 lbs of extra weight can feel horrible about themselves. The movement for them (and all of us) to embrace our bodies no matter what is a good thing.

At the same time, the focus on self-love does nothing to address the vast number of problems faced by fat people. It doesn't address how we have trouble finding clothes, finding cars to handle us, finding chairs to hold us, or being able to go into a medical facility and receive proper care because some or all of the equipment may not work on us. Body positivity does not address the fact that while the population of the world is getting fatter, no one seems to be building things to handle us.

So yes, by all means, love your body. But fight for a more accommodating world as well. We need that.

Out

For the first time since the last fall, I went outside. Even though my shoulders would give protest every time I turned, I was able to drive. Going in and out of the house was challenging, but I lived.

And now I'm in a lot of pain. Hahahahaha. Oh well. I still went out.

Day of Fathers 2019

It's Father's Day. I talked to my dad to ask him how he was without HIS dad being around this Father's Day. He seemed okay, though there are lingering headaches where my grandfather's assets are concerned. That really needed to have been handled better than it was.

Other than that, my dad was fine. I'm glad. I'm glad we're getting along better than we used to. I'm not even sure what caused that riff. The smaller the family gets, I suppose the closer you get to the ones who are left.

Getting There

OF COURSE, I would have to fall right before the weather decided to do an uptick. Now I'm hot and annoyed and in pain. I don't think sleeping is going to be very fun tonight.

Hopefully the pain will be less horrid tomorrow. The bathroom is so hot that I'm having a difficult time functioning in there. It's a room I have no choice but to deal with. Between the pain and the heat, it's rather miserable.

Okay. Enough complaining.

Tumbling Down

I fell in the driveway today. Nothing seems to be broken though I know my knees are going to be killing me in a couple of hours due to the way I had to get up. My butt will probably hurt too. I fell on my butt.

My roommate came to my rescue and took my glasses/other stuff from me. He also moved the car so I had ample room to hoist my body to a standing position.

That took a while. For one thing, I needed to recover from the shock and impact of the fall. For another, falls always leave me in a panic. I had to calm down from that before I could think clearly about how to fix the situation.

In any event, I'm back in the house and at my computer. Thankfully, this didn't end in a bad way.

Radioactive Stag

Apparently, there is an increasing number of people who have their bachelor/bachelorette parties in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. You read that correctly. Cheap flights, the opening up of the area to tourism, and just general morbid curiosity have created a strange new ritual for stag parties. And mind you, when you go here, you can't drink. There are no strippers or prostitutes. There is a hotel, but beyond that, the whole thing is just a matter of wandering through an abandoned, possibly dangerous city that could maybe make you radioactive.

Then again, I guess that's the point.

Stag parties have always been about getting all the single-life hellion out of your system so you can settle down.  Of course, as we've become a more open society where sex and pleasure are concerned, perhaps we don't need to 'get it out of our system' as much as we used to. For many people these days, the point of getting married is as a nice safe exit out of the party life. When you start that in your teens and don't marry until your 30s, the whole party thing has started to get dull.

Instead, it seems some people want to spend their last days as a single person exploring something else. This isn't just a collection of abandoned buildings. This is a relic of Soviet-era life. It's a relic of the nuclear arms race. What do people talk about as they walk through abandoned buildings? What do they discuss when there is no background noise or energy from other people? What do you do with all of that spookiness, all of that sadness?

A lot of people probably find this morbid or disrespectful. I can understand this. At the same time, I do really get why people would go there, especially when their lives are about to change.

Beautiful Day

It was nice again today. I guess we'll get some of the happy heavenly Spring I had last year. This time it's happening in June. I'm okay with that as long as I get some of it.

Things should be quiet for the rest of the week. I need that. I need that for the rest of the month, really. Peace, quiet, and mild weather. I would really, really like that.

And Again

There are a lot of new players in my guild for this one little game I play. Today I noticed that while there are two ways to go about doing one of our minigames, the autoselect on the game chose the one I didn't. I was trying to balance my traits instead of playing to my strengths. Both ways to do it would be valid, but the game clearly likes one over the other.

I was discussing this finding with some of the newer people in the guild, as we'd considered both options a few days before. When suddenly, there he is. Mansplainer.

Mansplainer: Ya know if you do this event BEFORE that event, you can gain points to make the traits on your people better.

Me: Yeah, I know.

Mansplainer: Did you? I thought you were just saying you didn't.

Me: *goes back to discussing what I was discussing with the other people*

Mansplainer: I was just trying to help you be better at the game.

Me in real life: *singing* Mansplainer!Doodoodoodoodoo.

Me: *typing* I'm good.

Mansplainer: Are you sure?

Me: Go check the rankings.

Mansplainer: *I assume he goes to check them because....* Oh. You have the #1 spot.

Me: Yup.

Me in real life: Doodoodoodoodoo.

Just for the Record

I'm in a good mood and I had a good weekend. A friend came over and watched a movie with me on Saturday. It was sunny and pleasant. Lovely weekend.

I'm documenting this because I know I often bitch and complain the whole time I'm on this blog. Sometimes it looks like I'm just some miserable old hag. But I'm not. Not always. Hee.

Post Trip

The flood waters are subsiding, but a lot of damage has been done. Businesses and homes in my area have been ruined. Lots of farmland is still unusable. Parts of some roads have been washed away. It's going to take a lot of money to fix all of this.

Our trip to Tulsa went well. It was tiring, but we had fun during the drive and my roommate seemed happy about his appointment. Then we had Chinese food and it was amazing. It rained some on the way home, but it wasn't storming. I am grateful for such an easy trip.

It's Pride month and as usual that's being mucked up by people asking why they don't get a Straight Pride parade. One time I saw a perfectly healthy spoiled little bitch child throwing a tantrum because her sister who couldn't walk got to ride in the wheelchair and she should get to ride in it too. Whenever people complain about not having a straight pride parade, they sound just like that spoiled bitch child in my head. You have all the stuff you need, Susan and Kyle. Shut the hell up and be thankful.

Killjoys

I haven't blogged in a bit. I didn't want to keep talking about how annoyed I was with the heat/rain/pain/etc. However, today that wasn't the case. I had a good day today. I was in a good mood, despite the rain/pain/etc.

My mood was even better after reading an article where a person who blogs about GoT went over a post she made last year about who would survive. She was amused and a little shocked at how much of it she got wrong.

The comments were fun until, of course, someone just had to get on there and demand to know WHY they were still posting about GoT when it was over? I mean, look, clearly the amount of people who were happy about the post is enough reason to understand why people are still writing about it.

I will never get the posting killjoys. If you don't like something, why are you reading the article and then taking time out of your life to post about why you are unhappy about the article? Find other things to do.

Deeper Meh

It was muggy all day. Again. I'm tired. I'm already not looking forward to where summer goes. I'm depressed about it. I see people enjoying the summer and I don't even know how to do that anymore. It's just hot and awful. I'm in the dark place tonight.

June Meh

It is SO muggy. Seriously. It feels ten degrees hotter than it is because of the mugginess. That may not be official. That may just be me.

Anyway, June is here. That seems weird. It doesn't FEEL like June yet. By this time next week, it will probably feel too hot to even be June. I miss the summers of my childhood. It was never this hot then....or, you know, I was just younger and handled it better. Probably that.