Omnivore:

Tumblr's atmosphere is wigging me out a bit. Instead of sitting around grinching about the inherent terrible-ness of Tumblr like most others, I'm dusting this off and keeping an eye out for alternative means to communicate.

I don't have much to say though. It's a problem. I have several alternatives to social networks that piss me off (my irritation at Tumblr isn't even an iota of my irritation at Twitter)--snail mail, IM, Skype. I see people I should throw a message at quite often. I just don't have anything to say! "I'm still muddling along," over and over? The very thought is off-putting.

When I do have something to share, the feedback I get is... less than overwhelming. I feel like I'm grasping for attention like back when I was a miserable off-kilter teenager, when I put it like that. I accept that a lot of is nothing to do with other people being inherently terrible; rather, it's the way I deal with things being a lot different to the way other people deal with things. But part of accepting that means I'm avoiding sites where I know, from experience, that I'd achieve nothing but a sensation of being slighted, overwhelming irritation, or both.

I hope all this avoidance doesn't mean I miss out on something super-important or useful to me, but my patience and my subconscious are thanking me for it.

I've been thinking a lot of deep, weird thoughts lately. I'm in a good mood but some of the thoughts I'm mulling over concern me. One of the stories I'm kicking around deals with a person being in a situation I found myself in, and I can't stop thinking, "This is such a fucking self-insertion my-life-is-pain pity party, who is going to have the patience for this?" But you know, as melodramatic as it is, it literally happened to me. Real life can be stupid and melodramatic!

Um, what else... Last night I had a dream about being in my old high school (not the one I usually have nightmares about, the one before that). The place was teeming with students at ten o'clock at night. I walked towards where my old home block of classrooms used to be, munching on a hot dog (red frankfurt sausage, tomato sauce, no mustard or onion). I rounded the corner to see a huge glass enclosure where giant, uncanny four-legged hot dog bun beasts lumbered back and forth. One of them turned its massive head towards me to stare me down with the pink steamed meat where its head presumably had been. I looked down at my hot dog, also missing its tip, then turned and ran like the dickens.

So no change there then.

I have recurring nightmares about a particular teacher who I parted with on very, very, very bad terms. It usually involves me being stuck back at that school and her finding reasons to harrang me and/or be a terrible person in general. (her sitting back, SIGHing and shaking her head as one kid crushed another kid's skull under a giant crate with a forklift is a particular, and very in-character, example that comes to mind)

I had another nightmare like this last night. It involved her telling some kids including myself to go somewhere and do something; we went there at some expense, found we couldn't do it and went back (You know dreams, never skimping on the details, right?). She told the kid who reported this to her that we should have looked in one particular place that wouldn't have been obvious to anyone, and she told them that I, of course, should have known this.

At this point, I suddenly reached a semi-lucid state, finally snapping after eight years of having dreams about this goblin of a woman, and I began screaming. "FUCK YOU, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT THEN, YOU FUCKING FUCK, I FUCKING HATE YOU AND YOU'RE A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT WHO KNOWS SHIT-ALL ABOUT ANYTHING IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE, WHY DON'T YOU JUST TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FUCKING REPRESENT IN MY FUCKING DREAMS AND JUST FUCK OFF ALREADY?"

The children went silent. And she told me what it was she was trying to do.

I huffed a furious 'THANK you' and turned to go.

"And when you forget," she said in a strangely deadpan tone, "I'll be right here telling you again."

When I left that building I saw the ocean in the distance, and another recurring nightmare came to mind. "Oh, that's right," I snarled, "Come on, while we're here bring on the fucking tidal wave like you always do."

Sure enough an apocalyptic tsunami formed and rushed towards me. The other dream NPCs ran screaming.

Until it hit me, I stood right there, holding a plastic shopping bag in one hand and and flipping off the wave with the other.

It went right through me like a hologram, leaving nothing but a strange summertime shimmer behind it. By the time it was generating an even bigger wave to see if that would faze me, I got bored and walked away.




Wish I could remember what the hell it was the teacher told me.