okay, so it's Saturday again. what have i been doing this week? answering emails with copypasta, throwing up a lot, coding a new peer matching protocol for my advanced* peer-to-peer system Thistledown because the old one was made of wood, trying and failing to stay up all night to reset my fucked-up sleep cycle (i'm nocturnal. i'm starting to think there isn't anything i can do that will change that, including a fortnight of going to bed at 10pm with hot fucking milk drinks, and the worst thing is my psychiatrist pretty much said the same thing Wednesday.) the all-nighters are also a failed bulwark against the deluges of psychotic images i get when MD isn't here and i'm nearly asleep, and the nightmares i get once i am. worrying about bills. trying to get exempted for council tax. attempting to persuade the student loans people to refinance me next year.
i'll let you know when i do something of value.
mr. searchy man: no. it doesn't matter that you are not the same guy as before. i am just as unavailable as if i were a married Christian hetero with a nice gold ring on my finger, you get me? there is absolutely no difference in the type of commitment we are talking about here. get your arse to plentyoffish.
L
* "It's not broken - it's advaaanced."
i can't answer all of those, either. there's way too many from way too long ago. this is what's going down if you've emailed me:
- if you were asking for step-by-step instructions for the experiments i've already done, those are being completed little by little. i have a list of those who have asked for them and will send them out to you when they're done.
- if you were asking common questions and i didn't answer you, it is very likely because those questions were already on the FAQ. i would happily respond to each and every person who asks where to get neodymiums, who i am, whether i'm gay, etc. with the answers or a direction to the FAQ, but i just don't have time any more. there are literally hundreds of you asking the same questions. go to the FAQ by the green link, from my profile, in the left sidebar there.
- if the answer to your question is not there and it pertains to implant hardware or control software, or you have ideas for the Southpaw development effort, go to Biohack.me and ask questions in the relevant thread there, or start a thread with your idea. this is also the place to go if you just wanted an update on the progress of the Southpaw or other experiments.
- if your question is a personal one, ask it here in a relevant post, or email me again with [Non-FAQ] in the subject line.
- if you are attempting to romance me, please don't. i'm sure you're great but i get a lot of this and i love Muad-Dib in permanence. believe me, you all will know if ever this ceases to be the case.
- if you wanted the video or photos of my latest experiments, a link to a reupload will be forthcoming.
the rest i will be dealing with personally. emails which cover any of those things above, i'm just not able to respond to and they will have been deleted. (if i had extra time you will receive a lovely copypasta that tells you pretty much what i've said here.) carpe corporem
L
okay, there's so many i can't actually respond to them all. some salient points:
melladh, Thomas, Phryk, Kuro, Crow, everyone else who responded with support: i was kinda expecting you all to be angry. i really appreciate the patience, yeah? i don't want to get rid of any of you. (apart from marriage proposal man, he sounded really fucking serious and i ended up feeling like a total wanker for having to firmly reiterate multiple times that i am not interested.)
i will add a twitter icon to the blog. i've been meaning to do it for fucking ages. thankyou for your two cents. i'll also link to the PayPal, since two or three people have asked, but i fucking hate begging.
Imran: i will email you about this post-haste. if i can afford it i am happy to speak wherever i'm wanted.
"Muad-Dib" is my top search this month. people have emailed again wanting information about him; he doesn't really have any kind of Net presence apart from a disused Facebook and Bebo, so i can't link you anywhere without revealing his real name and all of his friends' to everyone. his family is on those pages, you get the idea. a brief primer then: he is physically very beautiful, with a swimmer's body, thin handsome face, soft golden-brown hair and massive stormy grey-blue eyes; he is smart, though he doesn't get the same grades i do (it's because he hates University courses); he doesn't think either of the previous two statements are true at all; he's one of the best Heroes of Newerth support players and generally an excellent gamer; he has absolutely no self esteem; he is the sole source of humour in my bleak brain most of the time; he is ridiculously strong, physically and otherwise; he is gentle and kind and eternally patient with me and not with most people. Muad-Dib is the one of the two of us who has friends and a social life.
i do not have a Facebook. i never will.
i will make "I get email" posts if you all want them; ordinarily i just throw said mail out, but it could be publicly displayed for entertainment purposes.
Ultra Tempum: "buped" means that my venous system is filled to the brim with buprenorphine, the opiate drug that keeps me sane. i think i made it up. it's not a word you'd be using in your daily life unless you too are a functional addict.
i will upload the essay and re-upload the video of my last Nd insertion to some file stash somewhere tonight. keep you posted once it's all up with download links and the like. peace, all. carpe corporem.
L
hey, i think its eyes have rott - FUCK IT'S STILL ALIVE.
um, hi. you've probably forgotten about my sorry ass by now. have the fans all gone? is that guy who kept asking me to marry him still here?
i owe you all an apology for being away so long. lots of things happened; first there was the move, which was so fucking stressful i kept throwing up, and then trying to catch up with my honours year project, trying to get my application to repeat last semester approved and get repeat tuition fee support for it, trying to catch up with everything else i missed. there was a lot of serious head problems just after the move as well, plus fallout head-wise from the shit i did at Christmas. it still eats at me. then my finances crashed while we were moving, i got a phone call from the bank about how they needed £800 that day, and i had to use up every single penny i and my ma had, anywhere, just to stop them closing down my account. i'm still so broke i can't afford fuck all except rent. Muad-Dib is helping me get food. it's pretty much just potatoes, noodles and those frozen bags of discount meat you get at Farmfoods. i still owe my friend Feoa and Muad-Dib's dad for Berlin, my flatmate B for the massive electricity bill that came in when the boiler broke and my ma for helping me pay the deposit on the new place.
headspace got pretty corrupted this time around, as you can probably guess. i didn't try to end it this time; it makes me feel too guilty, on account of the life partner and family i'd have to leave behind, and the bupe sorta cushions the blow of a lot of those thoughts. i did completely shut down for everything but the Honours project, so i haven't even been answering my phone or checking my email, much less working on the experiments. i thank the gods of sedation that i had this shit in my veins that keeps me from going completely insane when my brain just falters and fails for months on end like that. i think i'd have succeeded at death a while ago if i didn't.
it's time to start again, again.
in my absence two places have been set up to document and plan the experiments: they are Biohack.me and SelfModifier. they were set up by people who read the blog, and i will be establishing myself on them tomorrow. it's going to be the day when i finally check emails, answer messages, make introductory posts, etc. and i promise no matter what kind of progress i do or don't make, every Saturday i will check in here and on those sites.
i tried on various people's advice to set up a Flattr. i'm still trying. my paypal broke when a payment from my bank got refused, and i think that might have broken the flattr as well.
also i had an invitation in January to go speak about H+ in Ireland; i may or may not actually do this, since i don't know if it's too late to accept or about travel funds and whatnot.
in the main, though, sorry. sorry for leaving you all for this long. sorry for not replying to your messages and emails and SMS. sorry for not being better with my finances so i have any money at all to do anything. mostly, sorry for fucking up.
i have an essay i'll post for you tomorrow about underground H+. it's a long-ass bastard (4K) but it's a fairly decent piece, i think, since i wrote it for a University course. it's 0354 now and i ought to go find something to make me sleep. i'm okay, but i'll be better when i get back into talking to people. g'night, sibs. carpe corporem.
L
okay, okay. i was moving house. my cunt of a landlord decided that the repair bills required to satisfy regulations for student housing were greater than the profits from the students, and instead of installing functional windows, sold the apartment i live in. he is a money-grubbing coke-snorting underdeveloped shit of a pathetic little man, and i should dearly love to see him floss his ass with razor wire. he has caused us a fuckton of stress, not to mention necessitated my spending over a month disconnected from the Wired, calling agents and companies, viewing a hundred dingy nasty flats occupied by flies and leftover Playboy posters, having to have discussions about who's actually compatible with who before two people who would very much not get on move in together by accident, trying to sort out the ~£400 heating bill caused by the abovementioned cunt making us keep electric heaters on 24-7 when the boiler broke down for two months (he didn't want to pay for repairs to burst pipes), trying not to let my final undergrad project crash and burn, etc.
i'm not dead. i am buped up to the eyeballs, allowing me a modicum of clarity to understand and accept the situation. we have now found a new apartment where i will stay with one housemate until i graduate, upon which i will get my own place. all of this is still being funded by undergraduate loans and grants.
Southpaw news in a little while, sapes. i've got 216 mails to reply to. cc
L
PS i'm not single, handful of Googlers. i spent Valentine's Day with my Muad-Dib, who does not give a shit about gender or orientation, we got fried chicken and had a picnic. i have been with him for close to two years, i love him irrevocably, i'm not interested. you also have got to stop referring to me as a "lady" when i am genderless.
i. never to read threads about myself on other websites
ii. to talk more with my family
iii. to try and set up some sort of Southpaw development space rather than keeping it here, since a blog isn't ideal anymore for the volume of people coming in
any ideas on the latter are welcome.
L
i am seeing lots of reactions, mostly on io9 where they reprinted the article about me on Wired, that have misconceptions. i would very much like it if the uneducated masses who like to call me an idiot would disavail themselves of the following precepts:
1. that i cost the NHS money without contributing to it.
no, i pay taxes just like you do, and fund the NHS just like you. some of my experiments have led to hospital, one to an overnight stay; i've never been in ICU, and the service is meant to help all people, not just people with tragic accident-related injuries.
2. that i sacrificed all or some of my sense of touch. i did not. next.
3. that you are just as much a "cyborg" as i am because you use an iPhone and wear glasses. fuck off if you are going to tell me that what i do is pointless, and i do not want to debate the definition of 'cyborg' with any normal.
4. that i don't do this voluntarily, and it's some sort of compulsion; also that because you can buy topical anaesthetic creams for stings and burns, that must mean those would work fine for surgery and would definitely go deep enough, so i must just "like the pain". do your goddamn research.
L
