Weekend Randoms

First of all, I'd like to say I'm really proud of Joss. He managed to make a lot of money with The Avengers and this is good, as he and his brand of humor need to be taken more seriously by the world. Yay for Joss. Yay for us all.

I spent a lot of time this weekend involved in my geekdoms. I watched this whole boatload of shorts over the back history of Westeros. Ahh, I was just so deeply happy doing this. They were quite well done too.  Of course, I mentally debated about what noble house I would have been born into.  Not Stark.  While I love the connection to the Old Gods, they're just a bit too dour for my tastes. Certainly not the Lannisters. I'm not the rich, blonde, and incesty type.  This removes the Targaryens as well . . . silver hair, rich, incesty.

No, I would have been a Baratheon. They're loud and lusty and prone to getting fat and that kind of thing. They have just enough Targaryen blood in them to make them interesting and enough everything else to balance it out.  Yeah, Baratheon. But I would have kicked Stannis down the stairs......a  very LONG set of stairs.

On Friday I did the now ritual cleaning under my bed and around all the unseen places in my room to suck up wicked little fleas. I know I didn't get all of them, but fuck it. I got as many as I could.  Getting as many as I can is about all I can do. I need to be happy with that and knowing at least THOSE fucking fleas can't breed now.

Another tactic to combating the fleas involves doing frequent laundry and putting it away as soon as it comes out of the dryer. I spent a while on Saturday folding things and putting away my clothes. Today I washed up some places where one of the cats is hanging out. Yes, it's a slow war, but it is a war nevertheless.

It was hot and muggy all weekend, but it's supposed to be nicer this week.  I'm happy about that, as there is a plan for yard work in motion. My roommate was out there today battling trees and Virginia Creeper.  Though the yard work is kind of in a strange place now because the stump in the front yard has apparently been rotting and is now all soft and easy to break apart.  It looks like a huge mess at the moment.

Anyway, I am coming out of the weekend feeling positive and happy.  I get to see my uncle next Sunday!!! Yes, I'm three exclamation points excited about that.

The Deeper Truths

One of the things that I find most fascinating about being human is how good we are at adaptation. Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution has their head in the sand. This isn't a statement against that religion or this one.  Evolving, adapting, is so much a part of who we are that to try and assume it isn't there is to deny us, and all living things, of our most primal and vital power.  There aren't many cosmic laws I believe in, but I know two two be true. 1. Nature always gets to win. 2. Adapt or die.

Now, as I've written about in the past, sometimes our capacity to adapt can get us into a lot of trouble. It's not so much that we do adapt, but that we alter the wrong thing and therefore do not deal with the root of the problem.  It's why people who don't have access to proper medical treatment will learn to walk with a limp. It causes them pain, but they can still get around. Once they adjust to the limp and the pain though, they tend to forget they still need the medical attention, even when they have the chance to make that happen.

When we really think about our adaptations though, and have the time to really plot out a way to improve our circumstances, this can be a beautiful thing.  It can also tell us about our true wants and desires.  This may sound odd, as most people believe they have a pretty good idea what they want/desire. Some things have a way of sneaking up on you though.

I wrote about how I've rearranged some things in my bedroom to make clothes organizing easier. Part of this was a culling.....I put away clothing I don't wear so I would have room for the stuff I do wear. Part of it was location location location. I moved all clothing storage to one place, so I wouldn't have to wander all over the room to put things away. Part of it was mental, as I made a rule for myself that clothing WOULD be put away on the same day it came out of the dryer, no exceptions.

So this new system has been in place for several weeks now, and I am happy to report that it is working. All my clothing is put away and in the place it should be.  I have a reasonably good idea of what all I have and when things might need to be replaced. Best of all, the energy in my room has gone from one of unsorted chaos to order.

Now this orderly thing . . . that is the unexpected discovery I have made in this process. I like order. I like structure and predictability.  Some people might believe this goes contrary to the creative spirit, but I do not believe it does. This idea that creative people are chaotic isn't always true. Mind you, the true test of the human spirit is how creative they can get when things get fucked up. However, when we're not in the middle of crisis solving, I believe most creative people benefit from an orderly environment.

Again, this goes back to Maslow. Creativity is a higher priority need. It's very much there, but other needs have to be filled before it can. Random noise, cluttered rooms, people yelling, people losing their temper, drama, money issues, etc . . . what do these things have in common? They suck your energy.  Even if you don't want to willfully get involved, the very act of resisting and ignoring the chaos can also zap your energy.

Now, when I was younger, I would have told you I thrive in the chaos.  I didn't. I survived it and I endured it, but I didn't thrive. It's kind of the difference between a flower that grows in a nice flower pot and one that has to push its way through the concrete. Sure, they both bloom. Yeah, maybe the flower in the concrete is stronger because it overcame such odds. It adapted instead of dying.

So yes, when I think about what I really want and desire in life, it is to be in a living environment where things are orderly. I want things to be in their place. I want everything to have a designated spot.  I want calm, collected minds that focus on solving one problem at a time. I want schedules and plans and enough money to know that my bills will be paid.

What is the best thing about this insight?  I think the simple answer is that it gives me a realistic goal. I want to live in an orderly home. Now what do I have to do to get there? I'm already making some changes to get me there, and more will come as the weeks pass. They'll come in layers though. We do, after all, need time to adapt.

Philosophy of Inner Drives: A Personal Struggle with Preservation

I guess for about the last six weeks or so, I've been rather serious about getting my weight under control. If you've read the blog for a while now, you know this has happened time and time again, usually with meh results. I used to get really upset about that.  These days, I'm okay with it. Even if this time doesn't work as I want it to, I'll still gain knowledge about what did work and what didn't. Said knowledge will inform me as to how to approach the issue past this point.

One of the things I'm really trying to keep track of is my hunger. Throughout most of my life, when I felt the slightest aspect of hunger, I would eat.  The only thing that would keep me from eating was no access to food at the moment. When I did get access to food, best be sure I was eating then.

I'm trying not to do that now. I know another meal will happen eventually and if I'm hungry, I can just wait it out.  It's not going to kill me, as we eat on a fairly regular basis. This logic does not stop my body from starting a cycle of panic when I get hungry. Yes, I just wrote that. Whenever I get hungry, my body starts to panic.

The inner drive for preservation is very significant in us. When functioning in a proper way, this drive pushes us towards making decisions that will prolong our lives. This is Maslow's base of the Hierarchy of Needs. Find shelter. Find safety. Find water.  Find food.  The drive to keep us alive communicates with our brain through a complex series of chemical reactions that urges us to respond.

When we respond in a way that the body knows will promote preservation, we are rewarded with happy chemicals. When we fail to comply, our bodies can and often do release panic-producing chemicals. Again, as a way to communicate to us what the body needs.

This chemical production is what makes the drive for preservation so potentially destructive. When this need is out of balance, it will often urge people towards preservation at the cost of everything else.

I know this to be true because I start to panic when I get hungry. I get nervous, my pulse races. The longer I go without food, the more intense the emotions. Just as soon as I eat, all of that tension melts away.  My body rewards me with happy chemicals and tells me that this is how life should be.

The only problem is, humans really shouldn't eat just the very second they start to get hungry.  It leads to people being in situations like mine. It leads to people who have to struggle to even walk into the kitchen  to get their snack. It leads to people who prioritize food above everything else, even at the risk of their own life.

My way to combat this is twofold. First of all, I am trying to pay attention to all the instances when I feel hunger.  Am I really hungry? If yes, fine. If no, then why am I feeling this? What is triggering the hunger? Once I pinpoint the triggers, I can begin to analyze why these situations push me into hunger.  My guess is that it has very little to do with food at all.

The next thing I am doing is trying to rewrite my preservation drive.  And yes, I completely believe you can do that. When I get hungry, I remind myself that I will eat a planned meal or snack after a while. I can wait and be perfectly fine. I'm also mentally promoting the preservative qualities of exercise. This makes me stronger. This lowers my blood pressure and increases circulation. These things help me to live longer, which is the POINT of preservation.

If anything, it's a new approach to the usual problem.  It's a new mindset because clearly the ones I have had before didn't work for me.  Will this mean I'll be a healthy weight five years from now?  Who knows? I'll still be better off for the gain in knowledge.

Embracing the Real Life Word Problems

Life is mathematics. Everything we do, everything done to us, everything we sense or feel or respond to is math. Every aspect of our existence can be explained by equations. Sometimes these equations are simple. Sometimes they are as complicated as fuck.

Sometimes, the equations overwhelm us.

If BHB needs to limit her caloric intake to x, how much of f can she eat without having to resort to e.  (X=f-e). Put another way, if BHB does e for 30 minutes each day, how much f can she eat before putting on more weight? (X< f-e@30m).
This is just the simplified version. I'm not counting in fat content of the food, various nutrients, metabolism levels, or any of the other number of complex factors that play into this.

Broke Betty has $1400.00 for the month. Her rent is $750.00, her utilities are $355.00. The rest has to cover food, gas, and other bills. She has $250.00 on her Discover card before she maxes it out and $150.00 on her Visa before she maxes it out.

An adult female flea can lay 50 eggs per day. If BHB's cat has 45 fleas on it, and goes into four rooms of the house, how many fleas will be infesting the house within 4 weeks? If BHB has four cats going into five rooms and each cat has 45 fleas on them, how long before BHB's brain explodes into tiny pieces?  How many fleas can feast off of the tiny bits of brain?

Of course, you can't let the math get you down.  One of the best things about being human is that we can fight the math around us with our own math. For every pound of fat we might gain, we can fight back with another walk or one less serving.  For every impossible budget, we can fight back with smart shopping and frugal decisions. For every flea, there is a flea comb, a vacuum, and dish washing liquid and water in a plate. 

I'm not going to suggest that everything we encounter in life can be solved. We all know that isn't the case. A lot of the time though, there are at least some solutions. They may not be the ones we want. They may not be the easiest to handle.  In the end though, they might keep us from sinking under the weight of the rest of reality's math.

In fact, the math can and should be our ally in most situations. After all, math is factual. It's rational and creates order out of what we may otherwise view as chaotic hell.  Math doesn't offer opinions or criticisms. We may shade the actual math or facts with emotions, opinions, and the like, but the math isn't doing it. It is there to merely present the situation without comment. 

And when we can take a step back and view the problem for what it is, just a rational set of facts that need to be worked out in our favor, then life becomes easier. Instead of looking at losing weight as "I have to lose so many pounds before I am at a healthy weight and it's hard and I can't do it," we will simply focus on the facts. "A healthy weight is x and I have to lose y to get there." From that point, it can be broken down into manageable pieces. 

We can't escape the math.  It's there whether we like it or not.  It follows the impartial rules of the universe and, again, there is nothing we can do about that. At the same time, the fact that math exists and that it follows rules of logic isn't something that being done TO us either. We can allow that math to overwhelm every situation we are in, or we can study it until we find a way to work with and around it.

The beautiful thing is, once we learn how to work with the math, it really does work for us.

Moments of Surrender

I think the worst part about the last month is that it started out with such promise. I was helping someone do something and I really loved it.  There was even a chance it could have turned into something productive for me. Then it all went to fuck, fell apart, and ended. To be honest, that was about the best part of my April.

I'm not one of these people who believes that when things break that some cosmic evil has befallen me. Things break. It's part of life. And, yes, sometimes things break because of cats. I'm the human though, and it's part of my job as the human to understand that, again, the cat wasn't trying to do something TO me when she broke my stuff.  She was just being a cat.  Still, things need to be replaced and when funds are limited, that is stressful.

Sometimes, a lot of stuff breaks at once. I had to have work done on my computer. Work was done on the roommate's car. Other things have broken over the month to the extent that I'm freaked out to even touch anything.  I shouldn't be this stressed out about it.

We've been working to keep the house clean and the roommate has been putting Flea Be Gone on the yard. Yet, despite our best efforts, the cats still have fleas. The house still has fleas. I spent quite a long while cleaning a certain area of the living room today, vacuuming, spraying it down, Lysol, the works. Even after all of that, my roommate had fleas jump on him when he walked over there.

I know it will be okay. I know problems can and will be solved. I know it's all just some complex puzzle I have to find my way through . . . but sometimes, knowing that isn't enough.

And that's okay.  It's fine to have moments when you're completely disheartened. As long as you don't harm yourself or anyone or anything else in the process, it's fine to have times when you just surrender to the total hell that life can be. And that's where I am now.....in surrender mode. I'll give myself some time recover and then start trying to swim through the fuckatude again.

And All the Strange Rock and Rollers

The fourth season of RuPaul's Drag Race has ended and Sharon Needles was crowned the next drag superstar. I couldn't be happier. For the first time, Ru put the fate of who would win into the hands of her audience. To me, this was an even greater victory for Sharon, because it meant that not only did Ru see something in her spookiness, but the rest of the world did as well.  Sharon talked a lot about how it wasn't just being gay that made life difficult, but also being a weird kid.  In the vast land of drag queens, Sharon's victory wasn't just for the ladyboys out there, but also one for all of us fringe people who dress in black and dare to enjoy the strange. It was a victory for the little post punk goth spirit in all of us and I'm damned proud of that.

You know, the crazy homophobic culture Nazis bitch whenever gay people show up on television. They don't like to watch them buy houses, they don't like to know they have talent or want jobs.  It seems they certainly don't like it when they advise Mitt Romney.  One of their complaints is that by showing the homosexuals to TV, it will help to normalize them and influence children. They may be on to something.

Because on the reunion show, Latrice read a letter she received from the mother of a little girl. The letter talked about how the little girl had been bullied at school, but, because she loved Latrice so much and saw how this 400 lb. black man wearing women's clothing had overcome all manner of hardships, she knew she could stand up to the bullies and live her life with bravery. This little girl learned to be fierce. How's that for an influence?

Of course, I'm sure that's the last thing the haters want to think about.  They dislike the homosexuals as it is, but more than that, they certainly don't want everyone else finding value in them. It probably even puzzles them that people could.

What they don't realize is that when I look at people like Sharon and Latrice, I don't think about how they have sex with others. I think about how these people grew up outside the normal. Like many who aren't normal, they suffered for it. Beaten, abused, tormented, teased.  Everyone tried their best to break them and make them conform.

But they didn't.  Not only did they refuse to be "normal straight men," they took it a step farther and sexywalked into drag. They found their warrior strength in a different kind of battle, in a multifaceted performance art.  The look is important, but so is the strength, the nerve, the wit, and the sense of personal power.

To watch someone go from a marginal position in society to a place of such fortitude is inspiring. It doesn't just inspire gay people either. It inspires anyone who has suffered that same kind of hazing and social struggle. It inspires all us weird kids out there, all the bullied ones, all the strange ones. It is the true ugly duckling to the beautiful swan.  And it is a kind of inspiration I have never, ever found in someone who played by the rules and conformed to all the social norms.

Sometimes I think that's the crux of homophobia. It's not about morality or religion. It's not about what is perceived to be good for society or the nation or whatever.  I think homophobia stems from people who lack self-esteem and only find comfort in being part of the group.  When someone comes along and tells them that, by their very nature, they reject this group and its rules, these people take that rejection personally.  Because they cling so tightly to the their status in the group, they perceive anyone who just isn't impressed by that status as a threat.

As much as they say it scares them that the gay people are trying to make everyone gay, I think it freaks them out even more that the gay people just might not care if they are or not.

Anyway, I'm happy for Sharon and I'm glad she won.  It was a great day to be a freaky. Mmbopmmbopbop.

Topic Control: The Things I Did for Love

Hello, everyone. It's Monday so my topic was chosen for me. Tonight I am to discuss the things I've done for love.  Love can have many different meanings, but I'm taking the topic to imply romantic love. That's going to be what I tackle with it. After all, no one wants to read a post about me squeeing over finding books again, although that IS love. Anyway . . .

The subject reminds me of the Ishtar chapter in Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Brief Lives. While the overall theme of the graphic novel is Dream's search for Destruction, Gaiman also discusses and foreshadows a lot about the idea of mortality. He also shows what some ancient gods are doing with their time in the modern age.

Ishtar, for example,  is working as a stripper in a club called Suffragette City (heh!).  In the scene I'm talking about, she is talking with her roommate, also a stripper, as they're on their way to work. Her friend is telling her about a woman she knew who was a heroin addict. They didn't want her to shoot up in her arms because it left bruises so she started shooting up in her eye. Ishtar's reply to this is something like, "The things we do to be loved."

To me, this has always been a great analogy for how I see the lengths most people will go to for love.  They will do something dangerous, painful, scary, and harmful just to feel those fleeting moments of goodness. It's depressing and sad, horrible. And while most people would see putting a needle in their eye as objectionable and wrong, many of the other things we do for love, while just as ghastly, are considered normal and common place.

This topic was basically the theme of my mother's life.  Since I could remember, my mother's two motivating forces were AVOIDANCE OF MOTHER (as in, hers) and BE IN RELATIONSHIP WITH MAN. As you can imagine, most of the time, these two motivations clashed a lot. My mom would do just about anything she could to avoid hearing my grandmother bitch at her. She'd also do anything she could to keep a man in her life.

In fact, aside from a few blissful years, my mother always DID have a man in her life. Hell, even then, she had men in her life, they just didn't stay around. The rest of the time, she was willing to do anything to keep the man there. She was beaten, lived in poverty, worked to support the man, endured abuse, violence, allowed horrible things to happen to her children, and lost just about everything she had. And the only reason she would EVER get rid of one of her horrible men would be if some other man was already lined up to take his place.

As you can see, I didn't really have a good example of love. In fact, almost every relationship I've ever been witness to has been pretty twisted and warped. When I was younger, I was in love with someone. I was also pretty psycho about it. I'd call him all the time, I'd obsessively think about him, all that other bullshit that I'm even embarrassed to talk about now. It was just a mess and he completely wasn't worth it.

I did gain a lot of value from that.  I realized (far later in life), that if a relationship isn't bringing out good things in you, then you shouldn't be in the relationship. If you aren't happy, end it. If you find yourself crying a lot, end it. If you feel like you have to walk in eggshells all the time just to keep this person from flying off the handle, end it.  If you find you're only happy when this other person isn't around or isn't talking, end it.

I know it's not always easy to get out, but you should. Even if you can't do it at the moment, realize  that it needs to end and start making plans to where that can happen.  And every time you start straying from your plan, remind yourself of how deeply awful your life is with this person. Remind yourself that you have a goal for freedom. No one should have to live in misery.

So what have I done for love? Stupid things.

What will I do for love now?

I'll live my life to the best of my ability.  I'll continue to press on with my goals of trying to make the most of my body and mind. I'll revel in my own beauty and dance to stupid theme music. When something in my life sucks, I'll remember it doesn't have to be this way. I'll start making plans to change whatever it is. I'll do what I have to, no matter what, just to make sure I'm happy, stable, and content.

And yes, I realize none of that has anything to do with romantic love. It shouldn't. I won't do anything for romantic love. If it shows up, it shows up.  Romantic love isn't some reward for jumping through all the social hoops.  That's just fake bullshit. Romantic love is when someone loves you for you. And as supermodel of the world and famed philosopher RuPaul says, "If you can't love yourself, how in hell you gonna love someone else?"

Can I get an amen?