I know it’s stupid to get worked up over people being stupid on the internet, but sometimes I can’t help myself.  Like tonight.  I read a bit of a blog by a person with all kinds of mental problems who - this is the forehead-smacking part - takes enormous pride in being able to outsmart and defeat her therapists.

Yes, congratulations, Miserable Fucked Up Person, you have succeeded in thwarting the well meaning efforts of people who want only to help you be happier.  It must be rewarding to get to feel so superior.  Please, continue to ignore the fact that the only person you’re defeating is yourself.

Self sabotage: it’s what’s for dinner.

Seriously.  I am a frazzled mess.  Who the fuck calls in sick on the day when my Entire Fucking Life Forever And Ever is being decided?  Or rather, announced.  Shit.  You know what I mean.

Here are things I am good at coping with:

-A lack of clean socks.  Steal some of Husband’s.

-No food in the house.  Go to Subway.

-It’s too cold out.  Get in the tub.

-I am trapped in a leg hold trap in the forest.  Chew off own leg and hop back to town.

Here are things I absolutely cannot cope with:

-FURTHER DELAYS IN FINDING OUT WHAT MY DIAGNOSIS IS.

I am going batshit crazy sitting around the house all day, but also recognize I haven’t the brain capacity to successfully tie my own shoes nevermind venture forth into the world in search of distraction.  If you were here, you might be amused by the hummingbird-like manner in which I have been starting, losing track of, and abandoning activities all day long.  I waffle between irritation, frustration, weepiness, listlessness, and a urge to just get it all over with the jump off the fucking patio.  So far I have failed to read, fold laundry, do dishes, nap, eat, and even watch TV.  You know you are in a hard way when you can’t even achieve TV watching.

Honestly.  I am sure I am making a much bigger deal out of this than is strictly required - after all, as previously discussed, I’m sure I haven’t got any tumours or cancers or other actually serious problems.  In fact I was just telling Husband, over crepes which were lovingly hand warmed by our slaves who then fed us morsels with their pristine fingertips, how nice it is to live in utter luxury as we do.  In between attending gala balls and deciding which colour of marble to install in our eleven bathrooms we really aren’t faced with much in the way of hardship.  Yet I suppose all of us are entitled to the occasional freak out.  Today is my turn.

My god, I’m not even making sense any more.  Someone kill me.

This morning I was supposed to go to my doctor and hear the final word on just what the hell is wrong with me (I know, I know, it’s sure to be a huge list).  What actually happened was the clinic called to cancel my appointment because my doctor is sick.

If anybody needs me today, I’ll be at home wringing my hands and staring miserably into the middle distance.

Lately it seems there are a lot of people who are riding their bikes on the sidewalk.  I hate this because they invariably manage to scare the crap out of me.  One does not expect things to be moving any faster than about six or seven kilometres per hour on the sidewalk, so when something does, it’s alarming.  I don’t like to be alarmed when I’m just walking somewhere.  And I feel justified being a jerk about this because, hello, bikes belong on the road where they can get killed with all the other fast movers.  Us slow moving walking types are entitled to the sidewalk, where we expect an alarm-free stroll.

Is it bad of me that I fantasize about shoving a stick into their spokes when cyclists ride on the sidewalk?

My little brother is about to depart for university this fall.  He just finished high school.  And I know this is probably futile, but I would like to try and pass on some wisdom to help him at school.  Wise readers, what do you wish someone had told you before you started university?  Here is what I have compiled already:

Don’t study in groups. The utility of group studying is the biggest myth of university life. Here’s what you imagine group studying is: A friendly, hard working gang helping each other out, sharing insights, enhancing each other’s knowledge and understanding of the material, and improving everyone’s performance on the test.

Here’s what really happens: 10% of time spent actually studying collaboratively, 5% of time spent helping people stupider than you, 2% of time spent being helped by people smarter than you, 3% of time spent discovering things you weren’t even aware were part of the curriculum, and 80% of time spent totally fucking around (this includes flirting, discussing wicked bands, bitching about how stupid professors are, etc.). In summary, group studying bears only the most superficial of resemblances to real studying.

Instead of group study for three hours, you are better off doing independent study for an hour and a half, group study for twenty minutes (to get that 2% of help and 3% of missed material), and then just socialize freely and without guilt afterwards.

Go to class. This may surprise you, but school is easier if you go to class all the time. I know it’s a pain in the ass to show up, but consider these things: One, you already paid for it. If you weren’t going to attend, you could have put that thousand bucks towards beer. Two, it really will help you learn. If the material covered in class is a repeat of the readings, that’s okay - think of this as enforced studying for the final. Take advantage of it. Three, many classes will cover material in class that aren’t part of the readings but nonetheless appear in the test or on the papers. You can’t always tell in advance whether you are in a class of this type, so the safe bet is to attend. Four, at some point you will need letters of reference for something. A job, grad school, a co-op position, a scholarship, who knows. To get these letters, your professors need to know who you are. The only way this happens is if you attend class. The other way is if you’re the guy who never goes to class; I leave it as an exercise to the reader to imagine how good your letter will be in this latter case.

Attend office hours. I know, I know - who wants to go to extra school? Answer: you do! Why? Because, as above, these people are the folks in charge of your letters of reference, grades, and other pulling-strings types of advantages that are hard to quantify but highly useful. Here is the other secret: professors usually love to talk nerdishly about their area, and unless they are in the hard sciences, their office hours tend to be desert wastelands of neglect. Show up, bring a question or two or an intelligent comment, and prepare yourself for a short chat. Show interest and reap rewards later on!

You are not too smart to learn from your books. Many students discover that they can get by without doing much reading. This is fine if you want to be a lazy bastard and learn nothing. But you want to actually get something out of your education, such as some education, so read those damn books. Quit whining about them. Some will be boring, so boring they make you want to die. This is good for you - it builds character. And remember that until you can recite the contents of those boring, stupid texts from memory, you don’t know that shit, so get off your high horse and read.

Never lend anyone anything, ever, no matter what. This includes notes and books most particularly. Your fellow students are a bunch of sticky-fingered, careless, immoral bastards who won’t think twice about running off with your only copy of the entire list of British kings from William the Conquerer on down. Or else they’ll get busy and forget, or they’ll lose your stuff in the trash heap they call a dorm room. Or all of the above.

Someone needs a copy of your notes? Accompany them to the photocopier and never let your notes out of your possession. Someone wants to read chapter three out of the chem book but didn’t buy their own copy? As above: joint trip to the photocopier. Someone wants to borrow your hoodie? Tell them you have scabies. The secret special bonus to this method is you get some extra social time without having to worry about losing your shit. Because your shit is valuable. And no one can be trusted!

Don’t have sex with drunk girls. Remember: a woman who is intoxicated cannot legally consent to sex. It doesn’t matter how much lap dancing she is giving you, or how badly you want it. If she’s not straight and sober, WAIT. Not only will you be the hero gentleman of campus, but you will avoid such nasty things as lawsuits, criminal charges, and a reputation as a predator. I know it will seem sometimes like everyone on earth is getting drunk and laid but you, but remember this: none of those other people will do your time if you get slammed for taking advantage of a drunk girl. And it is always taking advantage if she consents while intoxicated.

The professor is never stupid. Whenever you hear someone say they have a dumb prof, or an unfair prof, your alarm bells should go off. Here is what you know, in general, about people who complain about the prof: they aren’t getting an A (so don’t borrow their notes or study with them), they probably don’t work hard (or they would be meeting the professor’s requirements and therefore having no problems with him/her), they are pissed that they can’t just do whatever they want (which is a major trait in young people hitting university for the first time), and they’re looking for someone to blame.

Some professors are annoying, unfriendly, difficult to work with, and tough to get an A out of. But they are much more educated than you are, and you can learn from them if you think strategically. Put aside your pride and think of the difficult professor as a challenge to overcome. Because even if you are right, and the prof is a total wiener, that wiener is still in charge of your grade. Your job as a student is to get your A in whatever way you can (without cheating!). If that means swallowing your pride and doing a stupid assignment, so be it.

If you find yourself thinking you have a stupid professor, ask yourself these questions: Have I been attending class? Have I been doing all my readings? Did I start my assignments in enough time to get help if I had a problem? Did I turn off my phone and resist the urge to text during class? Have I been resisting the urge to be a lazy bastard and not study? If you have any “no” answers, consider that maybe you are the source of your own troubles.

Be nice to nerds. Today’s socially awkward geek is tomorrow’s multi-millionaire. Besides, these are the folks you want to go to for help or missed notes so it pays to befriend them. Don’t bother getting notes from your drinking buddies - chances are, their notes suck.

Ask for help. From professors, from the writing and math centres, from the counselling centre, from anyone who knows their shit. No man is an island.

Don’t bother looking for the secret to good grades. The formula is simple: Effort = Grades. That’s it.

I have allergies, and this morning I woke up with Terrible, Awful sinus pressure.  I just want to say that it is incredibly, deeply unfair to have to suffer through months of headaches and sinus pain and itchy eyes just because there happen to be trees on the planet.  I mean, come on!  It’s actually sort of pathetic - hay fever, I mean. You’d think my body could come up with something better to do to me.

Oh wait, it did.  This Tuesday I go for the results of months of testing (which culminated in the never-to-be-forgotten three hour MRI) to see what my pesky nerves are getting up to.  However, I am pretty sure they’re going to tell me they don’t know.  The reason I think this is that my care has been handed back from the neurologist to my GP.  If you have something serious like MS or whatever, the neurologist keeps you.

Also, when I finally broke down and called the neurology clinic on Monday to see when my results would be available, it became clear that they’ve been available for a while, but no one bothered to call me.  So it can’t be anything too serious.  Right?  They call you if you have a brain tumour.  I’m sure they would call if my brains were about to leak out of my ears or something.

So what I expect to hear is this: “We have no idea what is wrong with you.  Your body is a special snowflake whose mysteries we cannot hope to unravel.  In the meanwhile, take these pills when you get an attack.”

Okay.  There was a time when that would have been a disaster.  I really wanted a diagnosis, because the uncertainty was killing me.  I figured if there was a diagnosis, it would mean there were treatments - and, it would mean I’m not just crazy and somehow doing this to myself.

Now I realize that a diagnosis actually isn’t good at all, because the kicker of neurological diseases is almost all of them can’t be fixed.  And, if I have something significant enough to have been defined in the medical literature as A Disease, it’s probably pretty bad, right?  So I don’t want a diagnosis now.  I’ve learned more about this stuff and apparently it’s not uncommon for nervy stuff to stay mysterious in origin, it probably doesn’t mean I am crazy, and even without a formal diagnosis, there are lots of different medications to try to treat the symptoms.

So I’m all ready for the no-diagnosis diagnosis.  I’m a little nervous about the medication because a doctor I know figures there’s one certain pill I have a very good chance of being prescribed, and one of its side effects is “cognitive blunting.”  I asked, “So, like, I have a little trouble focusing or something?  I forget where I left my keys, that kind of thing?”  And he said, “No, like you can’t count backwards from ten.”

And though he went on to explain this particular side effect is rare and only happens in chronic users, I will be very suspicious of that med if I get it.  Quick - would you rather be in pain or stupid?  It’s actually a pretty tough call!  The pain is, no question, terrible.  But so would being stupid, ya know?  I don’t know.  Obviously I have been prescribed nothing yet and know nothing yet, I’m just ruminating over here.  As you might guess I’m pretty nervous about this appointment on Tuesday.

So until then I will stuff my traitorous body with antihistamines and try to keep my imagination reined in.

Today I ate:

Cherries for breakfast.

Two big bowls of vegan pho, one around ten-thirty and one around two.

Toast and jam.

A big bowl of Chinese-style soup full of green veggies, including broccoli, spinach, peas, zucchini, and ginger.

Firm tofu, grilled, in a sauce of peanut butter, Thai red curry, ginger, soy sauce, and sugar.

And now?  Now I am going to eat a big chunk of watermelon, by digging right into a halved fruit with a melon baller (snicker).  I’m going to park my ass on the couch and watch Cracker while I do this - It’s going to be nothing but murder and melons until bed time!

I got this thought-provoking comment from my friend Puck about my somewhat vague post on food from yesterday:

Eating’s a pleasure. “Eat Food: Feel Good.” Granted “Eat Food” in this case can also end up with “get fat and unhealthy” but it can be controlled without having to resort to “Almost never Eat Food and when you do restrict your input incredibly”.

I don’t see any reward — aside from no risk of eating too much — of not enjoying yourself. Neither of us believe in some sort of finish line to life where you get rewarded for what you did in it.

You get rewarded in life *by* what you do in it. And that’s why I eat yummy food.

I had a strong reaction to this comment because of the bit about almost never eating and restricting input incredibly.  This could be a reference to either veganism or to regular eating just highly restricted - and both of these are things I have experienced.  So I thought, why not blog about it?  I do live for your comments!

In the old days, when I ate the standard North American diet, I struggled a lot with my weight.  I found it very difficult to manage my food intake so that I wasn’t overeating.  The pleasure I took from chips and burgers and fries was always tainted by a sense of guilt and shame, because I knew I was paying for that pleasure in pounds.  I never really freely enjoyed all that bad food, because I was never able to just accept and love my overweight body.  I also suspected, though at that time had done no research, that the kind of food I was eating was probably also bad for my health over the long term.  So I can only speak for myself, though I suspect others will identify: eating was not a pleasure, or at least not a pure one.

I dieted for years, and dieting did feel like starving.  I had to really cut back to see any progress, which was depressing as hell and impossible to maintain.  So I can see why making the changes required to maintain a healthily low weight feels so impossible and like such a deprivation. Like frogs in a pot, I think we get blinded to the reality around us, which is that we have created an environment of plenty and therefore artificial need.  This, I believe, is the source of much of the difficulty with dieting.  Losing five pounds wouldn’t be hard if we weren’t so thoroughly accustomed to eating chips and fries and doughnuts and chocolate bars all the time.  We have come to accept this kind of eating as the normal set point; now even a whole foods carnivorous diet would seem extreme.

The problem is that the pleasure we derive from food has become associated with the worst kinds of food - deep fried, heavily salted, prepackaged, full of high fructose corn syrup.  We’ve lost our taste for regular old food, fresh from the ground or the animal.  Giving up these bad foods is experienced as an intolerable punishment - we feel entitled to the bad food, and enter an endless cycle of eating, feeling guilty, gaining weight, trying to lose it, failing, experiencing hopelessness, and returning to the bad food.  We have become slaves to our conveniences.  “Eat food: Feel good” has become a trap.

Here is the best part of being a vegan: I eat like a hog and can lose weight.  In addition to eating only plants, I really work to keep my fat intake down to around ten percent of calories.  This means in practice that I get my fats almost exclusively from the plants themselves, not from added oils.  This also means that my food is not very calorie dense compared to the normal diet.  So I eat all the time.  I usually have four proper meals every day, and I snack on fruit and veggies throughout the day.  I never feel deprived.  I never go hungry.

The irony is that now that I have restricted my diet, I finally have the freedom I craved to truly, purely enjoy food.  I don’t worry about my weight at all now.  So when I sit down to a meal, there’s nothing on my mind except whether to have my salad before or after the main course.  The guilt is gone and the lard is going.  This is what it is to truly enjoy food in an environment of plenty.  Puck, I eat yummy food too!

But of course I pay a price.  I can’t just eat anything at all.  I can’t have an ice cream sandwich, for example, which is surely one of summer’s chief joys.  The question is, Is this a real deprivation?  It might be, if I were constantly hungry and frustrated with being a vegan.  But my belly is always full, and who cares about ice cream sandwiches when there are fresh fruit smoothies?  The more I relax into this lifestyle, the less it feels like a chore or a deprivation.  It’s becoming more and more normal to me, and along with this normalcy comes comfort and pleasure.  It hasn’t always been easy, as I said yesterday.  I’m going against a lifetime of eating differently than I do now, and there are things I miss a lot.  But it gets easier, and now I’m in a pretty good place with veganism.

So to Puck I would say I do enjoy myself, thoroughly, full-bellied-ly.  My relationship to food is no longer conflicted.  Will I be rewarded for this lifestyle within my lifespan?  Only time will tell, but assuming I fall within two standard deviations of the norm, epidemiological data says I have a great chance of avoiding heart attacks, obesity, and certain cancers, and diabetes.  It’s just a matter of deciding if it’s worth it to you (anyone).

I’m sure there is also a way to eat a carnivorous diet that doesn’t involve a sense of deprivation or weight gain, but alas, I never discovered it.  Of course I was never able to kick the junk food habit, which surely contributed.  I doubt deprivation is the necessary state for meat eaters who want to stay trim, though avoiding deprivation from hunger probably requires abandoning junk food almost entirely.  I don’t think I would advocate anything so strict as almost never eat and when you do restrict incredibly - there must be some middle ground between overeating and undereating that allows people to feel full, to purely enjoy food, and provide for all nutritional needs.  I mean besides veganism. 

I’m all achy and sore from the gym yesterday.  Lordy!  Everything aches!

I may reward myself with one of those new Starbucks smoothies, called Vanillos or Vivillos or Vananas or something.  I had the mango one yesterday (they can make it with soy milk instead of cow’s) and it was delicious!  As good as home made, only I don’t have to wash the blender!

I also shelled out seventeen bucks for cherries yesterday, and am just revelling in them.  Dark, sweet little orbs: How I love them!  I think cherries are my favourite fruit.  So when summer comes and I am presented with the option of purchasing them at shamefully high rates, I do.  I’d fill the tub with them if I could (afford it, that is).  Today I am eating only cherries for breakfast, which should have interesting repercussions for my digestive tract.  I will, as always, keep you posted.

By the way, I have been enjoying the conversation about homlessness, which all started because someone asked me to write about it.  It is extremely flattering to have strangers solicit my opinion as though it matters - which of course it doesn’t, outside this tiny blog.  At this stage in my life I have managed to accrue exactly zero power and influence.  But the point is, if you, loyal reader, have questions or topics you would be interested to have me address, do ask.  I live but to serve.

Or something.

p.s. - the landlord said no to cat.  Humbug!

I haven’t talked about veganism for a while, and though I have already thoroughly baited Puck with my post on Wikipedia, I woke up sassy today so why not?  Let’s talk about plants, yes?

I am finally settling into comfortable veganism.  Up until recently it’s felt a lot like work.  The worst part is when we eat out, and the best we can do is a salad (no-cheese-no-egg-dressing-on-the-side-please).  I have a tendency to feel ripped off, like I’m missing out on things.  Which in one sense I absolutely am: I’m missing out on pizza and ice cream and enormous wedges of lasagna.  Sometimes I even feel sulky about it, when I am in the grip of hunger and the thought of a bowl of lettuce is just so inadequate.

But then there’s the other side of things.  I lose out on certain things in the short term, but gain others in the long term.  Healthy arteries, a safe weight, reduced risk of a variety of cancers, reduced environmental demand for my food, reduced cruelty.  (Though I never seem to stop finding animal products in surprising places, like toothpaste.)  Mainly we eat at home now, because when we eat here, I can make big, filling, nutritious meals.  There is no sense of being ripped off.  And it’s cheaper.

I try to keep things in perspective.  Society’s permissive attitude toward food (eat anything you want, anywhere, at any time) is a ridiculous standard against which to measure my veganism.  It’s not that veganism is wildly restrictive and unreasonable,  just that the rest of us have made it normal to be wildly gluttonous.  Have you noticed that?  People whip out food at any time they are required to hold still for more than five minutes.  Business meetings, lectures, riding the bus, shopping.  Everywhere you look people are stuffing their faces, and it’s with on the go style food, meaning junk.  I don’t remember this being the case when I was younger.  As a kid, food came at regular and predictable times: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner.  We ate at the table.  If we were out and got hungry, we held on until we made it home.  I remember this as normal for everyone I knew.

It’s like we’re afraid to be hungry (we here means society).  We can’t smoke now, so we need something else to put in the hole.  “Hole” here being literal (mouth) and metaphoric (existential emtpiness).  Food is comfort.  A good breast, if I may use a little Kleinian psychoanalysis.

Maybe I’ve been suffering from the lack of breast, which is just my reality, but since going vegan I’m no longer in a position to hide it by stuffing myself with restaurant and 7-11 purchased munchies when I go about my day.  Perhaps I’ve been in a process of dealing with the lack of instant gratification/breast, so that now I’m pretty cool with my salad, knowing there’s something better at home.

Perhaps this doesn’t make any sense.