RIP Tom Dowler

i got the news today that my great-grandfather, Tom Dowler, died peacefully this morning at 0920. he was very old and suffering from the advanced stages of dementia, so the family has been expecting this for a while, but i guess you can't ever prepare properly for this kind of shit.

we called him Farver - that was all we could pronounce out of "great-grandfather" as tiny kids. he and my great-grandma Doll-Doll lived very close to where i grew up, just a couple of blocks away, and they were always involved with us, always happy to see us when we came to visit. they'd break out the biscuit jar and let me eat as many ginger nuts as i could cram into my face, and they kept a stock of proper Schweppes lemonade for us. Farver would press a pound coin into our hands as kids, when it was a fuckton of money to us, and grin and tell us to go and spend it all at once. later on as i left for the University he'd give me a tenner when he saw me, even though they don't have very much money to live on. he would always bear hug me and tell me, "Stay lucky, kid. Be good."

i was lucky enough to get a proper goodbye, which was more than i managed when my gran died. lucidity was incredibly rare by last Christmas day, the last time i saw him, and i thought it had been gone completely for quite some time. for the most part, it had. he was still cheerful, and we (me, my ma and my nan) opened his presents with him in the care home and made sure his giant pillowy bed was comfy, just sort of chilling and fetching the occasional drink and talking shit with him. he was the nurses' favourite guy in the whole place. they'd just changed his bedding, given him his meds and made sure he was okay, and we'd come back in to hold his hands and make sure he fell asleep knowing there were people there with him. before he went under he looked straight at me and said, "It's okay, kid, I'm still your Farver." i gave him a hug and he fell asleep.

he was a good person who did some bad things and some really fucking good things. he fought in the Second World War, driving an amphibious tank called a duck, and helped liberate the camp at Flossenbuerg. he was also a good friend of the Kray twins. he never spoke about this - to us, he was just Farver. he loved us.

i can't say he's in a better place, but he's not suffering any longer. recquiescat in pace.

L

first exam

well, that was fucking terrible. ran out of time, a quarter or more of the shit i was meant to be answering got left behind. another quarter did get answered but was so messy and rushed that i seriously doubt it will get me any marks. i guess i did alright on the other half, even though it was mostly on Agent UML, which is the one tiny piece of the course i didn't fucking revise or even make notes on - but i'm not good at estimating that kind of thing, so really i have no idea whether i'll even pass or not. there were five or six drawing questions, so i fucked up my time management and wasted almost all the time i had making the fucking drawings, painstakingly, by hand since the University doesn't let computers for exams access anything other than MS Word. i have nowhere near the level of Windows Stockholm Syndrome required to be able to make legible AUML diagrams and finite state automata in Word, never mind the level it would take to want to.

(i know people are trying to be nice when they say this, but no, sib, i will not "pass with flying colours" this time. please don't say that. i'm not low-self-esteeming a perfectly good exam transcript up to shit - this really was a very bad run. they happen. also i am trying not to say stupid shit like OHHHHH WOE WOE IS ME ASHES AND DUST I HAVE RUINED MY LIFE when actually i just got an average mark instead of a very good one.)

unsure of what to do now. that was the first exam, the next one is the day after tomorrow. i didn't sleep last night so i'm wavering a bit; think i'll at least mail Prof. V about what happened before I pass out in my bubble bath. reckon i'll make tomorrow a hardcore revision day. gonna chill out tonight.

i'd type more about some other stuff i was gonna talk about but i'm whacked now and i keep hitting the wrong keys like a little old lady. gnight, all. carpe corporem.

L

crisis averted

erm, sorry about that last post there. it did let up after a while and i was able to sleep after trying the whole (Internet videos + hot bath with sleeping aid oils) thing suggested here. i'm pretty sure the cause is just stress since my first exam is tomorrow, the rest all happen in the same week and i am totally unprepared for any of them. i guess at least it gets them all out of the way quickly. after they're done i can start focusing on what to do about housing.

regarding "get to a psychiatrist rite nao!!!", i already have one and his office is shut at 2am no matter how crazy i am. i didn't want to call NHS 24 after the result i got last time, which was the on-duty staff insinuating that i was a crackhead, refusing to believe that i wasn't in treatment for heroin use, and repeatedly telling me they would not give me any morphine or methadone (i had not asked for any kind of drugs). i will let Dr. D know what went down when i see him next on the 24th.

i really appreciate the comments from people trying to help, too. it helps to know people are out there and they're not all judgmental dicks. there's not a whole lot of people i can call or whatnot when this kind of shit happens - my parents are too far away to do anything about it, so all it would do would be scare the crap out of them for no reason, and i didn't wanna wake either them or my one other friend Feoa up at that hour of the morning just to listen to Cracky McGee blabber on about shadows and imaginary singalong time.

gotta go "revise" now, but will be connected for the rest of tonight up through the morning if anyone writes back. carpe corporem

L

worrying

i'm a wee bit frightened right now. i'm hearing things that aren't there. sure i see things that aren't real from time to time because of the stupid habits i had when i was a teenager and the permanent, very mild damage i did to myself experimenting like that, but i don't usually hear anything and this is not a flashback, i know what those feel like and they've always been the same with the same cure. these noises are definitely not real: scrapings like granite on granite, whispering voices saying fucked-up shit, B speaking even though she is asleep in her room. she can't be talking because she's been in there for hours and already called J (her long-distance boyfriend) and her parents, these being the three people she speaks to almost every night and the only reasons she'd be on the phone in bed. i don't have auditory disturbance usually (as in it's not some symptom of BPD/EUD or chronic depression) - this is only the second or third time it's happened - but those exceptions are fucking freaking me out. there are also a few unreal things cropping up in my visual field.

they're shadows mostly, humanoid. no discernible features. i keep seeing one (that isn't my reflection) in the black background of this blog. there's also a trail effect, sort of like motion blur on a camera, when i move my head or eyes. unlike flashbacks none of this is alleviated by moving my hand through visual anomalies or plugging my ears until the sounds revert to tinnitus.

there are actual words, too, in the voices. that doesn't ever happen, this is the first time i have ever heard a voice actually speaking to me. usually it's like overhearing talk from far away. the other two times i've heard things, one caused by taking the wrong dose of sleeping pills because i forgot i'd taken the first one, the other by being a fucking moron and drinking more irish cream than i'm allowed by a factor of three or so - those times did involve the occasional song, but not this. for example, last time i thought Muad-Dib had GamerFM radio going on his headset whilst he was playing Heroes of Newerth, because i could hear a song that sounded like it might have been by the Birthday Massacre and B doesn't like that kind of music. there was no song. he didn't even have the actual game music activated. i couldn't make out the verses but the chorus went

everything is black
the queen is black
the dreams are back
and everything is all black

it repeated itself many times, scaring the crap out of me once i realised what it was. i thought it might have been an indicator that my gory, fucked-up nightmares were about to conquer Muad-Dib's superhero-like counteracting effect on them. nothing so far, thank fuck.

i just wish the voice component would give it a fucking rest. they're not schizoid instructions or warnings like someone truly affected by hallucinations might get; they don't give orders or appear consistently as a discrete set of "people" in my head. it's like one conglomerate of misplaced/inappropriately formatted thoughts that uses whatever human "voice" it feels like using in order to communicate its nonsense to me. they're saying things like "Hey" and "Don't think you should" and other vaguely contextual things about what i'm doing at any given point. and laughing every so often. but they're not compelling me to do anything, nor are they saying anything dangerous if i were forced to do what they say.

fuck. i just looked at the monitor on Muad-Dib's old machine that he lets me use, and lying in the background is an image of me lying down on my side, with my eyes open and glazed and my body not breathing or moving. it can't be a reflection because of the angle and because it is wearing makeup and no hat. i have my hat on, it doesn't. do any of you know what to do in this kind of situation? something i can take or do that might help? i realise how insane i am and i sound even worse here but this shit is not right and it's fucking creepy.

L

crap news

we got a letter a few days ago that said we're being evicted, again. the new outdoor second-floor beer balcony that the pub's owners (a company called Belhaven) have been wittering on about apparently requires the destruction of my home. B and i have been given two months to get the fuck out before they want to start construction, which means ball-wrecking our flat to make room for a little atrium and stairway where customers will come for about twenty days of the year max, to "enjoy" the "sun" of the City. we haven't even been here for the year we said we'd be.

Muad-Dib and i are gonna try and get a one-bedroom place to live in that we can share, and B is gonna find someplace to live by herself before she moves to Southampton (southwest England) in September. i have no idea where we're gonna live or what it's going to cost, but at least we can pool our resources. i'm still pretty stunned that he's cool with that kind of commitment.

the stupid thing is that this beer balcony is a shitty business decision. there's one right next to where they're gonna put it that gets all the sun in the courtyard, literally two metres away from their one. there's also an existing beer garden for this pub that's well liked, and a pub next door that has a proper roof terrace, twice the size of the balconies and heated with proper shelter for the rain and a 360-degree suntrap all year round. to boot, customers of our pub will have to climb several flights of stairs and go round to the back of the building to reach this balcony, unlike the other balcony. they will not be arsed to do it. it's not gonna make Belhaven any fucking money given the cost it will incur to build the damn thing. B wants to write to them and ask them to postpone construction but i doubt they'll agree.

i can't do fuck all about it yet, although at least we have a plan (exams are first priority right now). just thought i'd let you know that once again my landlords have turned out to be cunts.

L

progress report

progress report: see shrink today, ought to have a slightly better dose of meds tomorrow as the starting 35mg is now causing some serious problems 12hrs after last dosage. digestive system reactivates too quickly now, having become adjusted to 35mg, and switches on at about 9am every morning to shout HEY! LISTEN! GET UP YOU LITTLE FUCK! HEY! LISTEN! and retch and stuff. not cool. the sensation is horrible and completely unignorable. it's not even pain, it's like that physical feeling kids get of too much excitement building up in your guts, like when you're four and you realise it's your birthday tomorrow or you're sixteen and somebody hot takes interest in you.

er, or maybe that was just me. i remember that feeling when it had an emotional origin and wasn't quite so fucking obnoxious... goddamn i had such a crush on this one hacker at my school, Majestic, when i was sixteen. i worshipped that dude. i loved everything about that guy for some reason, including his slight sociopathy, and despite the fact that i plainly annoyed him in hindsight. i pretty much thought he was Phate. eventually he took up with a pretty, mute Japanese girl who did not suffer from my charming lack of social skills, inadequate understanding of personal grooming and total inability to dress myself; i learned the meaning of "emo kid phase", sparked a school-wide trend of referring to me as "bitter like a lemon", spent weeks pathetically crying myself to sleep and dyed my hair red for a bit in an effort to be more interesting. good times.

at least i was pretty sure at the times themselves that they were good. good in the sense of doing stupid peer-pressure faux-rebel teenager things, which i was sure i was obligated to do at every opportunity and explore every possible avenue of lest i "miss out" somehow. i was the crappiest teenager ever. secretly, i just wanted to learn to hack stuff, and i was pretty terrible at it, so mostly i just hung around people who were actually good frustrating them with my completely useless educational background in literary analysis and European linguistics. i figured i would fake it till i made it and therefore, for a while, adopted a searingly irritating habit of just mimicking the personal behaviours of anyone who actually did have some skills. i think i thought this would "rub off" and i'd be a real hacker one day. occasionally i'd do something mildly rebellious yet always completely without risk to me like tipsily try oral with a giiiiirl or bob up and down at parties in the woods which i diligently referred to as "raves" or have a tab or a joint, and spend the next day self-congratulating in an actual physical journal about how badass i was. i'm surprised i didn't pass out from sheer narcissism the day i snuck off to London to get my tiny, unobtrusive, incredibly expensive (because the guy realised how naive i was and that i could easily be fleeced in return for secrecy) underage first tattoo.

er. as i was saying, progress report. i'm a little bit drugged up right now. pain levels are fine as long as the medication remains active, which is the problem of course, since as expected the starter dose has become inadequate. that's pretty routine. as for repair work, i've created a studying space in my house after B removed her desk to her room to use as a dressing table. i now have more plug space and a little whiteboard she didn't want which is badass because i always wanted a whiteboard. i need to steal a pen for it though. haven't done hardly any revision for the imminent exams, because i still (to my shame) have the goddamn assignments to do. i am perfectly aware of how ridiculous that is. am communicating with a professor in the Department, Prof. V, who is remarkably sympathetic to all this despite my general tendency to fuck up, about what to do in that regard, what to prioritise etc. maybe doing the assignments will function as revision too. Prof. V says not to panic but he has now gone on holiday, and i'm sort of shitting myself here. my parents will be so disappointed if i have to repeat another year, again.

i'm pretty damn worried about that particular situation, and the variable pain levels don't help at all. Friday night / Saturday morning, when i missed my Friday dose of painkillers and spent the night awake in Stage II withdrawal, was fucking terrible and it's so easy to fall into II or even III with such a small amount of the stuff in my system at any one time. there's no grace period. i am pretty sure that my level of organisation, as it stands, is not sufficient enough for me to be completely safe without the buffer provided by a day's worth of dwindling effect in case of emergency.

speaking of which i've also introduced a couple supplementary organisation methods to my system, attempting to forget less shit, procrastinate less, be late for less things etc. i have a wall calendar (although it is for last year) and i'm drawing up a routine list of tasks that occur every weekday (you know, cleaning the flat on Sunday, taking recycling out on collection days, scrubbing my face on Saturday with the weird green shit that stops you getting spots, that kind of thing.) i'm also logging (but not restricting for now) caloric intake in a little book B brought back for me from Poland, since the meat's metabolism has changed recently and seems to fluctuate like a bitch requiring a lot more control than it did before. i assume that's an aging thing, although it's failed to affect Muad-Dib. he's a year younger than me though, and possesses a much more efficient shell with a ridiculously efficient metabolic rate. also he has things like muscle mass and a Y chromosome. sometimes i wish i could switch meat with him; he gets boobies to look at, i'd get the ability to walk upstairs without hurting my goddamn self.

then again it would be more than i'm capable of to inflict another human being with a substance dependency, two severe psychiatric diseases with management options but no cures and periodic life-fucking-up flareups, chronic pain and the permanent risk of pregnancy every time you fuck. also i'm a selfish ass and i'd be loath to give someone else my implants, tattoos and pretty shiny decorations. plus, i'm kind of used to everyone treating me like a dying orphan and that would not fly were i simply a lazy healthy guy instead of a lazy unhealthy little hacker thing.

god, i type a lot of shit. carpe corporem, all. further report later on (psychiatrist at 6pm) if the psychiatrist has anything of interest to you all to say.

L

the newer system generally is the better

as i learned today rather definitively. i'll start by explaining that yeah, out of a stupid antiquated habit i did (up until today) always send my rent in to the landlord by cheque. when i started paying rent aged 18 i didn't have internet banking set up on my account and i thought it was the safest way to give large amounts of money to people who don't accept debit cards, without paying charges or physically going to a bank whose only branch in the City is fucking ten miles from campus. i really ought to have rethought this policy, oh i dunno maybe four fucking years ago when i set the IB up.

so today, the ninth of goddamn January, i get a call from the landlord. "We didn't get your cheque for December; is this one we just received the December rent? What? It's the January rent, like what is due in January and arrives on January the fourth in an envelope marked JANUARY RENT? Three hundred and fifty pounds plix then, you little bastard. Now."

i called up the bank in a fucked-up medication-induced state of sociopathic calm, silently wondering whether i could use the same begging patch as my homeless friend Daz and whether he would teach me the ropes of homelessness for free. the bank, upon being told that i had written and sent a cheque, it had gone out of my account and its recipient said they didn't do that, blinked.

"You really ought not to have used a cheque," said the phone lady. "You should have put the money through over the Internet."

it turns out they don't keep records (at least not that they would give out to ID-verified customers) of where cheques fucking go. they keep records of them going out, and when one is paid in it just says CHEQUE IN :D :D :D without any indication of what cheque or whence. cockheads didn't actually have any idea who had paid in the cheque or to where, and couldn't help other than the nice lady saying it sucked and she'd do something if she could. i couldn't even get pissed off at her because she clearly wasn't able to do fuck all to help, even though she wanted to.

they just kept telling me this was a flaw of the cheque system and i ought to have used something else to pay the landlord. well, fuck, dickheads; why does the system still exist then? if it's really that insecure why don't we just fucking abolish it? and it really is that insecure, apparently. the bank shrugged and wondered idly if the police might be able to help, but i shudder to open a criminal investigation for any reason, never mind before i'd even physically seen the landlord about anything, so i ordered printed statements and a cheque voucher as evidence and excused myself before the Vulcan calm collapsed and i started blubbering like a fucking moron. i call the landlord back up and ask them to search their records for the cheque's number to see if it actually arrived, and tell them that evidence of my having written and guaranteed it is forthcoming. at this point they decide i'll be the one who needs to go to the fuzz and/or Post Office to open any investigations that are necessary, since i won't just do the easiest thing like a reasonable person and pay them twice. they tell me they only have three employees including the two people who own the fucking company and they'll get Angela to have a look in the goddamn filing cabinets. i hang up and start thinking of shit i can maybe sell to raise a secondary rent payment, possibly some viscera, quietly freaking the fuck out.

two hours later i get a call from the landlord again.

Angela found the cheque where it has been since December the fourth when i sent it. it was paid into one of the employees' personal accounts. i don't even know if that was someone stealing it or if they're actually employing someone that dim. they were very sorry for the inconvenience. i sat there for about ten minutes with dried YOU'RE-FUCKED tears on my face looking like a guy who's just been told he has HIV or something because my brain is broken and can't distinguish between a bad yet non-fatal event and the end of the fucking world as it knows it.

and all i could think was, i fucking hate cheques.


L

so i got four emails that were all like HEY YOU OUGHT TO GO SEE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO IT HAS YOU IN IT and i was like YEAH WHATEVER

seriously, non-hacker general public, please stop informing me about the existence of that film. i have read the original novels. they were poorly written and not particularly interesting to me. the worst thing is no one person repeats themselves when telling me i ought to go and see it; everyone genuinely means well, and doesn't realise how psychotic my conditioned response to so many repetitions of the same suggestion has become. it's not like the same people tell me over and over again.

why do i hate it that much? because everyone who has never met me or seen this place thinks that i took my personal image from a fictional character in a Swedish pulp crime novel. i was interviewed for a Norwegian newspaper and the guy wanted so badly for this to be true that he asked me three times whether or not i'd wanted to look like Lisbeth Salander before getting into looking fucked up.

to be honest, being compared to the character probably isn't great for me. she's the perfect hacker, assassin, lover and everything else despite her broken bird demeanour. she's played by two very beautiful actresses and from what i can tell the films just emphasise how short and cute and sexy she is. the hero falls in love with her, she saves the day alongside him and proves to the world how badass she is. then she goes off and lives to badass another day. i'm fucked up and insecure and neither an alternative supermodel nor a completely unstoppable genius (not saying i'm stupid, just that i can't hack the Gibson with three keystrokes and an insouciant remark.) it's a recipe for failure.

er, other news after the commercial break.

L

meat free

almost. new medication doing incredibly well, should updose this week. glad to see all the support, will jump in on discussions / answer questions later when i've had a bit more sleep. house is now filled with Christmas decorations B had me put up because i'm manlier than she is, twinkly lights etc., and i will be interested to see how fucking spangly it all looks on 60mg of this stuff.

the stuff won't be named, as someone asked, because of the searches it will generate and because of what people will be led here. there are other reasons but i don't need to talk about it. Unq, or anyone else who is privy to my bitchings in the real world, if you want to know the gory details, drop me a text. everyone else, you can email me if you like, because i don't want to deliberately keep things from you all, although it's really not worth the effort for this particular piece of knowledge.

am layering up to slay Mephisto, then tackle a peer-to-peer system assessment with the aid of all my skeleton mages and a tough-ass mercenary i've been dragging around since i hitched my first ride to Lut Gholein on that crappy caravan. wish me luck, fgts.

L

freedom in slavery

so it's been about two weeks since the latest medication change. i won't bother you with the details; you all knew how little the Suboxone had been doing recently for my pain control levels, and recently the consultant psychiatrist Dr. D has switched me to another drug, a liquid one that works a lot better. it's been so long since i was actually free of pain that i'd forgotten what it was like. everything's so much freer - movement, thought. i really hope this shit will help me with my repair effort.

hilariously, whilst it is much stronger than tramadol, the new painkiller is of the same family (synthetic opioid analogues, in this case a morphioid). inc: many "can i snort tramadol?" searches just like the good old days.

in terms of that - i will have enough for rent this month, once i also pay back my mum for some of what she loaned me for rent the time before all this shit. i only have this because of you all and your support, and i can't express enough how much i appreciate that support. you are all going to hacker heaven with me.

i'll have some assignments and assessments to do in the next few weeks, so i hope to keep you all updated with them if only so you know what it is i'm trying to do and why... plus they might be interesting. bad news - i will be doing this from various crap boxes belonging to other people (like this one) because my laptop has finally gone tits-up, its mechanical soul flown off to the big scrapyard in the sky (it's where i'm gonna go, when i die, when i die and they lay me to rest i'm gonna go to the place that's the best...) - er, it's fucked, is what i mean. i saved the RAM. my parents are going to see if they can get me a new one (well new to me) for jesusween, which is awesome if a little more than they ought to be spending on their fuckup kid.

i haven't actually been to sleep yet, so idk how coherent this post is actually gonna be. we woke up at 1530 today and decided it was time to try and clock reset once again. if i don't pass out in the pharmacy, in class or at the hospital, i'll let you know how it goes.

lastly, SMS reply-type shout out to Unqualified: i hear and i obey. doing OK, as you can see (you mostly reminded me to update the blog, so consider this entry dedicated to you.) thanks for the checkup; you and anyone else who cares to check in on me are more than welcome to, as it's brilliant for keeping me in touch with what actually matters and not focused on things like stressing over trying to get my washing machine fixed. i love you guys.

L

repair in progress

seeing another specialist now, the psychologist i was referred to a while back. we're still in the initial review stage with one more appointment to go before she decides whether or not she'll treat me. with the way it's been so far - "We need to find the emotional source of this depression" - the odds of that look slim. but, if she doesn't see me, i think somebody else will; at any rate even if they don't it will mean more sessions with the actual psychiatrist, who is excellent.

having some trouble with University re. sleeping; missed a few classes, need to drop my extra and catch up with the others. have emailed a professor who ought to be able to help me there.

regarding pain, which has been pretty bad these last few months since the buprenorphine stopped working (Dr. D puts it down to tolerance, which i was told was impossible, but he knows more than i do) - i will be starting a new pain med on Wednesday this week. that's good, because this one will be stronger and not a crappy partial agonist (meaning i can dose up if necessary) and it will also not be filled with poison that makes it impossible to do anything else for pain. i cannot tell you all how glad i will be to get that shit out of my veins. i'll be free for the first time in a very long time. my blood has been converted into a trap for my mind and that trap is about to be dismantled, finally.

downside: five days of withdrawal to make sure it's safe by the time i start the new meds. i am a couple days in but as you all know it starts on the third really. this week is gonna be fun.

will be sure to let you know how everything is going so you can point and laugh etc. other stuff tomorrow depending on how shitty i feel.

L

all hallows eve

All Hallows' Eve in the Silver City, and everyone under the age of 40 is getting wasted right outside my house. all the males are dressed as zombies; all the females, as "sexy" whatever they felt like. i'm sure this doesn't differ in your cities either. i sat outside to have a joint and watch the drunks, and out of about 60-75 women that went past not one had resisted the pressure to wear torture shoes and a tiny skirt in the freezing cold.

three or four of them noticed me sitting on the wall, looking probably pretty fucked up with my giant clothes and my joint, and i realised they pity me as much as i pity them... weird, huh.

outside of the sexy hordes, things may be getting better, though i'm loath to type a post about happy shiny rainbows before i actually know for sure. i got two conflicting letters yesterday from the Student Loans company, so one of them says i get about half the max loan and the other says max loan. they both have the same date. i need to call up the company yet again but at least it means some money will be coming in sooner or later.

lastly, i need to thank everyone who has sent what they could give towards food and rent. we have enough to pay the rent now, so things are so much more secure for the while than they were before. i can't thank you all enough. i never expected this much support. thank you so, so much.

some people say the PayPal isn't working - let me know if it doesn't. let me know also if you do not want to be listed as a contributor - i'm giving screen or real names as they were given to me, but i'm not listing amounts. i just want to have some page up that shows you were willing to help, as a thankyou.

on that note - even if your only contribution was to keep reading, thankyou too. i'm in no way trying to imply that people who supported me are better than people who didn't or couldn't. once again, the rule is no donating unless you have an income and can spare it.

happy All Hallows', sapes (well, i guess it's All Saints' Day now but whatever, i don't know all the Christian terminology, i just like the time of year). carpe corporem.

L

donor pie

verified: the PayPal account is working, but it got hit in the face with shrapnel when my overdraft exploded and now it hates my bank account. i can still use it and take money out of it, just can't put any in from my own account. so it's kinda useless for shopping.

today me and Muad-Dib took £10 out of the account and went to the campus bakery. i mention this because it would have been impossible without you all. thankyou so much. we bought some reduced shit to last the next few days and something to eat then and there and i realised how hungry i was; yesterday's tests revealed ketosis in my system, which the doctor yelled at me for until i told her it was poverty rather than anorexia. i wasn't surprised the meat was breaking out the emergency systems after a couple weeks of not really eating anything at all, but i'd been trying to suppress the sensation of hunger itself and i guess it worked until i went in there. everything looked so good, even nasty shit like the mac'n'cheese, and it smelt like greasy, bacony, sugar-topped motherfucking heaven. i had a caramel square, and a plasma physicist mate i see every now and again gave me a steak pie before that because "you look like you need it". he was probably right. i still haven't been sick either, so it will actually give the meat some nutrients this time, albeit not very good ones.

i also found some Ribena in my locker, but it had turned into fermented stuff. not even chooh. all the glucose had been used up and it tasted like arse so i threw it out, feeling like a tool for throwing away technically still edible food. the Sprite was alright, and there were some Haribos in there as well wrapped in tin foil (fuck knows how they got in there, i don't remember). i have used up all my Xanax, though since i was using it to ignore hunger, i might not need it anymore. donor wall and proper FAQ page coming soon.

i called the Student Loans Company yesterday. they said the first employee who spoke to me shouldn't have given a time estimate because that's not allowed, and had been disciplined. they also made me skip lectures tomorrow to try and catch my passport arriving via Special Delivery (probably going to get lost since nobody can find my fucking house.) after patching me through "to my boss" three times they said my account was still being processed at head office, and that it would take about 14 working days to finish processing and then a couple more to actually get the money and letter proving the money exists to me. that is, it won't get here before i have to pay rent for November.

i asked the guy what about the October and November rent, and house bills, and the food it's meant to cover. he made a sorta nuirgh noise. fuck the SLC. thankyou, sapes. i'm not exaggerating when i say i would have bailiffs taking my furniture right now were it not for you. this has only reinforced the lengths i am willing to go to to fetch knowledge for you.

L

having vomited: i'm screwed

i phoned the bank and the doctor. i can't think straight right now, so forgive typos and nonsense in this one. my balance is pretty much fucked. i can't get hold of the student loans people until after i see the doctor tonight because i've fucking left all my login data for them at home. i fucking hate panhandling but enough of you have offered to give me money that it might be worth my dignity and your spare cash to pull me out of the shit. i hate doing this to people.

i have a semi-broken Paypal at "a (9dot) mason (another dot) 06 (an at sign) aberdeen (0dot) ac (dotO) uk" (EDIT: de-regexed at Max's reminder. i told you i wasn't thinking right. please don't send mail to this address, it's a formal address for bills and things.) - idk if it even works, since i accidentally broke it when my bank overdraft collapsed last March and it said it could no longer be linked to my bank account. if it works without being linked to an account, it should be fine. EDIT 01: making sure it works tonight if i can. will let you know if it doesn't.

i also have a worthless bank account. sort code 40-44-41, account 91356593. holding name Ms A Mason. yeah, look at the meatspace data, it's pointless trying to censor it whilst begging. i can come up with other stuff like IBAN and holding branch address if people need it.

L

slim-fast

dinner last night was a quarter of this ancient tub of ice cream i found in my drawer of the freezer and i think it's fucked me up. i dunno what the hell else it could be since i haven't eaten anything else in the last 48hrs or so - tried to make a Slim-Fast shake thing i borrowed off my roommate but it smelt so fucking bad i couldn't stomach it even starving - but i can't even keep pills or drink down now and my stomach is killing me. think i'm gonna have to call the doctor.

fuck yeah cause you all come here for bodily fluid news. in other depressing meatspace happenings, today was the last feasible day for the student loans to come through and nothing has. i'm gonna call them again; i fucking hate sitting on hold with their self-interrupting autoresponder system. turns out i also can't apply for the "student hardship fund" until this document comes through, which is why i need to apply in the first place.

...okay, it's getting pretty bad now. i was going to post account data since people offered enough times but i've gotta go get an emergency appt. or something. more later. cc

L

data loss

hdd totally fucked, power's on the fritz as well now. random outs. fans don't work all the time so i have a desk fan belonging to my roommate sitting behind the machine while i try to answer emails.

i've also lost the HOWTO files i was working on, and the list of people that wanted them, and all the operation documents/photos/videos i had before. fuck.

i'll start the skeletons off again tonight and when i finally do write the docs, i will just post them here and on some filesharing services. sorry if you emailed me and were told you'd be sent a copy - you won't, i had all your addresses in a text file and it's gone.

also i do know how to use PhotoRec etc. but the HDD was too far gone - recovery tools turned up fuck all on initial scan and i didn't have another disk to recover to anyway so i just zerofilled and reinstalled everything (plain reinstall failed and fucked GRUB up). now for the moment it works, but idk how long it will last. i wish i was better at repair work.

in meat news, i missed the last two days of this week but have gotten to more than average classes still. the Xanax isn't really suitable for listening intently to lectures though and one day i ended up just composing replies to people instead of taking notes, like a fucking slacker. well, i am a fucking slacker, but you know.

myself and Muad-Dib are down to £1.40 between us or so, now, apart from the change pot. my roommate uses so much TP that i think said change is gonna have to go on that instead of something a bit more useful (MD thinks she eats it.) Student Loans still haven't paid me or sent any letters, but it could just be slow post - still freaking me out. we're gonna go scouting Marks'n'Spanks for 10p discount food tonight on a tip from Daz, our homeless friend who lives in front of the alleyway to the flat.

here's hoping for 10p belgian truffles and 20p pork roasting joints, motherfuckers. otherwise we're gonna be the ones eating TP.

L

UPDATE: the bastard rich people in their Jimmy Choos and pashminas fucking beat us to it, and by the time we got there they'd already filled literally cartloads of the reduced stuff and were trailing the staff waiting for them to reduce more. we got basically nothing - a sausage roll and some lemonade. assholes. they don't even need all that, they could at least leave some for other people - just a few bits. we saw one lady in gold jewellery and a fur coat cleaning out an entire shelf of reduced meat - so there was literally none left for us - then paying for it with her debit card and saying "See you tomorrow" to the cashier. i hate people with no concept of sharing. we didn't want ALL the food, we just wanted SOME, you fucking dicks. we need to fucking eat.

shit. sorry. i'm just worried.

obstacle

laptop's hdd is screwed. unmountable from any kind of bootable media nor from the OS itself, which isn't even getting to GRUB before it freezes. looked at it from a miraculously functional Ubuntu 10 live disc that had been loose in Muad-Dib's pocket - fucked. can't mount the encrypted volume that contains the Fedora distrib i've been living off for years, upgrading it again and again, waiting for the memory, or the hdd, or something else i can't fix without money, to break. looks like it has. the touchpad, DVD drive button, volume controls and keyboard all went long ago.

conducting memtest anyway. maybe it's actually a RAM problem somehow plx and i can just scavenge someone else's spare gig for it or see if i have some around here i might have stolen from somewhere... can't really remember what's in the box of gomi. i'm pretty sure it's fucked though. i'm gonna try to reinstall F14 (only disc i have and the DVD writer is on the fucked machine) then download another image and upgrade to... what is it now, 17? 17 beta? i'll lose all my bookmarks (pissed) but the fiction and all that shit is backed up or posted on the blog. if the box is completely boned i'll gut it and see if i can use the hdd as an external, scab the memory for something.

you know what caused this, the loss of my main frankenmachine and my current reliance upon a tiny, dying XP notebook my mum gave me for taking notes in lectures with?

fucking auto kernel updates. all i did was run the auto yum update and click the happy little YOU NEED TO REBOOT ME! icon on the taskbar. fuck.

L


PS. Xanax better than Valium. supply limited, but feeling less dead for the moment. pray to nothing it lasts; sometimes wish i believed in that shit for sheer placebo effect. the Suboxone stopped working completely this week and now i remember why i started taking morphine. working on finding an alternative, outlook piss poor though.


edit: memtest finds no problems. reinstall commencing. cock.

sell your integrity for fun and profit

several people have contacted me regarding advertising on SA. i have refused them all. i don't care if it would make money, i don't care what i could use that money for. i'd rather work at KFC (which refused my last job application on the grounds of "not adequately qualified for this position").

as i said to the last advertiser, i don't want to associate myself with the kind of untrustworthy information that adverts represent. you could not trust the ads; you'd know they were only there because someone paid SA money. you'd know that i don't believe in the ad copy or use whatever product they're shilling. you'd know i'm not in any way qualified to tell you what you should and shouldn't buy, in this case, subscriptions to a job news site. it would be pointless at best.

at worst, the customers they want to attract would see the company's name and logo on the blog of a self-harming mentally ill drug-addicted fringe-science biohacker, and would form an impression of that company which is not quite the one the executives intended. i explained this, but i don't think anyone listened.

lastly, i fucking hate advertising. i hate the way it tries to manipulate people's use of their resources without their consent or knowledge. i hate the way advertising firms try to get into people's subconscious minds to make them buy, buy, buy. it is degrading and dehumanising. you can evaluate how to use your budget by yourselves.

so, no, there are not going to be and never will be any adverts on SA. not Google ads, not banners, not Lijit ads, not anything. fuck ads.

L

reinitialising

i got enrolled in University again for fourth year, which started Monday. i was actually pretty proud of myself for getting to the advising appointment and doing the whole registration thing without any fuckups other than being an hour late. it turns out being fucked up is considered a legit excuse for that, somehow. they said they'd make the bureacracy go away since i was "one of their best students", although i think i'm actually just one of their most easily recognised charity case students. i got to the classes then, but that night i took my pills too late and ended up playing RIFT on MD's account until half three. so today i slept through all three classes and so did he. i guess it could be worse.

i also don't have student loans sorted out yet. my mail keeps going MIA after people send it, never arriving at my place because of its unorthodox address - slightly fucking worrying as the loans people have/had my fucking passport. no word on if or how much money will be paid. October rent due date approaching rapidly, kinda shitting bricks here.

head has been a little better. intrusive thoughts have ceased for the time being. plus i actually have people i know in this year, so maybe i can have more than one friend, a housemate and a partner as my meatspace social circle now. doesn't really matter since you guys are better support than any "friend" i ever had irl, to be honest. apart from Feoa, who is beyond good to me, but she needs space and help just like i do - we can't constantly be relying on each other since that would make both of us worse.

i did get some decent Valium from some of my street friends, though, so i should be able to sleep better tonight. only ten of them but they're real this time and this time i'm not gonna pop all of them, get anteretrograde amnesia and spend four hours telling Muad-Dib how x shitty romance book hero i read about when i was thirteen is totally hotter than him.

yeah, i was fucked. i was trying to block out pain from removing an embedded test prototype in my wrist and man, that tissue doesn't like letting go of embedded shit once it gets a hold of it.

gonna go take a bath, go to bed at midnight like an old lady and see if i can sleep through Quiz Night. (0900 lecture tomorrow.) fucking pub. cc.

L

PS. went to wedding of MD's sister Saturday, was recognised by guy i'd never seen before who had found Berlin lecture and shown it to fifty of his repulsed employees. lulz.

pulled from the scrapheap

i have been trying for a considerably long time and find myself unable to explain what precisely i have been doing since February, when you last saw me. physically, the answer is simple: sleeping; cooperating with medication regimes one after another as they are proposed, adjusted and readjusted; eating convenience food; staring lifelessly at whatever useless shit was in front of me, uselessly trying to pick up my work and my life. i lost myself.

i also spent a considerable portion of the time acquiring the means to build an Exit bag. this device is the quickest, most painless way to terminate one's own life. it induces anoxia in seconds via a maskful of nitrogen. there is no pain, only a deep breath in and a gentle sleep. you can't be revived. i had the components prepared and to be honest, my plan for much of that missing time was to kill myself, as it has been before. this time i was far better informed and equipped. i had all the necessary equipment to give my emptied mind a final, irrevocable state of peace.

i desperately wanted that peace. Suboxone does not give the kind of solace morphine does, and it had long since stopped doing fuck all for either kind of pain in my system. my University work was circling the drain, depression and procrastination hovering over it like vultures ready to finish the job. my financial situation was as dire as always, and this summer i could find no research jobs, not to mention the fact that i was still meant to be working on Thistledown full time. that led to Muad-Dib working 8-6 at a shitty phone unlocking shop, for employers who "borrowed" most of his salary, just to pay my rent and get me food to eat. he is living with me unofficially, but he has another place to go to, and he sacrificed his entire summer and all of its earnings for me. you can imagine this did not help the guilt.

i feel like i should explain that more: i carry a lot of guilt around. you saw what i did to my parents, as carelessly as i do everything else; i might be good at H+ but i am also pretty damn good at fucking people over without thinking. i've done it before, i don't even know i'm doing it half the time. coupled with the worst depressive episode i've ever experienced, i had set a date and my life was tabled to end on the third of July, 2011. from around April i'd been experiencing what they call an "intrusive thought" - it's time it's time it's time, strings and strings of the same little fucking messages everywhere. in dreams and in daydreams, scribbled in doodles on my planner, i'd even notice it spelling itself out in paraeidolic patterns on my ceiling or in the patterns of clouds and leaves. it's time it's time it's time it's time it's time. it would insert itself into the little "subtitles" i see in my mind's eye when people talk to me, into lines of my novel when i tried to reread it. i knew the messages were right, was the worst thing.

i realise i am making myself sound even more insane. my consultant psychiatrist says i am sane, but damaged; potayto, potahto. the third of July came around and my mum called, planning a visit for me to go down to England on my birthday. i realised they would fly her up here tomorrow when someone had to identify my body, or they would make Muad-Dib do it. i put the phone down and cried for hours until he got home. he told me in detail how he thought he would react to my suicide. that made me bawl more. we talked and talked until i promised him i would not do it.

the intrusive thoughts are common in extreme depressive episodes, according to Dr. D. they're almost gone. but i'm trying really hard not to sound like an emo kid while still telling the truth: my mind broke. i had the instrument of a calm quiet death up in my attic, i had my will and cadaver donation there, i had instructions to sell all my things to cover my bank overdraft. my roommate was gone for the summer and would never see my corpse. i convinced myself i was going to a blissful oblivious abyss of nothing where i couldn't hurt or disappoint or betray anyone ever again. i wasn't capable of anything for a fuck of a long time after i realised i couldn't give myself even that.

to boot, mental illnesses bring on physical ones. in one way or another i haven't been well for a very long time. that impacted everything to an irritating degree, but luckily is documented by enough doctors and psychiatrists that the University Registry will be satisfied of what happened.

so, consider me that shell pulled barely living from the cybernetic junkyard, half a torso, no limbs and a lolling bald head. my real name is fitting for that picture, after all. the core of me is alive, but the rest is damaged, and it has taken me so long just to be able to communicate with anyone without lying about how fine i am or just shitting bricks for no reason.

i am on the bench, fixing myself bit by bit with gomi. i'll need help before i am a working person again. but i will get there, and i will keep talking about it for a while as i do; should you not want to read this, as i would expect (recovery stories are not often very exciting save for the author) - check back in a few months. i will heal. it might not be fast. you have likely outstripped me tenfold.

thankyou all for your supportive comments, in the meantime. i saw them but was too fucked up to respond. i hope you understand, but equally, i'll get it if you don't. i will try to answer some emails tomorrow.

carpe corporem.

L


edited for stupid typos.