Scientology: endorsed by Tyler Durden.

Our company just purchased a new site relating to massage therapy training and work. We’re redesigning, so we need a new logo. Here is my submission. The good news is, as we’re going to be Wii boxing to determine the winner, I stand a good chance of winning!

What started as an idea for a joke on Facebook turned into a more serious status update, which has now turned into a blog post.

If you don’t know, a few weeks back, girls all over Facebook started posting the colors of the bras they were wearing, but nobody said why. It turns out it was for breast cancer awareness. Lately, there’s been something similar involving cryptic posts about monsters, elevators, and cars. All of this leaves me mystified.

First of all, secretive publicity stunts are annoying as hell. If they at least posted why they were posting the color of their bras, that would be something, but leaving for people to figure out on their own (or, in most cases, ignore) is a gimmick that I’d expect from an Evangelical church youth group, but not a cancer awareness group. And are they really expecting people to say, “Holy shit! I’d completely forgotten about breast cancer!” Why not spend the time raising an awareness for a condition that really needs it?

I don’t want to propose that bipolar disorder is as serious or kills as many people as breast cancer; but few people understand that bipolar disorder actually does kill some people, and the sympathy surrounding breast cancer is often replaced by prejudice and social stigmas around bipolar. Other mental disorders have stigmas as well, ranging from disbelief and mockery (autism and ADHD) to fear and blatant misconceptions (schizophrenia), but bipolar disorder is my battle to fight, so I’ve chosen that one.

In light of all that, here are some statistics on bipolar disorder.

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Here’s a rather brilliant theory on Star Wars episode IV (if you’re into that sort of thing).

I hadn’t thought about any of this, but I have to admit, it all makes sense. I’d be interested to think some more along these lines. I’ll dig around and see if this guy has written anything else.

I just discovered The Swell Season. No, not the book—the band. Here’s one of their songs:

I’m really impressed with them so far. Apparently, they almost won a Grammy for the song “Falling Slowly,” which appeared on the Once soundtrack, but lost out to some song from the Dreamgirls soundtrack.

Also, I’ve recently discovered some of Regina Spektor’s other albums (most notably, Soviet Kitsch) and I’m really digging those. I’ve always admired her music, but I’d only heard one album (Begin to Hope), and I couldn’t get into it as much as some of her other stuff.

I’m doing some work for a band-mate of mine, Cutter Gage. He wants a site for his music. I’m drawing up a few designs, but here’s the first. It still needs a little work, but I want to get approval on an idea before I really move forward with it.

I’m going to work on a second one tomorrow, hopefully.

Janelle’s sister, Alaine, bought our cats some Christmas gifts this year.

Franny
Zoey
Sherlock

Also among the gifts were some new toys and a crap-load of catnip.

New poem up on the poetry page. It’s been a while since I’ve written one. This one is a sailing metaphor. Every guy writer, if he writes long enough, will eventually use a sailing metaphor. This is fact.

I won’t try to hide that this is about Janelle. She’s really a balancing force in my life, and I don’t admit that nearly enough. She’s a great source of strength for me, and I find myself leaning on her a lot more than I originally thought I would.

So here’s to Janelle, and many nautical references to come! Cheers!

I haven’t blogged about this because I’ve been MIA for about a month, but there have been some recent developments with Zoey. We found out about a year ago that he has some problems with his gums. Not even problems that we can fix or prevent—he has some genetic form of gingivitis. The resulting inflammation will eventually cause his teeth to hurt, meaning it will hurt for him to eat. The pain can get quite severe. When it gets to that point, there’s usually no choice but to pull the bad teeth.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I looked down at Zoey and saw a shape a little different than the roly-poly one I was used to. I weighed him and found that he had lost a pound and a half. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you consider that it’s 12% of his total body weight, which is the equivalent of me losing 21.6 pounds, it gets a little more serious.

It wasn’t until then that we connected the dots in our head. Zoey had started sitting by the food bowl and meowing. We assumed it was because he was spoiled and wanted the canned food that we feed him on the weekends. We realized that it’s because he was hungry, but had to choose between putting up with severe pain or going hungry.

Needless to say, we felt really bad for the poor little buddy. We took him into the vet the very next day, and they thought they could save the teeth with an antibiotic and a steroid. Yes, we got a cat steroid. This will not help us if we need to barricade him out of a bedroom. The vet also prescribed a special, high-calorie canned food for us to feed him twice a day. Yes, we’re actually giving Zoey a special high-calorie food. You can guess how much he loved that.

Anyway, after a few weeks on all three, everything seems to be back to normal. We’ve stopped giving him the steroid, and we have about one dose left of the antibiotic. (We cleared all of this with the vet on a second trip.)

Well, everything is back to normal, except for one thing: Zoey is now accustomed to being spoon-fed high-calorie cat food while the other cats are locked out of the room. He’s eating normal food again, and quite often, so we decided last night that it was time to stop giving him the special food. We split the contents of the last can into three equal portions and fed them to all three cats.

We’d been giving Zoey his medicine and food in the downstairs bathroom, so that’s where he’s used to being spoon-fed. We were cleaning it tonight, and Zoey hopped up on the toilet seat cover and started crying. If you don’t know, Zoey’s crying is pathetic. We ignored him and cleaned the bathroom. We cleaned it, and then we went elsewhere to clean. Five or ten minutes later, we walked by and we saw this. He was there for about fifteen more minutes before he gave up.

So, while I’m sad that he had to go through all of that in the first place, we also now have to put up with a rather spoiled cat.

Is it weird that I followed up a long post about Existentialism with a long post about my cat’s dental problems?

I picked up a book, An Introduction to Existentialism at the used book store down the street (best $3.98 I ever spent). I’m really impressed with it so far. I read a few chapters in the airport and on the plane ride back, and kept thinking, “Man, I need to blog about this.” By the time we landed, there were too many of those thoughts to blog about, so I had to settle on just one.

Long-time readers and friends probably know about my disdain for Idealist philosophy. That same conviction is actually the binding force of Existentialism—rather than a comprehensive system, it is a reaction against another system of irresponsible optimism.

Idealism gave birth to the concept of Utopianism. Those who knew me in college know how much I was into books like 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451—books that were literary reactions against Utopianism. That was actually a precursor to my Existential tendencies. I just didn’t see utopia as the answer to man’s problems. I didn’t see it as a very realistic or even desirable goal.

This quote, taken from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, sums up pretty neatly why I fall into this camp:

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