blueswede
The Nine Faces of Dave
brain poisoning with automotive emissions
Those last two entries didn't belong here. So I got rid of
them. I feel shitty having written them, and I'm going to
try and forget that sort of thing existed in my head. Note
to self: don't act on darker impulses, even if it's just to
write stuff down.
This is going to be the Entry #280 that I wanted to write.
I'm going to do things right this time.
And in doing so, I'm going to detail the most frustrating
two days I've had in a long time.
Two days ago I took my car up to a shop out of town to get
the air conditioning fixed. It was supposed to be repaired
yesterday, but nobody put it in the service queue and so it
didn't get done. I spoke to a manager, who guaranteed that
the car would be first in line to get repaired today, and
that the necessary work would be done by the afternoon.
Today I called to check on it at 1:00, and the work hadn't
even been started. I called again at 3:00, and found out
that the air conditioning belt was supposedly missing, and
that the other belts "needed" to be replaced. They wanted
$195 for the belts and labor, on top of the $200 I would
have been charged for the recharge and conversion on the AC.
Long story short I told 'em to stop work and I'd come up and
see it myself. Naturally, when I got there the mechanic who
had been working on my vehicle had left. So I picked up the
car and took it home, with no work having been done. And I
inspected it and found out that, sure enough, the belt was
missing, so it apparently broke off somewhere. The others,
however, were in fine condition.
So I was without my car for two days and didn't get anything
fixed, but at least I didn't get hosed by a bunch of crooks.
At any rate, my weekend is pretty well set. Haven't had a
weekend full of auto maintenance since before I bought the
car. Guess I'd better get used to these. Thankfully I can
fix this on my own. Rawk.
Now as for those other two entries, I'm not sure where they
came from. I'd guess they were product of heavy frustration
triggered by an unfortunate incident involving two women I'd
thought were pretty decent people. It's stupid to go into
now, because the more I think about it the more I realize it
wasn't that big a deal. I'm not mad anymore, and I just
wish I hadn't gotten it in my head to write things down just
after getting really angry.
So what does this tell us about the real reasons? Poisoning
with nerve toxins. I'm completely serious about this; I had
something in my system that was trying to kill me, or at the
very least make me feel crappy. And it was working. Things
kept getting worse over the following week. I slept less,
felt worse, and generally was in a bad state.
The cure? One day of fasting. I'm feeling vastly better
now after not eating for 24 hours. Whatever poison was in
me is gone, and I'm feeling better.
The past two days still sucked, but what the hell?
I even somehow got in my head to ask out a girl I know here.
Naturally I was unsuccessful, since she turned out to be
somewhat involved with someone (big surprise), but she was
really cool about it all.
So it's really fucked up that I've been having all these
contradictory experiences with the various women I know. It
makes me unsure what to think or who to believe. Who's the
real deal? Who's legit? Who represents reality?
The fact is that I've had pretty crappy dealings with women
in my life. Things have improved some recently, but every
so often there's a major setback and I get pissed off. But
I don't hate women. Some, yes. But I've hated a whole lot
of people in my time. And I guess the real problem in my
interactions with women is that I've had a severe imbalance
of bad over good, and that can skew your perception of other
events. I mean look at me; I'm happy to get rejected simply
because things didn't blow up in my face.
I shouldn't be bitter, but sometimes, especially after a few
bad experiences, it's hard not to be. And though it may not
last very long, it can produce unfortunate results. Now in
my case the unfortunate results this time were limited to a
stupid entry, now deleted, in which I misdiagnosed what went
on as a symptom of egotism instead of immaturity. Though I
do still blame popular culture in some ways for the fucked
state of gender interaction.
The problem with venting is that anger can cloud your head
to the point where you can't filter out the insight from the
noise, and everything spills out even when it shouldn't.
Probably half the entries in this damn thing don't deserve
to exist and take up space; they're a product of a time that
I wish I could forget. And my angry ranting was a throwback
to that, I admit. For things like that I should probably
keep a second journal, and keep it hidden.
But it's better in the long run to have vented my anger and
frustration in a non-destructive manner. And the advantage
of this medium in particular is that the records can, in the
end, be destroyed.
So we leave with a thought: what determines the quality of a
person's character? Is it what they think, or what they do
that makes them who they are? Am I a bad person for my dark
thoughts and impulses, or am I still good as long as I don't
act on them?