Random life stories
I've been on a grand adventure. The last two years has been a steady stream of weird events and insanity for myself and others. In the last year or so I've had like 4 psychotic events, 2 of which I was hospitalized for, one I endured in solitary isolation lasting several months through which I burned through my savings (I occasionally left my nest for groceries but used the machine and spoke to no one), and one I spent screaming and passing out at a friend's place while in a paranoiac stupor. I was technically eligible for disability, but the process for getting disability assistance in canada is basically impossible without a full time effort and the help of consultants lasting several months. When you're saddled with mental illness it's prohibitively difficult to get assistance, which is likely why the mentally ill wind up on the streets and eventually self-medicate with drugs.
I was lucky though, I had a roommate with a great knack for intervention. And the friend I crashed with was like somekind of witch doctor when it came to dealing with insanity. People like those two are very rare and they're far more skilled, empathic, and effective than medical professionals who basically treat patients like cattle and often (always) harbor extreme contempt for the people they "care" for. The one advantage of cooperating with the mental health institution is they you can get drugs and doctor's notes excusing year-long absences - which is the main reason I still have a shot at completing my master's degree after vanishing for several years. The drugs usually suck, but after enough suffering (8 years) they finally gave me the good shit. And then I added weed on top of that and shit was tight.
So two things happened after my stay with the witch doctor. I decided I needed to change my life up so I enrolled in the most advanced 1st aid class I could get into. At first I thought it was just a basic certification, but it turns out that the level of first aid I took was a career in and of itself. From that I went from being a useless academic to being a super in-demand multi-purpose medic. I wasn't a paramedic, I needed a few more courses before that, but more like someone who would be put onto teams to provide expedient medical intervention. So I could be put into construction teams, sporting event, security teams, ect. I got my security ticket too. With the basic training I could upgrade to private investigator, camera installation, armored car driver, K9, weapons, ect. People make fun of security for being rent-a-cops and mall cops and stuff, but you can do some really advanced stuff if you have the right skill set - some of the security guys I know are former military, or guarded secret documents, or guarded foreign political guys and stuff. On a security team I'm usually just a basic guard or a medic.
The other cool thing I did was weeeeed. Shit's so tight. When I was working construction I just wanted it to be a weekend thing as a reward and to sooth my muscles that were sore from labor. But when I left construction I went on a several week bender where I did like multiple bowls a day and walked around at night looking for coyotes. My roommate at the time was a hunter, so he helped me track the coyotes. We found like 12 of them at once, one time. One time they actually started hunting us. They used all these distraction and surrounding tactics and stuff just like in jurassic park. People are all like "lol coyotes are pussys just kick them" but when there's 12, and they've been known to kill large animals, and even a person from time to time, and they're surrounding you and making creepy noises and stuff, it's hard to believe they're not a threat. But yeah we often did that high as fuck.
Having gained the power of the coyote, the wisdom of ganga, and the healing skills of worksafe BC, I did the most insane thing I could think of: I vowed, for an entire year, to volunteer for every geek convention I could. There are a lot of conventions in vancouver and I only managed to make it out to volunteer for 3 of them. I scheduled another 2 on top of that, but communication fell apart and I missed them. The first one was pretty well run and straightforward, except for a girl going psychotic and trying to kill herself. A bunch of construction douches showed up to the con, probably with the intent on hitting on underaged pussy, and abused one of the venue staff until she had a breakdown. The douches were kicked out, but before they left they went around abusing the nerds, possibly inducing the near suicide. The girl was pulled from the railing that she climbed up onto and the police took her away. The event organizer dismissed it as "drama", indicating that he either sees a lot of suicide or that he generally lacks basic empathy (he's still a generally nice guy, even if he has a reptilian lack of concern for human tragedy.) Or maybe it was a fake suicide attempt. I don't know but she looked psychotic as the police were escorting her out in her anime girl cosplay.
Convention 2 was pretty safe and problem-free, although the security team I was in was a little too tightly wound. They were wearing body armor (like actual tactical armor, not costume stuff), handcuffs, ect. I did some minor medical interventions and I was mostly on door duty but I got to do a bit of information gathering and some radio handling.
Convention 3 was by far the strangest. I don't even know how to sum it up. I showed up as a regular volunteer, but was upgraded to security. I had Serving it Right, a requirement to serve alcohol in BC. I myself don't drink alcohol and never have, so I had to guess what everything tasted like when people asked for recommendations. It was pretty sweet - I was pouring beer for wizards and unicorns and stuff. But yeah, the upgrade to the security team. It was a sci-fi and fantasy con, but it seemed to be a tradition for the security team to be either furries or furry-aligned. One of them threw a coin on to the counter and it has a furry symbol on it - they have special secret coins with like their secret rank minted onto it. I guess he was expecting me to present my coin but I had no idea what any of this was. I've been flirting with furry for pretty much forever, but at no point did I tell them anything. So somehow they can just tell. My direct superior was a transmale (cockatoo when online, none the less) and rode my ass whenever he could. Maybe he liked me a little and decided to express it with psycho head games and working me hard at random. When we were alone he wanted to kick me in the balls. It was like part hostility and part seductive offer. I mean I can certainly find getting kicked in the balls sensual, but I balance that with a general desire not to be kicked in the balls. He also wanted to tie me up, put a collar on me, and occasionally talked to me like a dog when sending me out on tasks. Which I sort of appreciated in a perverse way, so I can't really complain about it. Also he gave me one of the coveted walkie-talkies (while insisting I go out for walkies) for some of my tasks - a privilege I abused when the building fire alarm went off and I excitedly spammed the channel with garbled and misleading nonsense. Also a fire alarm going off (and caused by) a bunch of nerds in a hotel is like a scene out of dante's inferno. It was chaos. People were screaming, it was insane.
At some point I got some time off and went to the dance floor where the DJ was playing the dankest most poison old stuff to an empty room. So a bunch of volunteers just had our own tiny dance party. One of them was the cockatoo's roommate, female-ish genderfluid - I'll go with "she", and we danced the tango with her taking the male lead. She told me she was psychic and the two of us got swept up in to a room "party" (just people chilling) where I got to hang out with various people from the geek community. Including someone who was introduced as "the furry". But I was safe, no one knew about my weird online shameful cartoon animal molestation interests. At least until I started talking with The Furry and making it clear I wanted to know more about his completely insane and cringe-y world. I got the impression that I was probably better of keeping it as a hidden semi-anonymous online thing, but I would always sort of be curious about the weird orgies and secret coins and rituals. But yeah, I'm not so desperate for friends that I need to make something like that my life - I'm content to stick to IRC channels to sate my hunger for dominating and preying on fruity internet animal clowns in the dark corners of cyberspace.
It was a multi-day event and I was dreading the long transit home one night. So the cockatoo let me stay in a room he had set aside for exhausted volunteers. I got some sleep until him and his psychic roommate woke me up in the middle of the night for what appeared to be no reason. Did they urgently need the room for some reason? Or psycho head games? Either way I was pretty sleep deprived. I made it through the day but left before the after party because I was exhausted and probably wouldn't have made it home (I was stranded last time I went to a con volunteer afterparty).
Yeah. So after that I sort of had a decreased interest in the geek community. I sort of also withdrew from the local film scene since I realized I didn't really have a future in it, nor did I really care about a lot of stuff the vancouver indy scene was generating. When I first got into microbudget cinema it was because the people who pioneered it were fiercely innovative and creative. Now it's formulaic clones of bland characters and story models. I still write scripts, but I don't really expect to sell them. So I've lost love of film and geek stuff. I've loudly declared my resentment towards science, my first and most enduring passion. But what happens if I finish my master's after all these years? Will it renew that passion and give me hope of some kind of awesome science career like the one I've been chasing my whole life? I'll find out when I get there. But for now it looks like I've given up on every dream I've had. Or is this just a slump? Will I come back harder? I don't know. But I feel I need a new dream to keep me going. Egalitarianism? No. Fuck that - that's just a fairy tale. Robot future? No. Hell no. I'm a mammal I want to do mammal stuff. Eugenics? Noooo. That's unnecessary, humans are more or less fine if society wasn't bent. Change society? No. That's too hard and only works very slowly. I guess I should just finish my degree and play it by ear.
Exp tally (last ~1 year):
Medical aid delivered
broken ankles possibly requiring steel plates: 4 (one double)
concussion: ~4
nail gun mishaps: 2
knife wounds: ~3
head wound: 1
chemical damage to eyes: 1
intoxication: ~3-5
drug overdose: 1
Psychological assistance (not necessarily successful)
attempted suicide: 1
suicide ideation: 2+
paranoia: 4
drug addiction/withdrawal: ongoing
random sub-threshold psychotic: multiple, ongoing
malingering: 3+
Criminal (hearsay, likely fictional accounts)
prostitution: 1+
drugs (coke, meth, steroids, oxy): 3+
credit card fraud: 1
uttering threats: 1
attempted murder: 1 (sentence served)
assault: 3+ (suspected, charges pending)
aggressive soliciting: 1
Animals
racoons (including 1 attack)
crows (including crow hatred towards me)
coyotes (largest group spotted of 12. Den located, hunting area located)
Security
radio skill
flashlight communication
access control
tactical communication
evacuation
triage
information gathering
Construction
safety guidelines and enforcement
tool names
intro hammer swinging
shovel operator
navigating hazard areas
information gathering
lifting stuff
boxcutter proficiency
Calamity (myself and others)
flood
depression
short stay shelter
homelessness
fatality
fire
sent to nunavut
psychotic episode
Insanity encountered (not all of which I disapprove of)
flat earth society (I discovered that someone I know is a die hard flat earther)
MRAs, multiple
furry secret society
psychic
non-seizure psychotic fits
charismatic church exorcist (he even did a church spell on me. Different event from the last time I was exorcised.)
serious ideation of a genetically engineered dickgirl utopia (if everyone is the same gender, there will be no gender problems)
anime club facebook group openly posting about their obvious interest in pedophilia (content deleted)
professional full-time LoL account grinders
I'm sure I missed something, but yeah that was my year.
I was lucky though, I had a roommate with a great knack for intervention. And the friend I crashed with was like somekind of witch doctor when it came to dealing with insanity. People like those two are very rare and they're far more skilled, empathic, and effective than medical professionals who basically treat patients like cattle and often (always) harbor extreme contempt for the people they "care" for. The one advantage of cooperating with the mental health institution is they you can get drugs and doctor's notes excusing year-long absences - which is the main reason I still have a shot at completing my master's degree after vanishing for several years. The drugs usually suck, but after enough suffering (8 years) they finally gave me the good shit. And then I added weed on top of that and shit was tight.
So two things happened after my stay with the witch doctor. I decided I needed to change my life up so I enrolled in the most advanced 1st aid class I could get into. At first I thought it was just a basic certification, but it turns out that the level of first aid I took was a career in and of itself. From that I went from being a useless academic to being a super in-demand multi-purpose medic. I wasn't a paramedic, I needed a few more courses before that, but more like someone who would be put onto teams to provide expedient medical intervention. So I could be put into construction teams, sporting event, security teams, ect. I got my security ticket too. With the basic training I could upgrade to private investigator, camera installation, armored car driver, K9, weapons, ect. People make fun of security for being rent-a-cops and mall cops and stuff, but you can do some really advanced stuff if you have the right skill set - some of the security guys I know are former military, or guarded secret documents, or guarded foreign political guys and stuff. On a security team I'm usually just a basic guard or a medic.
The other cool thing I did was weeeeed. Shit's so tight. When I was working construction I just wanted it to be a weekend thing as a reward and to sooth my muscles that were sore from labor. But when I left construction I went on a several week bender where I did like multiple bowls a day and walked around at night looking for coyotes. My roommate at the time was a hunter, so he helped me track the coyotes. We found like 12 of them at once, one time. One time they actually started hunting us. They used all these distraction and surrounding tactics and stuff just like in jurassic park. People are all like "lol coyotes are pussys just kick them" but when there's 12, and they've been known to kill large animals, and even a person from time to time, and they're surrounding you and making creepy noises and stuff, it's hard to believe they're not a threat. But yeah we often did that high as fuck.
Having gained the power of the coyote, the wisdom of ganga, and the healing skills of worksafe BC, I did the most insane thing I could think of: I vowed, for an entire year, to volunteer for every geek convention I could. There are a lot of conventions in vancouver and I only managed to make it out to volunteer for 3 of them. I scheduled another 2 on top of that, but communication fell apart and I missed them. The first one was pretty well run and straightforward, except for a girl going psychotic and trying to kill herself. A bunch of construction douches showed up to the con, probably with the intent on hitting on underaged pussy, and abused one of the venue staff until she had a breakdown. The douches were kicked out, but before they left they went around abusing the nerds, possibly inducing the near suicide. The girl was pulled from the railing that she climbed up onto and the police took her away. The event organizer dismissed it as "drama", indicating that he either sees a lot of suicide or that he generally lacks basic empathy (he's still a generally nice guy, even if he has a reptilian lack of concern for human tragedy.) Or maybe it was a fake suicide attempt. I don't know but she looked psychotic as the police were escorting her out in her anime girl cosplay.
Convention 2 was pretty safe and problem-free, although the security team I was in was a little too tightly wound. They were wearing body armor (like actual tactical armor, not costume stuff), handcuffs, ect. I did some minor medical interventions and I was mostly on door duty but I got to do a bit of information gathering and some radio handling.
Convention 3 was by far the strangest. I don't even know how to sum it up. I showed up as a regular volunteer, but was upgraded to security. I had Serving it Right, a requirement to serve alcohol in BC. I myself don't drink alcohol and never have, so I had to guess what everything tasted like when people asked for recommendations. It was pretty sweet - I was pouring beer for wizards and unicorns and stuff. But yeah, the upgrade to the security team. It was a sci-fi and fantasy con, but it seemed to be a tradition for the security team to be either furries or furry-aligned. One of them threw a coin on to the counter and it has a furry symbol on it - they have special secret coins with like their secret rank minted onto it. I guess he was expecting me to present my coin but I had no idea what any of this was. I've been flirting with furry for pretty much forever, but at no point did I tell them anything. So somehow they can just tell. My direct superior was a transmale (cockatoo when online, none the less) and rode my ass whenever he could. Maybe he liked me a little and decided to express it with psycho head games and working me hard at random. When we were alone he wanted to kick me in the balls. It was like part hostility and part seductive offer. I mean I can certainly find getting kicked in the balls sensual, but I balance that with a general desire not to be kicked in the balls. He also wanted to tie me up, put a collar on me, and occasionally talked to me like a dog when sending me out on tasks. Which I sort of appreciated in a perverse way, so I can't really complain about it. Also he gave me one of the coveted walkie-talkies (while insisting I go out for walkies) for some of my tasks - a privilege I abused when the building fire alarm went off and I excitedly spammed the channel with garbled and misleading nonsense. Also a fire alarm going off (and caused by) a bunch of nerds in a hotel is like a scene out of dante's inferno. It was chaos. People were screaming, it was insane.
At some point I got some time off and went to the dance floor where the DJ was playing the dankest most poison old stuff to an empty room. So a bunch of volunteers just had our own tiny dance party. One of them was the cockatoo's roommate, female-ish genderfluid - I'll go with "she", and we danced the tango with her taking the male lead. She told me she was psychic and the two of us got swept up in to a room "party" (just people chilling) where I got to hang out with various people from the geek community. Including someone who was introduced as "the furry". But I was safe, no one knew about my weird online shameful cartoon animal molestation interests. At least until I started talking with The Furry and making it clear I wanted to know more about his completely insane and cringe-y world. I got the impression that I was probably better of keeping it as a hidden semi-anonymous online thing, but I would always sort of be curious about the weird orgies and secret coins and rituals. But yeah, I'm not so desperate for friends that I need to make something like that my life - I'm content to stick to IRC channels to sate my hunger for dominating and preying on fruity internet animal clowns in the dark corners of cyberspace.
It was a multi-day event and I was dreading the long transit home one night. So the cockatoo let me stay in a room he had set aside for exhausted volunteers. I got some sleep until him and his psychic roommate woke me up in the middle of the night for what appeared to be no reason. Did they urgently need the room for some reason? Or psycho head games? Either way I was pretty sleep deprived. I made it through the day but left before the after party because I was exhausted and probably wouldn't have made it home (I was stranded last time I went to a con volunteer afterparty).
Yeah. So after that I sort of had a decreased interest in the geek community. I sort of also withdrew from the local film scene since I realized I didn't really have a future in it, nor did I really care about a lot of stuff the vancouver indy scene was generating. When I first got into microbudget cinema it was because the people who pioneered it were fiercely innovative and creative. Now it's formulaic clones of bland characters and story models. I still write scripts, but I don't really expect to sell them. So I've lost love of film and geek stuff. I've loudly declared my resentment towards science, my first and most enduring passion. But what happens if I finish my master's after all these years? Will it renew that passion and give me hope of some kind of awesome science career like the one I've been chasing my whole life? I'll find out when I get there. But for now it looks like I've given up on every dream I've had. Or is this just a slump? Will I come back harder? I don't know. But I feel I need a new dream to keep me going. Egalitarianism? No. Fuck that - that's just a fairy tale. Robot future? No. Hell no. I'm a mammal I want to do mammal stuff. Eugenics? Noooo. That's unnecessary, humans are more or less fine if society wasn't bent. Change society? No. That's too hard and only works very slowly. I guess I should just finish my degree and play it by ear.
Exp tally (last ~1 year):
Medical aid delivered
broken ankles possibly requiring steel plates: 4 (one double)
concussion: ~4
nail gun mishaps: 2
knife wounds: ~3
head wound: 1
chemical damage to eyes: 1
intoxication: ~3-5
drug overdose: 1
Psychological assistance (not necessarily successful)
attempted suicide: 1
suicide ideation: 2+
paranoia: 4
drug addiction/withdrawal: ongoing
random sub-threshold psychotic: multiple, ongoing
malingering: 3+
Criminal (hearsay, likely fictional accounts)
prostitution: 1+
drugs (coke, meth, steroids, oxy): 3+
credit card fraud: 1
uttering threats: 1
attempted murder: 1 (sentence served)
assault: 3+ (suspected, charges pending)
aggressive soliciting: 1
Animals
racoons (including 1 attack)
crows (including crow hatred towards me)
coyotes (largest group spotted of 12. Den located, hunting area located)
Security
radio skill
flashlight communication
access control
tactical communication
evacuation
triage
information gathering
Construction
safety guidelines and enforcement
tool names
intro hammer swinging
shovel operator
navigating hazard areas
information gathering
lifting stuff
boxcutter proficiency
Calamity (myself and others)
flood
depression
short stay shelter
homelessness
fatality
fire
sent to nunavut
psychotic episode
Insanity encountered (not all of which I disapprove of)
flat earth society (I discovered that someone I know is a die hard flat earther)
MRAs, multiple
furry secret society
psychic
non-seizure psychotic fits
charismatic church exorcist (he even did a church spell on me. Different event from the last time I was exorcised.)
serious ideation of a genetically engineered dickgirl utopia (if everyone is the same gender, there will be no gender problems)
anime club facebook group openly posting about their obvious interest in pedophilia (content deleted)
professional full-time LoL account grinders
I'm sure I missed something, but yeah that was my year.