The Pursuit of the Extinction of Evil Hauntings Within...or Without?

I have two DVD collections -- one of which is Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers series. Every Halloween I try to watch at least one of the Halloweens. The simple theme-music alone gives me chills. I honestly do not know why but Dr. Loomis' symbolism continues to pull me in.

Why does he bother? He's been going at it for years! The crazed doctor chases and shoots Michael over and over with no success but he keeps on going despite being caught afire and mutilated!

Loomis quotes from H1:

Loomis: I would suggest a maximum security ward...not a minimum security institution...he has an instinctive force within him...he's waiting...
Medical Board: (waiting) for what?
Loomis: I don't know....There is insufficient security here....
Medical Board: ...perhaps someone else should take on his care...
Loomis: ...I'll stay with him....
++++
Loomis (to Michael): You fooled them, haven't you Michael? BUT NOT ME...
++++
Loomis to nurse: understand what we are dealing with here...don't underestimate IT....
Nurse: Don't you think we should refer to "it" as "him?".
Loomis: ...if you think so.......
"HE'S GONE FROM HERE! ...HE'S ESCAPED...THE EVIL HAS ESCAPED!!!"
++++
Loomis on Phone to Haddonfield Police: He's on his way...you better believe me officer, he's coming to Haddonfield...(why?) because I KNOW him...you must be ready for Him...if you don't (then) it's your funeral.
++++
Loomis to Policeman: This is NOT A MAN!!!
Policeman: You seem just plain scared
Loomis: "I met this six-year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, with the blackest eyes. I tried for seven years to reach him and another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was simply and purely evil."
++++
[Loomis Shoots Michael]
Laurie: Was that the boogeyman?
Loomis: As a matter of fact, IT was.

Corporate Hell #3 SP1

Another night on the floor has arrived. It feels like a wicked cornstalk is creeping it's way from my stomach up to my throat about to strangle me. I took only a half-effexor again this morning and will take a whole tomorrow morning in another attempt at titration. If that doesn't work then screw it, I'll take the drug.

I've been blaming myself for my piss-poor performance at the new job. I'm not even good at math so I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to switch careers. I'd been contemplating a new career path and then, in desparation, I installed the 350+MB beta Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005 and many things worked that did not work before.

I have a long history of blaming myself for situations out of my control. I'd rather have a questionable internal locus of control than feel helpless. One one hand, helpless is so much horrible but on the other hand it is at least some sort of reality. It really doesn't matter because either way I end up wanting to do train-diving.

Regardless, I'm still no genius and cannot read binary code without a tool so if I'm going to be mediocre then why bother. It took at least an hour this morning for me to reverse engineer some gwbasic code to locate and decipher just one of the formulas I need. I'm fairly certain that my mediocrity is glaringly evident at the new job and the VS2005 disaster that killed my deadlines has worsened it ten times over. Being homeless and on the street completely alone is a worst fear of mine so I should discuss my status with the boss and get it over with.

The floor is not completely hard. I took the memory-foam off the bed and folded it in half.

Nocturnal Chatterings #1

- It's Sunday night again before work and I can't sleep again. I thought I got rid of that problem.

+Work doesn't seem so bad, I wonder why.

- Because it is another being that sucks the life out of me and leaves me with no time to do what I'd like to do with myself. It traps me.

- I also can't sleep because it feels as if my stomach is empty even though i had a snack.

+ That's because your intestines are broken again and there is probably nothing in them.

- I think I'm going to have to relocate to the floor again, it is calmer down there.

+ The bed has a history of being a cesspool to helldom.

- I don't want to take Ambien again. My stomach is still empty. I've had to sleep before with an empty stomach but did not know it. So many household arguments over plain dumb oatmeal. I hate plain oatmeal but just eat it to get stuff shut up.

+ At least you have a bed of your own this time even though you tend not to use it lately.

- I'm haunted. It's Halloween again and I am still haunted. Running through the woods with the crunch of the leaves betraying my location. How can leaves be so pretty when they are dying? Then they are bland brown when they are dead. It's cruel and I hate it.

+ Millions of people suffer from insomnia and a growing more of trauma-related disorders.

-I don't know why that is relevant or helpful to me. I still don't know why we bother.

-I'm going to try something else to eat and then try the floor. If I have to take a pill then I have to take a pill. I can't allow myself to get run down again because I have nowhere to turn.

Hope #4 : Anxiety Rips off the Skin

I'm not going to make it. When the anxiety hits then I just know I will not make it -- that I will end up like this for the rest of my life and I cannot live with the thought of that. I have endured this too long to be able to live with the thought of it going on forever.

I took a half dose of the Effexor yesterday and today I am so anxious that I feel the need to tear off my skin, to scrape it off with a sharp-toothed comb. One-half of 37.5 mg is 18.75 mg. Such a small change should not make such a difference -- especialy since I have been titrating for so long.

Damn them all to hell for ever have allowed those doctors to put me on medication to begin with. I was not depressed. I was traumatized and if they had stepped up to the plate and said, "This is not about her. We are literally screwing her in the *ss and she is reacting to that. This is about us. We need fixing, not her.", then I would not be going through this. I would not be wanting to tear out my hair, eyes, and nails. In fact, I would have not endured allot of what I have.

Action equals reaction so fix the damn action instead. I should be able to go out today into the sun and do something I enjoy instead of shivering and crying.

Corporate Hell #3

It's been three weeks since my escape from the depths of the labyrinth cubes in Corporate Helldom to my current desk in the world of small business life. Wildly tossed about and holding on for dear life, I feel as if I have jumped from one the Titanic to the Minnow. At least this boat is not sinking...as far as I know.

Living for so long in the irritating safety of red tape dulled my technical skillset and now I am playing catch up by desparately coding into all hours of the nights and weekends. I may be getting too old for this.

Fortunately, a couple of times per week there are other refugees from the old place seeking asylum elsewhere and this is beneficial for me because I enjoy the happy-hour-freedom-parties. However, back at the Titanic, the multi-million dollar disaster continues to reek all hell and the hired-gun continues to net up the fish.

You can usually get a profile of any employee by what is on his or her desk but you can TRULY spot a sharp and savvy Information Systems (IS) employee by what is NOT on the desk. This is for two related reasons:

1. When things go really bad in IS, they go REALLY REALLY VERY bad. From the business-critical databases to the core functioning networking of the company, if something goes majorly wrong there is no time to grab stuff off the desk before either running out the door or getting booted out the door. Having access to highly crucial systems means no two-week notices if you are to go because that gives you time to bring down the vessel.
   
2. In addition, the higher you go, the further you fall. More reason NOT to keep personal items on your desk and another sign of your savviness.
   

Naive out-of-touch staff do not realize this and oogle over their photos, figurines, and plants.

As a side note, staff with "attitude-issues" keep the Daily Dilbert on their desks. I took mine home before I ever gave resignation and it now sits alone with me at my new desk on the Minnow as I again struggle to keep afloat.

The True Fighting Spirit of the Betta Spendens and How do We Ever Survive? #3

Lazzy flaring at the world in his earlier days.
On the morning of October 12 I awoke to find Lazzy's body lying on the bottom of the tank. I had cried for him the night before and told him that it would be ok if he needed to move on. I thanked him for all that he had given me, apologized for his hard life, and let him know that I did not want him to suffer any longer if he did not want to do so.

I thought I would take it better but cried on and off for the rest of the day. It's been twelve days since his passing yet just a couple of nights ago I found myself crying again while thinking about him. He died before I could figure out why he fought so hard.

Obviously, Lazzy meant more to me than just a fish. I'm sure a professional would claim that I was projecting or having some type of transference reaction. Perhaps he represented a lost part of myself or maybe I was struggling with an explanation for my own reasons to continue on in harsh circumstances.

It is my suscpicion that the instinct to survive is so strong for most living creatures that it is just too hard to give up. No matter what hardships the body endures it keeps going for as long as possible. The force is so strong that it is almost cruel. Humans, in particular, can take decades of the worst experiences possible and yet live for decades more.

Regardless of any of this, Lazarus has died again but is probably not going to rise anytime soon.

Fake Plastic People

To me, a "fake" person is someone who walks around with a shell-like emptiness inside. I don't think that the person is truly empty, just repressed. Regardless, I do not like to have these people in my personal life. In fact, I despise these people. They hit a nerve in me.

I know I should feel compassion for these people and perhaps on some level I do but, for the most part, they can stay the hell away from me. Yes, a nerve gets hit there....

I know we all have our vices but these people continually run around in a pretend world hiding behind whatever suits them the best whether it be alcohol, television, gambling, socializing, intellectualism, materialism or whatever. Anything can be a vice.

Vices can be useful, I suppose. We can't all run around emotionally raw all the time. However, in my experience when a person is constantly "in-hiding" then WATCH OUT because something is going to cave-in somewhere and innocent people get crushed and destroyed in the process. Hmmm....the nerve gets touched on again...

Having grown up around fake plastic people and seen the evil that sows itself in the souls of those people (aka "my nerve"), I had promised myself that I would not become one of them. Though not near 100%, I've tried to deal upfront with crap that has come my way. Since the whole process is a pain in the ass, I have sweated it out, and continue to try to do so, then why should I now be around others who do not try?

Being around fake people is like living in a glass box that they can't see. I can yell and scream at them to pay attention and have a REAL conversation but they just don't GET IT. Someone could be bleeding and dying in that box and it wouldn't faze them. The bottom line is that I would rather be completely and physically alone than feel alone with these people.

Hope #3

I hear it all the time: "You can't change the past."

I do not believe this.

The past repeats itself and we all have the power to change that.

Hope #2

Serotonin Syndrome Symptoms:
* Cognitive effects: mental confusion, hypomania, agitation, headache, coma.
* Autonomic effects: shivering, sweating, fever, hypertension, tachycardia, nausea, diarrhea.
* Somatic effects: myoclonus/clonus (muscle twitching), hyperreflexia, tremor.

After losing consciousness on three occasions, almost having a stroke, days in the hospital, two additional ER visits, lost work, and months of being deathly ill, no doctor believed that my symptoms were medication-related. I had all the symptoms above minus the coma.

However, per the walgreens.com drug-interaction tool and my pharmacist, it is not advisable to have a patient on multiple serotonin-related medications. It took a layperson to point this out and, interestingly enough, I have not fallen to the floor since titrating off these poisons.

These events of the past ten months started with a bout of insomnia. It was an unusually-long bout so medication was recommended. Unfortunately and asininely, health insurance only covers a limited amount of insomnia medication within a certain amount of time (14 pills every 28 days -- never mind, that anyone can get practically UNLIMITED amounts of Valium or Xanax with NO problem.) Regardless, I needed more than 2 weeks of sleep so the doctor prescribed an anti-depressant and increased the serotonin syndrome symptoms.

I have 37.5 more milligrams of Effexor to go before I am off the stuff. I tried stopping at this dose once but it was a train wreck. I have been coming off the toxin for the past three months and I don't think the worst is yet here. Google "Effexor withdrawal" and you will see. Actually you can try these samples:

http://depression.about.com/cs/venlafaxine/a/brainshivers.htm
http://www.join-the-fun.com/effexorwithdrawal.html
http://www.rxlist.com/rxboard/effexor.pl?read=501

The bottom line is that no matter HOW depressed I ever get or if I have to be mildly depressed and anxious for the REST of my life I will NEVER take an anti-depressant again to cope with something that I should be coping with in a more constructive manner. For myself only, I consider it substandard to live life hiding behind a pill and I refuse to give in to it anytime soon. I HOPE that I never do.

I'm not claiming that psychotropics are not useful in many situations; however, for all neurotic-type issues they need to be a last resort and then used as a supplemental tool to some type of psychotherapy. They are too-often quickly prescribed as a pop-culture solution. This does not work and is dangerous.