Yesterday, complained to the landlady about the smoke in my room every god damn day for the past six+ months. She asked me who is doing it. I say I don't know. Then she just stands there like a god damn post for over half an hour. I stand there with her, in silence, until her husband comes home, tells me off in Chinese, and they leave. I continue to stand in the hall for a while, still waiting for her answer to my questions, until I get too hungry. I go upstairs to fix dinner, then start swatting my bed, which has smoke in it, especially the mattress, which has a lot. Next thing I know a flashlight is in my face. It's the police. The landlady called them. They ask me if I called them, and ask me to let them in. The landlady gets there first. One of them speaks with her in Chinese. Then they talk to me. They say I need evidence of someone breaking into my room, and suggest I install a video surveillance system and buy an air cleaner. They leave.
This morning, went to Socialist event. Had the usual discussion. They have too many issues already to deal with mental health issues. They don't want to hear about decision analysis. They have incoherent preferences and they like them that way. Having coherent preferences is capitalist ideology, they say. They call incoherent preferences "nonlinear thinking". They say coherence of preferences are the root of all our problems. They can't muster any evidence to support their position. I tell them about BC Hydro in British Columbia. They ignore it. I come away feeling disaffected. Not particularly surprised, but not feeling good about seeing them again.
I mention the one economic issue: that low income is a symptom of schizophrenia! That's got to be the biggest laugh. Because of my political choices, i.e. not wanting to work for large multinational corporations or the military, I am classified as crazy. How predictable. T. asks about anagnosia. I say that I want freedom from forced medication, from people doing mean (i.e. deliberately deceptive) things in order to show me that I have a disorder "for my own good," etc. The room fills with tobacco smoke, though no one there is smoking. I feel the sharp pin-pricks in my legs. No one mentions it, and I am afraid to ask. I want freedom from my work being sabotaged. No one wants to touch any of it.
I get on the train to go to the gym. There are people in front of me and people in back. We are all very close to the door, all walking towards it. We are boarding quickly, in the normal fashion, and the driver closes the door on me. I ask him why he did this, and he gives me some bullshit about not being sure whether people are trying to get on or not. I call him on it, and he tells me to go to hell. I say I will gladly do so, and I will see him there when I go. He says, "Oh no you won't!" and right then and there I know I have another fucking Christian asshole on my hands, so I ream him out about it. I stare at him after I get off until he leaves. I didn't mention that the train is full of tobacco smoke.
I am at Kinko's, now, and there is smoke here, too.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
I went to the movies last night, and, lo and behold, T. was there. Soon after the start of the film, I smelled smoke. I looked behind me. Someone upwind was hastily concealing something with their hand and shoving it into a bag on their lap. It occurred to me that the last two times I had smelled smoke, I had turned around to find the exact same thing happening. Movie theaters are dark. It's hard to see what's going on. I don't know what it was, but the smoke made my legs hurt. Sharp pin-pricks. Ouch! What the f--- is this stuff? I had been having a conversation with G. in the lobby beforehand, and the ubiquitous cigarette smoke began to drift in from outside immediately. But it was no problem. I felt no effects. Is this just a matter of different kinds of tobacco smoke, or is there something else in the smoke?
After the film, as the first credit appeared on the screen, T. stood up and left, with her two friends. I had my mask on, of course. When I put my mask on, she put her hand to her face and kept it there for over an hour (it was a long film). Just as I had stood up and left the week (or so) before, at "The Lives of Others", where I had "accidentally" run into N. (different N. than on the train.) And I had one of the two experiences with the smoking then, as well. Well, I pretty much knew I wanted nothing to do with N. the day that she said my roommates were "doing me a favor" by smoking up my room and my belongings every day. Yeah, they're doing me a favor allright, putting me at risk of lung cancer, emphysema, cancer of the esophagus, heart disease, stroke, for the sake of other people being more comfortable about my behavior. For that, I stood her up at the magazine thing she had invited me to. So, I was surprised to see her at the theater. If I wanted to have anything to do with someone who thought such things, I would still be in touch with L., my ex. N., T., they're all the same. Sometimes it feels like a taunt, like, "see what you are missing because you won't accept medication."
I am getting the brush-off from another person over the internet. It happens in a recognizable way. They say, "sure, I'll do X", where X is add you to the mailing list, review your paper, or whatever, and they never do X. I come back to them to ask again, and they say that they'll do it, or they're "researching" it, or "contemplating" something or other, and they don't do it. And I can come back as many times as I want. This happens at work, too. They will eventually do it, but only after repeated, relentless inquiries, and the result will be half-assed, if any. Etc. So, this time, just to mix it up, I sent them this:
Look here, pal:
I have been getting this EXACT same treatment for over six years, now, without relent and without exception, from many, many, many disparate people besides yourself. The ONLY way that this can happen is if someone else orchestrates it. I don't know WHO is doing it, and I don't know WHAT they are telling YOU about ME. For all I know, it could be outright LIES and vicious slander. But whoever it is, they've got you playing their song. Go ahead, tell me I'm crazy. It's been like this for OVER SIX YEARS. EVERY SINGLE PERSON I contact through this or any other email account. This is NOT normal. You are NOT going to convince me otherwise. All I know is YOU are cooperating with it. WHY?? WHY?? WHY?? WHY?? WHY?? Whatever the story is, it must be VERY CONVINCING, such that you don't DARE break with the program, you don't even STOP to QUESTION it, or ask for my side of the story, etc. This technique, intended to instill "learned helplessness," is used to break people down as a form of brainwashing, psychiatric treatment, and other nefarious ends. I am NOT going to allow this to happen. It is NOT going to work. So, if this email even gets to you, if it is even YOU that I am dealing with, know that your efforts are FUTILE. Some people ARE capable of resisting this, and I am one of them. The ONLY effect they are going to have is to worsen my physical health, which prolonged and total frustration of this sort WILL DO and HAS BEGUN DOING. Is THAT going to satisfy you? Are you THAT sort of person? YOU ARE, as long as you cooperate with this campaign of isolation and continual annoyance. I am asking you to STOP. NOW! Call me at 415-956-5700x120 and talk to me in person, because, if you even get this message, your reply might not even get through, or could be edited. Don't bother to do so to tell me I'm crazy, that it is "all in my head," etc. I want to know WHO has contacted you about me, and WHAT they have said to you about me. DO IT NOW!
The lawyer who stood me up has been calling me night and day, begging for my business and has been so apologetic about leaving me high and dry, complaining about his bad back, etc.....NOT!!!
After the film, as the first credit appeared on the screen, T. stood up and left, with her two friends. I had my mask on, of course. When I put my mask on, she put her hand to her face and kept it there for over an hour (it was a long film). Just as I had stood up and left the week (or so) before, at "The Lives of Others", where I had "accidentally" run into N. (different N. than on the train.) And I had one of the two experiences with the smoking then, as well. Well, I pretty much knew I wanted nothing to do with N. the day that she said my roommates were "doing me a favor" by smoking up my room and my belongings every day. Yeah, they're doing me a favor allright, putting me at risk of lung cancer, emphysema, cancer of the esophagus, heart disease, stroke, for the sake of other people being more comfortable about my behavior. For that, I stood her up at the magazine thing she had invited me to. So, I was surprised to see her at the theater. If I wanted to have anything to do with someone who thought such things, I would still be in touch with L., my ex. N., T., they're all the same. Sometimes it feels like a taunt, like, "see what you are missing because you won't accept medication."
I am getting the brush-off from another person over the internet. It happens in a recognizable way. They say, "sure, I'll do X", where X is add you to the mailing list, review your paper, or whatever, and they never do X. I come back to them to ask again, and they say that they'll do it, or they're "researching" it, or "contemplating" something or other, and they don't do it. And I can come back as many times as I want. This happens at work, too. They will eventually do it, but only after repeated, relentless inquiries, and the result will be half-assed, if any. Etc. So, this time, just to mix it up, I sent them this:
Look here, pal:
I have been getting this EXACT same treatment for over six years, now, without relent and without exception, from many, many, many disparate people besides yourself. The ONLY way that this can happen is if someone else orchestrates it. I don't know WHO is doing it, and I don't know WHAT they are telling YOU about ME. For all I know, it could be outright LIES and vicious slander. But whoever it is, they've got you playing their song. Go ahead, tell me I'm crazy. It's been like this for OVER SIX YEARS. EVERY SINGLE PERSON I contact through this or any other email account. This is NOT normal. You are NOT going to convince me otherwise. All I know is YOU are cooperating with it. WHY?? WHY?? WHY?? WHY?? WHY?? Whatever the story is, it must be VERY CONVINCING, such that you don't DARE break with the program, you don't even STOP to QUESTION it, or ask for my side of the story, etc. This technique, intended to instill "learned helplessness," is used to break people down as a form of brainwashing, psychiatric treatment, and other nefarious ends. I am NOT going to allow this to happen. It is NOT going to work. So, if this email even gets to you, if it is even YOU that I am dealing with, know that your efforts are FUTILE. Some people ARE capable of resisting this, and I am one of them. The ONLY effect they are going to have is to worsen my physical health, which prolonged and total frustration of this sort WILL DO and HAS BEGUN DOING. Is THAT going to satisfy you? Are you THAT sort of person? YOU ARE, as long as you cooperate with this campaign of isolation and continual annoyance. I am asking you to STOP. NOW! Call me at 415-956-5700x120 and talk to me in person, because, if you even get this message, your reply might not even get through, or could be edited. Don't bother to do so to tell me I'm crazy, that it is "all in my head," etc. I want to know WHO has contacted you about me, and WHAT they have said to you about me. DO IT NOW!
The lawyer who stood me up has been calling me night and day, begging for my business and has been so apologetic about leaving me high and dry, complaining about his bad back, etc.....NOT!!!
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Last Sunday morning, I stayed in bed and read my new books, the ones on mental health law. My legs started to itch and feel prickly. The bedding smelled funny, burnt, a little tobacco-ey. I thought, either I am coming off my imposed addiction, or there I am really inhaling a lot of tobacco smoke, just by being in bed.
I didn't want to swat my bedding just then, because I wanted to go to the gym. I would just have to do it again after I got back. I didn't want to get out of bed because there really wasn't anyplace else to read.
When I got back from the gym, I found that my bedding was, in fact, full of tobacco smoke. A lot of tobacco smoke. I yelled insults at whoever did this, as I swatted and huge billowing clouds of smoke rose from the bed. I went past the ten o'clock limit, and a car drove by outside and honked its horn.
That night, to avoid the poisonous levels of particulate matter, I slept with my mask on. I did that last night, as well. I was too tired to swat before 10pm. I could tell that there was already fresh tobacco smoke in my bed from just sitting on it. My legs began to feel prickly. They feel prickly, or I feel the blood vessels dialate.
Today was my appointment with the lawyer. I walked over to his place in the Mission. I was a little early. His secretary called him. He was to be arriving from the East Coast, where he was to have attended a conference. The secretary told me, with an affect that could best be described as perky, that his plane had been delayed, that he had just landed, that his back was killing him, and that he was sorry but he was going to have to head straight home. (I noticed that the secretary had excellent posture.) He said that he would call to reschedule. I asked how the senior lawyer, the one I had originally intended to see, was doing. He said he was recovering from his illness.
My boss is up to his usual bullshit. It is too tiresome to describe.
I have looked up "learned helplessness" on wikipedia. My, how familiar. Everything you do comes to shit. Even if it is programming a computer, somehow someone else logs on and introduces errors. (This is very frustrating if you happen to be working on a large, complicated mathematical model.) This has been shown to decrease immune response, it turns out. That could explain why I keep getting infections.
The law team I had visited is known for having won a large judgement against the FBI.
I didn't want to swat my bedding just then, because I wanted to go to the gym. I would just have to do it again after I got back. I didn't want to get out of bed because there really wasn't anyplace else to read.
When I got back from the gym, I found that my bedding was, in fact, full of tobacco smoke. A lot of tobacco smoke. I yelled insults at whoever did this, as I swatted and huge billowing clouds of smoke rose from the bed. I went past the ten o'clock limit, and a car drove by outside and honked its horn.
That night, to avoid the poisonous levels of particulate matter, I slept with my mask on. I did that last night, as well. I was too tired to swat before 10pm. I could tell that there was already fresh tobacco smoke in my bed from just sitting on it. My legs began to feel prickly. They feel prickly, or I feel the blood vessels dialate.
Today was my appointment with the lawyer. I walked over to his place in the Mission. I was a little early. His secretary called him. He was to be arriving from the East Coast, where he was to have attended a conference. The secretary told me, with an affect that could best be described as perky, that his plane had been delayed, that he had just landed, that his back was killing him, and that he was sorry but he was going to have to head straight home. (I noticed that the secretary had excellent posture.) He said that he would call to reschedule. I asked how the senior lawyer, the one I had originally intended to see, was doing. He said he was recovering from his illness.
My boss is up to his usual bullshit. It is too tiresome to describe.
I have looked up "learned helplessness" on wikipedia. My, how familiar. Everything you do comes to shit. Even if it is programming a computer, somehow someone else logs on and introduces errors. (This is very frustrating if you happen to be working on a large, complicated mathematical model.) This has been shown to decrease immune response, it turns out. That could explain why I keep getting infections.
The law team I had visited is known for having won a large judgement against the FBI.
Friday, January 18, 2008
(incidentally, the SF Bay Guardian did fail to post The Violin under "Rep Clock" for the Roxie)
Yesterday, I go to the BART station to wait for the train. I have just missed one. The next is not for 11 minutes. I go to the spot that will let me off right in front of the escalator at 16th and Mission. There is one person waiting there already, at the black tiles that indicate a door position. I stand behind him. A line forms behind me, single file, stretching almost to the other side of the platform. Then a woman walks up. She has a robin's-egg blue trenchcoat folded over her forearm. In her hand, a thin copy of the free newspaper, The Examiner. She walks up to the third position in the line but stands apart from it, and begins fanning her face vigorously. It is January. It is not hot. She looks too young to have hot flashes. I notice too late that she is directly upwind from me. But my legs have already started to tell me that something is wrong. There is that faint prickly feeling again.
I am impressed. This woman has really tried hard. She must have covered herself with cigarette smoke, but I can't smell anything. I just feel it. The dose of nicotine. I wonder what to do. I turn and face directly at her. I stare directly at her. She keeps going. She avoids my gaze. They always do. I think it has something to do with guilt. Deep down, they know what they are doing is wrong. Or they just can't own up to it 100%. So, they flinch. They look away.
I stand like that for several minutes. I wonder if there is anything else I can do. Snatch the paper from her hand? It's a free paper, so is that theft? She is, technically, battering me. Talking to her is out of the question. She has already prepared her canned response, as I know from past attempts. The dose is so faint, though, I let it go.
Eventually, the train comes to end this standoff, which seems to last forever. I get on. We are packed in like sardines. The man directly in front of me sees me. He conspicuously clears his throat a couple of times. Then he starts mumbling to himself. He does this all the way to 16th and Mission, three stops away. I stare at him, as well. He, as well, does not meet my gaze, until I finally move my head to where he is looking. I try to tell him "Real good." He says, in a thick european accent, "What?" (Incidentally, he is dressed very sharply in business attire. He's clearly not a random nutcase.) I repeat myself. He removes one earbud, then the other. "That was real good," I say, "You should be an actor." He thanks me unintelligably beneath his heavy accent and I leave.
The movie I have come to see is sold out, so I go to a cafe. It is pleasant, and the air is clear. I take out my copy of Schelling's book on Conflict. Within a minute or two, the cafe is filled with the smell of cigarette smoke. I don my mask.
At work, my work had been sabotaged. This has been going on for five years. It has a number of effects. Primarily, it causes me emotional distress. This is supposed to both toughen me up and make me want to go to therapy. It also cuts down on my self-confidence, makes me more pliable, fearful, and easily dominated.
At home, my room is full of smoke. I let the fans run for a while, then I turn in to bed. I am too tired to swat the bed first. Besides, as I have mentioned, it raises the particulate matter in the air to very unhealthy levels. I immediately smell the difference. With the sheets and covers up to my nose, it smells like I am asleep on a pile of tobacco leaves.
I awake with fire in my throat. How can they do this to me? Smoke is a carcinogen. I take my long underwear off the floor and put it on the bed. I take out the tennis racket and swat it a few times. Each time, a while cloud of smoke emits. This was exactly what happened after I had been wearing them for a while, without swatting them first. I had thought maybe the smoke was dead skin or dirt from the road, so I let them lay out for a few days. Same thing.
I think of how nicotine is a contact poison. It can be easily absorbed through the skin. Whoever is loading up my long underwear with smoke obviously intends to dose me with nicotine, whether through my lungs or otherwise. Nicotine is thought to have an effect on the symptoms of schizophrenia. I have noticed that I am less prone to crying, now that I am thoroughly dosed pretty much all the time. I don't like that. I feel like the emotional part of my brain has been dulled to the point of despondence.
MindFreedom Internation has sent me a welcome packet, including a newsletter from 2006. It says that schizophrenia is not inherited, that there is no evidence of inheritence. It is wrong. There have been studies that show this. Children seperated from their biological parents at birth have twice the chance of schizophrenia if a parent is schizophrenic, normal chance otherwise. Anyway, I am skeptical of the statistics I see being flung about by people without a background in statistics, in general. Especially regarding schizophrenia. There's an inherent sampling bias in the diagnostic process. Schizophrenia is not a well-defined condition. Therefore, the base rate is not known. Are there a hundred thousand schizophrenics in the U.S., or are there 10 million? Depends how you count them. All the other statistics change drastically, depending on how you do.
I go to work angry. I want to start speaking out. "Schizophrenia" is being used as a label to taint anyone who has a really toxic family, or has unpopular political views, or is sufficiently anti-religious. It is a somewhat self-fulfilling label, as well. The train stops at the platform. The doors open. The driver keeps them open far longer than necessary. This often happens. It just so happens that, each time the driver does this, the platform is also reeking with cigarette smoke. The smoke enters the car. I don my mask.
Yesterday, I go to the BART station to wait for the train. I have just missed one. The next is not for 11 minutes. I go to the spot that will let me off right in front of the escalator at 16th and Mission. There is one person waiting there already, at the black tiles that indicate a door position. I stand behind him. A line forms behind me, single file, stretching almost to the other side of the platform. Then a woman walks up. She has a robin's-egg blue trenchcoat folded over her forearm. In her hand, a thin copy of the free newspaper, The Examiner. She walks up to the third position in the line but stands apart from it, and begins fanning her face vigorously. It is January. It is not hot. She looks too young to have hot flashes. I notice too late that she is directly upwind from me. But my legs have already started to tell me that something is wrong. There is that faint prickly feeling again.
I am impressed. This woman has really tried hard. She must have covered herself with cigarette smoke, but I can't smell anything. I just feel it. The dose of nicotine. I wonder what to do. I turn and face directly at her. I stare directly at her. She keeps going. She avoids my gaze. They always do. I think it has something to do with guilt. Deep down, they know what they are doing is wrong. Or they just can't own up to it 100%. So, they flinch. They look away.
I stand like that for several minutes. I wonder if there is anything else I can do. Snatch the paper from her hand? It's a free paper, so is that theft? She is, technically, battering me. Talking to her is out of the question. She has already prepared her canned response, as I know from past attempts. The dose is so faint, though, I let it go.
Eventually, the train comes to end this standoff, which seems to last forever. I get on. We are packed in like sardines. The man directly in front of me sees me. He conspicuously clears his throat a couple of times. Then he starts mumbling to himself. He does this all the way to 16th and Mission, three stops away. I stare at him, as well. He, as well, does not meet my gaze, until I finally move my head to where he is looking. I try to tell him "Real good." He says, in a thick european accent, "What?" (Incidentally, he is dressed very sharply in business attire. He's clearly not a random nutcase.) I repeat myself. He removes one earbud, then the other. "That was real good," I say, "You should be an actor." He thanks me unintelligably beneath his heavy accent and I leave.
The movie I have come to see is sold out, so I go to a cafe. It is pleasant, and the air is clear. I take out my copy of Schelling's book on Conflict. Within a minute or two, the cafe is filled with the smell of cigarette smoke. I don my mask.
At work, my work had been sabotaged. This has been going on for five years. It has a number of effects. Primarily, it causes me emotional distress. This is supposed to both toughen me up and make me want to go to therapy. It also cuts down on my self-confidence, makes me more pliable, fearful, and easily dominated.
At home, my room is full of smoke. I let the fans run for a while, then I turn in to bed. I am too tired to swat the bed first. Besides, as I have mentioned, it raises the particulate matter in the air to very unhealthy levels. I immediately smell the difference. With the sheets and covers up to my nose, it smells like I am asleep on a pile of tobacco leaves.
I awake with fire in my throat. How can they do this to me? Smoke is a carcinogen. I take my long underwear off the floor and put it on the bed. I take out the tennis racket and swat it a few times. Each time, a while cloud of smoke emits. This was exactly what happened after I had been wearing them for a while, without swatting them first. I had thought maybe the smoke was dead skin or dirt from the road, so I let them lay out for a few days. Same thing.
I think of how nicotine is a contact poison. It can be easily absorbed through the skin. Whoever is loading up my long underwear with smoke obviously intends to dose me with nicotine, whether through my lungs or otherwise. Nicotine is thought to have an effect on the symptoms of schizophrenia. I have noticed that I am less prone to crying, now that I am thoroughly dosed pretty much all the time. I don't like that. I feel like the emotional part of my brain has been dulled to the point of despondence.
MindFreedom Internation has sent me a welcome packet, including a newsletter from 2006. It says that schizophrenia is not inherited, that there is no evidence of inheritence. It is wrong. There have been studies that show this. Children seperated from their biological parents at birth have twice the chance of schizophrenia if a parent is schizophrenic, normal chance otherwise. Anyway, I am skeptical of the statistics I see being flung about by people without a background in statistics, in general. Especially regarding schizophrenia. There's an inherent sampling bias in the diagnostic process. Schizophrenia is not a well-defined condition. Therefore, the base rate is not known. Are there a hundred thousand schizophrenics in the U.S., or are there 10 million? Depends how you count them. All the other statistics change drastically, depending on how you do.
I go to work angry. I want to start speaking out. "Schizophrenia" is being used as a label to taint anyone who has a really toxic family, or has unpopular political views, or is sufficiently anti-religious. It is a somewhat self-fulfilling label, as well. The train stops at the platform. The doors open. The driver keeps them open far longer than necessary. This often happens. It just so happens that, each time the driver does this, the platform is also reeking with cigarette smoke. The smoke enters the car. I don my mask.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
On Monday, returning from work, I saw a sticker on my door that the DHL deliveryman had come by but was unable to deliver. It had two tracking numbers on it.
On Tuesday, I typed the two tracking numbers into the DHL website to see where the packages were. If delivery had been attempted (successfully or not), I would have proceeded with my usual routine of gym and then grocery shopping, before returning home. As it was, one of the packages had been successfully delivered. The other had not. I remarked to A. how inefficient it was for the same delivery company to put two packages with the same destination on different delivery trucks, and headed straight home.
At home, there were two boxes, one from DHL, the other from Airborne Express. I ate some food, then realized that the tracking number on the Airborne Express was the second of the two packages that DHL had tried to deliver before. So, I guess DHL delivers for Airborne Express now.
One of the boxes had a DVD drive in it. The other had the carrying case. It was brown ("chocolate"). I had ordered black.
Not much else to report. Just the usual: pipe smoke in my room every day, cigarette smoke in the halls. There's a guy who walks by my window and coughs vocally as he walks by every day. It happens right when it is time for me to wake up, so on most days it is the first thing I hear. Sometimes, it even wakes me up. Ah, another day.
This week, a young man coughed vocally as he walked past me at the bus stop. On his shoulder facing me was one of those alloy clips that are used for rock- and mountain-climbing (and some people use to attach attach their wallets to their belts). This one, however, was shaped like a fish. Often, the people who cough in a very loud and attention-getting way are wearing some sort of religious paraphernalia. Usually, it is a cross around the neck. One particularly annoying guy wears a big Star of David.
There are other people I've learned to recognize. One guy has gray hair and a gray beard, and always wears a baseball cap. I've run into him at the Main Library, at the Roxie, and other places.
One of the lawyer's colleagues called me back and we scheduled a meeting. I am thinking about what I'll say then.
On Tuesday, I typed the two tracking numbers into the DHL website to see where the packages were. If delivery had been attempted (successfully or not), I would have proceeded with my usual routine of gym and then grocery shopping, before returning home. As it was, one of the packages had been successfully delivered. The other had not. I remarked to A. how inefficient it was for the same delivery company to put two packages with the same destination on different delivery trucks, and headed straight home.
At home, there were two boxes, one from DHL, the other from Airborne Express. I ate some food, then realized that the tracking number on the Airborne Express was the second of the two packages that DHL had tried to deliver before. So, I guess DHL delivers for Airborne Express now.
One of the boxes had a DVD drive in it. The other had the carrying case. It was brown ("chocolate"). I had ordered black.
Not much else to report. Just the usual: pipe smoke in my room every day, cigarette smoke in the halls. There's a guy who walks by my window and coughs vocally as he walks by every day. It happens right when it is time for me to wake up, so on most days it is the first thing I hear. Sometimes, it even wakes me up. Ah, another day.
This week, a young man coughed vocally as he walked past me at the bus stop. On his shoulder facing me was one of those alloy clips that are used for rock- and mountain-climbing (and some people use to attach attach their wallets to their belts). This one, however, was shaped like a fish. Often, the people who cough in a very loud and attention-getting way are wearing some sort of religious paraphernalia. Usually, it is a cross around the neck. One particularly annoying guy wears a big Star of David.
There are other people I've learned to recognize. One guy has gray hair and a gray beard, and always wears a baseball cap. I've run into him at the Main Library, at the Roxie, and other places.
One of the lawyer's colleagues called me back and we scheduled a meeting. I am thinking about what I'll say then.
Monday, January 14, 2008
This morning, I woke early. I had a strange feeling that I had over the weekend, as well. I felt giddy and lightheaded. My body was still resting. My brain felt like it was going a mile a minute, but without thinking anything. I don't like this feeling, whatever it is. I didn't have the now-longed-for feeling of withdrawal from nicotine that I had last week, but that is largely because I've slacked off on swatting my bed. Still, every night I come home, my room is full of pipe smoke. Friday night, the smoke from home fires was so thick, you could see car headlight beams shine through it, so I didn't even fan out my room until much later. I just sat there in the smoke. Saturday and Sunday I woke up and started reading, without getting out of bed. Bad idea. Inevitably, I would turn this way and that, causing my matress, covers, etc., to exude tobacco smoke, which I then inhaled. Shit!
Yesterday, I bought a Dust Devil to deal with the heater at work. But today, when I got here, the smell was gone. Not particularly surprising, given that the heater is off during the weekend. Now it's back, but it seems less bad than it was.
I checked the theater website - The Violin did play Saturday night! Did I read the paper incorrectly? They have f---ed their listing before.
Dell's & DHL's automated systems say a second box is set to arrive today.
Yesterday, I bought a Dust Devil to deal with the heater at work. But today, when I got here, the smell was gone. Not particularly surprising, given that the heater is off during the weekend. Now it's back, but it seems less bad than it was.
I checked the theater website - The Violin did play Saturday night! Did I read the paper incorrectly? They have f---ed their listing before.
Dell's & DHL's automated systems say a second box is set to arrive today.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
After work, I go to Kinko's, then to the gym. At Kinko's, I post a complaint to the postal inspector about my missing merchandise. At the gym, I find that my lock isn't in my bag, so I use one of the $0.50 lockers. When I get back, someone has posted an out of order sign on it ("This piece of equipment is not in working order."). Nothing appears wrong with the locker.
When I get home, the missing delivery is sitting on the stairway, where the mail normally goes. In front of my bedroom door are three other deliveries. One is my other order from amazon.com, apparently intact. The others are from Dell Computer. Upon opening the Dell deliveries, I find that they have filled my order incorrectly. I have ordered a motherboard, installation instructions, a DVD/CD drive, a keyboard, and a carrying case. They have sent me two motherboards without installation instructions, and a keyboard.
On Saturday, I call Dell. I spend half an hour with them while they put me on hold to conduct "research" and pass me off to one another. After 30+ minutes, they are about to pass me off to a third person. I tell them I don't have time and hang up. At various points in the conversation, they misstate my order as having two keyboards and no DVD/CD drive, they tell me that my order has shipped correctly, they tell me that I have to return the motherboard (but not how to do that), they tell me that the DVD/CD drive has been delivered, and later that the drive has been delivered "to the carrier".
The people I was with the day before told me that they would be meeting that day to see "The Violin" at the Roxie. I find out later that the Violin is not showing at the Roxie this week.
When I get home, the missing delivery is sitting on the stairway, where the mail normally goes. In front of my bedroom door are three other deliveries. One is my other order from amazon.com, apparently intact. The others are from Dell Computer. Upon opening the Dell deliveries, I find that they have filled my order incorrectly. I have ordered a motherboard, installation instructions, a DVD/CD drive, a keyboard, and a carrying case. They have sent me two motherboards without installation instructions, and a keyboard.
On Saturday, I call Dell. I spend half an hour with them while they put me on hold to conduct "research" and pass me off to one another. After 30+ minutes, they are about to pass me off to a third person. I tell them I don't have time and hang up. At various points in the conversation, they misstate my order as having two keyboards and no DVD/CD drive, they tell me that my order has shipped correctly, they tell me that I have to return the motherboard (but not how to do that), they tell me that the DVD/CD drive has been delivered, and later that the drive has been delivered "to the carrier".
The people I was with the day before told me that they would be meeting that day to see "The Violin" at the Roxie. I find out later that the Violin is not showing at the Roxie this week.
Friday, January 11, 2008
At the end of my lunch break, I call Dell Computer to get spare parts for my laptop. I call a local repair shop first, and they say I need a new motherboard. I look on dell.com first, and I find the right one, but there is no price and no way to order, so I call in. I spend 45 minutes on the phone with their salesperson, who sounds like they are in India, to order a new motherboard, new keyboard, new CD/DVD drive, and a carrying case. During one of our hold sessions, in which she is researching the carrying case, I wait for a while, then I go on to dell.com and find the right case. I wait again. Finally, she returns, and is still looking for the case. I give her the part number. This is better than last time, i think, when I spent $50 for their support people to ask me the service key five times ("j23k... what was that?..." "j23k45... what came after that?" "j23k7..." etc.) and refer me around in circles, for about 45 minutes to an hour, at the end of which they only told me what I already knew, or could have guessed, or wasn't true at all...
At the end of the day, I go straight home. I have brough my gym clothes, but I don't go, because, before I leave, I check my amazon.com orders on a hunch. Funny, i think, that none of them have arrived when there were four shipments and I ordered them last Friday. So I look, and it turns out that one of them has been delivered on Tuesday. Tuesday! It is now Thursday. I haven't seen it. I go straight home. One by one, I poll my housemates and the landlord who lives there too. She sends her cheeky daughter out to talk to me. She says they haven't seen it, and asks that I find out who signed for it. I explain that it was sent with delivery confirmation, not signature verification. No one has seen the package that was delivered two days before.
The halls are filled with smoke, I think cigarette smoke, while I am asking around. I have my painter's mask off, so that I can talk, and so I don't look like I'm from Mars, and I can't help but inhale it. I feel its stimulating effect. It enters my legs. Always my legs, I think. I feel like I want to go out and run around the block, I am so suddenly restless. Damn! It takes so little, now.
I remember how it was when I was first getting "smoked" like this. It was so painful. A prickly sensation would spread throughout my body, especially my legs. It felt like my capillaries were exploding. --- oh my, there is that black guy singing that song again. --- It felt like my capillaries were exploding. Then, as I got more acclimated (addicted), the feeling became less and less. Now, I don't feel it at all. At the gym, I used to experience it especially painfully. I could tell I'd been smoked, for example, by someone walking in from outside with smoke all over their clothes, without even smelling it. I think it is harder to smell it when you are breathing hard. Now, I don't feel it at all, and I can't tell if a funny smell is nicotine smoke or not.
J. sent the money I requested. No note, just a check. She had scribbled out her address so that it appears as two solid black lines. I knew her and worked with her for three years. I think we both know exactly what is going on. I am going to try and break out. She opposes it.
That night, I swat my bed some more. Hardly any smoke at all, this time. Just a couple of puffs come out of my top sheet and my comforter, each. I read some and go to sleep.
One of my dreams is that I am trapped in an abandoned house. I am holding my breath, trying to find a smoke-free room. They are all filled with smoke. I wake up, and my left arm is completely numb. It feels like one of those foam rubber severed forearms with a hand attached that you buy for Halloween. I change my position and brace myself for what usually is unbearable pain as the nerve cells wake up to their first supply of oxygen in who knows how long. Then I recall that the past several times I have done this, I haven't felt much pain at all. And this time, disappointing my expectation, I feel nothing other than the blood flowing into my arm, like water into a glass. Not even a tickle. So this is what it is like, I think, to be addicted to nicotine. My body is narcotized. My nerves toxified. Did they want me to take up smoking, now, or just keep me in a state where I can be easily medicated?
I get up and go to work the next morning. Accross from me, on the train, sits down a man in dark glasses. Is this the same man who was there last Tuesday? Last Tuesday, a man sitting bolt upright on the train, big shaded glasses. Rock star glasses. Looked like an idiot. I sat directly in front of him so I wouldn't have to see him. A man sits down behind me, coughing loudly all the way until he gets off, somewhere before Civic Center.
At work, still a strange smell from the heater. What is it? I still can't place it. Cedar?
After work, I see a film on Hoelderlin. I meet a film group there. They invite me out with them. We go to a cafe and sit outside. I smell cigarette smoke from one party, then another. My body is responding. I feel giddy and faint, jazzed like I'm on coffee. I don't want this. I don't want to feel this way. I can't help it.
I go to the pharmacy. I ask about the new anti-smoking medication that blocks nicotine receptors. The woman tells me to come back in a minute and ask for the pharmacist. A man is standing in front of the drugs, looking like he is not looking for anything. I can smell cigarette smoke on his jacket. As I walk past him, I look at him and ask, "got that?" He looks at me, and, like I've caught him at a childhood prank, he laughs.
I come back and talk to the pharmacist. I describe the drug to him and he says, "Oh!" and he laughs. He won't tell me what the drug is. He just says I have to have a prescription.
At the end of the day, I go straight home. I have brough my gym clothes, but I don't go, because, before I leave, I check my amazon.com orders on a hunch. Funny, i think, that none of them have arrived when there were four shipments and I ordered them last Friday. So I look, and it turns out that one of them has been delivered on Tuesday. Tuesday! It is now Thursday. I haven't seen it. I go straight home. One by one, I poll my housemates and the landlord who lives there too. She sends her cheeky daughter out to talk to me. She says they haven't seen it, and asks that I find out who signed for it. I explain that it was sent with delivery confirmation, not signature verification. No one has seen the package that was delivered two days before.
The halls are filled with smoke, I think cigarette smoke, while I am asking around. I have my painter's mask off, so that I can talk, and so I don't look like I'm from Mars, and I can't help but inhale it. I feel its stimulating effect. It enters my legs. Always my legs, I think. I feel like I want to go out and run around the block, I am so suddenly restless. Damn! It takes so little, now.
I remember how it was when I was first getting "smoked" like this. It was so painful. A prickly sensation would spread throughout my body, especially my legs. It felt like my capillaries were exploding. --- oh my, there is that black guy singing that song again. --- It felt like my capillaries were exploding. Then, as I got more acclimated (addicted), the feeling became less and less. Now, I don't feel it at all. At the gym, I used to experience it especially painfully. I could tell I'd been smoked, for example, by someone walking in from outside with smoke all over their clothes, without even smelling it. I think it is harder to smell it when you are breathing hard. Now, I don't feel it at all, and I can't tell if a funny smell is nicotine smoke or not.
J. sent the money I requested. No note, just a check. She had scribbled out her address so that it appears as two solid black lines. I knew her and worked with her for three years. I think we both know exactly what is going on. I am going to try and break out. She opposes it.
That night, I swat my bed some more. Hardly any smoke at all, this time. Just a couple of puffs come out of my top sheet and my comforter, each. I read some and go to sleep.
One of my dreams is that I am trapped in an abandoned house. I am holding my breath, trying to find a smoke-free room. They are all filled with smoke. I wake up, and my left arm is completely numb. It feels like one of those foam rubber severed forearms with a hand attached that you buy for Halloween. I change my position and brace myself for what usually is unbearable pain as the nerve cells wake up to their first supply of oxygen in who knows how long. Then I recall that the past several times I have done this, I haven't felt much pain at all. And this time, disappointing my expectation, I feel nothing other than the blood flowing into my arm, like water into a glass. Not even a tickle. So this is what it is like, I think, to be addicted to nicotine. My body is narcotized. My nerves toxified. Did they want me to take up smoking, now, or just keep me in a state where I can be easily medicated?
I get up and go to work the next morning. Accross from me, on the train, sits down a man in dark glasses. Is this the same man who was there last Tuesday? Last Tuesday, a man sitting bolt upright on the train, big shaded glasses. Rock star glasses. Looked like an idiot. I sat directly in front of him so I wouldn't have to see him. A man sits down behind me, coughing loudly all the way until he gets off, somewhere before Civic Center.
At work, still a strange smell from the heater. What is it? I still can't place it. Cedar?
After work, I see a film on Hoelderlin. I meet a film group there. They invite me out with them. We go to a cafe and sit outside. I smell cigarette smoke from one party, then another. My body is responding. I feel giddy and faint, jazzed like I'm on coffee. I don't want this. I don't want to feel this way. I can't help it.
I go to the pharmacy. I ask about the new anti-smoking medication that blocks nicotine receptors. The woman tells me to come back in a minute and ask for the pharmacist. A man is standing in front of the drugs, looking like he is not looking for anything. I can smell cigarette smoke on his jacket. As I walk past him, I look at him and ask, "got that?" He looks at me, and, like I've caught him at a childhood prank, he laughs.
I come back and talk to the pharmacist. I describe the drug to him and he says, "Oh!" and he laughs. He won't tell me what the drug is. He just says I have to have a prescription.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
I asked my other boss, "Have you ever heard that saying, 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink?'" "No, why?" he responded. "Just wondering?" I say. "Are you trying to say something?!? Is there something else?" he asks, energetically. "No," I reply, trying to sound meek. I am enjoying it, though.
On the ride home, there is no smoke on the train. We stop somewhere in the twin peaks tunnel for a long time, 10 or 15 minutes, I guess. Some people are having a loud conversation. I think, if it wasn't for them, the other passengers would have gotten a bit tense, being that long in the darkened subway with no word from the operator. I had my book to read, so I didn't much care. We got to West Portal. They had us get off, get on another train waiting on the other side of the switches. I walk the entire length of it, then get off and get on the next car of it and walk its length, searching for good air. I stop at the front of the front car and don my mask. The ventilation is on full-blast. As a result, I am able to take off my mask after the University stop.
At home, there isn't any smoke to speak of in the foyer, on the stairs, or in the hallways. I hear the family talking, while I stand in the foyer, sorting through the mail. "This is bullshit!" I heard the daughter yell, disdainfully. I hear the son cough loudly and vocally a couple of times. In the kitchen, there is pipe smoke. Just a little bit, right where I stand when I tear the leaves off of my kale to throw it in the pot. I try to wave it away, but I give up, get my mask, and put it on.
In my room, there is the usual pipe smoke. The first thing I do when I get home is to unlock my door and leave it open. That dissipates it pretty well by the time I get back. In my room, after the kale, I prepare for another round of swatting the bed. This time, there is hardly any smoke. This is a great relief, because it means less energy spent swatting, fewer blisters, etc. There is smoke in the comforter. When I am done, I have time to read. I keep my mask on, due to all the PM in the air from the swatting. I open my window and sniff. I am checking for wood smoke. If the air is good, I put up my fans to bring in some fresh air, to get rid of the residual pipe smoke and swatting residue. I don't have them on for very long when I smell wood smoke again, so I turn them off, take them down, and close the window. The wood smoke is just as bad for the lower respiratory tract, but doesn't affect the upper so much, not nearly as much as tobacco anyway. I go to sleep.
I wake up and my throat is a little rough, but not bad, especially compared to usual. I don't have that withdrawal feeling, and I wish I did. It's a good sign. Yesterday at work, after lunch, I went to the bathroom. I came back and I was struck by the strength of the smell. Was it this bad when I left and I just didn't notice it? Sometimes, when there is an incremental change, you don't notice so much, the way a frog doesn't notice that the frying pan he is in is slowly heating up, until it is too late, whereas, if he had jumped in it from outside, he will immediately sense the danger and jump back out again. By the end of the day, my palate is sore and hurting. It is painful to breathe through my nose. How could this happen? I had just written in here that it wasn't so bad that day.
I arrive the next day (today) and my bosses spouse has sent me an email. The superintendent was up here yesterday, talking with my boss. I couln't hear anything because my left ear is blocked with earwax. My ears produce too much of it, and they get blocked from time to time, about once a year. Not a whole lot to be done about it. It takes care of itself. It was good to get some rest last night, though. Rest helps the immune system fight off infections, and it was getting a little infected. Today it is better, but still blocked. Anyway, she sends me an email telling me to go to the doctor. When she returns to the office, she tells me that the problem is with me, not the heater, and we talk about visiting the doctor, or moving me back to what is now A.'s desk. She says no one else in the office notices the smell, and that C. is afraid to talk to me, as a result of my dealings with my other boss. When my other boss gets in, I ask him what's up. He says everything is fine and that he's had no conversations with C. Then C. comes in and I ask her if there is any problem. The bosses wife chews me out for being confrontational with her, and when she leaves C. comes back and says that she isn't afraid to talk to me and that she doesn't know what the problem is. Anyway, I stick to my guns, pointing out how much easier it is to remove four screws and look at the heater, than to switch desks with A. or make a trip to the doctor. She resolves to have the maintenance guy take another look at it (he has just done so recently. I didn't monitor him closely, but I did notice a lot of dust on it, and it gets quite hot, all this after the superintendent had said she couldn't smell a thing).
The maintenance guy comes up and says that it's a waste of time, he'll look at it if we want, but he has just done so. I don't smell anything that morning, to speak of that is, whatever may have been there was obscured by the scent of the flowers besides. (The heaters are off at night, and it may be that turning one heater off makes the rest go higher. It's 1920's technology.) I'm wondering how intermittent this problem is, or if it is something that builds up over time, so that I don't notice it until the end of the day. I ask if we can wait until we know that it is occurring, and then open it up at that moment. I ask if I can open it up myself. It's just four wood screws, after all. He mentions liability issues, and says to just call him when it happens again. I mention that I have to go through the supe, and he is usually doing other things, and may be at another property altogether. He says he'll come right over.
The bosses wife and the supe are having their own conversation during this, and they reach a different conclusion. I try to sway them to ours. Apparently, they are unmoved, as the maintenance guy soon returns, vacuum cleaner in hand, to look at it now. This time, I watch. He pulls the cover off, and says "see, it's all clean." All I have to do is poke my finger between the radiator pipes and I come up with a finger full of soot. Yeah, the front half of it is clean, allright. The maintenance guy leaves to get cleaning materials. While he is gone, I wet a paper towel and poke it underneath the radiator with a pen and pull it out. It comes back with a dust-bunny bigger than my nose on it. The entire floor under the heater is covered with a thick layer of this stuff, in addition to the stuff actually on the heater, which is also rather dense. I show this to my bosses wife and the maintenance guy when he comes back. He grumbles something about making work for him. I point out that he was just talking about how we were keeping him employed.
He scrubs the heater with a bottle-brush, some wet paper towels. The entire office smells like a forest for a while. I check it, point out some places that he missed. He rips out the board blocking access to the floor under the heater and cleans some more. We go back and forth until I am satisfied.
On the ride home, there is no smoke on the train. We stop somewhere in the twin peaks tunnel for a long time, 10 or 15 minutes, I guess. Some people are having a loud conversation. I think, if it wasn't for them, the other passengers would have gotten a bit tense, being that long in the darkened subway with no word from the operator. I had my book to read, so I didn't much care. We got to West Portal. They had us get off, get on another train waiting on the other side of the switches. I walk the entire length of it, then get off and get on the next car of it and walk its length, searching for good air. I stop at the front of the front car and don my mask. The ventilation is on full-blast. As a result, I am able to take off my mask after the University stop.
At home, there isn't any smoke to speak of in the foyer, on the stairs, or in the hallways. I hear the family talking, while I stand in the foyer, sorting through the mail. "This is bullshit!" I heard the daughter yell, disdainfully. I hear the son cough loudly and vocally a couple of times. In the kitchen, there is pipe smoke. Just a little bit, right where I stand when I tear the leaves off of my kale to throw it in the pot. I try to wave it away, but I give up, get my mask, and put it on.
In my room, there is the usual pipe smoke. The first thing I do when I get home is to unlock my door and leave it open. That dissipates it pretty well by the time I get back. In my room, after the kale, I prepare for another round of swatting the bed. This time, there is hardly any smoke. This is a great relief, because it means less energy spent swatting, fewer blisters, etc. There is smoke in the comforter. When I am done, I have time to read. I keep my mask on, due to all the PM in the air from the swatting. I open my window and sniff. I am checking for wood smoke. If the air is good, I put up my fans to bring in some fresh air, to get rid of the residual pipe smoke and swatting residue. I don't have them on for very long when I smell wood smoke again, so I turn them off, take them down, and close the window. The wood smoke is just as bad for the lower respiratory tract, but doesn't affect the upper so much, not nearly as much as tobacco anyway. I go to sleep.
I wake up and my throat is a little rough, but not bad, especially compared to usual. I don't have that withdrawal feeling, and I wish I did. It's a good sign. Yesterday at work, after lunch, I went to the bathroom. I came back and I was struck by the strength of the smell. Was it this bad when I left and I just didn't notice it? Sometimes, when there is an incremental change, you don't notice so much, the way a frog doesn't notice that the frying pan he is in is slowly heating up, until it is too late, whereas, if he had jumped in it from outside, he will immediately sense the danger and jump back out again. By the end of the day, my palate is sore and hurting. It is painful to breathe through my nose. How could this happen? I had just written in here that it wasn't so bad that day.
I arrive the next day (today) and my bosses spouse has sent me an email. The superintendent was up here yesterday, talking with my boss. I couln't hear anything because my left ear is blocked with earwax. My ears produce too much of it, and they get blocked from time to time, about once a year. Not a whole lot to be done about it. It takes care of itself. It was good to get some rest last night, though. Rest helps the immune system fight off infections, and it was getting a little infected. Today it is better, but still blocked. Anyway, she sends me an email telling me to go to the doctor. When she returns to the office, she tells me that the problem is with me, not the heater, and we talk about visiting the doctor, or moving me back to what is now A.'s desk. She says no one else in the office notices the smell, and that C. is afraid to talk to me, as a result of my dealings with my other boss. When my other boss gets in, I ask him what's up. He says everything is fine and that he's had no conversations with C. Then C. comes in and I ask her if there is any problem. The bosses wife chews me out for being confrontational with her, and when she leaves C. comes back and says that she isn't afraid to talk to me and that she doesn't know what the problem is. Anyway, I stick to my guns, pointing out how much easier it is to remove four screws and look at the heater, than to switch desks with A. or make a trip to the doctor. She resolves to have the maintenance guy take another look at it (he has just done so recently. I didn't monitor him closely, but I did notice a lot of dust on it, and it gets quite hot, all this after the superintendent had said she couldn't smell a thing).
The maintenance guy comes up and says that it's a waste of time, he'll look at it if we want, but he has just done so. I don't smell anything that morning, to speak of that is, whatever may have been there was obscured by the scent of the flowers besides. (The heaters are off at night, and it may be that turning one heater off makes the rest go higher. It's 1920's technology.) I'm wondering how intermittent this problem is, or if it is something that builds up over time, so that I don't notice it until the end of the day. I ask if we can wait until we know that it is occurring, and then open it up at that moment. I ask if I can open it up myself. It's just four wood screws, after all. He mentions liability issues, and says to just call him when it happens again. I mention that I have to go through the supe, and he is usually doing other things, and may be at another property altogether. He says he'll come right over.
The bosses wife and the supe are having their own conversation during this, and they reach a different conclusion. I try to sway them to ours. Apparently, they are unmoved, as the maintenance guy soon returns, vacuum cleaner in hand, to look at it now. This time, I watch. He pulls the cover off, and says "see, it's all clean." All I have to do is poke my finger between the radiator pipes and I come up with a finger full of soot. Yeah, the front half of it is clean, allright. The maintenance guy leaves to get cleaning materials. While he is gone, I wet a paper towel and poke it underneath the radiator with a pen and pull it out. It comes back with a dust-bunny bigger than my nose on it. The entire floor under the heater is covered with a thick layer of this stuff, in addition to the stuff actually on the heater, which is also rather dense. I show this to my bosses wife and the maintenance guy when he comes back. He grumbles something about making work for him. I point out that he was just talking about how we were keeping him employed.
He scrubs the heater with a bottle-brush, some wet paper towels. The entire office smells like a forest for a while. I check it, point out some places that he missed. He rips out the board blocking access to the floor under the heater and cleans some more. We go back and forth until I am satisfied.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
I arrive to work late, partly due to delays in the subway system. On the train are people wearing dark glasses, but they aren't napping. One is standing, looking directly at me. I arrive at the office. The first thing after I walk through the door, my boss asks me to make the coffee. On the coffee machine is a postcard, a 1950's colorized black-and-white drawing of an androgynous face against the background of a living room. In large type on a white background pasted across it as if on pieces of tape, three words:
MORE
MEDICATION
PLEASE
I return the postcard to my boss' wife. I begin to work. The office has its usual strange smell. After some time, I begin to notice a familiar irritation in my nose and throat. I reflect on my withdrawal symptoms early that morning. At lunch, I go to civic center for a burrito. On the subway, more people in pitch-black glasses, not napping. I skip a train on the way home because of too much smoke.
I return home that evening after work. As usual, smoke everywhere. I spend some time swatting my bed. I don't find much smoke, just a little in the top sheet and on the comforter. Nevertheless, it is enough that I was able to smell it when I leaned over them earlier. I think of what I read on Wikipedia about nicotine. Unlike other addictive drugs, nicotine addiction results in the development of more receptors to process nicotine. So, instead of needing more and more to feed the addiction, you need less and less.
The next day, I get up. I go down to the washer and dryer in the garage to get my clothes. When I come back up, I hear someone's door close. The air was clear when I went down, but now there is cigarette smoke everywhere. I open the door to my room. There is cigarette smoke there.
The next day is a half day at work. My other boss complains about the "arctic blast" coming through the open window. I have begun wearing my long underwear to work in order to deal with that. It takes the edge off of the fumes coming out of the radiator. We go back and forth about that. He starts coughing. In fact, every time I make a mistake at my desk, he coughs. He claims not to notice any smell in the office. I suggest it is the cause of his coughing. We go back and forth. I close the window. I complain. He looks defensive. I insinuate. I open the window. I send email to the building superintendent to please fix the problem. I close it again when I leave.
After work, I go to the gym. I change into my gym clothes and notice that there aren't any gym socks in my bag. I specifically remember packing my gym socks that morning. In fact, I went back into the house to return a sock that wasn't mine to the dryer that morning. I think back to how my gym bag is unattended whenever I go to the bathroom at work. Later on, I will think back on this and jokingly wonder if I should start pissing into a bottle as I have learned to do at home.
At the gym, the 20-year-old man on the cross-trainer next to me, who is in excellent shape, clears his throat. Over and over again, he clears it. I ask him what's wrong. He says its "this stuff" in the air, smiles, and lets out a laugh. I say I don't think it is very funny and I leave.
I catch the train to the grocery store I use in the Sunset District. The air is musty but okay when I get on. Other people get on later and the air gets smoked up. I reflect on how much smoke it is possible to get into clothing and fabric in general. I know from intimate experience during the last six months that it is incredible. I pull out my painter's mask and don it. The man next to me coughs a lot while I do this. I check the air again at UCSF, but it is still bad, so I leave it on until I get off the train.
At the grocery store, Jeremy asks me about my name. I feel like I have had this conversation before with him. Like everybody else, he thinks it's an "east coast name" and asks me if I'm from the east coast. I was born there, but we moved out here when I turned five. That leads into the usual discussion of the differences between east coast and west coast, how the east coast has more "old money" and more eccentric weirdos.
On the 29 bus, the air is smelly but it's not smoke, so I just stand by an open window. Later I sit down. I get home. More smoke. Cursing it, I prepare dinner again with the breath mask. I leave for more Karosawa movies, after a stop at Rainbow Grocery.
At the theater, everyone is coughing like mad through the earlier parts of "Rashomon". There are a lot of good lines in that one. Finally, there is a line. The men are talking about lying. The audience provides a cacophonous chorus of coughing to this. One of the men in the film replies with something like "You only believe the good things." I remove my painter's mask and cough vocally. The coughing seems a lot less after that, but still nearly every line is getting a cough from someone. Outside the theater afterwards, I am looking at the poster for some other film they're having. I hear a child coughing. I look down, and there is a four or five year old kid. He continues to cough in an even tempo.
I lose interest in Karosawa during the second film. It's some noir flick he did the very year the war ended. That's energy for you. But it was nothing like the others. I lost interest and left early. On the way to the bus stop, someone sidles up behind me with a cigarette. Standing there, another man turns up his iPod to what must be deafening levels to him, and, seeing my eyes upon him, starts muttering to himself and lights a cigarette. After he tosses it, I stomp it out and encourage him to light another. He waves me off. The bus arrives so late I think I could have stayed for the remainder of the film and still caught it. By then, the stop looks like a chorus line of very cold people. The bus itself is soon packed, and it is reeking with...hickory? Astonished, I ask rhetorically, "What is this, the Hickory Pit?" No one answers. Then I am hit with a blast of tobacco smoke from somewhere. I don my mask.
At the end of the LKM bus ride, the train is waiting with doors open. I wonder if this is just to taunt us, as it usually is. Usually, the train waits for the bus to arrive, and then departs before any of us can get on. On board, it is smoky. I put on my mask, only removed briefly after disembarking the LKM bus. I keep it on after I leave and walk across the nose of the train, so the driver sees it. He screws up his face in something that looks like astonishment.
Home. Smoke. Smoke in my room. I run the fans, but can't hit the bed because it is too late. I get in. I have to pull the comforter away from my nose because the smoke coming from it is so strong when I breathe in that it makes me gag. I wake up with the familiar burning sensation in my nose and throat. It's no wonder people get cancer of the esophagus from smoking, I think. Whenever you have something that is constantly irritated like this, you're asking for cancer. Kurosawa is not worth this, I reflect.
I wake up. Smoke is everywhere outside my room. It seems thicker than usual. I waste time transferring my clothes, etc. to the other bathroom, which is smoke-free. I have adjusted my routine to the smoke. I now dress in the bathroom so I won't have to spend much time in my bedroom after the shower. They smoke it up before then.
On the way to work, I am about to cross the street to catch the train to BART, but a train going my way cuts me off. It stops so that I am looking directly at N. through the window. I have met N. once before on the train. Once before that, I saw her. We have a short conversation about the recent storm and how it blew trees over and fences and garbage cans down. Then she returns to her book. After a while, I take mine out and the rest of the trip passes in silence. During the silence, I reflect on our introduction a moment earlier. "You're...N., right?" I said. "and you're...W," she said. I had never told her my name. I specifically remember the previous time, when we met. I asked for her name. She gave it, but did not give the expected "and what's yours?" which was a little odd but seemed consistent with a sincere lack of interest. Then I remembered the time before that, when I saw her on the train, but we did not speak. She was holding the corner of a kerchief up to her eye, as if to sop up a tear, but there weren't any.
Almost to the last stop on this trip, someone asked about the book I was reading, "House of Cards" by Robyn Dawes. I explained how I had read research papers by the author, how I had a great deal of respect for him, and how the cover art probably made it seem virulently anti-therapy in order to sell copies, when it was really very complicated about the issue, and very good. That person thanked me profusely and left. As she got up to get off the train, silently, I said, "bye?" to N. "Take care," she said.
At work, my heater is somehow turned down to about 1/4 the intensity it was at yesterday. I can't turn it down. I don't know how they do this. No doubt that the problem is indetectible now, the building superintendent will come by and try again to make me feel like it's all in my head, I think. Everyone is very chipper. The bosses' wife asks me to call the computer guy about the new computers. She feigns amazement that, while two were ordered, one for me and one for someone else, only one arrived.
MORE
MEDICATION
PLEASE
I return the postcard to my boss' wife. I begin to work. The office has its usual strange smell. After some time, I begin to notice a familiar irritation in my nose and throat. I reflect on my withdrawal symptoms early that morning. At lunch, I go to civic center for a burrito. On the subway, more people in pitch-black glasses, not napping. I skip a train on the way home because of too much smoke.
I return home that evening after work. As usual, smoke everywhere. I spend some time swatting my bed. I don't find much smoke, just a little in the top sheet and on the comforter. Nevertheless, it is enough that I was able to smell it when I leaned over them earlier. I think of what I read on Wikipedia about nicotine. Unlike other addictive drugs, nicotine addiction results in the development of more receptors to process nicotine. So, instead of needing more and more to feed the addiction, you need less and less.
The next day, I get up. I go down to the washer and dryer in the garage to get my clothes. When I come back up, I hear someone's door close. The air was clear when I went down, but now there is cigarette smoke everywhere. I open the door to my room. There is cigarette smoke there.
The next day is a half day at work. My other boss complains about the "arctic blast" coming through the open window. I have begun wearing my long underwear to work in order to deal with that. It takes the edge off of the fumes coming out of the radiator. We go back and forth about that. He starts coughing. In fact, every time I make a mistake at my desk, he coughs. He claims not to notice any smell in the office. I suggest it is the cause of his coughing. We go back and forth. I close the window. I complain. He looks defensive. I insinuate. I open the window. I send email to the building superintendent to please fix the problem. I close it again when I leave.
After work, I go to the gym. I change into my gym clothes and notice that there aren't any gym socks in my bag. I specifically remember packing my gym socks that morning. In fact, I went back into the house to return a sock that wasn't mine to the dryer that morning. I think back to how my gym bag is unattended whenever I go to the bathroom at work. Later on, I will think back on this and jokingly wonder if I should start pissing into a bottle as I have learned to do at home.
At the gym, the 20-year-old man on the cross-trainer next to me, who is in excellent shape, clears his throat. Over and over again, he clears it. I ask him what's wrong. He says its "this stuff" in the air, smiles, and lets out a laugh. I say I don't think it is very funny and I leave.
I catch the train to the grocery store I use in the Sunset District. The air is musty but okay when I get on. Other people get on later and the air gets smoked up. I reflect on how much smoke it is possible to get into clothing and fabric in general. I know from intimate experience during the last six months that it is incredible. I pull out my painter's mask and don it. The man next to me coughs a lot while I do this. I check the air again at UCSF, but it is still bad, so I leave it on until I get off the train.
At the grocery store, Jeremy asks me about my name. I feel like I have had this conversation before with him. Like everybody else, he thinks it's an "east coast name" and asks me if I'm from the east coast. I was born there, but we moved out here when I turned five. That leads into the usual discussion of the differences between east coast and west coast, how the east coast has more "old money" and more eccentric weirdos.
On the 29 bus, the air is smelly but it's not smoke, so I just stand by an open window. Later I sit down. I get home. More smoke. Cursing it, I prepare dinner again with the breath mask. I leave for more Karosawa movies, after a stop at Rainbow Grocery.
At the theater, everyone is coughing like mad through the earlier parts of "Rashomon". There are a lot of good lines in that one. Finally, there is a line. The men are talking about lying. The audience provides a cacophonous chorus of coughing to this. One of the men in the film replies with something like "You only believe the good things." I remove my painter's mask and cough vocally. The coughing seems a lot less after that, but still nearly every line is getting a cough from someone. Outside the theater afterwards, I am looking at the poster for some other film they're having. I hear a child coughing. I look down, and there is a four or five year old kid. He continues to cough in an even tempo.
I lose interest in Karosawa during the second film. It's some noir flick he did the very year the war ended. That's energy for you. But it was nothing like the others. I lost interest and left early. On the way to the bus stop, someone sidles up behind me with a cigarette. Standing there, another man turns up his iPod to what must be deafening levels to him, and, seeing my eyes upon him, starts muttering to himself and lights a cigarette. After he tosses it, I stomp it out and encourage him to light another. He waves me off. The bus arrives so late I think I could have stayed for the remainder of the film and still caught it. By then, the stop looks like a chorus line of very cold people. The bus itself is soon packed, and it is reeking with...hickory? Astonished, I ask rhetorically, "What is this, the Hickory Pit?" No one answers. Then I am hit with a blast of tobacco smoke from somewhere. I don my mask.
At the end of the LKM bus ride, the train is waiting with doors open. I wonder if this is just to taunt us, as it usually is. Usually, the train waits for the bus to arrive, and then departs before any of us can get on. On board, it is smoky. I put on my mask, only removed briefly after disembarking the LKM bus. I keep it on after I leave and walk across the nose of the train, so the driver sees it. He screws up his face in something that looks like astonishment.
Home. Smoke. Smoke in my room. I run the fans, but can't hit the bed because it is too late. I get in. I have to pull the comforter away from my nose because the smoke coming from it is so strong when I breathe in that it makes me gag. I wake up with the familiar burning sensation in my nose and throat. It's no wonder people get cancer of the esophagus from smoking, I think. Whenever you have something that is constantly irritated like this, you're asking for cancer. Kurosawa is not worth this, I reflect.
I wake up. Smoke is everywhere outside my room. It seems thicker than usual. I waste time transferring my clothes, etc. to the other bathroom, which is smoke-free. I have adjusted my routine to the smoke. I now dress in the bathroom so I won't have to spend much time in my bedroom after the shower. They smoke it up before then.
On the way to work, I am about to cross the street to catch the train to BART, but a train going my way cuts me off. It stops so that I am looking directly at N. through the window. I have met N. once before on the train. Once before that, I saw her. We have a short conversation about the recent storm and how it blew trees over and fences and garbage cans down. Then she returns to her book. After a while, I take mine out and the rest of the trip passes in silence. During the silence, I reflect on our introduction a moment earlier. "You're...N., right?" I said. "and you're...W," she said. I had never told her my name. I specifically remember the previous time, when we met. I asked for her name. She gave it, but did not give the expected "and what's yours?" which was a little odd but seemed consistent with a sincere lack of interest. Then I remembered the time before that, when I saw her on the train, but we did not speak. She was holding the corner of a kerchief up to her eye, as if to sop up a tear, but there weren't any.
Almost to the last stop on this trip, someone asked about the book I was reading, "House of Cards" by Robyn Dawes. I explained how I had read research papers by the author, how I had a great deal of respect for him, and how the cover art probably made it seem virulently anti-therapy in order to sell copies, when it was really very complicated about the issue, and very good. That person thanked me profusely and left. As she got up to get off the train, silently, I said, "bye?" to N. "Take care," she said.
At work, my heater is somehow turned down to about 1/4 the intensity it was at yesterday. I can't turn it down. I don't know how they do this. No doubt that the problem is indetectible now, the building superintendent will come by and try again to make me feel like it's all in my head, I think. Everyone is very chipper. The bosses' wife asks me to call the computer guy about the new computers. She feigns amazement that, while two were ordered, one for me and one for someone else, only one arrived.
Monday, January 7, 2008
At the theater, I ask the guy at the box office if he is going to give me the finger again. He usually pulls the tickets out of the dispensing machine by pressing them against the stainless steel top of the machine with his middle finger and sliding the ticket, and his finger, toward me. This time, he takes it out and hands it to me. "No?!? Why thank you!" I exclaim, graciously. I go in. It is a double-feature of Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood", which I want to see because of the "ghostly landscape of fog and inescapable doom." I am late, but barely. I sit somewhere far away from everyone else and put on my painter's breath mask. The screen is a bit oblong from where I sit, but then I won't have to deal with people lighting cigarettes behind me, putting on their sunglasses, or touching their faces in a delicate, sensual way. Weird behavior in general. I am wearing the mask because there is a haze of burnt popcorn in the theater, as usual. Popcorn can conceal other smells, like tobacco smoke, which sometimes enters the theater through the ventilation system. Besides, my lungs have had it. The previous evening, I had to swat my beddings and bedclothes because of the tobacco smoke that is always in my bedroom, even though I have never smoked a cigarette, cigar, or pipe except maybe once in childhood. Whenever I do this swatting, which beats the smoke into the air in great white puffs, it raises the particulant matter content of the air to very unhealthy levels. My sinuses swell up so that I can barely breathe through my nose, and I cough. In the morning, I feel like hell, and my chest is hurting. Enough lung stress for one day, I figure, and I don my painter's mask, not caring that I look like an idiot.
During the show, I pop one of the exit doors to take a look. It is still light outside, and I see that next to the exit is a parking lot. I make a mental note to check it after the double-feature.
"Throne of Blood" ends. I go out to check out painter's masks at the hardware store down the street. I have a feeling the one I have isn't optimal. When I get back, I can't figure out which of the ticket stubs, all from this theater, is the one for today's ticket. The ticket-taker identifies it. "If you want to go in and out, get a hand stamp," he says. I reach for the stamp, standing on its pad. He grabs it first. I offer my wrist. He stamps the base of my thumb instead. "Whoops."
At the end of the intermission, before Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress," which I want to see because it is "Acknowledged as a primary influence on George Lucas' STAR WARS" is the trailer for "Blade Runner". They always show this trailer, and have been doing so for weeks, even though the movie won't arrive until mid-February, a month and a half from now. I don't blame them. It is a cool trailer, and makes me want to see the firm yet again. It starts out with the little machine that they use to identify replicants popping up its little magnifying glass, and the iris of the replicant is in full view on the laptop monitor. I remember this scene from the movie. It's near the beginning. They ask the guy being interviewed, "Do you love your mother?" He freaks out, attacks the interviewer, and goes on a rampage before they shut him down. This is one of the ways they identify replicants.
They don't have mothers, so they can't answer the question right, and they don't know how to fake it. I think back to how I feel about my mother, and how a conflict I had with her seemed to start this whole mess, many years ago.
"They're either a benefit or a hazard," says Harrison Ford, in his dark, husky voice, "If they're a benefit, it's not my problem." The rest of the statement is left to our imagination. It is in fact the content of the whole film. The same thing can be said for a lot of things, though. Autism, for instance. Autistic people have more of a tendency towards the extremes of the functional spectrum - highly functioning or highly nonfunctioning. If they're highly functioning, they're a benefit. Same goes for some forms of mental illness. They're either harmless screwballs or....
"How can it not know what it is?" Anonymous male voice speaking. Paranoid schizophrenia - it's the only mental illness that has, as a symptom, the belief that you don't have the illness. This film is ostensibly science fiction, with no reference to reality. But the corporate dystopia it portrays is often cited as a form of covert social critique. Might it be commenting on mental illness as well?
"If I were to go up north, would you come after me?" It is a woman talking. Attractive, dark hair. Eerily perfect features and hair. A replicant. No doubt about it. "No," replies Deckard/Ford, "but somebody would." No, escape is impossible.
The second film reminds me nothing of Star Wars, but I enjoy it anyway. Afterwards, at the subway station, a black man, wearing dark glasses, carries on about being careful what you wish for, how he is going to the gym to do some body-building, and how he is going to take control in the new year. He is bothering passers by, and one of them threatens to call the police. I am going to the gym too. He asks me if the train goes to Embarcadero, the end of the line, right before we arrive there. I say yes.
Before the gym, I stop off at Kinko's. I want to check out MindFreedom.org and ask J. to return some money of mine. While I am there, the same black man pops in, singing the same song, then leaves abruptly.
At the gym, I go to the thickest knot of people I can find, over where the fan is blowing. There is safety in numbers, I think. Often, when I am at the gym, I will get hit with a cloud of tobacco smoke from the ventilation system. I like to think that it's less likely if I'm not alone. As I am mechanically, uh, cross-training, I look at the reflection of the woman next to me in the thick plate glass windows. She is mouthing something enthusiastically. Then she begins to laugh. I look at her machine and see she has her earphones plugged in. All of the machines have cable television displays on them. Maybe she is watching a comedy. Then she begins to cough. She coughs so much that the man on the other side of us asks if she is okay. I look at her and she is smiling from ear to ear. The other man leaves, and she soon afterward. The machines were about half occupied when I arrive. When I leave, after my 35-minute workout, they are almost all empty.
Back at the subway station, a man sits next to me with his headphones turned up so loud I could make out the song they were playing, if I could recognize it. This always happens, I reflect. My train approaches. I check for ventilation in the front part of the car. If the ventilation isn't working, I will go to the other part of the car, which usually is. It is on, however. I enter. The air is thick with some kind of tobacco smoke. This is a fresh train at the beginning of the line. It probably came from the underground yard under the ferry building. It was empty when it pulled up. I think of asking the operator where the smoke came from, but I know what answer I will get. "I don't know." Or maybe he will deny that there is smoke at all. Asking seems futile, so I just go to the back of the car to see if the air is any better there. The ventilation is on high, but it is just as bad there, so I again don my painter's mask and return to the front. An obese woman with short, blond hair who got on with me with dark flight glasses over her head has now put them on, and is looking at me. I walk up and take the seat across the aisle from her. She leans her head against the window and pretends to sleep (it is 8:30 or so in the evening). I look at her. She stirs, sits up, looks at me nervously, then pretends to go back to sleep.
Later on, directly behind me, I hear the loud staccato of deliberate coughing. I turn around. A young man with a knit cap like mine looks directly into my eyes. I turn back around. I know he is getting off at the Unversity, and when that stop comes, he gets up and walks forward. When he is directly opposite me, I look at him again. He looks at me and forces out a laugh.
At home, I am greeted with cigarette smoke. It is heavy in the foyer, in the hallway, on the stairs. I unlock the door to my room. Mercifully, what smoke there is there is relatively light. It's pipe smoke, much less obtrusive. For a long time, I didn't know what the strange, sweet smell in my room was. At first, I thought it was evaporated mercury from my busted low-wattage "eco-friendly" lightbulb. I cursed it and wondered how much mercury I was soaking up through my bare feet as I walked across my bedroom floor every day. Compared to the cigarette smoke, the pipe smoke was almost nothing. It may even have been residual smoke from the dustup that occurs whenever anyone walks across a carpeted floor. I didn't think so, though, so I opened my window, mounted my trusty blower-fans in the opening, and turned them on. The cool, fresh night air coursed into my room and felt wonderful. Thank god the neighbor had stopped burning a wood fire every night, I thought.
I went to the kitchen to prepare some steamed kale for dinner. The smoke was so heavy, I again donned my breath mask. While I ate, I checked the time on my nonworking cell-phone. 9:45pm Only fifteen minutes before ten and I still had to finish eating. That meant no time to beat any smoke out of my bedding or bedclothes before the noise curfew. My housemates will call the police and complain about the noise if I do my swatting past ten. And they will come. I don't want that, so I just check for smoke on my longjohns and long-sleeved t-shirt before going to bed. Not that I could do anything about it. They could have been smoked up while I was at the gym, however, and I wanted to know. I'll never forget the time that I opened up my gym locker to find the book that I had been reading (on measurement theory, "Foundations of Measurement" by Krantz, Luce, et al.) had its front cover sliced off, as if by a razor. When I told my "friends" about it, they just said it was my perception that the front cover was sliced off! Wow, I thought, just another opportunity to invalidate me, I guess. Anyway, no smoke. I did my teeth and laid down. I fell asleep quickly.
I awoke during the middle of the night, after some dark, dreary dreams. As I lay there awake, I could recognize the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Nicotine is a stimulant, so withdrawal has a depressive effect. My nerves felt like they were made of lead, and hammered flat. "Well," I thought, "at least I know the painter's mask is working." I felt scared, though. Scared of this MindFreedom organization I was going to join the next day, scared of the reasons why I was joining, scared of the fact that I had been getting so much nicotine, despite my efforts to avoid it, that I was now suffering withdrawal. I was scared of the people who were doing this to me.
During the show, I pop one of the exit doors to take a look. It is still light outside, and I see that next to the exit is a parking lot. I make a mental note to check it after the double-feature.
"Throne of Blood" ends. I go out to check out painter's masks at the hardware store down the street. I have a feeling the one I have isn't optimal. When I get back, I can't figure out which of the ticket stubs, all from this theater, is the one for today's ticket. The ticket-taker identifies it. "If you want to go in and out, get a hand stamp," he says. I reach for the stamp, standing on its pad. He grabs it first. I offer my wrist. He stamps the base of my thumb instead. "Whoops."
At the end of the intermission, before Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress," which I want to see because it is "Acknowledged as a primary influence on George Lucas' STAR WARS" is the trailer for "Blade Runner". They always show this trailer, and have been doing so for weeks, even though the movie won't arrive until mid-February, a month and a half from now. I don't blame them. It is a cool trailer, and makes me want to see the firm yet again. It starts out with the little machine that they use to identify replicants popping up its little magnifying glass, and the iris of the replicant is in full view on the laptop monitor. I remember this scene from the movie. It's near the beginning. They ask the guy being interviewed, "Do you love your mother?" He freaks out, attacks the interviewer, and goes on a rampage before they shut him down. This is one of the ways they identify replicants.
They don't have mothers, so they can't answer the question right, and they don't know how to fake it. I think back to how I feel about my mother, and how a conflict I had with her seemed to start this whole mess, many years ago.
"They're either a benefit or a hazard," says Harrison Ford, in his dark, husky voice, "If they're a benefit, it's not my problem." The rest of the statement is left to our imagination. It is in fact the content of the whole film. The same thing can be said for a lot of things, though. Autism, for instance. Autistic people have more of a tendency towards the extremes of the functional spectrum - highly functioning or highly nonfunctioning. If they're highly functioning, they're a benefit. Same goes for some forms of mental illness. They're either harmless screwballs or....
"How can it not know what it is?" Anonymous male voice speaking. Paranoid schizophrenia - it's the only mental illness that has, as a symptom, the belief that you don't have the illness. This film is ostensibly science fiction, with no reference to reality. But the corporate dystopia it portrays is often cited as a form of covert social critique. Might it be commenting on mental illness as well?
"If I were to go up north, would you come after me?" It is a woman talking. Attractive, dark hair. Eerily perfect features and hair. A replicant. No doubt about it. "No," replies Deckard/Ford, "but somebody would." No, escape is impossible.
The second film reminds me nothing of Star Wars, but I enjoy it anyway. Afterwards, at the subway station, a black man, wearing dark glasses, carries on about being careful what you wish for, how he is going to the gym to do some body-building, and how he is going to take control in the new year. He is bothering passers by, and one of them threatens to call the police. I am going to the gym too. He asks me if the train goes to Embarcadero, the end of the line, right before we arrive there. I say yes.
Before the gym, I stop off at Kinko's. I want to check out MindFreedom.org and ask J. to return some money of mine. While I am there, the same black man pops in, singing the same song, then leaves abruptly.
At the gym, I go to the thickest knot of people I can find, over where the fan is blowing. There is safety in numbers, I think. Often, when I am at the gym, I will get hit with a cloud of tobacco smoke from the ventilation system. I like to think that it's less likely if I'm not alone. As I am mechanically, uh, cross-training, I look at the reflection of the woman next to me in the thick plate glass windows. She is mouthing something enthusiastically. Then she begins to laugh. I look at her machine and see she has her earphones plugged in. All of the machines have cable television displays on them. Maybe she is watching a comedy. Then she begins to cough. She coughs so much that the man on the other side of us asks if she is okay. I look at her and she is smiling from ear to ear. The other man leaves, and she soon afterward. The machines were about half occupied when I arrive. When I leave, after my 35-minute workout, they are almost all empty.
Back at the subway station, a man sits next to me with his headphones turned up so loud I could make out the song they were playing, if I could recognize it. This always happens, I reflect. My train approaches. I check for ventilation in the front part of the car. If the ventilation isn't working, I will go to the other part of the car, which usually is. It is on, however. I enter. The air is thick with some kind of tobacco smoke. This is a fresh train at the beginning of the line. It probably came from the underground yard under the ferry building. It was empty when it pulled up. I think of asking the operator where the smoke came from, but I know what answer I will get. "I don't know." Or maybe he will deny that there is smoke at all. Asking seems futile, so I just go to the back of the car to see if the air is any better there. The ventilation is on high, but it is just as bad there, so I again don my painter's mask and return to the front. An obese woman with short, blond hair who got on with me with dark flight glasses over her head has now put them on, and is looking at me. I walk up and take the seat across the aisle from her. She leans her head against the window and pretends to sleep (it is 8:30 or so in the evening). I look at her. She stirs, sits up, looks at me nervously, then pretends to go back to sleep.
Later on, directly behind me, I hear the loud staccato of deliberate coughing. I turn around. A young man with a knit cap like mine looks directly into my eyes. I turn back around. I know he is getting off at the Unversity, and when that stop comes, he gets up and walks forward. When he is directly opposite me, I look at him again. He looks at me and forces out a laugh.
At home, I am greeted with cigarette smoke. It is heavy in the foyer, in the hallway, on the stairs. I unlock the door to my room. Mercifully, what smoke there is there is relatively light. It's pipe smoke, much less obtrusive. For a long time, I didn't know what the strange, sweet smell in my room was. At first, I thought it was evaporated mercury from my busted low-wattage "eco-friendly" lightbulb. I cursed it and wondered how much mercury I was soaking up through my bare feet as I walked across my bedroom floor every day. Compared to the cigarette smoke, the pipe smoke was almost nothing. It may even have been residual smoke from the dustup that occurs whenever anyone walks across a carpeted floor. I didn't think so, though, so I opened my window, mounted my trusty blower-fans in the opening, and turned them on. The cool, fresh night air coursed into my room and felt wonderful. Thank god the neighbor had stopped burning a wood fire every night, I thought.
I went to the kitchen to prepare some steamed kale for dinner. The smoke was so heavy, I again donned my breath mask. While I ate, I checked the time on my nonworking cell-phone. 9:45pm Only fifteen minutes before ten and I still had to finish eating. That meant no time to beat any smoke out of my bedding or bedclothes before the noise curfew. My housemates will call the police and complain about the noise if I do my swatting past ten. And they will come. I don't want that, so I just check for smoke on my longjohns and long-sleeved t-shirt before going to bed. Not that I could do anything about it. They could have been smoked up while I was at the gym, however, and I wanted to know. I'll never forget the time that I opened up my gym locker to find the book that I had been reading (on measurement theory, "Foundations of Measurement" by Krantz, Luce, et al.) had its front cover sliced off, as if by a razor. When I told my "friends" about it, they just said it was my perception that the front cover was sliced off! Wow, I thought, just another opportunity to invalidate me, I guess. Anyway, no smoke. I did my teeth and laid down. I fell asleep quickly.
I awoke during the middle of the night, after some dark, dreary dreams. As I lay there awake, I could recognize the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Nicotine is a stimulant, so withdrawal has a depressive effect. My nerves felt like they were made of lead, and hammered flat. "Well," I thought, "at least I know the painter's mask is working." I felt scared, though. Scared of this MindFreedom organization I was going to join the next day, scared of the reasons why I was joining, scared of the fact that I had been getting so much nicotine, despite my efforts to avoid it, that I was now suffering withdrawal. I was scared of the people who were doing this to me.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
This blog is where I will report activities and incidents relating to being policed.
Today I got on MUNI to go over the hill. As I walked in front of the large portrait window at the front of the train, I could see the bus driver, wearing wraparound mirrorized glasses (it was an overcast day in January - "the storm of the century" ) madly talking to himself. As soon as I got on, he stopped. I stood at the front of the passenger area. He was manipulating the throttle with a glove and a paper towel in his gloved hand. He saw that I was standing there and began pushing the train buttons with his extended middle finger. Then he demanded that I produce proof of payment, which I did. As I left, I said "I am going to put an end to this. I'm not going to take it anymore." He demanded that I shoot him, that I call the governor, and that I call the mayor, and that I get off the bus. I asked him why he asked me to shoot him. He said that I said that I was going to put an end to him, tried to close the door on me, and threatened to call the police. I got off the train.
Today I got on MUNI to go over the hill. As I walked in front of the large portrait window at the front of the train, I could see the bus driver, wearing wraparound mirrorized glasses (it was an overcast day in January - "the storm of the century" ) madly talking to himself. As soon as I got on, he stopped. I stood at the front of the passenger area. He was manipulating the throttle with a glove and a paper towel in his gloved hand. He saw that I was standing there and began pushing the train buttons with his extended middle finger. Then he demanded that I produce proof of payment, which I did. As I left, I said "I am going to put an end to this. I'm not going to take it anymore." He demanded that I shoot him, that I call the governor, and that I call the mayor, and that I get off the bus. I asked him why he asked me to shoot him. He said that I said that I was going to put an end to him, tried to close the door on me, and threatened to call the police. I got off the train.
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