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I’m writing again from Shakespeare Café with an author friend, Yu Wang. She’s a Chinese expat living in Paris, and she’s written a memoir on that topic. Tomorrow, she leaves to tour Eastern Europe for the summer. This might be the last time I come here this summer.

Soon after we arrived, there was almost a brawl outside. Just outside on the patio where more customers are eating and drinking, a cigarette smoker was allowing smoke to blow in somebody’s face. They shouted at each other for fifteen minutes before the finally left.

Next, an annoying girl just sat near us. She is a human short circuit. She is twitching, bouncing her knee, and sniffling non-stop. Despite the similarity to opioid withdrawal symptoms, she has an air of self-satisfaction that junkies in withdrawal usually don’t have. Now, she is shouting commands across the café to her boyfriend or husband who stands in line. He is getting the coffee, and she wants to make sure he gets her order exactly right. Her voice is nasal and makes my skin crawl. I don’t think she needs any caffeine. I pity her boyfriend.

I wrote for a while, or at least, I tried. It’s the girl’s blood-curdling voice that is preventing me from working. She has a non-regional American accent and speaks in a loud, high-pitched drone. She is speaking slowly, and the way she pauses between random words makes it impossible for me to tune her out. I cannot hear myself think.

For informal speech, the word “like” has several established usages. It is grammatically appropriate, for example, when used as a comparative preposition, a verb, a subordinating conjunction (even if it is not always correct usage), and an adverb. When the speaker is conscious about how she says it, she can even say “like” as a quotative particle: “I was like, ‘dude, check out those Hare Krishnas walking down the street.’” But that only works once per conversation per week. Beyond that, the speaker risks sounding like a moron.

When I was a kid, “like” had already infected my generation’s speech, but a lot of old people would say “you know” every sentence. The “you knows” were annoying too. The “you knows” of my parents’ generation were generally high school dropouts. I couldn’t bear to listen to them.

While old people were still saying “you know,” in the 1980s, Valley Girls from San Bernardino, California had made obnoxiously excessive and inappropriate usage of the word “like” popular. Most kids were saying it often and inappropriately. They were generally saying it in place of the “you knows” of our parents’ generation, except it was worse. “Like” had become a filler to replace “um/uh” and pauses. Saying “um” is forgivable if done sparingly. Sometimes, you just can’t think of what to say, and saying “uh” is an honest way to acknowledge ones lack of fluency without being pushy. Now, “like,” on the other hand, is often used in an authoritarian way to keep people from interrupting while the speaker tries to think of the appropriate word while monopolizing the conversation.

When I was in highschool, the vast majority of kids who said “like” were native English speakers who could not string enough words together to form a smooth sentence. I don’t know if it’s mental laziness or lack of intelligence on the children’s part, but we did happen to be confined together in a poorly funded American public school.

Even as a teenager, it was torture to hear my classmates saying “like” all the time. It generally was not possible to avoid those children because my high school was the kind of closed campus that was modeled after a prison or perhaps a factory or a work house. We did not have the basic freedom to move around and escape bad surroundings and unpleasant people.

Thus, here I sit at Shakespeare café, and an American woman, who looks like she is nearly thirty, is saying the word “like” once every four or five words. In the past five minutes, she has even said “like like,” that’s double “likes,” several times. I don’t know how someone can graduate from college and still talk like that. I don’t know why her parents let her enter adulthood without first teaching her not to talk like that.

She is sitting with her boyfriend, and she barely lets him get in a word. He just sits there and whispers something in reply while she speaks non-stop for minutes at a time. He is quiet. I wish she could be more like him.

I try hard to tune out people like her. They don’t come here every day, but since college is on summer break, there have been more American tourists here.

She prattled for another fifteen minutes before leaving.

Finally, I could concentrate. I wrote for a while. I was going fast. I had written nearly a page. Suddenly, another barrage of grating “likes” assaulted my ears from across the room.

Liker 1 (20 something male voice) : “I was like … watching them both like …. this year, and like, Rick and Monty,.... is like totally …. more intelligent.“

The ellipses represent long, irregular pauses.

Liker 2 (20 something male voice): “Like yeah ….. like I watch them too.... But like Bojack Horsemen like is like … deeper, like you know?“

Liker 3 (20 something FEmale voice): “Like my brother ….. he is like totally into those shows, ….. but like I don’t really like watch them, but like um …… he watches them like all the time.”

I don’t know what Bojack Horseman or Rick and Morty are, and considering who their fans are, I don’t want to know. I don’t watch TV anyway.

I suffer from partial hearing loss. The fact that I could hear every single word each liker said while I was sitting on the other side of a crowded room should give an indication of how loud these people (American) are compared to everyone else (French). I was counting the likes and counting the total number of words each “liker” emitted.

Liker 1: “Like yeah, … like Bojack Horsemen, I like like (double like) Bojack Horseman. …. Bojack Horseman is like good like but like um it’s not like deep. It like pretends to be deep….. But, like, Rick and Morty is, like, more, um, like, intelligent.”

Liker 3: “Rick And Morty is like scientific.”

Liker 2: “Like, I agree totally. I like can’t um like um wait for the next like season. of Bojack. It’s going to be like totally awesome.”

Liker 3: “Like, have you ….. like ever noticed… like how often we say the word “like?”

LIker 4: “LIke yeah… um true dat… um I’m trying to stop saying “like” so often, but it’s like hard.”

Liker 1: “Me too. One of my teachers in high school ….. used to ….. li.. correct us and tell us to …. stop ….um .... whenever we like …. said it.”

(Liker #1 almost finished a sentence without saying “like.” Maybe there is hope for him.)

Liker 2: “Like I don’t even notice it … like …that much.”

I’d kill myself if I had to go back to high school and listen to that for another four years. The repetition of that one word combined with the irregular cadences and random pauses in their speech was excruciating. The longer they speak and the more they repeat “like,” the more raw my nerves become. To make it worse, their loud voices make it impossible not to hear them.

The effect is similar to that of nuisance barking. Nuisance barking is when a nearby neighbor keeps a dog that barks nonstop for hours each day. Selfish neighbors with small dogs are the worst culprits. Of course, it’s the fault of the neighbor for being a bad owner, but the dog often takes the blame. Nuisance dogs are frequently the targets of poisoning, gunshot, fatal bludgeoning, or theft. The owners of nuisance dogs are subject to fines and lawsuits. It is not uncommon to read about them in the “crime reports” sections of the paper after their dog’s nuisance barking causes somebody to crack and assault them for being obnoxious dog owners and bad people in general.

There’s not much that can make me snap, but loud, annoying babble comes close. The reader might have figured out that the likers were Americans. It’s summer break, and I can either avoid Shakespeare Café until the Americans go back home to school, or I can acquire a set of noise cancelling headphones for people like them. Short of that, there is no way to tune it out. I’ve tried relaxation exercises, meditation, deep breathing, yoga, and ear plugs.

Compared to other nationalities, Americans are difficult to be around for extended periods of time. I’m an American and lived most of my life there, so I know this first hand. My experiences with such people when I lived in the USA helped drive me to alcohol and hard drugs. I cannot mentally tune them out, and dependng on my situation, I cannot always physically leave them. Their behaviour takes a hard psychological toll on me, and drugs and alcohol made it easier to tolerate them and not snap and murder them.

I believe that people such as the likers are making life unbearable for so many others to the point that it is fueling the rise in opioid addiction in the US. Such people helped cause me to become reclusive there and eventually contributed to my moving to the desert where I lived alone and off the grid. It also helped drive me to leaving the country all together.

__

Back to the ski trip.

It was noon on Saturday, and I was still serving in Purgatory at the megamarket grocery store situated in a suburb of Paris I had been writing about during the previous five blog entries. I was there with a friend shopping for food we would bring with us on a two week ski trip. I don’t like supermarkets, and I hate shopping during the weekend rush, but being here wasn’t my choice. Drusilla had been leading me around the store, and I was pushing the cart, trying to keep up in the heavy crowd. I felt like a retard on a trip to the zoo.

I've reached the word count limit. I will continue later.

She likes to sleep with the radio on
So she can dream of her favorite song
The one that no one has sung
Since she was small

She will never know that she made it up
She had a soul and we ate it up
Thrown away like a paper cup
The music falls

The only flaw in her detailed plan
Is where she wins back the love of her man
Everyone knows that he's never coming back

He took her heart and she took his name
He couldn't stand taking all the blame
He left her only with guilt and shame
And then she cracked

Won't it be dull
If we rid ourselves of all these demons haunting us
To keep us comforted

In the dream I refuse to have
She falls asleep in a lukewarm bath
We are Left to deal with the aftermath again

On behalf of humanity
I will fight for your sanity
How profound such profanity can be

Won't it be dull
if we rid ourselves of all these demons haunting us
To keep us comforted

Won't it be odd
To be happy like we always thought we are supposed to feel
But never seem to be

Near where I live there's a viaduct
Where people jump when they're out of luck
Raining down on the cars and trucks below

They put a net there to catch there fall
Like that'll stop anyone at all
What they don't know is that when nature calls you go

They say that Jesus and mental help
Are just for those who can help themselves
What good is that when your living hell on earth?

From the very fear that makes you wanna die
Is the same as what keeps you alive
It's way more trouble then some suicide is worth

Hard to believe I fought the war on drugs
My hands where tied and the phone was bugged
Another died and the world just shrugged it off

I just spent 40 minutes posting on a previous post. I went to hit "post" only to come back and fine it did NOT post. Talk about seriously frustrating. I'm a bit pissed off about that. I don't have time to rewrite everything I wrote because my friend is going to be here shortly to take me to dinner and a play, but I wanted to see if THIS entry would post.

September 21-23 2017
Earth Frequency Activation
The feast of the Trumpets: The Last Trumpet
Astological/Astronomical Alignment
Possibly Extra-Terrestrial/Extra-dimensional
God or Gods showing authority in humanity's direction
Some speaking of Rapture, but that is always with an eyebrow raised.
All I know is that these dates are somehow significant for those on the spectrum.

part 5

I was writing about a two week ski trip I went on with a French woman. We had just arrived at a megacenter grocery store somewhere in the suburbs of Paris. We were moving around the store picking out food items.

I found the cheese section. One of the worst things about shopping is when people camp in front of what you want. You’ve already spotted that one thing you want. It’s only a block of cheese. You’ve been eating cheese for years, and by now, you know what kinds of cheese you like. You’re smart enough to know that your time is valuable; so when you can’t decide between two cheese, you either buy both, or you buy one this week and you buy the other one the next week. Deciding takes two seconds. The cheese you want is three feet away. You just need to reach it. It won’t take three seconds to open the cabinet door and take out the cheese.

Thus, I stood in front of the shelves of cheese that I wanted, the dry cheeses, but they were blocked by a throng of people who simply stood still in front of the cheese.

The people camped out in front of the door took up so much space that there was no way to get around them and open the glass door. They were chatting among themselves. Although they were looking at the cheese, what they are actually talking about had nothing to do with cheese. They were discussing the wallpaper in the mother’s kitchen. I said “excuse me” loud and in their ears, but they did not respond. These people would not budge, no matter what. I repeated myself and, again, no response. Whenever this happens, it’s usually a big family or a group of knuckleheads in college. Today, it was a middle aged family group. They would not make up their minds about the cheese, no matter what, so they kept yammering on about the Mother’s wallpaper.

I peered over their shoulders and looked at a block of dry manchego, a cheese that is nice for its ability to travel without needing refrigeration. It is made of goat milk and not cow milk, and therefore, it was easily digested. I tried to squeeze past the crowd that was blocking the cheese. They would not move. They just stood there staring at the cheese and gossiping about their mother’s wallpaper..

“Excuse me,” I said in French.

They did not budge. The cheese was just out of my reach.

“Excuse me,” I said again in French.

They continued to stare at the cheese for a few more minutes.

“Pardon me,” I said.

They did not respond.

“It’s not real estate people. Make up your minds and get the fsck out of the way,” I said.

This is probably the first time in my life that I have been driven to swear at strangers, but this is the kind of thing that rubs me wrong.

Still, they did not move. Finally, I shoved three of the lollygagging people aside and grabbed the cheese I wanted.

“Excusez moi!” one of the said.

I could not take much more of this, yet this is how the suburban world spend their Saturdays. I put the cheese in the cart which I had parked off to the side and out of everyones way. Drusila saw the cheese.

“Why are you picking out cheese and yogurt? That’s dairy. You just said you were allergic,” Drusilla said.

She looked annoyed but not curious and not puzzled. She had the surly look of someone who is convinced that she has had all of the answers to life’s questions since the age of eleven. Manchego is a well-known variety of cheese, and most people know it is made from sheep milk. Another Red Flag on the grounds of being intellectually incompatible and ornery.

“It’s goat cheese. I can eat it,” I said.

There is more to it, but I was too tired to explain. Even if it were cow cheese, I could still probably eat it. The reason is complicated, but basically, the proteins like casein, whey, and lactose that trigger the allergy are broken down in the chemical reactions that produce some cheeses, especially dry cheeses, and yogurts.

“Suit yourself.”

It’s excruciating to argue with somebody who questions everything you say and do and who is so sure of herself that she believes she knows all of the answers. I’ve never met Hilary Clinton, but the former First Lady came across the same way in interviews, the news, and even in her own books she has written.

Next, Drusilla found the cardboard tasting factory tomatoes. Then the potatoes. I suppressed a groan each time. She had stopped picking out food that was poisonous to me and started picking out things that were only disgusting and so cheap and heavy that it was not economically worth it to transport them 500 miles.

I’ve forgotten the exact costs of fuel and wear and tear on the vehicle, but very roughly, the cost of transporting 100 kilograms is 0.10$ per mile. By the end of the shopping excursion, we would have about 100 kilograms of food, and we were going to haul it 500 miles. Do the math. It cost $50 to haul all of these potatoes, rootabegas, tomatoes, bottled water (which she picked out!!!), etc. to the ski resort. That nullified any cost savings of buying the groceries in Paris. Even if transport hadn’t been expenseive, the unpleasant experience of going to the supermarket on a Saturday afternoon would have made it not worth it.

“Let’s get some fruit. How about oranges, peaches, kiwis, apples. Even lettuce is better than those store tomatoes.” I said.

I picked out some oranges and apples.

“no they cost too much…” she said.

“ I’ll pay for them.”

She shrugged. I got them. They were the same price as the same fruit sold in teh USA. Why does she have a job if the only food she will buy with her salary is the cheap, crappy rooty food that grows underground (onions, garlic, potatoes, beets, rutabegas, etc).

She picked out some grapefruit. The one fruit that is so bitter as to be inedible happens to be the only fruit she likes. I did not make a comment. Another Red Flag for liking disgusting crap that retirees in Florida eat.

I picked out some eggs. I got a box of thirty. They were cheap and that was enough to last two weeks.

“What are you doing with those eggs? Are you going to eat that many?

“yes,” I said.

She peered at the carton with her beady black eyes.

“They are not Bio eggs,” she said.

“They’re free range eggs;” I said.

“That’s not good enough. They have to be BIO. BIO is the same as ‘organic‘ in America. It means they are free of pesticides, hormones, and have special growing conditions.”

“In the US, the “Organic” label means nothing. It’s just an advertising gimmick everybody uses, no matter how the food was grown. That’s not a good thing to go by. It is just as likely to have pesticides and growth hormones as any other label. Consumer groups have studied the claims of ‘certified organic’ labelling in the US. Only a little was what it claimed to be but a large proportion was not. You have to research each product to know for sure. I have not researched the “BIO” certification of French groceries, but I had assumed it was bogus like the American Organic label.

“Get the BIO,” she said.

“Do you trust BIO?”

“Just get it,” she said.

I had been warned that many French women were bossy.

I couldn’t care less about BIO or organic. Even non-organic French food is of better quality than American “organic.” Concerning eggs, you can tell that it is better by the color of the yolk and the flavor of the egg. It is orange and the flavor is richer. American eggs yolks are lemon yellow. The shells of French eggs, BIO or not, are stronger too. It takes a solid tap to open one, but an American store egg cracks with the slightest pressure. But, I just didn’t care. I couldn’t care less. I had enough of that place.

The truth is that unless you raise the eggs yourself from your own chickens or have an egg lady, which I had while Iived in Portland, who raises the eggs herself and delivers them to your door, you have no way of knowing

“BIO is was trustworthy. French food has better oversight.”

“OK, fine.”

The BIO eggs were sold in packages of six and ten, costing 3 and 5 dollars, respectively. They cost three times as much as the “free range” eggs which I had been eating since I arrived. I cannot justify spending so much on ordinary eggs. There’s a famine in Africa.

I knew Drusilla was an intelligent woman in terms of IQ and ability to learn, yet it was clear that we were not intellectually compatible. She was failing to correctly process new information - she was “always right,” in her mind. She had a lot of bad and incomplete information that she took as gospel. In turn, she tried to push her bad ideas onto me. She expected me to hear and obey without questioning her. I have since been told that this was normal female behavior in France.

We all have blind spots into our own shortcomings, we have internal inconsistencies, and we are hypocritical in some ways; and this woman had already revealed more than her share. That wasn’t the bad part. It was her aggressiveness in maintaining her bad ideas that made the behavior unbearable and made her unattractive. This is why I don’t trust most old people. Old people are in “ruts” in their ways of thinking, their personalities, and their ways of doing things. It all gets worse with age.

Anyway, it boggled my mind that someone who cared about the BIO hype so much as to fight about it would shop at a large chain grocery store instead of any of the numerous coops or small markets in the area.

I feel like that word is awfully demeaning isn't it? "Recovery" that is.

it makes me feel like I lost all of my learned skills and am re-learning how to do anything in life.

and people look at you as somehow being lesser than, despite the fact that it's usually the other way around

you hear shit like "get healthy again" or "get your mind straightened out" or "get back in the swing of things" like I'm some fucking science experiment who has to take baby steps in order to be able to go anywhere in life.

like wtf? And people don't trust you anymore. My brother doesn't want to smoke weed with me because he thinks it might make me do heroin

and I feel like I get a fucking audit from people who know my past every time I interact with them. I can tell they're like trying to see if I'm fucked up or not.

last time I checked, I'm still pretty fucking good at my job. Last time I checked, I still treat everyone respectfully and politely. Last time I checked, I don't get involved in someone else's business unless they ask me to

but, apparently, you shoot a couple bags of dope in your arm and suddenly people don't care about any of those truths anymore. They just assume I am incapable of doing anything while on drugs and just need to "figure things out"

oh, I think I got things figured out quite well actually. I like to get high. I just can't realistically chase certain highs anymore. But I still am damn straight going to use lower forms of intoxication. Because, in my opinion, I earn the right to.

im just tired of dealing with people who don't understand that drug usage does not equate to automatic failure

but when you are labeled as a failure by some people solely for using drugs, well I guess that kind of settles it in their mind

The way I see it, unless I did something to negatively affect your life, what drugs I used are none of your fucking business.

Here I will attempt to share a memorable experience from nearly a decade ago.
I had just acquired this connect a couple weeks prior. I was going to their apartment almost once (or twice) a day so they certainly knew who I was in a short period of time (a reliable customer). This place was the epitome of a "trap house". Literally, it was the 1-stop-shop. They had pretty much everything from weed (swag), heroin, from cocaine to meth, and pharms, powder, liquid, etc. They even had cigarettes that were a couple bucks cheaper than gas station price. Sometimes I would go there just to buy a few packs of smokes lol. They lived in a poverty stricken environment. It was grim, frightening and sketchy. The absence of positive thought was the only consistent thing. Negativity and ego driven assholes lurked in the abyss of this apartment complex. Twas the Projects.. and I had been getting their x tabs for 3$ a piece and reselling them for 10-15$ a piece; That was my side hustle. The first time I was brought to their apartment, this 1 (of the 3) guy pointed a gun at me. (Absolutely retarded. Mind you, I am not the same person as back then)
So..On this late night, I was on the way to pick up 150 x tabs with my buddy. As I pulled down the street, we were approaching the apt complex. All of a sudden, I get a call from the guy demanding to not come to the "trap" but to just park at the gas station right across the road. (Side note: I hated dealing with these types of dealers.) Anyways, I parked at the gas station and a rickety, old maroon truck pulled up behind me. My buddy coincidentally knew him (the x runner) so he got out and got in the truck. Basically, I figured it'd go smoother since he knew the dude personally and I was already rolling. I thought he was just going to grab the bundle of x and hop back in my car, but no, they drove off. I guess they had to go pick it up or something. So now I am sitting at a ghetto-ass gas station, by myself, at 1:00 am, rolling my balls off waiting on more, with about 2 ounces of bud in the car and a few xannys. Mind you, I am the only white person lol I did not fit in to the scene.
30 minutes went by, still waiting, and my phone had just died. I was sort of worried, but again I was rolling balls and fully reclined, music on (probably the mars volta) and chain smoking the fuck out of my pack. I ended up getting out of the car to buy some orange juice and another pack of smokes since I doubted they would card me in this area. As I was waiting in line, this crazy lady called me out and said something along the lines of "Man you sure are bugging, I used to sell the fuck out of x until I got busted and went to prison. Just got out..." I just bashfully smiled and got the fuck out of there. I was 16 at the time. I got back in my car, rolled a joint to kill time and before I knew it, all the orange juice was gone, all my cigarettes were smoked, and I had been sitting there for over an hour.
At this point of time, I am actually freaking out. Like should I leave? Do I look for my friend? How long do I wait? What happened? Panic...
As all these thoughts were rushing through my mind, I checked my rear-view mirror and what do I see? A cop car pulling into one of the gas pumps. My heart started racing faster. I looked out the other mirrors and realized there were two undercover cars parked on the other side of the lot, and one SUV at the other pumps and the same SUV model parked across the street (near the entrance of the apt complex). It looked staged. The cars were blacked out, and new. It was a set up. Then I saw a guy walking towards my car. Clearly an undercover. I remember every step he took towards my car was a time I fumbled the joint and bag of herb into the center console. Such butter fingers. I think I dropped the joint in the crack between the car n center console haha. so nervous.
The UC was dressed in a fucking Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. So retarded. I mean come on, we were in a ghetto and he is dressed up so fake; totally did not fit the scene but then again neither did I. The only people at this gas station were people who looked dirty and rough and then there was me, A scrawny white 16 yr old in a decent car. He flashed his light in my car and asked me what I was doing there. I told him I was just getting something to drink, and was going to get gas but realized I left my money at home. He told me I need to leave, that there is about to be a drug sting happening at this place (probably not in those words). I left immediately.
As I was pulling out of the gas station, the truck with my buddy and ecstasy passed by, coincidentally. what amazing timing, my phone was dead. So, I nonchalantly followed them. We went about 3 miles and hopped onto I-45 and drove for about 4 or 5 exits. And then we did the transaction behind a business (that was closed). It was so fucking sketchy and so crazy.
I wonder if the sting was set up for us. Even though we weren't buying a lot, I know that they were selling a lot and were reckless so maybe it would have been an easy target. Or maybe it was just coincidentally another deal that was bigger about to happen. Either way (and most importantly), we were safe.
The dealers (not the x runner) I was buying from is locked up for like 50 years, the other one is dead, and the other guy is locked up for life for shooting someone aka murder. Soo, fuck them anyways. Terrible people. Oh yeah, also the reason why it took [my buddy and dealer] so long was just typical dealer stuff; unprepared n bullshitting - nothing relevant.
To conclude this rant, we drove back to a buddy's apartment with the goods. Sold ALL of them to about 15 people, and partied for like 24-30 hours or so. I remember that the comedown was so miserable and one of the last times i would ever take a tab. this was also before i discovered pure molly (ok, maybe not pure). And also, the "x runner" ended up making some life changes, as did I, and we are now friends among the same amazing group of people. Honestly great people nowadays. Anyways, there is my rant from about 11 years go.
Cheers.

Hey guys. I've been very busy here at Job Corps.

The program is very beneficial in the big scope of things. Free training, free food, free driver's ed, they offer a free college program at Valley college when you complete your trade, free living, you get a 100$ clothing allowance twice while you're here, free eye doctor visit and glasses, etc.

The people here are the downfall. Twenty-something year olds act like they're 16. Relationships that form within 2 days of being at the program and last just as long. Prison type hustling (selling cigarettes, noodles, honey buns, etc.). Drugs are scarce to non-existent. Security is super tight.

I've managed to drink alcohol multiple times on what is called "mall runs". A bus comes for us and drives us to Inland Center Mall and Walmart. They drop us off and pick us up in like 1.5 hours. So me and some friends get liquor or beer and buy gum, mints, food, etc. and have a good time and come back trying to be sober.

I smoked bud this last weekend which I said I wouldn't do for the entirety of the program. 3 blunts, edibles, and hits off a wax pen. Boy did I miss THC. Most especially that feeling at the tail end of the high where everything is perfectly trippy, I feel a comforting loneliness in my head, I mumble replies to people to more quickly return to the silent, peaceful state my mind is in. Then I go and listen to Flume and go to space. It was amazing.

They drug test you when you first get in. If you fail, you must re-test in 37 days, and if you fail THAT one, you are terminated from the program. If you pass the entry screening, you do not get drug tested again unless you are "blue carded".

The "blue card" system works based on suspicion. If you smell like weed, your eyes are red, or even someone anonymously snitches you out to security with a slip of paper, you can be blue carded. When you are blue carded you get drug tested. If you fail, you are terminated. If you come back smelling like alcohol, you are breathylized. The limit is 0.0. If you are over 0.0, you are terminated. NO alcohol is tolerated.

It's quite crazy to think that if I am caught for drinking I will be homeless on the streets of San Bernardino. And yet, I am drinking and will be drinking today actually. Funny how my impulsive mind works.

I will post more information tomorrow.

Please ask questions in the comments and I will reply. This blog is a way to communicate the ins of this program that I wish I had known going in. It is also a way for me to express myself. I enjoy writing and I need a friend who I can talk to. Even if it's just the internet. Even if no one reads this.

So the year of 2017 has been full of awesome changes and a new appreciation for myself and my abilities. I have started actually monitoring the food I eat and walking for 5-10 miles a day. I started a small work out routine which I have been expanding on in an effort to get into even better shape, it feels good to be at least somewhat active and helps me hold myself in higher regard.

I have also been tripping a lot and exploring the city i moved to. I really enjoy living here and am very happy to have moved and everything seems to be going great. I have lost about 10 pounds just by walking and eating right.

The main reason for this entry is because of the concert i went to last week. For about a year I have been really into this band called "the birthday massacre" their goth style guitars, 80s synth pop sounding, female vocal stuff is hard to put into words. It basically covers everything i ever wanted in music... singing female vocals, heavy guitar, a sort of synthesized background music often with long instrumentals... its like candy to my ears ive never had such a love for a band. Its like anything they do i will like instantly. This caused me to go back to the type of music i liked about 15 years ago sort of goth nu metal whatever you wanna call it.

So Ive spent about a year listening to all their albums, they have been around since 2002 so theres a decent number of them... still amazed that they cant make an album i wont listen to in its entirety over and over. So by the time they tour i can basically name all the albums all the songs they rapidly became my favorite band of all time.

Fast forward to before the show and I planned on a very strong candy flip, the strongest ive done. I abstained for 2 weeks from L and 6 from molly. I took 5 hits of the same L ive had for months 3 hours before the show and 300mg of molly an hour and a half before the band took the stage. I was really excited more so then i have been in a while for anything... and ive done some really fun stuff but this just seemed so personal. No one got me into this band no one even really knows i like them so much so it was very much the first time ive done something just for me because i really wanted to.

Anyway before they come on im obviously peaking, looking back on it now thinking of course it was an overly emotional experience for me... most people couldnt see in front them them on that many psychedelics. But when they took the stage I was literally captivated and took video and pictures, video is so good you can see the singers eyes and facial expressions.

Now Ive discovered so much about myself in the almost 2 years off dope and being single i thought i knew everything there was to know about me. The whole thing really threw my view upside down. This whole time i thought i was fine with being alone having no real connectivity to anything. I was fine with my even emotions and predictable everything but she literally made me feel like a teenager. I forgot what it was like to actually get excited to see someone, to have their small acknowledgement mean everything to you... Like im not obsessed with the singer, i could see if i were younger confusing this for being attracted to her, it was just weird to feel that way again. It was nice to feel that way again, ill never forget what it was like to have that happen... i literally forgot for so long.

I wish i could write her and be like "at 30 years old you taught me i can still feel, after everything i went through, im capable of lowering my guard so much a small event can have a massive impact"

fuck it. that's right, FUCK IT.

Now don't get me wrong, there are some drugs that I just cannot do anymore. That is, if I want to maintain any form of responsible and normal lifestyle.

The following is a list of drugs that will take me down HARD:

Heroin
Methamphetamine

That concludes the list.

Honestly, outside of those two drugs, I think I'm just gonna continue to get high. I mean, really, what is the big deal? I try to wrap my brain around that question every fucking day.

What is the big problem if I occasionally use recreational drugs?

And I guess maybe Im just frustrated that not everyone looks at it that way. They immediately conjure up the worst case scenario in their minds and assume that is what definitely will happen.

As if I'm just gonna take a bunch of sleeping pills and ibuprofen on my way to an overdose, HERP DERP saw it on Erowid HUHHHHHHHH

get the fuck out of here. I feel like a douche for saying this but honestly, I'm pretty fucking good at taking drugs. To the point where I wish the people who were worried fully understood like just how much I research this shit and thought I put into it.

It's not like I'm at a party and just going "yeah, let me do that"

no, I plan this shit out. At first, I was just trying drugs to see what I liked, and what I didnt like

Some stuff I didnt care for, some stuff completely became my life.

But the point is, I had to try them to figure all of this out. I'd rather be at this point knowing what I know now instead of not knowing anything about drugs, if that makes any sense.

It's not so much that I can't stop using drugs, I just struggle to find reasons to do so. I don't want to be a role model or do the whole white picket fence with two kids shit. I just want to go through life having a few laughs and just straight chillin. How is that harmful to anyone? It's not even harmful to me!

"blah bleh blkah YOU don't even have any goals or ambition, such a waste of potential!"

ok guy, here's a goal for you: Let me figure out a way to not have to listen to people tell me about goals and potential.

Seriously, that's it. That is my major goal in life: Have everyone leave me the fuck alone.

Boom, now that that is out of the way, let's look at how to go about this.

Option 1: Be a heroin junkie

Well this option certainly does the job pretty well. Being left alone that is, heroin is really good at that. It takes you to a magical place where all your problems float away and nothing bothers you. Unfortunately, you generally wind up enjoying this feeling underneath a bridge somewhere and the other 90% of your life is absolutely horrible. And, I already tried this route. Not sustainable

Option 2: Kill myself

A bit more extreme measures here, and this is definitely an option that would always be a backup plan to option 1, and they kind of intertwine a bit. Not really much to gain here, and depending on which book from the previous millennium you subscribe to, could actually lead me straight to hell. I have no desire to kill myself, and can't really see it ever becoming an actual concern at this point, but it is always an option. Not trying to be morose here, just covering all the bases.

Option 3: Become a lifelong criminal

Now we're getting somewhere, I could just be a criminal for the rest of my life! I have this weird relationship with stealing things, it's like I know I can do it but I am reluctant to because I have always been trying to not rack up criminal charges. But if I just say fuck it and don't worry about my record, yeah I could definitely just rob houses / businesses for a living. Total scumbag move, but again, its an option. Go to jail, get out, steal, get high, back to jail. They still gotta feed you 3 times a day you know.

Option 4: work full time at a job I hate for the rest of my life and use drugs as a way to escape my shitty reality

seems to always be the fall back plan. Could be worse I guess

Option 5: Go back to college, get a good job, work super hard, put money away for retirement, have kids, settle down

That's what they're expecting me to do...

Nah but seriously, I just don't want to do that. And that's really the crux of this whole post.

That is what I should do with my life. I don't want to do that.

So where does that leave us?

I guess some would say that I need to "grow up", but I don't really think I'm immature or anything, and I definitely try to be a good person towards other people. I just don't want to do anything more in life than I have to.

And when did that become such a travesty? I feel like society has shifted towards this like belief that you should strive to live your life like the fucking Dos Equis guy from the commercials, The Most Interesting Man in the World.

Yeah, that guy probably never got off work, went home, smoked weed, watched a Sixers loss, and went to bed. I'm sure that is definitely NOT going to be in any Dos Equis commercials any time soon. But you know something, you don't have any idea what goes on in my head 24/7.

I've tried to avoid having to admit this to myself, but I'm fucking weird man. In a lot of different ways. Drugs just help me forget about this. I might not be the most interesting man in the world, but I like to think that I am capable of providing very unique and accurate insight towards things that I come across in my life. And, sometimes, I feel like that is something that might be more valuable than being the coolest guy on Instagram or w/e. I like to talk to myself because I'm usually saying something worth hearing. But it's really just me hearing it, but when I say it out loud I feel like I'm saying it to someone? Im still not sure why I do that, again, weird shit.

And the worst part is, you would never even know it. I'm such a pleasant person on the outside. Get along with everyone, say please and thank you, hold the door for an old lady type of shit.

But I'm fucking weird. On the inside. And I know it. Usually it takes people a little bit before they realize it and subsequently my friendships don't usually last very long. Relationships are twice as worse. I don't have friends, I just have people that I do drugs with sometimes.

Idk man, I know a lot of shit about a lot of shit, but I still can't figure out why I don't live a normal existence. And I can't decide whether it is better to be different, or if it would be a lot more simpler to just be like everyone else.

I don't know what im trying to say anymore. I talk to myself a lot, but it's more just a way of vocalizing my thoughts to hear them out loud to sort of form this like quasi-relationship with this person who doesnt exist but totally gets me and doesnt think im weird or anything

My god, it's like I love myself and hate myself at the same time. I love my brain, and my thoughts, and my ability to learn things at a fast pace.

But I hate my actual self, my actual life, my actual place in the world. And I don't even have much to bitch about. Sure, itd be nice to be a bit taller. It'd be nice to have a perfect smile. It'd be nice to have a full head of hair. But all things considered, I should be a lot more happy with myself than I am.

But it's nothing physical that is making me like this. No, this is something that is coming from inside.

I'm miserable with drugs

I'm miserable without drugs

And I can't fucking take it anymore

I helped my friend who's a drug dealer move. We getveverything packed in the car fine but we are exhausted. He had done coke so we go to this supposedly secluded spit to shot some coke. I do my shot it's a big one bells ringing. I didnt see the cop till he c was screamin with a gun to my head. Great needles everywhere we are fucked.

My buddy had a quarter of u 4770 on him, coke, and a little fentanyl. Too his credit and my everlasting debt he said all the drugs where his. I claimed I was sober and in NA. Trying to be of service to my fellow addict blah blah. They bought it and I drove away. Unfortunately my best friend didnt. I'm doing everything I can to get him out. But his bail hasn't even been set yet.

But man I saw my life ft lash before my eyes. This one black cop was cool and gave me 3 MG of kpin out of my script while I was handcuffed. But I almost lost it all and became a felon.

I woke up this morning with my heart racing and the most terrible dread that I have felt since the morning after my son died. I dreamed that I was on a trip in a foreign country with a good friend of mine (the one that I actually went to Ecuador with last time). We were in a small hotel and we were trying to figure out what the local customs for New Years were so that we could go out and participate. We were having fun, in a bar trying out our language skills and laughing a lot--everything was light and easy--fun. Then I went to go up and find my room to get something and though the hotel stayed the same my companions shifted to my sister and another friend and I was with my older son who was about 2 or 3 at the most. He was running around as usual, a blonde hurricane of joyous energy bouncing off the walls and I was alternately scooping him up for hugs and trying to keep him from destroying the place. We were packing up to leave and once again New Years figured in the dream because I did not want to travel on such a alcohol soaked holiday.

My sister and friend were heading to the car with bags and I was trailing behind. I had been holding Tyler's hand and I was also trying to carefully sneak my dog (in a bag!) out of the hotel without anyone noticing. Suddenly I was aware that I did not have Tyler's hand anymore and I said, Has anyone seen Tyler? The minute I said it the panic started to rise in my body and I dropped everything and turned around. My sister and friend gave me looks that were disapproving as if to say, "why would we be in charge/ You are the mother!" The shame now accompanied the dread but it was the dread that fueled my panic. As I raced back through the hotel floor by floor calling out, bursting into people's private rooms asking if they had seen a little boy, I noticed that the hotel had all sorts of floors I had not seen before--some were under construction and blocked off with cleaning carts in front of the stairwell exits, others seemed to almost be hospital wards for elderly men. I pushed my way into each one and continued calling. No one had seen him and everyone was disgusted that I had let him out of my sight.

Suddenly a little blonde boy who was not Tyler ran laughing through the room with his laughing parents in playful pursuit. There he is, some of the people cried! But no, this is not my son, this is another boy, their boy. It was an overwhelming horror. The same one that I lived through when Caleb died. I could not believe and yet I knew the truth. I had not protected him. I had not been vigilant. I had allowed myself to be distracted. I had lost my son. In the dream I could not breathe because the reality was crushing me. When I woke I was experiencing a panic attack and could not breathe again. I talked myself down. You are in your bed. You can slow your heart with deep slow full breaths. You did not lose Tyler. He is 29 years old. He is happy. He is alive.

Still, I cannot shake the dream, nor the horrible guilt and shame that seems to live deep inside me and may live there until I die. I could not protect my beautiful little boy. I failed to do the one thing that is most important that a parent do and that is to see to the survival of their children. It does not matter that I know rationally that this is not always possible, that this never in my control, that Caleb was already a young man making his own disastrous decisions. This shame exists on such a deep level that it rarely even surfaces anymore. But what this dream showed me is that it is as strong a force as ever.

I will go through my day. I have 10 people coming to dinner tonight and I stiil have to shop and cook. It is my book group. We will be discussing the Armenian genocide and the Native American genocide because these were the themes of the books we read. I will be discussing the lives of people that lost everyone, some that saw their children killed before their own eyes --not one but all of their children. I try to have perspective. My son is in Greece working with all the people that have lost everything from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq; people coming over land through Iran and Turkey and then by sea to Lesbos. I try to place my grief next to theirs in an attempt to quantify, to tell myself, yours is not so big. Bullshit. Grief cannot be quantified. It is surreal sometimes to carry grief. Imagine what these parents have seen, including losing their children in the final passage at sea. My nightmare simply put me back in this most primordial space: a mother must protect her child. Period. When that fails, when she fails, whether it is large waves at sea, a soldier's gun or a drug overdose makes no difference in that almost biological place in the psyche: she failed.

Tales of M. Married with Children

Writing from Shakespeare Café again. It’s a nice day. The heatwave is over. Four times out of five, the atmosphere in the café is nice.Today, just as it was a few days ago, it is not. It’s Americans again but only one this time. It’s a twenty something year old female, blond, blue, and loud. She will not shut her mouth. The loudness of her voice is appropriate for a noisy bar or something but definitely not a quiet café. Everybody can hear every word seh says. I can hear every word she says, and I am on the other side of the room. I also have significant hearing loss.That should give an idea of her behaviour. Everybody else is either speaking quietly or is silent. I don’t know if it’s always been this way with American tourists. Until a few years ago, Chinese tourists acted that way, but suddenly, the bad behaviour stopped. I think it had to do with being newly wealthy and the time it took to learn how to behave. They are now polite, quiet, and generally well-behaved. Americans are by far the most obnoxious nationality of tourist.

Another reason I didn’t enjoy cooking is because my last American girlfriend wouldn’t let me in the kitchen - of my own house, and before that, Psycho Suzie, another girlfriend, said everything I tried to cook was disgusting. That is when I quit trying to learn. Thus, for most of my adult life, I ate out.

We were still in the suburbs.

“In that case, I will cook, and you will wash the dishes. We will buy groceries, and we should do it while we’re still in the city. It will be cheaper than the grocery stores at the resort. There is a grocery store nearby that I like,” she said.

“Okay.” I said.

I’ve been trying to cultivate a sense of civic responsibility and a social conscience since I was a teenager. Despite amount of time I’ve spent on it, I’ve only been minimally successful. In terms of commerce, it’s usually limited to avoiding Walmart, MacDonalds, and supermarkets. When given a choice, I pass them by, even when it means that I go hungry half the day with dangerously low blood sugar and have to pay more money for the same thing at the local grocery store or co-op when I finally find one.

Drusila was driving, and I didn’t see that I had any choice. It would only be this one time that I had to go, so I didn’t complain. One must be able to adapt, and being a good travelling companion was my priority.

She drove quickly through a grid of sharp turns and pulled into an enormous covered parking garage a couple of hectares in size. (It was huge.) She drove nearly as fast around the maze of parking rows in the garage for ten minutes until we found an open space and parked.

The building this belonged to was a Walmart sized supermarket. It reminded me of my Walmart days, and I was not pleased. That was the second Red Flag.

Usually, the kind of people who go these places, especially on a Saturday, are harried families with children and other suburbanites who are insensitive to the effect that chain supermarkets and other huge corporate franchise stores have had on the livelihoods of mom and pop grocers and other independently owned businesses.

She asked me to get a buggy for the groceries. I never use buggies when I buy groceries, but would make an exception and not complain. Still, I was worried.

I could list dozens of reasons I hate shopping buggies, but the short answer is this: the wheels squick on the tile floors. Squicking is sound that is like the sound made by tennis shoes rubbing on the waxed floor of a basketball court but a lot worse. It is high pitched and does not stop. I can’t stand it - it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. This sound is different from the loud squeaking of wheels with bad bearings or unoiled casters. If it were only so simple as rusty bearings in the buggy’s wheels, the solution would be to find a buggy that does not have bad bearings. That’s not possible because all carts of the same design make this sound on a given floor. That was an additional half a Red Flag for Drusila.

I found the carts. They were in a blocked off section of the asphalt parking lot, and they were arranged in long trains like freight cars in a rail yard.

I pulled on the end cart of one of the trains, but something was wrong. The cart would not separate from the train. I tried another train. It wouldn’t budge either.

“Drusilla, help me please,” I said.

I waved at her. By now, she was way over at the store entrance. She came back.

“You have to put a token in it,” she said.

“Where do I find a token and where do I put it?”

“Why don’t you know how to do this? Here,” she said.

That sharp voice and rude comment worried me. Although I didn’t believe it, I had been warned that French women are bossy. Another Red Flag for Drusila. Fifteen minutes into the trip and she had already racked up three and a half Red Flags. You can learn a lot about somebody by grocery shopping with them.

She took a token from a token machine that was operated by a cart attendant. It was several meters away from the carts, and its purpose was not obvious. I was puzzled as to why somebody was being paid to operate a machine that dispensed cart tokens.

I looked at the cart and tried to find the place to put the token.

“Give it to me,” she said.

I handed her the token. She put the token in a slot in the handle of the cart, and this action freed the cart on the back end of the train.

“Now you know how to do it when you come back,” she said.

Today, I had already learned that supermarkets have taken to securing their carts with token operated locking mechanisms. It was not this way when I last used one during childhood. To make the system more obfuscated, one has to beg the token from a cart attendant. There are a lot of the things about how modern society works that I don’t know about, don’t care about, and would prefer to live to the end of my life without ever knowing. Learning to use the carts at supermarkets is one of them.

I hadn’t even entered the store, and I had realised that I would have been happy to have shopped on my own and to have payed an extra 10 percent at the village general store at Alpe D’Huez. I’ve avoided the suburban lifestyle since childhood. I was surprised that suburbanites such as herself had made it to the party at the city center where I met her. It was difficult to deal with the supermarket and this woman’s nonsense, and I feared that it would trigger a migraine.

We entered the store. She walked fast, and I pushed the cart behind her, trying to keep up. I felt like a retard on a trip to the zoo. Drusilla was my caregiver.

Crowds, families with children running around, noise, thousands of carts - all of their wheels squicking incessantly on the tile floor, glaring fluorescent lighting, signs, advertisements trying to steal my attention and get my money, shelves and shelves of tens of thousands of different things I would never want to eat -- the totality of it all overloaded my senses and was oppressive. It reminded me of a bad trip.

It was not possible to move in a straight line for more than a few steps. Progress was slow. We had to dodge people who weren’t looking where they were going, and we often had to stop and wait for others to quit clogging the aisles. Many were simply standing with their carts and blocking the aisles. They were stopped, gossiping with companions, chatting on their phones, disciplining their children, counting coupons, and reading sales papers, among other things. The vast majority chose to undertake these activities in locations that would block traffic.

Close to the entrance were vegetables. The very first food items she put in the buggy were onions and garlic.

“I can’t eat either of those. I’m allergic,“ I said.

“Nobody’s allergic to garlic or onions. Come on, they’re good for you.”

“I will probably die in my sleep if I eat thme. If I survive, I’ll be sick all week. I really am allergic.”

“Come on,” she said.

Another Red Flag. She is bossy and has a contrary attitude.

She walked fast, weaving through the crowd, always headed deeper into the center aisles. An important rule when grocery shopping at supermarkets is to avoid the center aisles. They are full of crap, and the good food is on the perimeter. I trailed behind, pushing the huge buggy, which was slowed by the dithering shoppers and buggies that had been parked in the middle of the aisle.

Next, she found the peanut butter, Nutela, and other spreads. She grabbed a jar of peanut butter.

“I’m allergic.”

“Come on,” she said with a distinct note of impatience in her voice.

She took off again, weaving through aisles that were so crowded that there was barely room to walk unless you turned sideways and sucked in your stomach. I was left trailing behind with the cart like a Special Needs adult.

Then she took me to the dairy milk.

“Lactose intolerant…”

The witch huffed and walked away.

Invasion of the Fat People

i’m writing this afternoon from a British-owned coffee shop, Shakespeare and Company. I like the view from here. I sit at counter facing the large windows. Just outside is a patio full of tables. A brick lane runs between the patio and a garden. Today it’s full of red and purple blooming plants, among them is mimosa, roses, hydrangea, and lavender. A breeze carries the scent of lavender into the coffee shop. Beyond the garden and across the river Seine is Notre Dame Cathedral. All around are tourists and gypsies who earn money off them. Many of the tourists are bright red from the sun.

I sat here and wrote for a while, and just now, I noticed something strange. Several customers have blue hair. No, that’s not what’s strange, but blue hair is unusual for France. The customers are louder and pushier than normal. Maybe that’s just because it’s so hot today. Most of the males are wearing shorts and T-shirts, and the females are wearing Rompers, shorts, or dresses. Such clothes reveal a lot of skin. OK, I just realised what is wrong. All around are a lot of thick thighs, cellulite, and large butts on both the males and females. I see swollen ankles as well. Most also sport big bellies, spare tires, and flabby arms. Their cheeks are chubby like fat-cheeked babies. They have multiple chins. I see a college aged male with a gunt (urban dictionary definition but it’s on a dude). He’s swilling beer - in a coffee shop. It’s a pale ale - on a hot day. (Beer drinkers might have found that pale ales are virtually on drinkable on hot days. The flavor does not mix well with the heat.) So are his fat friends. Many of them have the musty odor that only fat people emit.

I’m counting - three quarters of the customers are obese. Since coming to France, I have never before seen so many fat people congregated in one place. The French have a very low obesity rate, and in Paris, it is a one in twenty or so. That is the normal rate for humans in a developed country according to epidemiologists who study the obesity epidemic. I feel like I’m back in the US where two thirds of the population are obese. I was fat for a while too, so I have first hand knowledge.

It’s shocking. it’s been three years since I’ve been near so many fat people in one place. I experienced hunger and malnutrition when I was a child. There’s a famine in Africa and Yemen. These people stuff their faces. They eat until they are literally sick, but they still don’t stop. They continue to eat even though the strain of the excess causes their bodies to break down prematurely over the years. Throw out your conscience with your MacDonald’s hamburger wrapper.

Why here? What has drawn so many fat people to one place? I listen. Their voices are inappropriately loud for a small, typically quiet café. Now I realise that everyone here is speaking English. One male keeps doing a loud doofus chuckle every time his buddy says something. He responds with a comment reminiscent of Beavis and Butthead. Huh huh. I just heard a “Creaky Girl.” There are a lot of “likes.” Now, here’s a “no worries.” They all have American accents. I can’t place the accent to a state, but it sounds like a generic east coast accent. They are a tourist group of Americans. It’s hard to say which nationality of tourist I hate the most, but American is at the top.

Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton - hereditary power, self-entitlement, ignorance, greed, consumer culture, bad manners, pushiness, rudeness, police brutality, drug prohibition, and a national obesity epidemic all come to mind. I have no plans to return, not even to visit.

Red Flags for Drusilla

Until this time in my life, my experiences with dating women, all of which were in the US, had been terrible. Generally, the only girl who would talk to me was the lone drunk fat girl who was left at the bar at closing time. Even she begrudgingly acknowledged my existence. Aelys and I were not compatible in lots of ways, as the reader might have guessed. Beggars can’t be choosers, and I took what little I could get.

For those with an IQ around 160, which is four standard deviations above the mean in a normal distribution of IQ scores, the concept of being intellectually compatible changes. Roughly one in 30,000 of the population is intellectually compatible with me if “intellectual compatibility” is defined by having similar IQs. In terms of education, I’m an expert in some subjects, very knowledgeable in a few others, and know a little bit about some more subjects. I also have skills. I can perform a couple of athletic feats as well. Despite all that , I have plenty of limitations compared to others. I’m acutely aware that there are lots of things I don’t know anything about and can’t do. I don’t feel superior.

An ironic characteristic of ignorant people is that the more ignorant they are, the more sure of themselves they are. This has been seen in US politics a lot recently. It’s also true for expert professionals such as MDs and PhDs. Mastering one body of knowledge creates the illusion in their minds that they know a lot more about the world than they actually know. Being ignorant is okay as long as one is aware of it.

The extreme self-assuredness of the ignorant is seen a lot in relationships too. When one partner in a relationship has the sense that she can never be wrong, when the spouse for example insists she is always right no matter what, even when she claims 2+2 = 5.

I felt out of place when I lived in the USA, a country where people celebrate their own lack of education, where even the leaders mock science, where Trump is a role model, where research scientists are unemployed, and where dating is a humiliating and degrading experience.

In Paris, perhaps not so many women are impressed by money, fancy clothes, Rolex watches, or expensive cars, as their American counterparts. At parties, not so many were bothered that I didn’t dress like a YUPPIE. I had not yet learned that pushy ignorance is not just an American trait. The result was that I was finding that Paris is like the Disney Land of romance. Once you buy the ticket and walk through the gates, you find yourself in a marvelous land where fantastic creatures offer you spectacular new amusements. I would soon be overwhelmed by this change.

I had felt an oppressive loneliness since I got to the city, despite liking the city itself. There was a sense of urgency, of an unfulfilled relationship, I missed companionship, even that of Aelys but mostly of our cats.

I had started spending time with Drusilla, who was showing me around Paris. We went to interesting restaurants, to parties, to movies, to tea rooms, to museums, and for walks.

Only weeks before, I had been in California where it was sunny and warm. It was winter and it was cold here, but now that I was making friends with people like Drusila, an inner warmth and lightness of being made me not mind the weather and darkness of the season. Adapting to my new job became easier, and the time I spent with her decreased the stress of settling in a new country. I felt a sense of optimism with life. I was living the dream, and I was spending time with someone I liked and might grow to love.

Later that winter, she invited me skiing with her. The trip would be for two weeks. She had already made the arrangements. All I had to do was show up and pay half. Organising a ski vacation was still beyond my ability to navigate without stress in a new country, so I appreciated that she was doing this.

Having to maintain a daily drug hobby makes travelling uncomfortable. I was new to France, and had given up a habit of injecting heroin a few months prior to coming here. Without the burden of needing daily access to a supply, I was ready to spend a couple of weeks in the Alps with her, or so I thought.

The day to leave was here, and it would be two weeks of skiing at Alpe d’Huez. I was looking forward to the trip, spending time with my new friend, traveling in another country, skiing, and learning about the culture. I wanted to work on a project a little during those two weeks in my spare time.

Not only would it be the first time I would see the Alps, but the trip promised to be full of other new experiences as well.

I packed the night before. I was too excited to sleep. That morning, I met her on the outskirts of the city and got in her car. On the way out of the city, she had an idea.

“If you agree, we can cook our own food. It will be cheaper than eating at restaurants every day. The apartment (gite) has a kitchen,” she said.

“Sounds good,” I said, “but I’m not a good cook.”

“Why not?” she said.

Her voice surprised me. I thought I heard a note of anger and condescension. I had never perceived that in her before. That was the first red flag, and we had only been driving for five minutes.

“It’s complicated,” I said. “but I never had a chance to learn.”

There was more to it than that, but I would not tell her. My father said cooking was for sissies. The only thing men are allowed to cook is bacon. He was always frying bacon, which I had long realised was strange because he was a Jew. Perhaps out of guilt, he cooked the bacon strips until they shrivelled into hard little black curls that smoked and caught fire.

Because the kitchen did not have a ventilation fan, and the kitchen windows were nailed shut, the greasy smoke filled the whole house. It would send me into a fit of sneezing, no matter which room I was in. The house always stank like burnt pork. My father made me eat it sometimes, and when he did I usually got sick from it. Scorched pork is full of free radicals that have been linked to cancer. To this day, bacon, even when it is cooked correctly, and pork in general makes me sick.

Aelys, my last American girlfriend, was not a big girl, she was average in size. Despite that, whenever she walked across the room in the cabin we lived in, she caused a panic. The floor shook. Dishes rattled on their shelves. The cats got scared. A couple of times, I thought we were having an earthquake and crouched in a doorway. She was not pleased at my reaction; but, it wasn’t just me - our cats had run for cover too. (When I walked across the same floor, it did not shake; I am not graceful, and I am a lot heavier than she, so I could not understand why she clopped around like a cow.) Also, she had a habit of eating while standing up, and when she wasn’t eating, her jaws were often working on a piece of chewing gum. In a word, she was bovine.

Walmart is a chain of warehouse-sized stores in the USA that sell a vast range of discounted merchandise. Their merchandise is notorious for its poor quality. It tends to break or wear out quickly. From the shopper’s long term economic perspective, it is better to spend more money on one good thing that will last than to buy twenty of an inferior version of the same thing at Walmart. Like MacDonalds, Walmart has a reputation for putting Mom and Pop stores out of business, of abusing its employees, of bulldozing forests and historical buildings to erect more store locations, and of ruining scenic views. Many Walmart employees are paid starvation wages. Hilary Clinton sat on the board of directors of Walmart in the 1980s and 1990s. This was a formative period for the Walmart corporation, and she doubtless played a role in making it the monster it is today.

I had never been to a Walmart until I met my Aelys. As a child, they didn’t exist where I lived, and by the time they started popping up, I already knew about their reputation. I had not been to a MacDonalds since I was 12 until I met her. She loved Walmart and trash food. Her whole family used to make a day out of shopping at the one and eating at the other. She bullied me into going a couple of times. Each time I ended up with a migraine.

People watching at a Walmart is an unforgettable experience. The way they dressed, styled their hair, behaved in the store, and talked were all interesting, but one thing that stood out was the way people walked, when they did walk, that is. Most of the Walmart shoppers were obese. Half the people were in motorized wheel chairs. Outside of a hospital, I had never seen so many people riding medical equipment.

Of the ambulatory, a large proportion walked in a way that Aelys calls the “Walmart Lurch.” The Walmart walker leans forward, setting her weight on her elbows which are planted on the bar handle of a shopping cart. In this hunched position, she walks the store aisles in a slow, lurching motion. She is usually a behemoth of a woman, and she can look quite ridiculous walking bent over this way.

The experience of people watching at Walmart left me with a vague feeling of guilt, grief, and a migraine, not unlike when I was little when my grandparents used to drive us through the worst slums of Chicago to gawk at the extreme poverty and degradation of the ethnic neighborhoods. Thus, people watching in the USA has been an overwhelmingly depressing experience.

At the fashion show party, I spent some time people watching. Instead of leaving me shocked at how far the human race has fallen, the deportment of many of the women was impressive. After my experiences at Walmart, this was a pleasure to see. I could picture them as children being instructed on correct posture and gait, walking around with books stacked on their heads. They moved with grace. Also surprising, there weren’t many fat people, and the few who were obese were not ostracised for being different. The obesity epidemic had not yet spread across the English Channel to France.

Eventually, a woman in a low cut burgundy cocktail dress offered me a glass of champagne. She was striking. A ruby cross hung where the gleam of its rubies drew the eyes to her breasts. She had the fine and delicate features of a classic beauty, a model, high cheekbones, a sculpted nose with almost the Greek bridge. Her body was svelte. Her limbs were well-formed and had good muscle tone. She was elegant and her movements smooth and balanced. I imagined that she had trained in ballet as a child (she had). Indeed, most people here, and Paris in general, had a graceful comportment that I had rarely seen until I came to Europe. Her eyes had a gimlet quality that I found strange. I had recently seen a television show called Game of Thrones, and she reminded me of one of the characters, the Scarlet Priestess.

Drusilla and I talked for most of that evening. She had many of the same hobbies I had: skiing, running, and climbing. She worked for the fashion designer Dior on the Champs-Elysées in accounting, not modelling.

She looked older than me, maybe in her late 40s or early 50s, but she had taken care of herself. She was not decrepid like most Americans are by the time they reach that age. Her body wasn’t thick. Her face didn’t sag, and I suspected that other important bits didn’t sag either. There were no wrinkles other than faint crows feet around the eyes.

I was thrilled to have met someone I was attracted to and who seemed interested in me. Within a few days after the party, we were spending time together. I enjoyed her company. She was intelligent and interesting. She was also more than ten years older than me.

As with intellectual incompatibility when one has an IQ on the extreme end of the curve, incompatibility based on age differences loses its normal meaning when one has an unusual IQ. Age is sometimes just a number, as long as you maintain a healthy mind and body. I didn’t worry that she was older.

For a moment, I thought back to my Walmart days with Aelys. I thought about her mother. Mens sana in corpore sano is a Latin phrase that means ‘healthy mind in a healthy body.’ It has been understood as far back as Roman times that the state of the body is linked to the state of the mind, hence the expression. Aelys’ mother weighed 500 pounds and she seemed to like being that way. Her mother had also not read one book in her entire life, by her own admission. But those aren’t the things I hated about her. Her mother did not approve of my reading of scientific papers and literature in my spare time, and whenever she was around, she was always making comments about it. It is her personal choice to spend her spare time eating fat food and watching television, and as bad as those habits are, it’s none of my business (unless you consider the fact taht the obese cost taxpayers 60% more in medical care than those of healthy weight, and then you realise that your own hard earned money is being used to subsidize her bad choices). Likewise, what I did was not her business. I had never said a word about her weight or her lifestyle. I feared that it was only a matter of time before Aelys followed her mother’s lead.

I am not sure how fast I should taper off Suboxone after doing 800-1000 mgs of oxy every single day for almost 14 months.
I like the anti-depressant qualities of bupe, but I also know i can get by , just fine, with much less than the 4 8mg pills a day they prescribed me this first week.

My experience so far ( i had been on bupe once in july for two ro three weeks) yesterday was my first regular dosage, last opiates were Monday at noon, waited to 7pm the next night, Tuesday, to take my first 12mgs of 1.5 pills, right at the intake center while waiting to get processed, I also got talked into rehab. I had four 8mg stashed for emergencies . , so i did one more 8mg the next morning at the rehab...(the only one they were gonna give me that day, and were gonna do two days at 8mg a day, 2 days at 6, 2 days at 4, and like that until down to half a mg in two weeks. I decided that wasn't gonna work, why suffer slowly for two weeks, only to go thru three more days of withdrawal, even if they were somewhat milder, after doing all that for two weeks?
Didn't sleep all night....then I checked out of this nuthouse the next day, and did another two 8mgs that Wednesday night when I finally got out. Thursday i did three, and today did four.

Doc said to stay at the 32 mg dose to stabilize the first week and see how you feel. I feel fine. The xanax and the couple of bowls helped the transition "go down slow".

How soon do people usually taper off, if they taper of bupe at all? My cousin has been on it for two years, probably takes a 4mg everyday or every two days once in a while.

Curious as to anyone's experience who successfully tapered of Suboxone and stayed clean. At least for a while.

Thanks in Advance. [email protected]

I met Drusilla more than 2 years ago at a Paris Fashion Week party. A fashion house had presented a show of their new line of haute couture earlier that day at the Sorbonne, the medical campus where I work, and some of us who worked there were invited to a party with the fashion people to be held there that night.

I don’t know why I was invited. I don’t look like somebody who cares about the fashion industry. For that matter, I didn’t look like most scientists with their Homer Sympson Bubble Butt Dockers pants, patterned button down shirt with a pocket protector, and big belly.

I put on a white shirt that fit and a sport coat I had bought at a thrift store because I try to avoid supporting Consumer Culture, including buying the latest style of suit sold by the sponsors of the party. I wore a Stetson hat from the desert ranch and motorcycle boots because I didn’t have dress shoes. I wore the coat I had recently found next to the corpse of a stew bum who had died from cold the night before. It was a nice coat, and I had it cleaned to kill the fleas and lice.

The party was crowded. A DJ was responsible for the music. Several bars had been set up in the colonnade around the courtyard, and staff carried trays of drinks and hors d'oeuvres.

All around were people who worked in fashion: buyers, designers, artists, models, and staff for the event, as well as some people who worked in my building. Everyone was dressed elegantly. Men wore suits or sport coats and women wore dresses and high heels. A few people were dressed like freaks, so I didn’t feel extremely out of place.

It was a refreshing change from the American culture I had just fled. The people had an air of culture and sophistication that I had rarely seen in the US. No matter where you go, one finds some people who are pretentious, but I didn’t pick up a lot of attitude that night, despite the fact that the party was associated with an industry that bases itself completely on external appearances.

I wandered for a few minutes without seeing anybody I knew. I said “hello” to a few strangers. Most people I talked to were friendly and polite. Up to this point, I had liked France, and I was happy to discover another good thing good about French culture. Had it taken place in Los Angeles and been attended by Americans, I doubt that I would have been permitted to enter. If I had, nobody would have deigned to speak to me, as has been the case in the past.

For a moment, I recollected the last American parties I had known, usually keggers or drum circle parties. Usually, when I tried to talk to someone, their response was, “Who the fsck are you, and why are you speaking to me?” That was the males. The American Women at the same venues made the men seem polite. The instant she realised I was speaking to her, the American Woman had an expression on her face as though she couldn’t wait to scrape the dog crap off her shoes that she had just stepped in. Her comment that went along with the face was something along the lines of - “you’re not fit to polish my tiara, go fsck yourself.” That was when she acknowledged me at all. I understand where civil rights leader Eldridge Cleaver was coming from when he talked about the American Woman in his book “Soul on Ice.”

Americans of my generation say “like” at least once in every sentence. Adolescents say it even more frequently. Maybe their vocabulary is so limited that “like” is the only word they have to express most thoughts. Worse, the “creaky girl” speech affectation has spread across America like a plague.

Half the people looked college age. How smart they sounded compared to Americans of the same age. I hadn’t heard a single “like” among the English speakers and nothing similar among the French. There was no “creaky girl” either.
____
In my childish ideal of love, marriage is a sacred bond, and it is the most special kind of relationship that can exist between two people. It is more important than the relationship with parents or children, even when those relationships are good. Nobody chooses their parents or their children. We are stuck with blood relatives, the good along with the bad, until they die or until we cut them out of our lives. But we choose our mate, and many go through extremes of searching and suffering before we finally find one, especially in countries where long term relationships are out of style. Anything that takes so much time and effort to make happen is to be cherished.

Marriage/partnership is faithful, dedicated, and lifelong. You respect and treat the other better than yourself. You put the other’s needs before your own. You don’t do things that hurt the other. You work out your problems and make the effort to strengthen the relationship rather than throw it away like a MacDonalds hamburger wrapper. You stick with her exclusively. One of the big rules is that you don’t have affairs or cheat.

In 2011, Neilsen Corp, an agency that collects data on American TV viewership, nearly 200 million Americans (about half the population) watched NFL football in 2011, and that figure is unlikely to have changed since then. Just as televised football viewing is a national pastime in the US, adultery is a national pastime in France. Nearly half of married French people have had at least one affair. It is significantly lower in the US. Adultery is so common that there is an unspoken assumption that cheating will happen, and both husband and wife are equally likely to cheat. No gender is the exclusive victim.

In France, there is an important rule to follow in maintaining an unfaithful marriage: one must be discreet. Adulterers keep the affair secret. They don’t let their partner know because that knowledge what would hurt him or her. Of course, they do not want a divorce either.

To those who indulge, extra-marital affairs are seen as necessary to keep the marriage alive. Maybe there is truth to this viewpoint - the national divorce rate is actually much less than that of the US, but it leaves me wondering what is the point of getting married if you have to sleep with other people to sustain a marriage with your first choice into old age.

Affairs aren’t so common in the US, especially not since my generation is for a large part opting out of marriage. Affairs sound creepy. They reek of the sleaze of the1970s and the self-indulgent pastimes of the Baby Boomers. They evoke images of swingers, wife-swapping, leisure suits, disco, scenes of the cuckolded husband coming home unexpectedly early from work to find some hairy mustache dude in bed with his wife. I can’t imagine there is any love in an affair. Maybe it is cheaper than prostitution. Like watching televised football, it’s shallow entertainment.

Despite all of that, I still believe life would be more enjoyable if it were spent with the right companion. I have a romantic image of growing old with her.

I see that I’m not the only one having bad dreams. My hunch is that it isn’t always bad to have them. Whenever I’ve gone through long stretches where I dream of nothing but rainbows, unicorns, and happy clouds, my life is stagnant. With that in mind, assuming you’re not in the middle of a war or something horrible, turbulent dreams can be a good sign indicating great changes and growth.

Yesterday, I meditated. I’ve been doing a daily meditation practice for a while. The room was dark and my eyes closed. A pure black spot formed amidst the fiery clouds, webs, Buddhas, geometric primitives, mandalas, and exploding lights that had been displayed behind my eyelids. At first, it was tiny spot, maybe the size of a drop of black ink. It grew, like black oil spreading across water. Its blackness absorbed the sketchy images and inchoate scenes that had been around it. It grew until it covered most of my visual field, and then it stabilized. It now looked like a blacked out window.

The black window opened to reveal a lively scene in another room. it was like spying through a window into somebody’s house.

A woman was walking down a stairway which opened into a living room. I watched her walk. Her movement down the stairs was smooth and graceful, as though she had trained to descend stairs with a stack of books balanced on her head at a ballet academy. Her face was exotic, like that of a mythological Aztec deity. Her hair was black. Her dress was woven with phosphorescent red, green, and brown geometric patterns.

Suddenly, she stopped, turned to face me, and her eyes looked directly into mine. There was recognition in her eyes. She knew I could see her. She smiled. There was a mischievous look in her eyes. It was a look like what someone gives you when they catch you looking at them when you didn’t think they could see you, and they think it's funny or a game, and your surprise amuses them.

“I can see you sitting there looking at me.” She laughed and stepped forward as though to try to climb through the window into the room where I was meditating. I felt her in my room in my flat with me. It was a realistic and convincing feeling of presence like when someone is next to you.

I got up and searched my flat thinking someone had quietly come in while I was meditating.

Yesterday, I went out late to a café to have a glass of wine with my girlfriend. It was 2 am, and a Gypsy beggar man and a little girl, perhaps 5, walked past us and asked for money.

“No money.”

They left.

Later that night after we went to bed, i dreamed about the gypsies. The beggar man held the little girl captive in a hovel. He had kidnapped her or bought her from a child trafficking ring and used her as a begging prop.

I was also a captive. I was a little kid. He and his band of gypsies caught us and smuggled us to his house which was in a remote part of Mexico. Also captive was my secret swimsuit model girlfriend Krana Maria. Krana Maria was a girl I was with for three or four months. I can’t remember if I wrote about Krana Maria. I didn't want to sound like I was bragging, but it was the first time in my life when I had finally begun to have a love life. Now that I was in a country where the women would not treat me like shit but actually wanted to spend time with me, I was a bit overwhelmed. Also, I was in a fragile mental state at the time, and it was hard to write about her. She was one of the girls I met at the Paris Fashion Week parties I used to go to.

The little girl became Krana Maria. She was now her own age in real life, 23, and I was my real age. The gypsy slaver had marked Krana on the inside of her wrist with a scar. It was a jagged circular scar like a stigmata. The location was the wrist, the place the Romans put the nail during crucifixion. It was a mark of ownership.

Krana Maria and I were in love, boyfriend and girlfriend. It felt exactly how it had felt in real life. I couldn’t stand to see him treat her this way. The storyline of the dream changed. We were no longer captives, but were to be initiated into an outlaw motorcycle gang. We would live a life together, having adventures with an outlaw gypsy motorcycle gang in Mexico

The scars on the wrist represented membership or belonging to the gang. To get the mark, Krana Maria and I had to run the gauntlet on a motorcycle. Once we successfully ran through the gauntlet, someone put a spike through our wrists and then removed it. It was quick and didn’t hurt. We had matching jagged stigmata scars, the scars forming finger-sized rings, like wedding bands, running through our wrists.

Well thats just great. I have hashimotos disease.

Stupid damn thyroid!


Useless glandular lump if shit


Explains a few things though.

I get scared sometimes that drugs might really become hard to obtain. Like right now I can get so many different drugs. It's great. But if they take them away I wouldnt be able to cope with life. It would be horrible. I don't use as much as I used too but the fact that it's still an option brings me comfort.

So thank god there are people willing to risk there freedom and lives to supply drugs to the US. I hope you all get rich and stay safe.

those fuckers convinced me to throw away all my phone numbers, now i've completed the program and i'm in a worse fucking situation then I was when I went in there... sick as fuck an noway to feel normal... living in pdx you'd think things would be a breeze but I'm a seemingly 'upstanding' member of society in that I live in a tiny fucking studio - nobody will even talk to me. So I sit around going crazy like a motherfucker 24/7 and eat xanax when my doc is kind enough to give it to me - thanks buddy, 30 four hour periods where I can feel like half a normal person... shit lot of that does me. Sure I can find some white, but that shit ain't for me anymore - not to mention I can't fuckin afford it... and of course they won't let you into a methadone program if you're not currently using - what a crock of shit. I basically have to go out and get strung out again just to get help ? the system is jacked up... if anyone is in pdx and wants to chat shoot me a message - could really use some support just to talk....

The other day as I woke up, I became aware that before me was a city under a night sky. It was built on the end of a rugged peninsula that extended into a large a lake. It was compact like an ancient city. Its skyline was of towers, domed buildings, temples, spires, and palaces. A tower taller than the others rose from a hilltop near where the peninsula connected with the mainland.

A large, orange moon gave the city and the mountains around it a reddish color. Moonlight reflected off the golden roofs of some of the buildings. The surf breaking against the cliffs below the city shined in the light. A second moon, smaller and dimmer than the first, was silvery blue. It was higher in the sky.

On the opposite shore of the lake, perhaps thirty miles away from the city, mountains reached to the stars. In the distance, all around, were huge mountains, faintly visible in the distance. Then, I noticed something strange, and I looked at the larger moon again. It was not high, maybe 15 degrees altitude, and it was in front of twin mountain spires. That is a weird optical illusion.

If I study the scene long enough, I will remember it, and then I can try to draw it when I wake. If I relax, I can go deeper into dream sleep and merge into this world. That city and its inhabitants have a story, and I want to write it.

I relaxed. Ground solidified under where I lay. Around me, grass moved in a breeze. I heard surf breaking far away. The stars were bright despite the light of the two moons. Neither one was full. I know all of the constellations of the earth sky, but I did not recognise any star formations in this sky. Instead of the Milky Way being overhead, a dense, globular galaxy occupied a third of the sky.

Then my girlfriend, who had been sleeping beside me, touched me. I awoke fully, and the dream faded. It was 6 am, and she was getting up for work. I could stay in bed another hour while she spent that hour in the bathroom doing female things. Then I would have to get up for work too. She left, and I tried to go back to sleep and find the dream again. I could hear the shower followed by an electric hair dryer. It was too late. I got up to start my day in an ordinary world. I made coffee and started making breakfast for us.

I read the Hobbit in 5th grade. At that age, I half believed the author, a linguist who had translated Norse sagas, had discovered a manuscript and that it came from another world. It was the first book I read that made me want to write my own story, so I started writing a quasi-medieval fantasy novel. It had a plot outline, characters, and some scenes.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt like the world was against me. I lived in a TV household that believed creativity was queer. I didn’t have privacy. I wrote everything in code, like someone who is being watched. It was a 30 letter alphabet I had made up. It looked vaguely like Sanskrit. Some of the letters were from languages I had seen in books in dreams.

I stopped writing when I went to college. I had an engineering scholarship and needed to spend my time getting good grades to keep my funding. After college, I never went back to that fantasy novel. By then I had realised that, like 1000s of other novels inspired by that author, my story was a ripoff of Tolkien and Nordic mythology, and I was no longer enthusiastic about it.

In France, there is none of this 70-80_hours_a_week_in_the_lab/office_or_you’re_fired like in the US. The work-week is 35 hours. Since coming here, I’ve had time to have a more balanced life. I’m doing yoga every day again and running. I’ve also been doing things that interest me mentally including writing.

I’ve been working on a science fiction novel. I only get to spend a little time on it each day, but after a couple of years, I’ve made progress. So far, I have an outline, and most most chapters are filled in sketchy rough draft form. Some professional authors finish two or three novels a year, so I feel like I’m going too slow.

Good stories transport the reader to another world. The Hobbit did that. Sadly, most books fail to do that. The worst kind is the postmodernist novel which plagues bookstores today. These books are written in the form of the “disembodied voice.” They are dialogue only, and by definition, they reject the structure of the novel and do away with plot, setting, and everything that makes reading enjoyable. Postmodernist novels are unreadable. I’m thinking specifically of Gravity’s Rainbow, and I’m sorry I wasted four hours on it recently.

My background is neuroscience, and I mix that into my story, giving it some hard science and psychology. For atmosphere, I write while I sit in scenic and visually stimulating places, and I try to verbally sketch what I see into the story. I listen to conversations, trying to capture the flow of speech without bogging down the story with chatter. I don’t fill it with 500 pages of fart jokes or boast about the sexual prowess of the main character. I’m thinking of Gravity Rainbow again.

Plot is the hardest part. I’m not sitting here writing some L. Ron Hubbard (invented Scientology) Space Opera (science fiction version of television Soap Opera). He got rich, but one should not stoop so low for money.

Science fiction is about made-up events and has no basis in reality, otherwise it would be called general fiction. At the same time, it has to be realistic enough for the reader to visualise it and to be transported into its world.

Hemingway gave the famous advice, “write what you know,” meaning write only what you have experienced. That advice creates a problem for science fiction authors. One of my characters is an alien sex fiend. I’m trying a different approach to try to follow Hemingway’s advice.

One approach is to dream each scene in realistic detail and then write about it when I wake up. That’s what I was trying to do last night, and it only started before it was time to get up. Morphine drastically increases dream time and adds elements of realism such as depth, complexity, and detail.

Since my story is based on events that occurred in dreams and out of body experiences, the plot depends on phenomena that occurs in those states: hallucinations, teleportation, people who are not who they appear to be, telepathy, artificial universes, mind control, shifting realities. Futuristic technology produces some of those phenomena in the lives of the characters, and capitalists have figured out how to exploit these technologies and wreak havoc on the lives of the populace.

It is set it in a futuristic version of California based on the present where everything is for sale and disposable, life is cheap, people are fake, the president is a former game show host (I wrote it two years before it came true), and most people have to sell their organs for cheap plastic replacements in order to survive.

I believe I will be able to finish a novel by the end of the year and hopefully have it published. I want to get out of science. I’m not happy with my work situation.

I met my girlfriend at Invalides the other day. We went to the Rodin museum. I sketched a few of the sculptures in the sculpture garden. Rodin’s later art is not representational. It lacks surface detail. It’s coarse. The museum was full of these lumpy, molten golems frozen in theatrical poses. Despite its crudeness, it provokes a reaction and captures things through its gestures, expressions, and movement. Like modern art and postmodernist literature, I don’t find it to be beautiful. It does not elevate the soul. So, yes, it communicates something, but it is ugly, and I would not want it hanging on my wall where I’d have to look at it every day.

Afterwards, we walked through the Arrondissement Saint-Germain, and I took photos of some of historic buildings. Later we stopped at a line at a boulangerie (bakery) on rue Mouffetard to buy snacks. Of all the bakeries I’ve tried, this bakery makes the best pastries. Their bread, croissants, desserts, flan, tarts - everything is better than that of all the others. I go there almost every day. The smell of baking bread made my mouth water.

Ahead of us in line was a French couple, and the father was holding a baby. They were dressed relatively elegant the way Parisians often dress. They chatted and entertained the baby. I ignored them and observed buildings and other people without focusing on anybody or anything in particular. The line advanced slowly. I was surprised to see that Laetitia was practically drooling. I realized that she had been gazing at the little kid the whole time.

Women can stare at little kids and nobody thinks anything about it, but if a man stares at a small child, he can cause a panic and risks arrest.

Laetitia said, “isn’t he cute?”

I said, “yeah, sure.”

Kittens and puppies are cute. Human babies have hungry lamprey mouths, squinty eyes, big bald heads, and grasping hands make them look like vampiric aliens.

Since prehistoric times until WWII, everyone had as many babies as they could. Broods of 10 - 15 were the norm. The Baby Boomers all had babies too, except they had an average of 2.5 or so. The world has moved on, and Gen X and Millennials are the first American generations to question the expectation that one would have any children at all.

Less than half of our generation is having children, and as a whole, we are not having enough to sustain the population. Politicians and economists don’t like that, but as an environmentalist who likes vast, uninhabited natural areas, I love the idea population decline and the elbow room it promises. The population still grows because of immigration.

I like Thursdays because its long enough in the week to say its almost over but not quite the weekend. Fridays are too rush rush its the weekend so maybe going part time and having Fridays off would be good?

It started Wednesday my best friend did a bunch of expensive coke with me as I drove him around doing errands. We got to the place he's staying around 12 where he then fronted me 2 monster shots of u-4770 and was supposed to front me 10 mg benzo liquid. To get me through till refill day.Well he passec out hard after a fent shot before completing our benzo transaction. The vials where on the table so i completed the transaction and sent message saying I did. Apperantly there wasn't as much left in the vials as I thought so I fucked that up though it's not a huge deal because he has pills and can get more liquid I still felt like a shit friend.

Then this morning he calls me at 630 asking for ride to clinic sure no problem I tell him. I got leave at like 9 and realize my keys are locked in my car and I have no spare. So my dad came home from work tried to Jimmy lock failed but took me too clinic.

My friend just got fucked in whole deal because he lives too far out of my dad's way to pick him up and even if that wasn't the case there was no time. I just feel like shit over it. I guess all I can do is try and make it up to him.

I'm feeling so stressed. I don't want to lose my friend over this