anamia83

Anyone read the book "Skinny" by Ibi Kaslik? I just finished it and I found some of it triggering but for the most part I found it a little "out there". While I have a very severe eating disorder, the girl in the book seemed to be struggling with something almost schizophrenic. However, this may just be a thought I'm having because I don't have a person in my head I talk to? I've heard of that and I understand that. This girl's "person" materialized though. Like she could see her and describe her clothes and would touch her and stuff. Has anyone else experienced this in their eating disorder or is this part of the fictional aspects of the book to make it more "real"

God bless Sarah, Joe, and Jason for helping last night. Alan's and Jerry's rooms are now primed and ready to paint. Not only did Sarah pick up a necessary extra paint roller, but she included it as an early Christmas and birthday gift along with paint roller covers, shop towels and a Lowes gift card! I suddenly love Christmas!

I told Joe, Matt, and the guys subletting from them that if they buy their paint, they can choose the color of their room. Now, however, one of them wants to paint his room Tiggerific Orange. This is the color made famous (at least in Detroit) by Object Orange, a group of anonymous artists who paint dangerous, dilapidated buildings this color in order to draw attention to the need to tear them down.



So, uh... should I let him? He's calling me out the offer I made. The idea of a room being painted this color in this house repulses me, but on the other hand I don't have to see it, and it can be painted over whenever he leaves. This is what the paint manufacturer's website says Tiggerific Orange should look like:



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Last weekend I finally showed Anny and Joe Planet of Dinosaurs, one of the many recorded-off-TV movies I would watch repeatedly throughout my childhood. Joe and I are planning on recording a cover of one of the pieces of music used in the film on our next album, whenever that will be. See a post I made about the movie three years ago for stills and samples of the music from the film. Despite the great special effects and synth soundtrack, it is a B movie after all. I wouldn't be the first to point out the "porn actor" look of the movie's stars, and the spandex costumes are more frightening than the prehistoric beasts who are hunting them. And most of the film consists of these people just...walking around.

The writers really tried to create interesting interactions between the characters, and they might have been successful with a different editor and different actors. Now that Hollywood is completely out of ideas, I can always hope this movie will be up for a remake in my lifetime. If that happens, they will have to at *least* keep the musical motifs of the original soundtrack. I love the way the melody of the traveling cues begins. The first chords are F, A-flat, F, and B. The unpredictable wobbling between distant keys is almost certainly meant to represent a giant, lumbering dinosaur. (Or maybe A-flat isn't so "distant", being the relative major of F minor--which is also the key of the main titles and Tyrannosaurus theme.) But we are grounded in F for sure after the next progression, which is a perfect cadence ending on F (d minor, C, F). But F turns into F minor, and we're swung *back* into A-flat after *another* perfect cadence!

I think I'm rambling and I should focus on eating my lunch.

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/21972556/detail.html

I hope we can still buy cabinets next week....

i am planning on going to walden behavioral's residential program starting jan 1 and am scared beyond words. i did their inpatient program about 4+ years ago and only lasted a week and a few days (didn't have a terrible time with the food thing but my depression got the better of me and i cried pretty much every day i was there. being dropped off there brought up some abandonment/separation anxiety issues i had as a kid, a huge contributor to my developing anorexia in the first place. the thing is, i have "lived" with this illness for 17 years and am scared that they won't be able to help me (my therapist, of all people, even mentioned this as a possibility- i've since stopped seeing her for the meanwhile, so i have had a terrible time dealing with the prospect of this treatment lately). anyone been in the residential program and can ease my mind a bit? tell me what a typical day is like? i am also a very picky eater (don't even eat salads...curiously enough, my diet consists of a lot of "no-no" foods for your typical anorexic). what will make this treatment even more difficult for me is the fact that i am a grad student in psychology and wrote a dissertation on how these programs fail clients. i am so trying to keep an open mind...but need some help.

I don't think I was hinting that I want people to help me paint--at least not consciously--although maybe I should have. If people keep offering to help, I'll have to stop making Live Journal posts about mankind's inherent evil nature. And for all who will help out--don't be shy about calling in the favor. I'll help you out with any future home improvement project except for drywalling ceilings, which is absolutely the most detestable activity known to man. After sanding the kitchen ceiling for an hour yesterday, I finally understand why people apply that horrible popcorn ceiling garbage--it beats the hell out of hours of sanding with your arms above your head covering yourself in super-fine gypsum dust while your stupid dust mask has an unclosable gap by the nose that fogs up your glasses so that you can't see what you're doing, and then ultimately failing to perfectly conceal all of the joints by the time is painted, leading to an existential despair about the pointlessness of all human activity. So, yeah, popcorn ceilings.

When I was cashing in my savings bonds on my day off on Friday, the clerk had me move aside for a minute while an armored truck guy delivered some deposit bags. It was the same guy who always comes to my place of employment, to whom I give our deposits. But he didn't see my face and I didn't say anything. For some reason I don't like to say hi to people I recognize in public. But I do love seeing the same car more than once while driving. The last car I saw two times was a white Honda with a bumper sticker that read in large, block letters: BRÜNHILDE. Both times I saw this car I was driving to work on the Lodge Freeway, and I had Ride of the Valkyries in my head for the rest of the day.

My dad bought me cable TV for Christmas, which was installed yesterday. I'm not going to lie--it is wonderful. The cable box records TV shows for you. I will now enjoy an unending stream of Animal Planet, home improvement shows, and the Hitler History Channel! I should also cancel Netflix now.

I have to clean up my blog. A Buddhist couple who used to live in Michigan found me on Facebook and mentioned having seen my blog. I warned them that some entries can be crass and misanthropic. They are the founders of Buddhist Relief Mission, and they now live in Sri Lanka where they teach English to monks from many different countries. They are also in the process of publishing translations of the Jataka tales. If good people see my blog, I get nervous. I don't care about the rest of you slobs!

I can has money!!!
I got the letter through today saying i will receive ESA throughout the appeal process. Coolness.
I went to the housing benefit office to start my housing benefit up again, and was pleasantly surprised to find that their "internal system" (i never knew the benefits had a system..?!) had updated their records so i needn't have visited!

I spoke to a nice lady at Catch22 and she's sorting me out some voluntary work feeding homeless people. She also says that the police roleplay work is recruiting for February so i'll reapply for that too.

My new annoying housemate is corrupting the other boys-next-door (who are young) and turning them into arseholes. The three of them are picking on my other housemate, and she can't get away from it because she's agoraphobic and simply can't leave, and so is tearful and self-harming in her room alot. I've flat-out asked our support worker if the new housemate can leave, but it's not looking promising.

Last night i set myself a challenge. I challenge myself quite often to do something that confronts my anxiety problems, cos i get a huge kick out of beating it. Unfortunately last night i didn't meet my challenge, and am feeling rather sad about it, because usually i succeed. I'll try again though.

I got asked out today. Said no obviously. But rather flattering to be wanted all thesame.

In order to get the absolute bare minimum number of rooms finished by the deadline (Joe's and Alan's rooms, bathroom, & kitchen), Anny will basically not see me at all this week. This is the schedule I will have to follow after work and on the weekend:

Today: Sand & prime kitchen (we'll see how far I get with THAT)
Tuesday: Sand & clean Alan's & Jerry's rooms
Wednesday: Go to used appliance store, plan to have appliances delivered Dec. 26th.
Thursday: Prime Alan's room, Jerry's if there is time.
Friday: Paint ceiling, trim in Alan's room.
Saturday: Paint bedroom walls, prime floors
Sunday: Paint bedroom floors

My mom might be able to help again, depending on how much catching up she has to do at work after being gone for two weeks. Chris Holt also offered to help paint, so maybe I can get him to do the kitchen that weekend. The following week is also busy:

Monday: I don't have to do anything, but this is when the downstairs floors will be refinished.
Tuesday: Buy kitchen cabinets
Wednesday: Buy laminate flooring for kitchen (its floor is far too damaged to refinish)
Thursday: This is Christmas Eve, which I have off from work. I will spend the day installing the laminate flooring in the kitchen.
Friday: Christmas Day -- my first real day off since Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll sneak off to the house to grout the kitchen sink backsplash in the morning before going to my mom's house.
Saturday: Install kitchen cabinets, have appliances delivered.
Sunday: I turn 30 years old. I was going to take the day off, but there is just no way. Maybe I'll treat myself to only working 8 hours instead of the usual 10 or 11. I'm not sure what I'll have to focus on. I guess I'll install the shower attachment to the bath tub and catch up on all the other little details on which I've fallen behind.

I know these "house posts" are tedious, but typing this out helps organize my thoughts.

P.S. What is the deal with shop vacs? Are they supposed to just blow dust everywhere, utterly eliminating the reason they exist? What am I doing wrong?

I am so sick of being sick. I'm sick of wasting my life worrying about food and weight. I want to live a happy life and look forward to everything life has to bring. Right now I am always thinking about food and weight, I am always obsessing over eating disorder websites, I have no energy to do anything. I know my career is suffering and I have shut out my friends. They know something is wrong, but they don't know what it is. I want to recover, but no one knows there is even a problem. Is it possible to recover without treatment of any kind? I found the Eating disorder Anonymous website and thought about working through their 12 step program. I'm just afraid that I will go right back to the ed behaviors and thinking after one day; if it even lasts that long. I always feel like I really want to recover and then something will go wrong or even nothing goes wrong, but I just change my mind set back to "I need to starve, I need to binge and I need to purge." I think I am going to start working through the 12 steps and see what happens. It can't hurt, right?

Has anyone else ever recovered without reaching out for help? Has anyone ever gone to an EDA meeting or done the 12 steps on their website?

Has anyone read "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle? I just finished it and it was a really inspiring book. I have been in recovery from anorexia for almost two years and I felt like that book addressed a lot of the issues that are underlying in eating disorders. If you haven't read it I suggest you check it out.

On the way home today, for an instant I actually considered faking my death in order to get away from the Bagley house. Jason Johnson saw the house for the first time in I think months to help on his room, and he was surprised by how much was still left to be done. (So am I.) Joe also came by and they put in several hours of work.

Anny's family is having their Christmas Eve dinner very early at 1pm. I basically told them I just can't go. I was planning on taking my birthday off (which falls on a weekend), but I don't think that's possible anymore. All the bedrooms were supposed to be primed by today, and only Joe's is.

Here is something funny: The inside of the storm windows in Joe's room had a ton of condensation on them. I hope it magically goes away when I weatherstrip the windows. Otherwise I think I will have to drill "weep holes" in the metal frame of the storm windows. Or something. I'll Google it later.

After I fake my death I'll start over in a small town grow a mustache and drink alcohol and no one will ever know it's me.

Everything irritates me. The slightest little thing and it makes me want to kick something. A bigger thing - like my new housemate - that's enough to make me want to throw sharp objects at his face. On weds night i did ALL the washing up and cleaned the kitchen. I've eaten fuck all so in theory i should be able to cook my dinner tonight easy-peasy. Uh, no. Last night i came home to find approximately half my stuff out my cupboards and scattered around the place dirty. Every DAMN TIME i want to prepare even the simplest snack or meal i have to go on a hunt through the house to find my stuf, THEN washing it up, and THEN dry it. And then try not to panic about my stuff being 'infected' with 'unsafe' food like meat juices etc. And to be honest the motivation involved in eating anything is so low anyway that all this just pushes me over the edge into not being able to even face thinking about food.
He's also sticking his nose into my personal life. He can fuck right off.

I feel strained. I have a constant headache from the tension around my head. I find myself frowning all the time.

Everything makes me cry too. I'm tempted to just lie here and cry for hours.

I was quite productive today. Went to the jobcentre to try and FINALLY get my address changed (6th time lucky?!). DLA was easy as pie, ESA however involves a great fat form. Ironic considering i'm not even receiving ESA. I also collected my last (ever?) anti-depressant prescription. And i went to the volunteer centre to make an appointment, but that didn't work out so i'll do that next week, hopefully armed with a list of potential ideas. And i joined the library. Having a whole big library for me to access that's only 5-10 mins walk from home is very cool. I got some leaflets there - it appears the community centre down the road does tai chi classes and stuff, and i'm going to look into what free courses i can do. The bad thing about joining the library is that it's made me realise how bad my concentration is and how difficult it is to read atm.

I'm trying to decide at what point i admit defeat and phone the crisis team. I've not been this bad for a long time.

Simon saying he never wanted to see me again didn't really last long, as he's here right now.

My carpet needs hoovering and it's REALLY bugging me. The effort involved in finding a hoover and actually doing it seems huge though. I don't know if we even have a working one.

Ok I had this like wow moment in therapy yesterday. We were working out a vague meal plan. It was kind of like instead of saying green beans we said vegetable. Things like that. Well it ended up with me listing the foods I eat and like. (Yes, even those foods that I think are "bad" even though they aren't) Well about thirty minutes in I had a list. It was tops 20 foods. I couldn't believe it. I've never ate anything out of safety zone. I've never had any other foods. When my boyfriend kept telling me I didn't like many foods I thought he was exaggerating but he wasn't. I have never tried anything outside of what I've been used to. Esp. since my mom has an ED to so what I was taught about eating was dead wrong.

I guess I just couldn't believe how little variety in my diet that this eating disorder has caused me.

If I disagree with awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, I can't exactly blame the recipient. He didn't grant the award to himself, and it's not likely that any arahants have been among those distinguished with the same honor anyway. What kind of makes me sad, though, is Obama spending much of his acceptance speech justifying war. He correctly points out that "we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes", but adds:

There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaidas leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. ...

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. ... But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such."

Mr. President, discovering a blazing contradiction in your line of reasoning is God's way of telling you to modify your argument. It would be better for Obama to decline the award and give almost this same speech in explaining why his beliefs and actions contradict those of the best previous Nobel Peace Prize recipients. Instead, he calls certain previous honorees like King "more deserving" of the award than he, but then goes on to explain why they are wrong. Obama said (I think patronizingly):

The nonviolence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached — their faith in human progress — must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

Mr. Obama, the "love that they preached" is exactly the reason why they couldn't advocate violence against their enemies.

Let's go back to when Obama said, "A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies." Don't you love that magical word? "Hitler." He is supposed to be an example of ultimate, superhuman evil--something very unique and very much unlike "us". We believe that nothing in the world would be more horrifying than an alternate history where Hitler defeated England and Japan captured Hawaii.

We believe Hitler "had to be stopped" because he was trying to build a worldwide empire that ruled through fear and violence, which is true. Now think about his chief enemy: England. The British Empire was the most powerful force in the world for more than 100 years up until that time, having built a worldwide empire that ruled through fear and violence. According to one often-quoted online resource:

By 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population, and covered more than 13,000,000 square miles (33,670,000 km2): approximately a quarter of the Earth's total land area.

The British viciously slaughtered the natives of the lands it colonized, from America to Africa and Australia. It enforced unabashedly racist laws--for example excluding the rights of citizenship based on ethnicity. And yet non-violence WAS effective against such a brutal enemy. Gandhi and his colleagues did win victories in South Africa and India, ultimately leading to Indian independence in 1947. The Nazis, of course, were more efficient than the British at killing people and they absolutely should have been resisted. But to characterize non-violence as ineffective against strong enemies--or to characterize World War II as the fight between Good and Evil--is just not accurate.

The United States entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor in the U.S. territory of Hawaii (which didn't become a state until 1959). Hawaii has an interesting history. Back when it was an independent nation, its democratically elected King Kalakaua was forced by a rebellious militia to sign the "Bayonet Constitution", which stripped the king of most of his power and restricted the right to vote to Americans, Europeans, or Hawaiian men who either owned a certain amount of land or earned over a certain income. King Kalakaua was succeeded by his sister, Queen Lili'uokalani, who wanted to abolish the new constitution. This upset the European and American businessmen who now held most of the power, so they formed a "Committee of Safety" in 1893. They conspired to overthrow the queen, and convinced the US government to intervene in order to protect American civilians and property. When US marines landed, Queen Lili'uokalani had no choice but to surrender. Five years later the US officially annexed Hawaii. The business interests in power resisted statehood for years since that would entail adopting immigration laws that would hinder the plantations' exploitation of cheap labor from disenfranchised Asian immigrants.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if someone bombs the military base you set up on land you stole, it is hard to claim moral superiority to your attackers. What further complicates that claim is when you illegally detain US citizens in concentration camps, carrying out a incendiary bombing campaign that takes the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and being the only government in history to ever use nuclear weapons in war. And let's not even talk about our important alliance with Joseph Stalin, the most crazed mass murderer in history.

Getting back to Obama's speech--he goes on to mention how "the world rallied around America after the 9/11 attacks, and continues to support our efforts in Afghanistan, because of the horror of those senseless attacks and the recognized principle of self-defense." Something funny about Afghanistan--the Taliban offered to deliver bin Laden to a third nation in order to stand trial for his crimes, but we refused the offer. George W. Bush had already demanded that bin Laden be handed over to us, and that this condition is "not open for negotiation or discussion". Thanks to whoever put that "manly"-sounding sentence in the speech, our government was forced to reject the Taliban's offer. More than eight years later, bin Laden is still at large and this year's Noble Peace Prize recipient just ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan.

President Obama said something else that I found interesting: "America has never fought a war against a democracy." I am skeptical of this claim, but I'm not able to research it just yet.

I understand that we will never have a president who is truly committed to non-violence. They just wouldn't ever be elected. And I understand how a person in that office inevitably turns to violence out of fear. But knowing that, why award the Nobel Peace Prize to a US president? That would be like awarding a "Husband of the Year" to a man who cheats on his wife, and then listening while he spends the majority of his acceptance speech explaining how you just gotta go out and get some "strange" once in awhile.

And yet there is some wisdom in Obama's speech. I'd like to sign off with some of the better points he made.

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In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable — and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and connected to open societies. Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There is no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time.

[A] just peace includes not only civil and political rights — it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

And that is why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action — it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance.

...

[I]t should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities — their race, their tribe and, perhaps most powerfully, their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. ... Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint — no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith.

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P.S. Sorry to bum you out with such a downer quote--I just thought he made a good point.

P.P.S. You were probably expecting a discussion on Buddhism and war, but that can probably be reduced to two points: 1) This world is inherently imperfect so that tragedies like war are inevitable; and 2) the Buddha never once in the Tipitaka approved of any kind of killing.

I have seen photos of all of my great-grandparents except for one, until today. My maternal grandmother's father, Joseph Waldowski, died when she was six years old, and therefore probably had no photos of him (at least none that I have seen). Recently, though, a cousin of mine found a portrait of the family from 1924 or 1925:



My great grandparents, Catherine (Skorowski) and Joseph Waldowski came to America in 1911 with most of the children in this photo and settled (like all of my other ancestors) in Detroit's Poletown, just south of Hamtramck. The baby on Catherine's lap is my grandmother, Rose (Waldowski) Bonkowski. The woman on the far left is the grandmother of my cousin who found the photo.

My cousins who are doing this family research have been visiting my grandfather (who they are not directly related to) more than I have in order to collect all of this genealogical information. I haven't seen him in months. I probably look like an ungrateful, neglectful chump.

Everything is falling apart. Of course during finals week.

My boyfriend is fed up with my eating. "This isn't' a game you're killing yourself". "Just eat". "I call you beautiful all the time and you never listen to me"

I told a really close friend about my eating and she talks to me about it. I think that pisses my boyfriend off I even told someone else.

Everyone keeps telling me I'm killing myself but I just don't see that I'm bad. Why can everyone else see it and I can't????I hate this. What am I supposed to do? I don't want to hide this problem it just makes it worse. But I can't get better over night. Fuck.

Hi all,

It's been awhile since I've posted here. I'm struggling, or rather, I have been for awhile now, and I'm just confused and not sure how to express any of this in words, but here goes.

I have this problem where, I still don't know what in the heck normal eating is. I oscillate all the time from hunger to being too full: its an awful cycle I've fallen into, that I eat small amounts during the day because it feels safe. But I'm afraid to be hungry at night and maybe this has become a habit: but I tend to eat too much at night, and it usually turns into what feels like a binge or overeating, and then I'm uncomfortable and just angry at myself.

Can anyone relate to this? They restrict somewhat during the day, only to eat more at night, and the same cycle endures?

I'm also living alone, so as one can imagine, that creates problems. I know people are different with this - maybe some people actually do better in recovery when they eat alone - but i KNOW that for me, I'm an absolute mess when I'm alone - again, either restricting or binging, and I wind up doing both all the time. So I'm wondering if, until I get things under control, I should always eat around / with others.

Do you recommend doing anything else while eating, like reading or something to distract, or do you recommend 'mindfulness' eating, doing absolutely nothing else but concentration on the act of eating? This is what was taught to us when I was in residential treatment (they had a very DBT approach to things)

I don't know what to do, honestly. I don't know why I like to stay hungry or somewhat hungry during the day, or why I'm afraid to eat more during the day and why I end up overreating at night. I think a lot of it really is that fear of being hungry at night, and maybe I seek the comfort and craving of eating especially so, during this time.

I obtained a $20,000 loan for the house back in August, and this last weekend marked my having spent just over that amount. (Of course, that does not count the $3,621 I put on my Visa card before that loan, to pay for electrical work, dumpster rental and other items.) This Friday I will cash in my three remaining, partially-mature savings bonds from my dad's parents. Those will pay for the floor refinishing and (used) appliances. I can put half the cabinets on my IKEA card, the other half on the empty space left on my Visa card, and the laminate flooring, downstairs toilet, and paint will be put on my Lowe's card.

I probably sound crazy, but I do believe it will all be worth it in the long run. That is, as long as I never have trouble finding renters. If that is the case, I should be able to comfortably pay off the debt in due time while making the house a nicer and nicer place to live for the people inside.

The tub is now installed. I thought it would only take Don an hour to do and I'd just pay him a $20 fee for his time. But with all the trouble and little purchases it ultimately required, it came to a grand total of $110 for the whole job. That really bummed me out a lot.

I hope I always remember to thank the people who come over to help. Joe is there every weekend, and Matt is usually there with him. Two of the other three guys who will be renting have come over twice, and the other one is supposed to be there this weekend. My mom works non-stop, but she is in Arizona right now visiting my brother and her new granddaughter. My dad sent me his miter saw and $300 (which was immediately evaporated when a $300 part on the furnace broke with exactly perfect timing). I promise to take care of my parents in their old age and lower the rent when the house and all associated debts are fully paid off.

Turns out 'my' beautiful cat has fleas. I've been pondering over why i've been itching like crazy for the past few weeks, especially on my neck and round my hairline (the cat likes to climb up and sit round my neck and pur in my ear).
Can/do cat fleas live on humans, or just bite you? And is it possible the fleas could have transferred onto my bed (the cat sleeps on there)?

So the government have decided to give the unemployed therapy to help them get back to work. Right. A psychiatrist is sceptical, as am I. The reason there's a hell of a lot of people unemployed is because there's no jobs, DUH. It also seems ridiculus that they're considering offering therapy to the unemployed when people with serious mental illnesses have to wait months or years for therapy. And finally the reasons for long-term unemployment are complex and won't be solved by CBT.

"When two snails meet during the breeding season (late spring or early summer), mating is initiated by one snail piercing the skin of the other snail with a calcified 'love dart'. The exact purpose of the 'love dart' is not fully understood but it seems to stimulate the other snail into exchanging small packets of sperm."
Two of my snails (Little Joe and Turnip) just mated and i've found the love dart. It's about 8mm long and white.

I've lived with my new housemate for 3 days and he's already pissed me off completely.
The following is housemate behaviour that i don't think is reasonable:
- leaving the front and back doors wide open (especially considering we've had so much stuff stolen and how people can be nasty round here)
- helping himself to ALL the cakes in the kitchen
- shouting loudly, rudely and aggressively at my housemate (even worse considering she's come out an abusive relationship)
- smoking weed in the house (especially considering his housemates don't smoke it, plus two of us have MH problems and the other is technically a child)
- helping himself to my cutlery and crockery. And then not washing it up. And then leaving it all over the place, including next door.
- whilst borrowing my laptop to go on facebook talking to SIMON on msn PRETENDING TO BE ME.
I'm trying to decide if he's gone far enough over the line for me to speak to our support worker about it.

I'm pissed off with things politically - particularly our governments complete failure when it comes to tackling poverty. I've mentioned that my best-friend-at-home has moved into a council flat. He's on JSA which brings in £100 a fortnight. £10 is deducted immediately to pay off the crisis loan he used to get the absolute basics for his flat - a microwave, a table, a mattress (he's still living without a fridge, cooker, washing machine - anything like that). Another £75 goes straight out in bills - water, electricity, gas and TV license. So he basically has £15 for a fortnight, so £1 a day. For him to go anywhere he needs the bus (otherwise it's 1 1/2 hours to walk to the city centre), and that's £3.40 a day. Add to this is an alcohol and drug problem, which can add up.
Now seriously - how is someone supposed to survive on £1 a day...? And with no cooker, no fridge, no washing machine? WHAT THE FUCK IS A PERSON MEANT TO DO?! The obvious answer for him is crime. No damn decent government should be forcing their people to resort to such measures just so they can put food on the table.
Fortunately he's got signed up with a support worker and a drug/alcohol counsellor who are both looking at his finances for him to help with budgeting. Maybe they can come up with a way to reduce the bills and/or find more money.
Frankly the prospect of moving out of here and me being in the same position scares the crap out of me.

I haven't felt misanthropic in awhile. Lately, if I see a news story about some egregious cruelty, I don't have a compulsion to "blog" about it as proof of our evil nature. I don't feel the impulse to measure and evaluate our species, or feel that it would make a lot of sense to do so. This is probably due to basically being forced to keep an eye on my mental state because of the Bagley house project. I can't afford to fall into self-destructive ways of thinking. That's not to say that the stress of how much there is to do in so little time doesn't bum me out sometimes, but I would be a lot worse off without you-know-what. And I would ALSO be effed without friends helping out. Joe and Matt helped out on Sunday. Matt is especially good for items that require attention to detail. Frequently performing surgeries probably contributes to that.

Something that has really interested me about Buddhism lately is the teaching of letting go of views. It's not that this is a secret part of Buddhism that I just discovered--I might actually be just starting to understand it. Political views are one example. I've always been too entrenched in the Liberal vs. Conservative dichotomy, but Barack Obama's presidency has kind of taken me out of that a little. I thought for sure he was the rational, revolutionary liberal we needed to fix this country--yet a year later we're still waiting for him to do something as simple and straightforward as reversing Clinton's executive order instituting the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. I've also benefited from the conservative conspiracy theorists who believe that Obama is going to create a Marxist dictatorship any day now. If he really has that kind of power, what is taking him so long? I want to laugh until I remember how we all thought Bush was going to institute a Fascist dictatorship "any day now". Bush was still a terrible president who should be charged with war crimes and civil rights violations, but if he was planning a Fascist dictatorship, letting a black liberal Democrat become president and then defending him when fellow conservatives rooted for his failure would kind of a foolish thing to do. We liberals secretly prayed for Bush's assassination (or joked that the only reason not to was because Dick Cheney would be even worse), but when conservatives express a similar wish for Obama, we conclude that they MUST be racist Nazi Fascist scum and congratulate ourselves on our superiority.

And I can't advocate the idea that a third party candidate would revolutionize the country, either. My conclusion isn't "both major parties are the same" or that they're "evil". That would be just another view.

I was listening to George Carlin's Brain Droppings while working at the house last week, and he said something in the introduction that I think contains some wisdom:

"[I]f you read something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in 'issues' is merely to point out how badly we're doing, not to suggest a way we might do better. Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they 'ought to be.' And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope! ...

"And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right."

It is considered very insulting to accuse someone of not having an opinion. It is supposed to be a sign of moral and intellectual weakness. But how? It is our natural inclination to fall into a set of deeply-held, ferociously-defended opinions. Why is that desirable? And is opinionlessness really a problem? (Or even a word?)

I know I already wrote all about this just seven months ago. I would like to think that my understanding of these ideas is maybe just half an inch deeper than it was then. It is really hard to let go of political views! "Yeah, the Buddha said you should stop clinging to views... but Republicans are still stupid and you should DEFINITELY vote Democrat or at least a liberal third party." I sincerely hope that the rationalizing of my selectively clinging to views is fading away.

So is Buddhism also a "view"? Yeah, actually. But it is a view conducive to happiness and ultimately aimed toward the uprooting of all views. It is still an impermanent construct--just a useful one. The Buddha said that his teachings only need to be held onto temporarily, like holding onto a raft while one crosses a river and leaving it behind after one arrives at the farther shore. Good Buddhists don't have any impulse to evangelize, argue, or debate.

I recently found a great sutta on this subject. It is attributed to the Buddha as a reply to a skilled debater named Pasura who tried to goad the Buddha into some kind of philosophical argument:

"Only here is there purity"
— that's what they say —
"No other doctrines are pure"
— so they say.
Insisting that what they depend on is good,
they are deeply entrenched in their personal truths.

Seeking controversy, they plunge into an assembly,
regarding one another as fools.
Relying on others' authority,
they speak in debate.
Desiring praise, they claim to be skilled.

Engaged in disputes in the midst of the assembly,
— anxious, desiring praise —
the one defeated is
chagrined.
Shaken with criticism, he seeks for an opening.

He whose doctrine is [judged as] demolished,
defeated, by those judging the issue:
He laments, he grieves — the inferior exponent.
"He beat me," he mourns.

These disputes have arisen among contemplatives.
In them are elation,
dejection.
Seeing this, one should abstain from disputes,
for they have no other goal
than the gaining of praise.

He who is praised there
for expounding his doctrine
in the midst of the assembly,
laughs on that account & grows haughty,
attaining his heart's desire.

That haughtiness will be his grounds for vexation,
for he'll speak in pride & conceit.
Seeing this, one should abstain from debates.
No purity is attained by them, say the skilled.

Like a strong man nourished on royal food,
you go about, roaring, searching out an opponent.
Wherever the battle is,
go there, strong man.
As before, there's none here.

Those who dispute, taking hold of a view,
saying, "This, and this only, is true,"
those you can talk to.
Here there is nothing —
no confrontation
at the birth of disputes.

Among those who live above confrontation
not pitting view against view,
whom would you gain as opponent, Pasura,
among those here
who are grasping no more?

So here you come,
conjecturing,
your mind conjuring
viewpoints.
You're paired off with a pure one
and so cannot proceed.

(Pasura Sutta, Snp 4.8, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu)