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Post by Killer Goldfish on Apr 26, 2022 22:23:09 GMT -5
I am coming to grips with the fact that I have no self-control when it comes to impulse purchases. I went to Wally World for cat litter only and came out with that, but also with DEEP BLUE SEA 3, an 8-pack of all the Freddy Krueger movies and a Venus flytrap. I have no regrets.
On the other hand, my refusal to kill myself is holding well. I found this out when I thought about the possible reasons my immunoglobulin test came back fucked up. I thought about the very worst possible reasons, like, you know, I'm dying of something right this minute, and discovered I didn't care. It actually made me smile. So I did a weapons check on suicidal ideation and, nope, not thinking about that at all. Just wouldn't mind that much if I croaked this week.
Interesting.
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Post by Dr. Kobb on Apr 26, 2022 23:35:59 GMT -5
I am coming to grips with the fact that I have no self-control when it comes to impulse purchases. I went to Wally World for cat litter only and came out with that, but also with DEEP BLUE SEA 3, an 8-pack of all the Freddy Krueger movies and a Venus flytrap. I have no regrets. Nor should you. Nice haul! |
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Post by Dr. Kobb on Apr 26, 2022 23:48:22 GMT -5
On the other hand, my refusal to kill myself is holding well. I found this out when I thought about the possible reasons my immunoglobulin test came back fucked up. I thought about the very worst possible reasons, like, you know, I'm dying of something right this minute, and discovered I didn't care. It actually made me smile. So I did a weapons check on suicidal ideation and, nope, not thinking about that at all. Just wouldn't mind that much if I croaked this week. Interesting.
There's been times I've been down really bad over the past decade, but none so serious that I even fantasied ending it all. So, hang in there? Fuck. I never know what to say to people when big scary topics like suicide come up.
I will say, I have zero issue with anyone taking their own life if they're diagnosed as dying of some degenerative or wasting disease. Obviously, there's a bajillion qualitative factors involved. Someone offing themselves ought to think of the hole they might be leaving in other's lives, so let's say you have stage 4 or 5 cancer and don't want possibly months of physical agony. Don't hang yourself so that whoever finds you is scarred for life. Leave a note outside the door or something.
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Post by Killer Goldfish on Apr 27, 2022 7:18:10 GMT -5
On the other hand, my refusal to kill myself is holding well. I found this out when I thought about the possible reasons my immunoglobulin test came back fucked up. I thought about the very worst possible reasons, like, you know, I'm dying of something right this minute, and discovered I didn't care. It actually made me smile. So I did a weapons check on suicidal ideation and, nope, not thinking about that at all. Just wouldn't mind that much if I croaked this week. Interesting.
There's been times I've been down really bad over the past decade, but none so serious that I even fantasied ending it all. So, hang in there? Fuck. I never know what to say to people when big scary topics like suicide come up.
I will say, I have zero issue with anyone taking their own life if they're diagnosed as dying of some degenerative or wasting disease. Obviously, there's a bajillion qualitative factors involved. Someone offing themselves ought to think of the hole they might be leaving in other's lives, so let's say you have stage 4 or 5 cancer and don't want possibly months of physical agony. Don't hang yourself so that whoever finds you is scarred for life. Leave a note outside the door or something.
Well as noted I'm NOT suicidal. But part of the insight is understanding for the first time why my dad beamed the way he did when informed that he had skin cancer. |
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Post by Killer Goldfish on Apr 29, 2022 20:40:33 GMT -5
I have been so exhausted lately I was ready to see a doctor about it when everything changed. In 2 of my toughest cases, the ones that weren't budging, I suddenly saw measurable progress for the first time. I'm still tired, but suddenly it's just on a normal end-of-the-week level.
As soon as I noticed that, I noticed something else. My supervisor is on family medical leave and her counterpart asked if I needed help with anything. I found myself saying "I need supervision. I don't ever get to talk about any of my cases. She (my regular supervisor) always needs to talk about herself." And it made me realize, fuck man, this why I feel so goddamned scorched. I haven't had any supervision in MONTHS. I do therapy with my huge caseload and then I have to do therapy on my supervisor. Fuck this noise.
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Post by Lemmy Caution on Apr 30, 2022 18:25:30 GMT -5
I have been so exhausted lately I was ready to see a doctor about it when everything changed. In 2 of my toughest cases, the ones that weren't budging, I suddenly saw measurable progress for the first time. I'm still tired, but suddenly it's just on a normal end-of-the-week level. As soon as I noticed that, I noticed something else. My supervisor is on family medical leave and her counterpart asked if I needed help with anything. I found myself saying "I need supervision. I don't ever get to talk about any of my cases. She (my regular supervisor) always needs to talk about herself." And it made me realize, fuck man, this why I feel so goddamned scorched. I haven't had any supervision in MONTHS. I do therapy with my huge caseload and then I have to do therapy on my supervisor. Fuck this noise. Important realization. |
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El Santo
Cock Goddess
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Post by El Santo on Dec 8, 2022 9:26:18 GMT -5
I just came to a realization about myself and my psychology that surprises me a bit, as a side effect of watching (of all things) Powell & Pressburger's The Pursuit of the Graf Spee and Ida Lupino's The Trouble with Angels within a couple weeks of each other: it turns out I find it much easier to believe that the captain of a Nazi commerce raider has a hidden core of honor and decency than to believe that it can be a morally or intellectually valid choice to become a nun.
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Post by Killer Goldfish on Dec 11, 2022 11:14:45 GMT -5
I just came to a realization about myself and my psychology that surprises me a bit, as a side effect of watching (of all things) Powell & Pressburger's The Pursuit of the Graf Spee and Ida Lupino's The Trouble with Angels within a couple weeks of each other: it turns out I find it much easier to believe that the captain of a Nazi commerce raider has a hidden core of honor and decency than to believe that it can be a morally or intellectually valid choice to become a nun. Well, that's fascinating. |
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Post by Dr. Kobb on Dec 22, 2022 13:31:27 GMT -5
I didn't know where else to put this, but I still prefer Nine Inch Nails' version of "Hurt" over Johnny Cash's. There, I said it. Not trying to be contrarian. Just personal preference.
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Post by Dr. Kobb on Dec 22, 2022 14:51:56 GMT -5
Mick Ronson is the Scotty Pippin to David Bowie's Michael Jordan.
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Post by Dr. Kobb on Dec 27, 2022 13:14:07 GMT -5
When you think about it, "Metallica" is a really cornball band name.
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Post by Dr. Kobb on Dec 29, 2022 17:57:35 GMT -5
Do you ever feel like the best you can manage is a vague semblance of sanity? Asking for a friend.
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Post by Killer Goldfish on Jan 2, 2023 20:26:19 GMT -5
Do you ever feel like the best you can manage is a vague semblance of sanity? Asking for a friend. That's the best I ever do, frankly. |
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Post by Killer Goldfish on Jan 2, 2023 20:35:57 GMT -5
The other day I was scratching my head after overhearing a co-worker say that she never puts money in her HSA. It was still in the back of my mind just now when I (very nervously) got out my laptop to transfer the usual $2,000 into mine. Just like last year, when I tried to sign in at the special HSA bank, it told me I was locked out. I didn't actually groan aloud, but I probably should have. After this happened last I spent probably six hours on the phone trying to find the right person to tell me what to do about it -- there were several layers of problems, starting with the fact that you have to know the bank's secret handshake to even find the right department to call with its totally separate call center because this isn't a normal whatever HSA, it's a deep-dish custodial HSA, and as I say that was just the first layer.
When it happened again just now, I had a lighting bolt. I can do what my co-worker does and just not fucking bother with it. Just keep my money in my account and pay out of pocket without using the HSA card at all.
Why not? What was ever the advantage of using that damned HSA?
Sometimes when you realize you've been dumb, you feel smart.
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Post by Marxo Grouch on Jan 4, 2023 5:47:07 GMT -5
When you think about it, "Metallica" is a really cornball band name. That has occurred to me on more than one occasion as well. |
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Post by Dr. Kobb on Jan 4, 2023 11:57:41 GMT -5
When you think about it, "Metallica" is a really cornball band name. That has occurred to me on more than one occasion as well. What would you call yourself if you were a Metallica cover band? |
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El Santo
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Post by El Santo on Jan 6, 2023 13:48:25 GMT -5
That has occurred to me on more than one occasion as well. What would you call yourself if you were a Metallica cover band? In approximate ascending order of how much the tribute band in question would suck: Damage Inc. Masters of Puppets The Four Horsemen Lightning Riders Anesthesia The Unforgiven |
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Post by Killer Goldfish on Jan 8, 2023 8:43:23 GMT -5
Submitted for your approval. I was in an early-morning text-message conversation about demigods -- because my friends are just painfully erudite that way -- and by accident I asked a penetrating and insightful question. I texted over a photo taken by another friend, of a lighting bolt reaching towards a rainbow, and said something about how hard it can be to read the moods of the gods. The textee responded that the demigods might be involved, not full-on gods. I answered that as far as I knew demigods only cleared out stables and fought the Smog Monster, making the obvious comparison between Hedorah and Hydra because one is clearly named after the other.
And then it hit me. Could Godzilla be a demigod? He was originally conceived by The Honda as a manifestation of the angry dead of the second world war. But look at his incredible powers. Could he be a demigod?
Yes, this is how I think at 8:30 in the morning.
(Copied and pasted from BMMB.)
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El Santo
Cock Goddess
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Post by El Santo on Jan 8, 2023 11:17:39 GMT -5
Submitted for your approval. I was in an early-morning text-message conversation about demigods -- because my friends are just painfully erudite that way -- and by accident I asked a penetrating and insightful question. I texted over a photo taken by another friend, of a lighting bolt reaching towards a rainbow, and said something about how hard it can be to read the moods of the gods. The textee responded that the demigods might be involved, not full-on gods. I answered that as far as I knew demigods only cleared out stables and fought the Smog Monster, making the obvious comparison between Hedorah and Hydra because one is clearly named after the other. And then it hit me. Could Godzilla be a demigod? He was originally conceived by The Honda as a manifestation of the angry dead of the second world war. But look at his incredible powers. Could he be a demigod? Yes, this is how I think at 8:30 in the morning. (Copied and pasted from BMMB.) Not that it effects the answer to your question, but "Hedora" doesn't actually come from "Hydra." Rather, it's derived from hedoro, meaning "sludge" or "ooze." As to your main musing, I think we need to define our terms a little more precisely: when we say "demigod" here, are we using the loose, modern sense of a low-power divinity with an extremely narrow field of responsibility, or the strict, Classical Greek sense of a being with one mortal and one immortal parent? The second possibility delights me, because it fills my head with visions of Zeus descending from Mount Olympus in the form of... I don't know... a Humboldt squid? A swarm of fiddler crabs?... to impregnate a saltwater crocodile who was just that hot. If it's the other sense of demigod you have in mind, though, I think the answer has been clearly "yes" since at least 1958. The Japanese word that we translate as "god" is kami, and it has a somewhat different set of implications than its nearest English equivalent. Kami can be gods in the same sense as the Olympians or the ancient Egyptian pantheon, but they can also be something much more limited. If I remember correctly, Shinto doctrine pegs the divine population of just the Japanese Home Islands at approximately seven million-- enough for any geophysical feature of note to be or to have one, along with any number of plants, animals, humans, and even man-made objects. As a startlingly recent example of the latter, consider that the World War II battleship Yamato was understood by her crew to be imbued with divine power, partly because she was the biggest, most powerful, most "perfect" thing of her kind ever created, and partly because she bore the clan-name of the imperial dynasty. Anyway, since Shinto holds that almost anything can be or become a low-wattage god, it seems perfectly reasonable to consider not just Godzilla, but kaiju in general in that light. Furthermore, the films themselves make the connection explicit on several occasions. Varan the Unbelievable, Mothra, King Kong vs. Godzilla, and Gamera vs. Barugon all depict monsters being worshipped as gods-- and Varan, most tellingly, is worshipped by people living in Japan, even if they are isolated country bumpkins, and possibly Ainu to boot. |
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Post by Killer Goldfish on Jan 8, 2023 16:28:33 GMT -5
Submitted for your approval. I was in an early-morning text-message conversation about demigods -- because my friends are just painfully erudite that way -- and by accident I asked a penetrating and insightful question. I texted over a photo taken by another friend, of a lighting bolt reaching towards a rainbow, and said something about how hard it can be to read the moods of the gods. The textee responded that the demigods might be involved, not full-on gods. I answered that as far as I knew demigods only cleared out stables and fought the Smog Monster, making the obvious comparison between Hedorah and Hydra because one is clearly named after the other. And then it hit me. Could Godzilla be a demigod? He was originally conceived by The Honda as a manifestation of the angry dead of the second world war. But look at his incredible powers. Could he be a demigod? Yes, this is how I think at 8:30 in the morning. (Copied and pasted from BMMB.) Not that it effects the answer to your question, but "Hedora" doesn't actually come from "Hydra." Rather, it's derived from hedoro, meaning "sludge" or "ooze." As to your main musing, I think we need to define our terms a little more precisely: when we say "demigod" here, are we using the loose, modern sense of a low-power divinity with an extremely narrow field of responsibility, or the strict, Classical Greek sense of a being with one mortal and one immortal parent? The second possibility delights me, because it fills my head with visions of Zeus descending from Mount Olympus in the form of... I don't know... a Humboldt squid? A swarm of fiddler crabs?... to impregnate a saltwater crocodile who was just that hot. If it's the other sense of demigod you have in mind, though, I think the answer has been clearly "yes" since at least 1958. The Japanese word that we translate as "god" is kami, and it has a somewhat different set of implications than its nearest English equivalent. Kami can be gods in the same sense as the Olympians or the ancient Egyptian pantheon, but they can also be something much more limited. If I remember correctly, Shinto doctrine pegs the divine population of just the Japanese Home Islands at approximately seven million-- enough for any geophysical feature of note to be or to have one, along with any number of plants, animals, humans, and even man-made objects. As a startlingly recent example of the latter, consider that the World War II battleship Yamato was understood by her crew to be imbued with divine power, partly because she was the biggest, most powerful, most "perfect" thing of her kind ever created, and partly because she bore the clan-name of the imperial dynasty. Anyway, since Shinto holds that almost anything can be or become a low-wattage god, it seems perfectly reasonable to consider not just Godzilla, but kaiju in general in that light. Furthermore, the films themselves make the connection explicit on several occasions. Varan the Unbelievable, Mothra, King Kong vs. Godzilla, and Gamera vs. Barugon all depict monsters being worshipped as gods-- and Varan, most tellingly, is worshipped by people living in Japan, even if they are isolated country bumpkins, and possibly Ainu to boot. Well, when I THINK about this I am picturing Zeus and, not a crocodile, but more of an allosaur. But the FEELING is much more Shinto for sure. I always have a hard time blending the two properly. |
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