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My deeply troubled friend quite clearly wants romance.

A far-wiser mentor of mine advised me that for me to allow that would do _both_ of us a grave disservice. Even so, I've been reluctant to put a stop to what presently is barreling along turned all the way up to 11: Full-Hormonal.

The very best that I can really hope for is to be there when she's hungry for food - which she's actually not, not very much, and even then she's largely living off of peanut butter and honey - as well as giving her a safe place to sleep, to the extent she's not engaged in her relentless search for her next fix.

She quite clearly _hopes_ to get clean somehow, someday. I want to facilitate that. My far-wiser mentor advised me to encourage anything she does that is positive. But so far, also she has is hope for "someday".

She's not in as much denial as I've known lots of others to be. She knows very well that this stuff is bound to kill her someday. She's quite dismayed to have woken up in the back of an ambulance after she unwittingly shot fentanyl then "got NarCanned" but not as dismayed as she would have been had that fentanyl actually killed her.

From time to time she'll ask me whether I object to The Monkey On Her Back. Quite clearly I do, but always I say "It is _your_ decision, and yours _alone_". I know this from hard experience with other addicts I have known.

Someone mailed it - anonymously - to me in the slammer. I recall that it was an award winner for the fourteenth year of that particular award, but not which award that was.

It is written in the first person, with the protagonist reporting that he's just about to be discharged after five years in a mental hospital. I _think_ he was a physicist.

In other news, as I write this I'm blasting Beth Hart's and Joe Bonamassa's "I'll Take Care Of You" turned all the way up to 11: Mutually Assured Destruction.

Good Times.

So, I should be really happy and excited: tomorrow I start as a pharmacy technician at a fairly prestigious institute in Madison, Wi. No, not going to tell you where. I've wanted to do this for so, so long, and really--considering I can look at a molecule and give you at least a decent approximation of what effects it will have, this is an excellent fit. But I'm still nervous, if only because so many horrible things have happened to me and the idea of stability and a long-term career seems alien, like something I'm not "allowed" to have if that makes sense. So I'm afraid it'll be taken away from me like so many other things have been.

Wish me luck. I want to get PTCB certified as soon as possible and make a lifelong career out of this, slowly working my way up the ladder and making a positive contribution to the lives of many people. Maybe, though I don't dare to dream, this could even include going back to school and getting involved in the drug-discovery process, especially for new antibiotics or non-addictive painkillers. Other interests include changing hospital spaces to reduce infection and increase patient well-being--think "copper alloy railings, enclosed UVC-light air pumps, and lots and lots of sunlight" and so on--and nutrition, though I fear my low-carb lifestyle is sufficiently against current medical orthodoxy to make this a non-starter and even politically dangerous.

But whatever happens, for the first time in ages, it feels like time has begun to flow for me again. That feeling of being a sort of solid ghost is disappearing. And that can only be a good thing, right? I just hope it doesn't all go to hell...

While there are other reasons that I've been gravitating towards what I'm about to say, it was having seen not "Lady Gaga" but Stefani Germanotta as well as Bradley Cooper in their remake of "A Star Is Born" that actually precipitated my long-delayed decision

: A couple years back I quite sadly read Steven Pressfield's "Turning Pro". "Sadly" because while I was greatly inspired by his "The War Of Art", I had not read far before I knew full well that not only was I not a Pro, I was unlikely ever to become one as well.

That all changed right around 7:15 this last evening - Sunday, December 16th, 2018:

I Turned Pro.

That is not a decision to be made lightly, but I will explain later just why it is not, as well as what it actually means not so much to be a Pro, but to become one.

I will say that before the sun sets on another day, I will have posted my first vocal demo track at the above site. I'm having trouble getting my "Dry" raw recordings mixed right so as to sound good when they're "Wet", that is, when they've had such effects as Reverb mixed into them.

I've been working on a full-length vocal CD for a while now. Quite likely I won't need to mix my Dry tracks at all were I to add a third mic placed about fifteen feet away so as to capture the room ambience.

Just now I emailed my piano EP's producer Pete Burnight to ask his recommendation for a battery-powered Electret Mic.

He lent me two such mics for my EP's recordings onto his portable four-track with TDK SA-X cassette tapes run at double speed - so as to diminish the Tape Hiss - then mixed them for me onto a DAT cassette.

More commonly known as "Condenser Mics", they require "Phantom Power" not so much as to power them rather to charge the two metal-coated membranes whose change in capacitance results in subtle AC current fluctuations. "Phantom" because very, very little actual current flows.

I want a battery-powered mic - Pete's were battery powered - because I regard amp-supplied power over the XLR cable to be Wrong In The Eyes Of The Lord.

That first demo track I'll record with my iPhone 7 and the mostly-excellent Pro Microphone iOS. "Mostly": I'll post a review on my above site Real Soon Now.

Steven Pressfield Dot Com while quick to answer pings leads my browser to spin for tens of minutes just now. I'll post links to both "Turning Pro" and "The War Of Art" after Pressfield's webmaster gives his box a Boot To The Head.

Don't worry The Thought Police aren't after me again.

I wrote a short essay about the most frightening experience of my entire life.

While I posted it, and while it will show up in web search as I added it's URL to my Sitemaps Protocol map, it's going to be a good long time before I tell anyone but a deeply trusted few, and even them not for a while from now. I won't email it to anyone rather I will send it snail mail.

I will leave you with this hint though.

The first time I made a Schizophrenic stop hallucinating just by talking to him was in the plain sight of two Psychiatric Nurse in a PICU. One of them wandered nonchalantly out from behind the nurses desk about ten minutes later:

      Did you see what I did there,
      I asked quietly.

      Yes, just as quietly.

        I don't know why it worked.

        You entered his reality. If you can figure out the rules
        that apply there, you can bring him some relief.

A deeply faithful old man was being tormented by the Devil. Bernard just asked me to say a blessing over him.

In reality I can't make anyone stop hallucinating. While every Schizophrenic can make himself stop hallucinating, the don't know they can until I point that fact out to them.

Just writing this is really freaking me out. I'm going to go somewhere far away from my office, and I will leave my phone in my file cabinet.

Uuuuugh. Just a small mini-rant today. I got bounced from a social circle online elsewhere earlier today because, *apparently,* having a genital preference is transmisogyny. It's not enough that I support transwomen through their struggles and transition and suffering; no, the fact that I am a strict vagitarian and flatly refuse to date or have sex with a transwoman who still has male equipment makes me A Bad Person (TM).

This is how you get TERFs. I wish these people understood how much it reeks of male privilege--yes, MALE privilege, even though they were always women mentally and are on their way physically--to demand that a gay but cisgender women open herself, in the most literal, intimate, and deep sense, to the body parts she is not attracted to because the mind matches.

Look, I'm not going to date Buck Angel or another FtM who still has a vagina either: I'm a lesbian. I like women. I don't demand they be "womyn-born-womyn," but boy bits are verboten. What is unreasonable about this?! Isn't the entire point of someone going MtF to get a woman's exterior to match her interior?

I'm never going to become a TERF, but stuff like this is almost guaranteed to create more of them. I am having less and less sympathy for transwomen the older I get, and that worries me, because we're still all humans at the end of the day. I just wish some of them would pull their heads out of their asses about this.

_Speculate_ now.

Surely my many Soylentil friends will agree I am _exceedingly_ Hypergraphic.

My own interpretation of my Methylmalonic Acid blood test is that it was inconclusive: I was right in the middle of the normal range, but its Wikipedia article points out that it can have false negatives as well as false positives.

There are six or eight other B12 Deficiency tests, the most definitive one generally performed last as Bone Marrow Biopsies are both painful and costly.

TLE Hypergraphia along with a few other traits are collectively regarded as Geschwind Syndrome. In my case I also experience Hyperreligiosity, as I will discuss in another post in a day or two, as well as Circumstantiality, a tendency to talk incessantly, wandering from topic to topic with no apparent connection between them.

I'm heavily into talking just that same way.

While Broca's Aphasia originates in the similarly-named Brain Area, the Broca's Area is immediately forward of the Temporal Lobe of one's dominant brain hemisphere, either the right for most artists and musicians or - in my case, as a Scientist, Engineer and Writer - the left one.

However, TLE would _not_ explain my numb feet and lips. I don't know whether or not either B12 or TLE would explain the sudden onset as well as severity of Tinnitus at the start of that same episode, or the severe dizziness that first occurred that afternoon. That dizziness persists, two or three episodes each day, one to three hours each time.

My reading of Wikipedia's Methylmalonic Acid article leads me to figure that my test result of 216 nmol/L is inconclusive. While that level is normal, in the nine weeks before you ordered my blood draw, I'd been eating antacid just like it was M&M candy. This at first due to nausea after my Radical Nephrectomy on 10/31, then later due to the nausea that comes if I move my head even just a little when I get dizzy.

So far today while I was dizzy for three hours. I can avoid nausea without antacids by lying quietly on my bed in the dark listening to music, as that discourages head music. When the dizziness struck this afternoon I was in my therapist's waiting room, so I put my computer back in its bag then sat quietly, staring at a spot on the opposite wall. During my session with her I explained why she'd found me sitting quietly, then for the entire session took care always to look directly at her, never looking away.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to apply for a state-funded In-Home Caregiver.

This because I just now put a pot in the microwave rather than on the stove. I've been doing stuff like that quite a lot lately. Happily I clued in before I actually nuked it.

If my only problem would be burning down my home and those of my two neighbors I wouldn't need actually home care, just meal delivery. But that's part of that same program.

I'm not yet doing this every day but tomorrow I'll do sing scales before work.

The first time I sang scales I measured my range. I don't recall what it was but I will say I was quite dismayed at how narrow it was.

Today I only sang from C below middle C up to middle C and back. Once I'm confident that I can do so really well, and to project effectively I'll add just one note above and below.

It's not raining so I'll sing around eleven but only one or two sets. I have a shrink appointment in Vancouver at three and just want enough to buy a coffee t drink in her waiting room.

My essay "An NSFW Review of Portland's Oregon Theater" is #6 at Google for:

          oregon theater

... immediately below oregon dot theater... and #8 for:

          "oregon theater"

In other news, I'm working at home tonight, but didn't get started until just a half hour ago, at which point I decided so as to point out that Portland's Oregon Theater is a great place to get blown. Ten clams most night, twenty or twenty five on "Party" nights, when the management springs for vast quantities of pizza and free snacks, and more women turn up.

Be sure to get your Hepatitis vaccination and bring an economy-sized box of those little rubber raincoats:

            "Suit up before you play." -- Ann Landers, "Dear Abby"

I actually woke up at four in the afternoon - as I write this it's just before 2:00 AM - but took quite a long time to come round. I was reluctant to drink coffee as it's been upsetting my stomach lately, but eventually concluded I'd waste the whole night if I didn't.

The coffee of course made me nauseous. Again I was reluctant to take an antacid - ranitidine, generic RanTab - as I suspect - _suspect_ now - that antacids make my suspected - _suspected_ - Pernicious Anemia far worse.

But I just couldn't deal with the nausea anymore so I took a ranitidine. It was not long before my stomach felt just dandy, followed by dizziness, followed by even worse nausea.

Just the one acid would _not_ have caused the dizziness or the nausea, its effect would be far slower than that.

I lay in bed in the dark for a while, eventually to feel just fine and so got back up to prepare for going to work. The nausea and dizziness set back in, so again I lay in bed, intending to work at home so as to not risk getting nauseous on the bus to and fro. Fell asleep but just for an hour or so.

I wanted some coffee when I got back up but would not at first risk getting sick. A couple days ago I was advised to eat something before drinking coffee, and in fact I usually drink it on an empty stomach so I made a Jesus Big pancake. Just one, the size of my whole frying pan you can do that if you add eggs to your Krusteaz.

("Jesus Big" is Newfoundland English for "Ginormous".)

And in fact just to experiment in much the same way as the medical hero who trapped a mosquito against his arm under a cup, then died of Yellow Fever so as to overcome the skepticism of the medical community, I had a whole cup of by now cold coffee. It's been about an hour and I'm still not sick.

I figure I would be nauseous by now, so I screwed around with my logfile analysis, only discover that some completely empty directories at warp life are getting lots of hits, so I redirected them to soggy wizards' homepage.

Tell Me About Your Day.

I'm having a good day. Not every day is good for me but today is.

Radio Paradise is playing some live Grateful Dead.