I'm struggling at the moment, eating too much, doing too little, finding it hard to concentrate. My clothes feel tight, not a good sign.
I keep feeling angry with this counselling/therapy - there's no acknowledgement from this therapist, nor was there from the previous one, or the staff at my GP's, that I have actual life and health problems, long-standing problems, some of them decades old, that get in the way of my sustaining a positive outlook. I know people have worse problems, but the problems I have are real, and living with them with little help and pretty much on my own is bloody hard.
I wish they would at least acknowledge this, rather than saying something to me that amounts to a sophisticated version of "don't worry, be happy".
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Eek!
I've just been looking at the images that "prove" Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite (given how small her "penis" would have to be, and how large and meaty her clit and/or inner lips might be, not to mention that she might just literally have her knickers in a twist, one wonders how many men still visualize women having nothing but a featureless white marble smoothness down there) when I noticed her age.
When Lady Gaga (23) was born in 1986 Madonna was already 27. I was 27. That's how bloody old we are.
When Lady Gaga (23) was born in 1986 Madonna was already 27. I was 27. That's how bloody old we are.
Friday, 15 January 2010
Depression
You know what I think the difference between a depressive and non-depressive personality is?
Self-blame.
I've noticed most people, when faced with problems in their lives, blame other people for them.
I suspect people with depression mostly blame themselves, assume the fault is all in them, feel guilty or ashamed.
Self-blame.
I've noticed most people, when faced with problems in their lives, blame other people for them.
I suspect people with depression mostly blame themselves, assume the fault is all in them, feel guilty or ashamed.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
A Self-Made Fish Out of Water
Yet another night with little sleep. I went to bed just before midnight, and woke at 3am, and have been unable to sleep since. It's a quarter to eight in the morning, and my cumulative lack of sleep is making me hallucinate, something I haven't experienced since my late mother had her devastating first heart attack, and I was awake for three whole days and began mistaking dustbins for children. I'm now mistaking the leaves of high weeds blowing in the wind for a helicopter.
I've spent the tired yet wired early hours reading Nick Hornby's "the complete Polysyllabic Spree", which details the books he bought and the books he read (not the same things) between 2003 and 2006.
I've never taken to Hornby or his novels, I don't like his blokishness, I think he has lousy taste in popular music, which seems to be the only music he likes - he rates highly the Clash and Bruce Springsteen, which two I've long classed as posturing mediocrities whose only talent was to sellotape together rock clichés, and I've always classed him as one of those middle class men with an affected interest in football, so affected that even he's forgotten it was affected. Sports fannery is a blind spot of mine, I do not get it at all.
His cultural interests on the evidence of "Polysyllabic Spree" are limited to mainstream fiction and literary biography, rock music, and football. He doesn't so much dismiss science - for instance - as use that common trick of "hmm, very clever, far too clever for me, but it's not important, is it, except to nerds?".
Around the middle of the book Hornby mentions he's read a biography of the dead writer B.S. Johnson by Jonathan Coe. Hornby finishes his comments by saying that B.S. Johnson had an attitude about himself and others that could be simplified as "don't you know who I am?"
I knew and know who B.S. Johnson was. I read his "House Mother Normal" and "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry" in my late teens 33 years ago. I can't say I ever re-read them, but I can remember them clearly. They made a strong enough impression on me, the first book a depiction of the same non-events in an old peoples' home as seen through the consciousnesses of patients with different depths of senility, the second a depiction of a young clerical worker applying the principles of book-keeping to an escalatingly violent working out of his grudges. I didn't decide toread these because I had read reviews of them in the literary pages of newspapers , I found "House Mother Normal" in a Remainder Bin in my local Woolworths, and borrowed "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry" from my local library because I'd been impressed by the first book.
My friend Heather once called me "a Self-made Fish out of Water" and "an Isolated Intellectual". While I don't think I'm an intellectual and don't want to be, I wonder whether there's a basic truth in what she said; that I am by background very poor uneducated working class and I have suffered the disadvantages of that background, but I am very intelligent, received a middlingly good education, and continued to educate myself. Consequently, still trapped among people of my own background, I have spent 30 years of my adult life having little in common with them except where we come from: few common subjects of interest, few similar goals, few tastes.
I seem to have been interested and attuned to things that people of a similar age and similar intelligence weren't. I very often hear and read cultural commentators in the media failing to understanding references that I understand; these are people who by profession and education should pick up those references.
It sounds a snobbish and arrogant thing to say, but I wonder how many of my troubles come from having been born in the lowest social class with talents and intelligence that suited me for the professional middle class, but few opportunities to make use of them. I needed that insight twenty or thirty years ago, so that I'd have understood the desperate importance of climbing out of my class by any means.
I have only met two people like me in my entire life.
I've spent the tired yet wired early hours reading Nick Hornby's "the complete Polysyllabic Spree", which details the books he bought and the books he read (not the same things) between 2003 and 2006.
I've never taken to Hornby or his novels, I don't like his blokishness, I think he has lousy taste in popular music, which seems to be the only music he likes - he rates highly the Clash and Bruce Springsteen, which two I've long classed as posturing mediocrities whose only talent was to sellotape together rock clichés, and I've always classed him as one of those middle class men with an affected interest in football, so affected that even he's forgotten it was affected. Sports fannery is a blind spot of mine, I do not get it at all.
His cultural interests on the evidence of "Polysyllabic Spree" are limited to mainstream fiction and literary biography, rock music, and football. He doesn't so much dismiss science - for instance - as use that common trick of "hmm, very clever, far too clever for me, but it's not important, is it, except to nerds?".
Around the middle of the book Hornby mentions he's read a biography of the dead writer B.S. Johnson by Jonathan Coe. Hornby finishes his comments by saying that B.S. Johnson had an attitude about himself and others that could be simplified as "don't you know who I am?"
"which in Johnson's case was an even more unfortunate question than it normally is. Nobody knew then, and nobody knows now."
I knew and know who B.S. Johnson was. I read his "House Mother Normal" and "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry" in my late teens 33 years ago. I can't say I ever re-read them, but I can remember them clearly. They made a strong enough impression on me, the first book a depiction of the same non-events in an old peoples' home as seen through the consciousnesses of patients with different depths of senility, the second a depiction of a young clerical worker applying the principles of book-keeping to an escalatingly violent working out of his grudges. I didn't decide toread these because I had read reviews of them in the literary pages of newspapers , I found "House Mother Normal" in a Remainder Bin in my local Woolworths, and borrowed "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry" from my local library because I'd been impressed by the first book.
My friend Heather once called me "a Self-made Fish out of Water" and "an Isolated Intellectual". While I don't think I'm an intellectual and don't want to be, I wonder whether there's a basic truth in what she said; that I am by background very poor uneducated working class and I have suffered the disadvantages of that background, but I am very intelligent, received a middlingly good education, and continued to educate myself. Consequently, still trapped among people of my own background, I have spent 30 years of my adult life having little in common with them except where we come from: few common subjects of interest, few similar goals, few tastes.
I seem to have been interested and attuned to things that people of a similar age and similar intelligence weren't. I very often hear and read cultural commentators in the media failing to understanding references that I understand; these are people who by profession and education should pick up those references.
It sounds a snobbish and arrogant thing to say, but I wonder how many of my troubles come from having been born in the lowest social class with talents and intelligence that suited me for the professional middle class, but few opportunities to make use of them. I needed that insight twenty or thirty years ago, so that I'd have understood the desperate importance of climbing out of my class by any means.
I have only met two people like me in my entire life.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Lard-on
I tried another Viagra yesterday evening - it worked better than the first one in that with a little help from porn and a vicious fantasy on my part it provoked and sustained an erection for five or so minutes, not a long thick erection but enough of one to achieve an effective penetration.
A positive result of sorts, but I had a better one spontaneously on the edge of sleep the other morning. I'm ever more convinced that the lack of sexual desire and excitement I now feel, and my perpetual anxiety and despair, play a big part in my inability to get erections.
A positive result of sorts, but I had a better one spontaneously on the edge of sleep the other morning. I'm ever more convinced that the lack of sexual desire and excitement I now feel, and my perpetual anxiety and despair, play a big part in my inability to get erections.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Dog's Fanny Hairs
I had a disturbing dream last night in which Heather's dog Hebe had bald skin like a human , except for a triangle of pubic hair. I wish Heather would please oh please refer to Hebe's pubic fur as fur in future, not as "fanny hairs".
Brrrrrrrrr.
Brrrrrrrrr.
Русские женщины - самые красивейшие женщины в мире
Awake too early again. Sat watching Russia Today on Freeview just after 6am. Looking at all the Russian women walking in the snowy streets of Moscow and St Petersburg, it struck me again that so many of the strangers I find attractive in the streets of Greater Manchester turn out to be Russian, Polish, and probably Ukrainian and Belorussian (I hear these women talking or see in their hands a magazine or book with Cyrillic letters or polish on the cover). It also struck me watching all these Russian women on the TV that a big part of what I find attractive is how pale, untanned, and often flawless their skin is, with the only colour the natural rosiness of their cheeks.
I've been trying to figure out why Russia has always fascinated me - it had nothing to do with politics, I think it's sort of like the attraction of Japan - it's often said that for us Japan is the nearest we can get to to an alien planet. Well, I think for me, the attraction of Russia and the Ukraine is that they're the nearest I can get to a parallel universe where European culture descended from Byzantium rather than Rome.
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