Dichotomy Hubris

I was greatly exaggerated, or something like that...

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:41:12 GMT

So I've been off the air a long time. It's been the best of times and worst of times.
I had a cancer scare, which fortunately turned out to be nothing.
I had some very bad advice from a psychologist to try going off my medication, which was great for about three months and then the next twelve months after that I mostly wanted to kill myself. Or the psychologist. Or both.

Fortunately I got some good help, but most of 2007 is pretty hazy as I slowly recovered and figured out what medications were gonna work for me now.

But overall I'm in a good place these days. I touch base with a psychologist every few months just to discuss how medication is going and make sure things are fine there. Haven't needed more of the therapy type talking stuff in a long time, and doing reasonably well.

Kids are growing too fast, and we seem to be collecting pets at a prodigious rate.

I've also set up accounts on twitter and identi.ca if you're interested in following me on either one of those. I'm not really sure why I'm back on the air, but have been feeling that something is brewing and I should reestablish a presence. We'll see where the muse goes…

New and Interesting Things I've Learned About Drugs

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 07:12:58 GMT

Avanza is okay for day to day, but doesn't really hold me up well under stress.

Thus, while things seemed relatively calm thought it was a good time to go back to Effexor, which seems to work well for me apart from a few side-effects which I can live with.

Coming off the Avanza, or re-starting the Effexor can trigger incredibly strong panic attacks which, after a week were actually getting worse, not better.

And lastly, Xanax is your friend. Xanax can make drilling a hole in your head perhaps not look like quite the best solution for releasing the pressure build up.

But don't worry, every day I'm getting better and better. That's what the little green men from Mars keep telling me...

Dic. H.

Sat, 16 Jul 2005 04:06:18 GMT

Anyone there?

Still here, somewhere...

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 05:40:36 GMT

Sorry for the long silence.

It's been a combination of work, family and then traveling interstate that has kept me away.

I've caught up on my friends list but pretty much speed scanned through - so not too many comments, but I'm still thinking of ya.

I do have two articles rummaging around in the back of my head and getting more insistent on being written down - I think I'll have to make the time to rather then try and find the time...

One of them has some latin in it though, and I'm not up to facing that at the moment... :-)

In the meantime, take a look at this article da roses posted recently about a blind medical student earning his M.D. Very interesting.

Feeling a bit down at the moment. Had a phone call today regarding a contract job I applied for which I thought I was a pretty good match for, and got thoroughly disabused of that notion by the employment agent. Big ego hit.

And then the email account I just for LJ seems to have packed it in, so I've had to create a new one - so if anybody has emailed me recently you might want to comment here instead...

Dic H

More Invective

Mon, 09 May 2005 13:47:06 GMT

In my previous entry I talked about the five love languages and pondered if the sexual abuse I experienced as a child of nine effected my primary love language(s) or not.

Comments from da_rosas and sparklndymnd got me thinking a bit more on the topic more with regard to abuse survivors in general, and not just my own predicament.

First, if you are interested, below are a few links to some online quizzes to determine your main love language(s). I make no claim as to the veracity or accuracy of these. Caveat emptor:

Quiz 1
Quiz 2
Quiz 3

Note that I think we can and do express and receive love in all ways from time to time, but one or two of them are the main ways you recognise and have the most impact with you. For instance — as Sophie will testify — I am not one for expressing love through acts of service, I'm not good with the little things, but if you're a friend of mine and you need someone to help you move house, or need a ride because your car has broken down, then I'm your man.

I think abuse can really effect the way you receive and/or express love. For one thing, it can really screw up your notions of what loving behaviour is and isn't, just as it screws up your perceptions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in general, leaving you to question yourself a lot sometimes.

I see two main types of effect of abuse to a person's acceptance and expression of love: desensitisation and craving.

Desensitisation

One of the symptoms of PTSD is shutting down emotionally or feeling emotionally numb. This includes having loving feelings or feeling any strong emotions. This may also manifest as a distaste or refusal to accept expressions of love in particular forms. For instance someone who is verbally abused and put down all the time may not be able to accept affirmation or compliments, always suspicious. Someone who was physically or sexually abused may find physical contact uncomfortable or disconcerting.

It seems to me that desensitisation can lead to two opposite forms of behaviour:

Withdrawal — where you take the emotional numbness to a high art form. Rarely expressing any genuine positive emotion other than cynicism and disdain.
Indulgence — seeking out something, anything, to make you feel something again. This would often be self-destructive things like drugs or promiscuity.

Craving

Craving would be trying to find love in any way that you can. If your view of love has been distorted by abuse, you could be trying to find love in behaviour similar to the abuse that occurred in the first place. Some victims of abuse can find themselves easily involved with other abusers in the search for love, becoming prey for the abusive predator.

Others craving love can find caring and genuine suitors, but paradoxically be unable to accept that these people can really love “the real them”.

Thoughts?

Dic. H.

Vulgar Language

Sun, 08 May 2005 08:13:41 GMT

Have you every heard of the five love languages? Apart from being a series of books, its also a theory that there are five different ways that people express and receive love:

1. Words of affirmation
2. Receiving gifts
3. Quality time
4. Acts of service
5. Physical touch

I'm not sure how widely accepted this is in psychological circles or if it is just Dr. Chapman's pet theories that he's been able to spin to a money making series of books (yes I am cynical), but I definitely am the physical touch type when it comes to receiving and expressing love and affection. Words of affirmation or encouragement would be my second most common.

(Funnily enough, Sophie is an acts of service kind of person — sometimes opposites really do attract!)

I was thinking about this this morning. Hmmm... physical touch and words of affirmation... two things that really get used the wrong way when you are sexually abused. I wonder if these are my love languages because they were really hammered badly when I was nine years old — many parts of my psyche still forming — or if the they have been (or would have been) my love languages all along.

Dic. H.

Ow

Sun, 08 May 2005 07:31:28 GMT

Thursday evening the fire alarms went off at work. Turned out to be a small electrical fire on the ground floor in an area being refurbished, but we didn't know that at the time and had to evacuate the building... via the stairs... from the forty-first floor...

Three days later and I think my leg muscles are just starting to forgive me...

Confronting the man behind the curtain, part II

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:29:52 GMT

Things have been very busy of late. I've been working on a contract which has involved a lot of long days and weekend work, so I haven't had a lot of time to stop and smell the roses, let alone introspection.

Anyhoo... what things have been like since confronting my brother?

To be honest, I was really, really flat for a while after that (as Sophie would definitely testify to!).

Didn't really understand why until I talked with my therapist about it. One of the aspects of confronting my brother and his admitting responsibility is a kind of validation of the fact that, hey, it was a bloody awful thing I went through, and I'm allowed to acknowledge that fact now. The immediate associations of shame and guilt are loosened a bit, allowing other things through.

So, while you might expect a great weight off your shoulders, or some kind of euphoria, there's actually been a period of grief. Grief for what happened I guess.

Also, while knowing in your head that this was no magic bullet that would cure me, I suppose there was a little bit of disappointment that it didn't anyway.

At any rate, I think I'm pretty much past that period, and being kept as busy as I have has probably helped in some ways.

Working as a contractor, I'm having to learn to handle the insecurity of not having regular work lined up for long periods at a time, which is very new and quite challenging for me. I'm winding up on this current two month project next week, and it looks like I've got three weeks of bits and pieces stuff after that, and then we'll see. At any rate, so far, so good.

There's probably a bit more I could ramble on about, but its getting towards bed time and I'm not feeling the most articulate. Just wanted to lodge a brief status update with my lj friends.

Dic. H.

Joke for today

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 10:07:52 GMT

Q: What do you call a pig with no nipples?

A: Disgruntled

An argument with my six year old daughter...

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 09:29:45 GMT

McKenzie: “Yes you did!”

Dad: “No I didn't!”

M: “Yes you did!”

D: “No I didn't!”

M: “Yes you did!”

D: “No I didn't!”

M: “Yes you did!”

D: “No I didn't!”

M: “Yes you did!”

D: “No I didn't!”

M: “Yes you did!”

D: “No I didn't!”

M: “Yes you did!”

D: “You're acting like a child.”

M: “No I'm not!”

D: “Yes you are!”

M: “No I'm not!”

D: “Are too!”

M: “No I'm not!”

D: “Are too!”

M: “No I'm not!”

D: “Are too!”

M: “No I'm not!”

D: “Are too!”

M: “No I'm not!”

D: “Are too!”

M: “No I'm not!”

...

I also find it odd that threatening to send a child to their room for being naughty while you are tucking them into bed actually works, but it does!

Dic. H.

Question?

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 12:24:55 GMT

If a man talks in the forest, and a woman isn't there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Happy Easter

Fri, 25 Mar 2005 02:27:06 GMT

Dic. H.

Bar jokes...

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 07:22:22 GMT

Someone on there journal told a bar joke, which reminded me of my two favourite bar jokes...

An Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman walked into a bar.
You think at least one of them would have seen it.

A catholic, a buddhist and a mormon walked into a bar.
The bartender looked up and said, “What is this? Some sort of joke?”

And while I'm on a roll...

Two elephants walked off a cliff...

Boom, boom.

(With apologies) Dic. H.

Confronting the man behind the curtain...

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 13:30:58 GMT

At the start of last month I posted an entry called Fear and loathing in Dichotomy Hubris.

It was about how I feel so cut off a lot of the time from support from other people because I can't share what happened. I am bound up by shame and humiliation over being sexually abused by my own brother.

Well, I ended up taking a copy of that entry to my therapist, as I felt I needed to talk about it more. We discussed the aspects of my abuse that really involve his instilling of shame and humiliation in me as a form of control and dominance.

That shame translates in a large way to the fact that it was my own brother, a family member that did it. Now a few of my friends know I was abused, but the identity of my abuser is the one little kernel of fact I haven't told anyone except my wife and health professionals.

This excerpt from my previous entry sums up a lot of it:

Some of these people I have known a long time. Some of these people have also known my brother for a long time. None of them would have an inkling of what he did to me before they knew either of us.

I'm isolated by my own shame and fears. What would they think of me if they knew. If it had been some stranger or something it might be different. What would they think of my family.

Now besides the fact I've just realised upon re-reading that I should have had a lot of question marks instead of periods on those rhetorical questions — there is a lot of pain and shame bound up in those words.

One thing my therapist said was that the only way to really, really know how people are going to react if you tell them who abused you it to actually tell them and find out. My immediate response was, “Well, that's no good to me, tell me another way!”

I don't agree with every observation my therapist has made about me, some we've discussed and others we haven't (or at least I haven't), but — damn her eyes — I think in the end she is right about this one.

So, for me, the first step to talking to other people about this, people who know my brother, is to talk to my brother about this. To at least warn him.

You're reaction to that may be, “Stuff him! He deserves what he gets and you don't owe him anything!”, and you'd probably be right. I didn't say I owed it to him to warn him, I said the first step for me was to warn him. I had to do that, to at least treat him fairly or decently on that level, without compromising what I need to do to heal myself.

If you've survived abuse that may not be an aspect for you, but it was for me. The only common factor I have seen in survivors paths to healing is that they are worked out in excruciating increments.

So I've been working up to it. A few weeks ago I told him I wanted to talk to him about some stuff. Hadn't seen him since then because he was away on a business trip, so I had a reprieve for a while.

So this afternoon, brother drops in to return some stuff he had borrowed of mine, and to pick up a book I had borrowed of his. We're sitting there talking about some stuff, all the while the back of my head is going “how do I do this?”

Sophie knows what I'm planning so she's staying out of the room and keeping the kids entertained down the other end of the house. I start talking about how I've been having therapy lately for something called PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, sort of easing myself up to it.

So then I say, if I've got Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, then there must have been some Trauma to be Post, as it were. He agrees. I say the trauma occurred when I was about age nine and that I was sexually abused. He looks me in the eye and says, “By me.”

“Yes.”

Long silence.

“Why did you do that?”

“I don't know.”

We started to talk more. This may seem a bit surreal but we were having this calm, casual conversation more or less. No hysterics, no accusations and denials, no outpouring of emotions. We, just, talked.

Like me, his memories of that time are a bit hazy and fragmented too. I've mentioned before how my brother is a bit of an odd person and it wouldn't surprise me at all if he had some form of Asperger's Syndrome or similar condition. Well, one thing he mentioned was that our mum would tell him she didn't understand him at all, and vent that frustration verbally in a lot of ways. He always saw me as the favoured sibling. I believe he even said that mum told him she wished he hadn't been born. I don't know about any of that, I don't recall, but while I'm a bit surprised I can believe it possible. However he did say that while it may, in part, explain why he did what he did, it doesn't excuse what he did.

We talked for a bit. Some of the relevant things to come out of it were:

He takes full responsibility for what he did. He may not really know why he did it, but he knew it was wrong and there are no excuses.

He regrets it. He apologised for it. He understood that may not be worth much, but he offered it for what it was anyway.

He can understand my need to talk to others about this, and I should do what I need to do. He wasn't giving me permission, he knew I wasn't asking for that, he just acknowledged that I need to do this and he appreciated my giving him a heads up.

He knows this has been a big silent wall between us for a long time. He hopes that perhaps we can repair our relationship in the future but will understand if that never happens.

All in all it went about as well as I expect these things could go.

All in all, I think he's been expecting this for a long time.

So how am I now? To be honest I'm numb. After he had left, Sophie and I sat on the bed and I told her about it all. We had to go about to a friends place not long after that for a while, so I really haven't had a lot of time to process it all yet. There's reaction going on. I think there's some relief. I can feel my heart racing a bit every now and again.

I'm glad tomorrow is a public holiday here because I suspect reaction will come to the surface tomorrow, once I have some space, it's all happening in the back of my head at the moment, and will come forward once it's processed a bit.

I guess that's one excruciating increment dealt with. I don't know exactly what it has achieved, or where it leads, but I think the path is going upwards... one less dark secret killing me slowly...

Dic. H.

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 10:04:08 GMT

A country preacher decided to skip services one Sunday and head to the hills to do some bear hunting. As he rounded the corner on a perilous twist in the trail, he and a bear collided, sending him and his rifle tumbling down the mountainside. Before he knew it, his rifle went one way and he went the other, landing on a rock and breaking both legs. That was the good news. The bad news was the ferocious bear charging at him from a distance, and he couldn't move.

“Oh, Lord,” the preacher prayed, “I'm so sorry for skipping services today to come out here and hunt. Please forgive me and grant me just one wish ... please make a Christian out of that bear that's coming at me. Please, Lord!”

That very instant, the bear skidded to a halt, fell to its knees, clasped its paws together and began to pray aloud right at the preacher's feet. “Dear God, bless this food I am about to receive...”

That was for ewin because she likes bear jokes.

Navel Engineering

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 11:51:47 GMT

Okay, up front I want to say this is thisismostlymes fault. In one of her entries she asked if Adam and Eve had belly buttons, which immediately reminded me of this short essay I wrote for high school some 18 odd years ago. Published for your, errrr, well just published...

Navel Engineering

(Or, the deep and meaningful question, did Adam have a belly button or not?)

Adam's navel, or lack of one as the case may be, has created an interesting paradox that could keep the medical and philosophical fields guessing for years, if anybody bothered to treat it seriously.

The navel, commonly known as the belly button is formed by the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord carries all nourishment between the child and the placenta during pregnancy. In other words, the umbilical cord is the “life line” of the unborn child, while development takes place in the womb. However, after birth this life line is no longer needed, as its functions have been taken over by other parts of the body, such as the digestive and respiratory system. After birth the umbilical cord is severed, forming the umbilicus or belly button. The belly button could be described as the scar left by the umbilical cord which is no longer used.

The Biblical record of the creation of Adam does not clearly state whether Adam was made with or without a belly button. The Bible does however, give a general description of how Adam was created, along with the rest of the world in the book of Genesis.

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

Genesis 2:7 KJV

Adam was the first human to be created and therefore never had a mother nor did he develop in a womb of any description, he was formed from “the dust of the ground”, and was created as a fully grown adult. Adam had never been a baby and so he had never had an umbilical cord. If he had never had an umbilical cord then it would be reasonable to assume that the umbilicus, which is a direct result of having an umbilical cord, would never have been formed. Therefore, Adam never had a belly button.

However, this line of reasoning is hampered by two facts. ALL parts of the body, lungs, arms, eyes, stomach and belly button are formed in the womb as an unborn child grows. If Adam was created with these other assets, as if he had been born with them then is it not reasonable to assume that he would have been created with a belly button, as if he had been born with it? Adam was made a complete being, the Bible does not have any record of Adam having any deformity or anything about his body being unnatural. It could therefore be assumed that Adam naturally had a belly button.

Another pro-belly button argument is that Adam is the prototype of all man and therefore, if we have belly buttons then he would have a belly button. As a point of interest, there is also no record of Adam and Eve being surprised that their children were born with these funny looking holes in their tummies. Could this be because they themselves had these funny looking holes in their tummies?

One of the difficulties in finding a solution to this argument, is that none of the evidence for or against the existence of Adam's belly button is contradictory or directly disagreeing with the argument of the other side. More detailed information would be needed, to say definitely, without a doubt, that Adam had a belly button or not.

After such an extensive probing into the belly button issue, the only solution that should be evident, for those who find it important to know whether Adam had a belly button of not is this:

WHO REALLY CARES?

A conversation with my six year old daughter...

Sat, 05 Mar 2005 03:06:36 GMT

McKenzie: “Daddy?”

Dic: “Yes?”

M: “I love you.”

D: “What do you want?”

M: “I love you!”

D: “What do you want?”

M: “Daddy, I love you!”

D: “I love you too.”

M: “I want something to eat...”

They learn young!

Dic. H.

Keeping mormons from your door

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 09:46:28 GMT

To discourage mormons from knocking on your door, ask them, “Is your's the religion that allows you to have more than one wife?”

Then, no matter which way they answer, say, “Oh. In that case I'm not interested.”

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 11:25:52 GMT

Was just thinking the other day... I don't have a huge number of friends on my friends list on LJ. A bit like in my offline life, I just have this core group.

I just figure I must be choosing quality over quantity.

See ya 'round.

Dic. H.

Chalky Cheese

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 14:11:24 GMT

First, I'd like to thank the_sad_girl for giving me permission to reference her journal entry and her identity. She is most gracious.

One of the community groups I read regularly is abusesurvivor, which is a “a place where all survivors of all kinds of abuse can share and heal”.

Often members, especially new members, will post an entry introducing themselves, and will often give a description of the abuse they survived, sharing what they went through.

It may sound morbid, but believe it or not it can be a healthy thing to be able to share things like this with a group of people who have been through similar experiences as yourself.

My therapist used an expression a while ago which I really like, which was “Emotional shorthand”. People with similar powerful experiences such as abuse have an emotional shorthand where they can convey a feeling or concept in just a few words, or a turn of phrase, or a shrug of the shoulders that is totally foreign to those who haven't been where they've been. You don't have to explain everything explicitly, you have a... communion... a rapport. Being able to share your experiences or what you're currently going though with people with the same emotional shorthand can be healing.

One thing I've noticed in myself, and judging by comments in entries from others, is a habit when reading about other peoples experiences to immediately compare their level of abuse to your own. It may not even be something conscious that you do, and it definitely isn't a case of trying to judge if they qualify or not, it absolutely isn't that, its just... I don't know... kind of automatic. There's this rating scale, you just rate their experiences on the scale compared to yours, then it's gone again. Usually.

I'm gonna put a cut here because some things start to get graphic.

Late last year, the_sad_girl posted this entry introducing herself and giving the background on the abuse she endured.

She has been though a hell of a lot. A hell of a lot. Usually reading other people's accounts of their experiences, while upsetting at the time, do not effect me like hers did. Sure you feel compassion, outrage, understanding, a whole gamut. But as I've said before, I am really really good at compartmentalizing.

You box things up and move on. Sure, it may sound a bit harsh, but its a survival technique you had to learn and makes for a hard habit to break later.

After reading TSG's account though, I found it staying with me for quite a few days. This is a girl who was told by her guardian that, as a four year old being raped on a weekly basis by a thirteen year old, she was a slut who must have seduced the guy. This is a girl who was raped on a concrete stairwell at age sixteen by her boyfriend. A girl who's father killed her mother before she was even old enough to crawl. This didn't compartmentalize for me.

This stayed with me for days and days. I don't know why her story effects me more then others I've heard. It just did. Even now, months later I have to wipe away tears as I write this.

I feel sad for the sad girl. I feel so sorry for what happened to her. I feel outrage and hate towards her grandmother. The only one in her young years who was suppose to be her support was possibly the biggest traitor of all in her life.

I felt guilt. Remember that scale I talked about? She scores ten, I score zero. No contest. Why the hell should I have to see a shrink? Why the hell should I have something called post-traumatic stress disorder? All I had to deal with was the sexual proclivities of my brother, and his emotional blackmail and mind games. Sure it was maybe four or five years of my life, but hell, I was already nine by then and she was only four. And the sex part didn't even go on as long as that either.

Dichotomy, noun.

1: a division or the process of dividing into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities
2: something with seemingly contradictory qualities

Mirriam-Webster Dictionary

In my head I know that what I went through was bad, was horrible. But often your emotions tell you you don't have a right to feel that way.

My head understands that, yes, what I went through was very traumatic, and my pain is perfectly valid. But then sometimes your heart tells you such a different story. You whip yourself with feelings of inadequacy for your weakness. You rage against it as self-pity.

And you know what? That's not the worst thing. You know what the worst thing is?

I felt relief. It wasn't a huge feeling, in fact it was a teensy tiny little feeling that it took me days to identify. I was relieved.

You know why?

Somebody

had

it

worse

then

I

did.

It leaves me with a sick feeling in my stomach, but there it is. I don't know why. It sure wasn't a huge component of all I felt, maybe not even two percent compared to the sadness, the outrage, and the guilt, but it was there.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “The dignity and depravity of man”? It is an expression often used by Bible scholars and refers to the capacity of humans and humanity to be able to perform acts of great good, great compassion and self-sacrifice, and yet also have the capacity for horrible cruelty, terrible violence and selfishness.

And maybe sometimes it can be something as simple as being relieved that it happened to somebody else and not to you, while at the same time still feeling regret and sadness that it happened at all. A dichotomy of spirit, a dichotomy of nature.

I don't really know how to end this entry, its been very hard to struggle with and write. I don't really have any answers to what I've written, just the observations you've read. Perhaps, if your a person of faith, you can keep the sad girl in your prayers tonight, and perhaps, just perhaps, when life is low and all you can seem to see is ugliness and depravity, try and remember that there is beauty and dignity as well.

Dic. H.

Fear and loathing in Dichotomy Hubris

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 12:30:03 GMT

(I posted this in abusesurvivor, but have pasted it in here to keep a record of it in my own journal. It's a raw one.)

I am sort of a member of a missional community. (The “sort of” is a long story and not really relevant.)

Anyway, tonight about forty people gathered together in a home to share stories about out community which has been going for about two years now.

One of the guys was talking about how they have had a very hard time in the last year or so coming to terms with discovering their son is a high-functioning autistic. He mentioned the support and acceptance he and his family have had in the group as they come to terms with this, and for some reason it just hit me in the guts.

I feel so cut off a lot of the time from things like this because I can't share them. Although in my head I know it wasn't my fault, in my emotions the shame is still there. How can I access this support? How can I get what he got because I just can't talk about it, and it's so difficult for outsiders to understand. We are so isolated by a veil of unexperience.

Some of these people I have known a long time. Some of these people have also known my brother for a long time. None of them would have an inkling of what he did to me before they knew either of us.

I'm isolated by my own shame and fears. What would they think of me if they knew. If it had been some stranger or something it might be different. What would they think of my family.

Maybe I should have titled this entry, “Damned if you do, damned if you don't”.

That's it, I'm spent.

Dic. H.

Busy, busy, busy!

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 08:05:25 GMT

Hi,

Not posted for a while, and been having trouble keeping up with my friends list (all caught up now).

Been concentrating a lot of energies in getting organised for going contracting at the end of this month. Have a few possible opportunities but nothing too solid so far.

I've got themes for a couple of articles that have been percolating in the back of my head for a while, but just haven't found the time, inspiration and requisite angst all at the same time. Hopefully in the next few days.

In the meantime, grabbed this from someone else, but here goes...

Recommend:

1. a movie
2. a book
3. a musical artist, song, or album
4. a LiveJournal user or community not on my friends list
5. what I should have for dinner
6. a website
7. a quote

Then put this in your LiveJournal and I'll do the same for you.

Dic. H.

The Coffee Lover's Prayer

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 02:45:08 GMT

Caffeine is my shepherd; I shall not doze.
It maketh me to wake in green pastures:
It leadeth me beyond the sleeping masses.
It restoreth my buzz:
It leadeth me in the paths of consciousness for its name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of addiction,
I will fear no Equal(tm):
For thou art with me;
thy cream and thy sugar, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a carafe before me in the presence of The Starbucks;
Thou anointest my day with pep; my mug runneth over.

Surely richness and taste shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of Mocha forever.

Unsupportive support?

Wed, 29 Dec 2004 17:44:35 GMT

Being a bit of a newbie to blogs and weird things like talking about your feelings and stuff, I sometimes find when adding a comment to blog entry made by someone else I'm not entirely sure what is proper and what is not.

Tonight (or rather this morning) has been a prime example. One person mentioned they are are having a lot of flashbacks lately and would like some support. I'm thinking, “Okay, you can just say 'sorry' or the usual 'hang in there' when you don't really know what else you can do or say. I can say how I can identify with how they are feeling if I have had similar circumstances, or is that just a case of misery loves company? Is there anything practical I can suggest?”.

Lots of swirling thoughts like that.

Another case in point tonight was a fairly complicated relationship situation another friend described. Again, you want to be supportive, but in the face of something complicated or painful, a simple “Gee that's rough, I hope it all works out” feels tantamount to saying “Sucks to be you”.

Then again, it certainly ain't my place to tell someone else around here what I think they should do, and so how far should you go on giving opinions that may or may not be welcome?

I end up spending a lot of time reading and re-reading what I say, trying hard to be inoffensive while still expressing the facets I feel important or want to say.

It's a balancing act between not wanting to just offer empty commiseration, but also not wanting to be rude or butt in or give an opinion when it was not wanted in the first place.

Besides, I'm getting to like a lot of these people and I don't want to offend them. I worry too much.

Maybe it's also one of those male/female things. When Sophie talks about a problem sometimes she just wants some support, or acknowledgment, or affirmation. Sometimes she just wants the listening ear. Now all that acknowledgement and affirmation stuff I can do, but I'm also trying to figure out a solution to the problem too. And if she gets huffy about that is like, “well why did you tell me in the first place if you didn't want me to help you fix it?” Bad impulse! Go to your room!

And to make matters worse, I'm a computer programmer. I make a living out of trying to fix problems, so it's kind of second nature.

Anyway, I'm rambling a lot, mainly because it's four-thirty in the morning now and five hours ago when Sophie went to bed I said I would “be there soon”.

Dic. H. (who can't at the moment think of an analogy that doesn't suck)

Inconceivable!

Sat, 25 Dec 2004 09:59:05 GMT

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

-- The Princess Bride

I love the English language, if for no other reason than the countless opportunities to be misconstrued.

Example one:

I was at a gathering at a persons house, there was a young lady there who was sitting on a footstool. One of those soft, usually stuffed vinyl misshapen things that people usually rest their feet on.

Someone mucking around accidentally knocked this young lady onto the floor, and I made the comment that she got knocked clean off her poof.

Now “poof” is an old word for exactly what she was sitting on, a footstool. (They call them “ottomans” these days, I don't know why.) It is also a British and Australian slang term for a male homosexual. Guess she didn't know the original meaning, and only knew the slang one. Good first impression to make, eh?

You would think from the context she would figure perhaps I wasn't saying what she thought I was saying. It's like the word “gay” use to mean you were happy, but now it almost exclusively means your a — errr — poof.

People can take anything out of context, and that is why comic writers avoid the word “flick”.

A comic book writer named Peter David wrote a column where he mentioned a letter of complaint that he got from a parent over some dialog in one of his comics, where the villain says something like, “I could crush you as easily as I would flick a bug from my shoulder.”

Two salient details: Lettering in comic books is usually all capitals, and sometimes the ink can run a bit.

Thus, the “L” and the “I” kind of ran together to look more like a “U”, making another word that is not exactly a good out loud word.

The kicker is that reading the sentence that way didn't make any sense at all. But she still complained rather then use logic.

It could have been worse, he could have named the villan “Clint Flicker”.

Example two:

Organising lunch after a church service. Lots of people were still in the main hall and not moving out into the foyer where the food was, so, being the sound guy on duty that morning, I plugged a microphone into the board and asked if people could move out into the foyer so we could say grace and commence mastication.

Granted, I intended for people to do a double take, but one little old biddy got most upset with me. Not sure what she thought I said...

Anyway, being December 25th, allow me to wish you a gay yuletide season, and the opportunity to masticate with friends and family.

Dic. H.