Headaches and Self-Conciousness

I find that my blog makes me more self-conscious at times.  For some strange reason, I actually get comments on most of my posts, and that indicates to me that people read them!  While this gratifies me, it terrifies me, too.

Every time I get a positive comment, I think "Awesome!  I'm coool!"  But then, a minute later, I think "I'm not really that cool.  What if they expect me to be that cool all the time, but I was only cool by accident in that post?  Then I'll be extra NOT cool!  Oh nooooo!"
Not that I don't want positive comment, please, praise me!  It just makes me realize how insecure I am, despite trying to seem like such a badass on this blog.

And, of course, the negative comments illicit a strange combination of blood-boiling wrath and the desire to curl up in the fetal position in the nearest dark closet.  "Oh pleeease, leave me alone, I'm nobody, why waste your time one me?  Oh noooo, somebody doesn't like me!"  sporadically switches with "You wanna play, asshole, YOU WANNA JACK WITH THE RIPPER?!"  It's a strange reaction revealing my fragile self-esteem AND my huge ego.  Man, I'm a wreck.


Self-centered raving aside, I thought I'd talk about headaches.  Because I have one, so I guess this is still self-centered raving.
A headache is like a fly buzzing around your head... you don't even notice it at first.  And then, all of a sudden, you SNAP.  OH MY GOODNESS, I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.
You realize you've had a headache for a whole hour, but all of a sudden you feel like braining yourself with the nearest heavy object just to make the pain go away.
If the headache gets bad enough, EVERYTHING hurts.  Sounds.  Light.  Even happiness.  HAPPINESS IS PAIN!  Moving at all makes it feel like your eyes have turned on you and stabbed your brain with your optic nerves.
Headaches feel immortal... like even if you died they'd still be there... no head, but still a headache.  Floating around, a spectre of pain, without thoughts or form, just dull, throbbing PAIN.
In conclusion, headaches suck, and even Excedrin doesn't always work unless you're willing to take too many and then have the jitters for 6 hours because of the massive hit of caffeine.

I Want to be a Robot

I want to be perfectly rational, and despite all my efforts, it seems that I am not.  Just today, I was feeling very depressed and concluded that I would be better off dead, and there was no way around my impeccable logic.  I went to sleep for a few hours, and woke up, and was unable to duplicate my conclusions, feeling a little better.

This is bullshit!  This means I am incapable of rational thought unsullied by the capricious taint of mood and feelings.  This means that my pessimism must be, in part, a product of my stubborn depression, which is a mood disorder.  My political views are mostly determined by my feelings of familiarity or loyalty to a certain set of people.  Every aspect of my life is held hostage to the chemical whims of my biology as it goes through the silly, apish cycles originally meant to keep it alive in a very different set of circumstances.

What a cruel joke is human life!  The mightiest intellects in the natural world crumble before their own moody emotional gusts!  The brains that can put life on other celestial bodies and unravel the mysteries of the fabric of the cosmos fall prey to a little lost sleep, or a bad day at work!

I very much resent the hideous moods that run not just my life, but my very reality.  And even my resent is utterly without logic or reason!  There is a sick humor in all of it.

It occurs to me that we are little more than toddlers.  Sure, we articulate and justify our emotional whims much more fluently than toddlers, but we are still ruled by the exact same chemical stimulus-response laws as an infant.  We apply additional meaning to each whim with our advanced verbal abilities, to justify to ourselves that we are NOT just a sad pack of children squabbling over meaningless games and crying for sustenance.

Now I've whipped myself up into a vengeful, angry mood about all this stuff.  Yet as right as a feel, I know I may very well not be correct... after all, my conclusions are inseparably linked to my irrational caveman feelings.  Maybe life is great and amazing and I will never experience the truth because my very brain chemistry prevents it.  Yay life.

The Keebler Elves: Defilers of all that is Good

I saw a Keebler commercial recently in which the head elf (the one who looks like Newt Gingrich) explains that all of the goodness contained in their cookies comes from the good and kind things people (like you and me!) do.  Each time that happens, some kind of metaphysical "goodness" is captured and mixed in with the cookies.  This (and not sugar and fats) explains the excellent taste.

I couldn't believe it... the elves have always been obnoxious corporate facades for a cold, calculating profit machine mass-producing diabetes bullets, but that doesn't bother me.  This... this is PURE EVIL.

Somehow, someone somewhere decided it would be cute to imply that the very moral essence of all good acts is coldly snatched from the air by animated cookie minions.  Without the permission (or even notification!) of the originator of this "goodness," it is processed and baked into cookies so some cookie magnate somewhere can buy cocaine for his poodle.  The goodness does not spread more morality or kindness... it spreads chocolaty goodness.  If you're lucky, the very essence of your kindness helped calm a squalling infant.  More likely, it was used to entice millions of Americans to eat "just one more" enough times that your kindness is far outweighed by the idiotic rage in politics about rising health care costs.

That's right, the Keebler elves are not guilty as something so simple as co-opting your morality for themselves.  No, if that was the issue here, they'd only be as evil as most authoritative religions.
No, the elves are raping the very spirit of morality and kindness, and using it to fuel the narcissistic self-destruction of mankind.  Satan himself must weep in envy of such power!

In all seriousness, I know they can't do what they claim to do.  And I'm so glad, because if they could, putting the powdered remains of aborted fetuses into their cookies would be a morally-preferable option.

I'm done with politics for a while

Normally, I follow politics with some interest.  I'm a person with opinions, and I always hope my moral opinions will be reflected in policy.
There come a time, however, when I get overwhelmed by the stupidity of the rhetoric on both sides.  They simply cannot stop flapping their jaws, and declaring that the outcome of this ONE election will determine whether America stands or dies.
Obama is not some Karl Marx of a socialist who has single-handedly bankrupt our country because Satan told him to.
Romney is not some ruthless Ayn-Randian fat-cat out to grind the poor into a massive sausage to beat gay people to death with.
Seriously, folks, you give these schmucks too much credit!  They are both reasonably-experienced, notably-MODERATE politicians who are equally beholden to their parties' whims.

I just don't care anymore.  Honestly, I'm only a SOCIAL liberal, so I'm not really rabid about the economic and health-care policies of either side... Not that I don't care, I'm glad we're all talking about fixing these things, but I'm acutely aware that the national debt has been consistently ignored by BOTH parties for decades, and only now that it's a crisis do they start pointing fingers (at eachother, of course).  The proposed solutions are not much different from party to party now, and the "big" debates are over tiny details.  If all the money spent campaigning and squabbling over these things were put toward the public good instead, maybe we wouldn't be in this bind.

So I've stopped reading about politics.  The conventions put the final nail in the coffin for me.  Maybe I won't vote: my vote for a presidential candidate doesn't actually affect the outcome anyway.  The illusion of control is all we get from casting a vote.
Frankly, I can't see a whole lot of difference between parties anyhow, so even if my vote determined the whole election, I don't think I'd feel a lot of control.

In the end, all empires fall.  All civilizations collapse.  Ours will, too, at some point... who cares when?  Maybe Obama will create health-care policy so inefficient that the overspending sends us into so much debt the Chinese will own us.  Maybe Romney will get us into a war with Iran that bankrupts us, and then the Chinese will own us.  If we're that close to the edge, we're going over sometime soon anyway.

Changing Sides as an Argument

I've noticed that it always seems like a big deal when a person on one side of a debate switches over to staunchly defend the other.  It's a shock for those left behind and a triumph for those joined by their new ally.

I think I can understand why this might be the case.  As someone who drastically changed religious views, I admit that once or twice I've considered that I might have an advantage for having experienced both opinions rather strongly.  I occasionally have thought at some who have lectured me about what I'm doing wrong in losing my faith, "I have been where you are, but you have not been where I am.  You have no business lecturing me on what I know more about."

I know I'm wrong in this.  I don't know everyone's history, and to assume that my depth of religious conviction was every bit that of those lecturing me is arrogant and probably dead wrong in many cases.

Still, it seems significant that those who have switched sides have experienced both.  Their opinions are extra-respected by their new allies.  They waded all the way from conviction on one end through moderation and uncertainty all the way to the views they once despised and mocked.

However, no matter what the divisive issue, individuals seem to change camps from both sides.  There are plenty of former atheists who took a journey similar to mine, but in the opposite direction.

I guess it can't possibly have any bearing on the truth when a republican becomes a democrat or vice-versa.  Religious conversion/deconversion stories are equally genuine and moving on each side, since each is the true story of one soul overcoming confusion and misdirection to find some kind of peace or resolution.

The lesson to be taken from this little tangent: nobody's conversion to or rejection of a system of thought justifies my own.  To seek truth, we must look past the admittedly-appealing testimonies of others and look for what is true.  A lonely road, perhaps... but the only way to avoid being the blind following the blind.