Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

When I talked to my social worker about the fight mentioned here, she said she didn't notice. This difference in perception has always been a problem in dealing with human beings. Although I was acting extremely angry, normal people often seem to do that even when they're not, sometimes to the point of explicitly telling their friends to ____ themselves. It's irritating always to have to assume that someone is hurt since there's no way of knowing (since people who aren't angry often pretend they are, and those who are pretend they aren't), and even if I could ask, I've never encountered someone who is willing to talk out a problem. The obvious solution (one covered by the book we're currently studying) is not to care when I hurt others, but I still don't want to resort to that.

Other things I forgot to mention the other night:

Considering the accessibility of the brass, perhaps paizo would be a small enough company that they didn't use huge machines to pack the stuff, meaning people could converse without screaming. I think that would be helpful for building relationships and communication. On the other hand, there wouldn't be anyplace in the department where you wouldn't be chugging smoke from the people outside (or inside) the loading dock, or those who had just come in from break. (I wonder how people with significant allergies to tobacco can survive in America. They can't work at blue-collar jobs, and there are very few colleges they can attend in order to get others. Is that enough to get you disability benefits?)

It also occurred to me that I could use the skills I've had to develop to my advantage. Most significantly, at work, I've had a lot of practice hiding, sneaking, and keeping an eye on my enemies. Unfortunately, I can't join the military or a S.W.A.T. team or anything, so I don't know where I could turn that into a legal profession. In fiction, private eyes do a lot of spying on people, but I don't know anywhere that would be legal or tolerable, and I'd have to join as a specialist in an agency where someone else does the customer service.

When I talked to my contemporary social worker about the idea of joining the force noted here, she said she didn't think I'd be able to become stronger by it. That's fair enough; I also realized that I'd make a lot of enemies in the force by my opinion that officers should follow laws. (It also occurred to me that they don't get to take the squad cars home, do they? If not, most of the time they're driving them around would be when they're on patrol, which begs the question, why the hell are they in such a hurry?)

Beside the warehouse job at Privateer Press noted at the bottom of the same post, there was also a similar position at the other best company in the same area. However, where the former one stopped responding to my emails on several occasions after discussion, the latter was never willing to answer even once. Oddly enough, whenever I've sent an email to the company about anything other than that position, the CEO personally replied, to the point of giving me information about their lines that wouldn't be announced for some months afterward. It (relatively) recently occurred to me that I could try going through her to get to the job. But, after the wake-up call, I guess it wouldn't work. I imagine the people at the company wouldn't treat me as such a freak as the ones where I am now do (or at least I'd be able to find someone to talk to), but the rest of my life would probably not work without anyone I know in the entire region.

Anyway, my current social worker suggests that maybe I could get Mother to let me quit this job if I got another. Of course, there's no way I can go to any interviews, so the best we have on that front is considering applying again for assistance in that area.

So, I went to the wedding. Besides getting out of hell for a while, it also gave me the chance to experience a bunch of unusual situations (such as hanging out with people who've been drinking). The wedding itself wasn't overtly religious; although the officiate (the bride's brother) had "vestments" and "authority . . . by God," he was apparently joking. During the actual ceremony (from what I could make out from behind all the more important people who were able to stand in the area with chairs), I don't recall if he referenced any religions that are still believed by significant numbers of people. On the other hand, it appears that the bride took the groom's last name. It's sad that people still cling to this chauvinistic tradition even a full generation after people started fixing it.

One thing, however, that struck me was how many times I was too afraid even to say things to lokodraucarn, one of the closest I have to a friend and one of the few people I'm inviting when trying to get together a group where I don't have to be afraid. In this case, I believe that having a common interest gives me courage, but I don't know whether it will help me move on or just be inapplicable to other situations. I went to another diagnosis last week, and the best they could drum up was "schizotypal disorder."

I decided to risk taking a shower while Mother was out.

As you may have noticed, I didn't catch up any on journaling. This is because I was too busy wading through the Penny and Aggie archives (thanks to Ms.? kyanited). It's not enough yuri that I'd buy it, but most of it is free, they don't try to be Japanese (much), and they have an RSS feed, so I may as well follow it. Still, I think I see more clearly why I had so much trouble watching the L word: because it deals with real-life issues and hatreds. I can deal with crime shows and action movies because they're so alien to anything I've ever encountered. (Of course, I've never had a confirmed sighting of a non-straight lady, either, but prejudices are pretty similar regardless of which minority they cover.) I'm thinking maybe I should publish all my stories set on "Earth" mainly in Japan, just to reduce the accusations of dealing with social issues.

Apparently I am scientifically recognized as being a zero.

I managed to get up early enough to leave in the early afternoon. Google Maps suggested a direct route, but Mother suggested a longer one using freeways. I decided to try the former on the way down and the latter on the way back. Navigating was particularly difficult for someone who has only once been allowed to travel outside of town in the last nine years. (Mother did give me permission to do a bit of practice before that time, but it didn't fit my schedule.)

On the leg of the trip with my brother, talking about D&D got sidetracked into my social problems. He gave me a lot of advice, of which the gist seemed to be that people will do horrible things all the time, so I just have to put up with it and be friends with them. It's good to have someone with whom I can talk about these things (as I don't have any friends, and I can't talk with the people at work or gaming), but I think the fact that he doesn't know me is a handicap. He probably hasn't heard about my major psychoses, and he seems to think that I'm able to function like a human being.

When I asked whether he keeps his A/C set on "circulate" for the same reason I do, he said that tobacco smoke in small amounts is actually beneficial to one's health, as it inures the body to its effects. This didn't turn up in my cursory research on the topic. I can understand how difficulty breathing could strengthen the lungs and make them more resistant to emphysema, but it seems odd that one would be able to develop antibodies against carcinogens. Even if so, I still feel that poisoning others for the sole purpose of poisoning yourself is not validated by a side effect. It's like coughing on people when you're sick and saying it helps as a vaccination.

We arrived at our destination in the evening, so our father allowed us our freedom for the moment. Other than watching a bit of Happy Feet and some other stuff, one other incident was that Daniel complained about my snoring, which shook up my perception that it was safe to spend time with him. He also said that it was unhealthy of me to use two pillows.

I completely forgot to do the laundry on my long day when I had time. (I'd skipped it when I had the chance last week because I didn't have enough to make a real load.)

My new assignment from my social worker is to read Sections 1–4 of Chapter 9 (when they actually get to the exercises). We looked over some things during the session. I'm a bit ambivalent about the parts about how I'm supposed to act. For example, let's look at eye contact:

1. In high school, the "normals" claimed that if you look at someone, it's definitely because you want to have sex with that person (like how you're automatically masturbating unless you keep both hands above the table). This shouldn't be a problem, but one of the two main ringleaders in the department has stated publicly that he takes pride in being less mature than a high-school student, and both certainly act that way.

2. Lowering my head is the only compromise I've found between treating ladies with respect and not being considered a freak.

3. I've also ended up keeping my head down at work, as the only way I can find to avoid fights is to avoid any interactions entirely. It irks me to have to bow to a man, but I don't see any other option.

Of course, I didn't have the guts to say any of this to her. She says I'm going to have to start by practicing on her on Monday.

At work, I got in trouble for not completely disposing of things when I wasn't explicitly told how much to do. Admittedly, I haven't gotten in that many fights because people caught me cleaning up properly.

For the second shift, the operator gave me the choice of either working the station where I can't keep up or the one with two people. I didn't want to provoke people by thinking about it, so I made a snap decision to the latter. Unfortunately, I failed to consider the fact that they put me there replacing the one of the previous two with whom I actually get along, leaving me to work with the one person I despise most. (He's still only one of my three main enemies, as I don't fear him nearly as much as the other two.) I've deliberately been avoiding teamwork for some time now, but this really rubbed my face in the fact that, after more than six months, he's still completely incompetent at this job. Besides the usual slowness (he's one of the only two in the 20-man department who's slower than I) and sloppiness, he kept making obvious mistakes and then escalating them continuously. Even if I were willing to try to communicate with an enemy in less than an emergency, he has a track record of doing the opposite of what I say even when he asks me (hopefully because he's deaf and delusional, not malicious). It's a good thing they replaced him with someone else for the hard part.

Well, I said that I'd be picking these up later, but with all else I have to do on the computer and how little I get to use it (to say nothing of the fact that I have about 30 minutes worth of stuff I'm required to do every time I use it), there's no way I'm going to be able to catch up with my backlog. Consequently, I'll just point out the complicated things that I missed:

*Overhearing Mother talking to my brother about racism

*Doubt

*Work

*Easter

As I live in fear because of much less significant problems, I spend my spare time trying to enjoy myself rather than being an activist for major causes. However, I have been willing to at least add my name to petitions that I've encountered (on the Web) on the moral issues that are most significant to me. This has put me on mailing lists that thankfully increase my real-mail:spam ratio*. More significantly, they've pointed out more things that I should at least link: that systematic rape is more popular than I realized (1 2) and that creationists have even more pseudo-reasons than I realized.

*The third link also got me four automatic replies from various congressmen. I don't remember having run into that before. At least I can assume that ".in.gov" domains don't give a lot of accounts to spammers.

I was surprised to find that the works I noted have been relayed on a main article at Yuri na Hi-Bi. (Between the RSS feed not working well and the articles changing order all the time, it's lucky I didn't miss that one.) Unfortunately, I had only said what they were to test the water, not actually posted any information about them yet, so I'd better actually type the reviews before people come complaining that some of them have very little yuri in them.

I also got a reply from Ms. Morishima when I answered a post a while back, but I don't have proof, since I used email, and she only answers "applause" publicly. This one may have been misleading too, as I haven't actually drawn anything yet.

But in any case, it does seem that Japanese people are polite, so I'd like to try to keep these communications up to help recover some of the confidence in human interaction that I've been losing through communicating with English-speaking people (on the Internet, gaming, and especially at work). I actually got an OpenID livedoor account, but that doesn't seem to have any effect on commenting.

In general, one expects that through continuing exposure to some element, one would become accustomed or desensitized to it. So it's somewhat disturbing that the more I interact with human beings, the more I learn to hate and fear them. (I'll hopefully elaborate on that later.) This is making life difficult enough that, time and again, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to give up.

One interesting thing that I've noticed is that I don't remember ever having seen Japanese people do this. It may be because of how little experience therein, but statistically speaking, I should have found at least one flame in the fora, blogs, wiki talk pages, and personal messages by now if it's anywhere near as bad as people conversing in English—and that's the sort of thing that I remember. It almost seems like it's true that Japanese people are ridiculously polite to strangers. Of course, it may simply be that my unfamiliarity with the language makes it more difficult for me to read how they mean things, but that still means it's less hurtful to me and may help me build up a bit of confidence (and practice my language skills and build contacts*). The one obvious way to do this is Yuri na Hibi's place for sharing information. I have a few older comics that I didn't find introduced there, so I'm thinking of asking if there's interest in me posting about them.

First, of course, I really should type the second installment of that stuff I promised Ms. darkenez0_o I'd post. This has been hugely delayed due to the fact that I find it difficult to schedule a couple of hours to work on a single blog post these days. The agreement didn't state the extent of what I'd type, but I'm planning to try to catch up with the current issue and call it quits, as from that point on, it'd be easy enough for anyone who can play the subject to buy them and read them herself.

*My therapist even suggested that I talk about getting people to draw my shorts. for me, but I'm a long way away from having anyone that friendly yet.

Someone else also complains (admittedly in jest) about the fact that they make laws that aren't supposed to be followed. If you drive at or below the speed limit, you're a roadblock, and if there's one thing experience teaches me (about which I really should post), it's that you can't trust any man to act rationally even about the slightest things. And, of course, if they expected us to follow the laws, they wouldn't allow the police to drive well over the speed limit and make random U-turns all the time (not just when actually chasing someone or get to a crime scene, when they're supposed to use the lights on the roofs).

They also had an interview with a couple of Oscar-nominee/winners. The oldest significant memory I have of Downey is when my brother and I were watching one* of those movie CMs where they list and show a bunch of stars at the end. When they said and showed, "Robert Downey Jr.," we both said, "as Al Pacino?" The hair and the lines around his eyes did it.

Anyway, the comment about blackface relates to yellowface (which I had just looked up the other day, don't remember in what context), which segues to something I coincidentally (only noticed because I happened to see it mentioned on the front page right before I left work) found in the paper. I guessed what it was from the blurb, but was somewhat amused by the fact that they gave that headline, considering the fact that it was about English society (which they didn't even mention). Still, when I looked it up, I found here that, despite the fact that the play itself makes no attempt at having anything to do with Japan (as exemplified by how I searched for the URL with the word that I thought I could spell the same way and that would be in the article, which happened to be "poo"), Gilbert actually tried to put accurate Japanese elements in the production. (Incidentally, this section is also interesting, particularly the fact that they didn't argue against one bit being sexist. . . .) My mother also disagrees with the description of Peterson as "fluent," although I don't know on what bases she makes that claim. (Considering that I had only taken two years, which doesn't get so far as to actually learn much of any Japanese, I wouldn't have known the difference when I had the chance to observe for myself.) In any case, I don't see any need to go to it, as there probably won't be anyone I would recognize except Peterson himself, and even if I do get to speak a bit of Japanese with him, I'd also have to let him régale his current students with tales of how entertaining I am.

*I don't remember what it was. I thought it was Zodiac, but the pictures don't look right (particularly the ones with glasses, which would have prevented us from getting that impression). I remember the shot was of him sitting in what looked a room in a home, looking at a three-quarter angle. Does anyone happen to have any idea what that would have been?