fingers & cookies

YEah.
Brain's empty. But good!
Dave's been bringing me breakfast in bed lately. :D

And every so often when things aren't super busy Bossman will give me a day off in the middle of the week 'cause he's trying to cut down on labor costs. Like yesterday. I really shouldn't accept the days off, I should be all "no! there's indispensable things I need to do!" because I need the money and there IS enough work to be done. But I like the sleep and the errand-running time so much, so very much.

Dad's friend Ed is going to be looking around to see if there's a job for Dave with any of his peeps in the real estate and related businesses. I think Dave would take a job, or go to an interview, if he was offered one. But his opinion of himself is pretty low these days (Although he's been awesome to me!), so going out and convincing potential employers to hire him would not be easy or fun. An intro would be of great value, no question.

My overdue balance with Verizon is, like, more than $300. Which sucks, sucks, sucks. I have to choose a few things out of the following:
my Verizon past due balance (more than $300),
phone/internet bill (almost $80),
cable TV bill (probably more than $80),
getting some laundry done (neighborhood of $50, depending on how much laundry),
buying more D&R tobacco (around $60),
buying more wacky tobaccy (usually $80),
buying more groceries (certainly not less than $50),
or saving what I've got towards next month's rent ($800) which is payable as of tomorrow.

Aye. A' course most people, even most people I know are in a worse spot. And hey, I've still got half my last paycheck left, and I got paid on Tuesday. Being able to go to the store during the day yesterday was great. We'd been staring at a nigh-empty fridge for a week! I bought a massive amount of food--and was able to park close enough to the front of the parking lot that I could run the bags between the cart and the open trunk while keeping an eye on both of them. I understand that the shopping complex doesn't want to be liable for stolen carts or cars damaged by carts, but really, what's the point of having a cart if you can't push it out to where your car is? I can't leave the cart behind, go start the car, and drive up to where the cart is. That's asking for my food to get stolen, or maybe re-shelved by a zealous employee, I dunno. And I can't leave the trunk open way at the other end of the parking lot while I trudge back and forth with all the bags I can carry. That's asking for the crap in the trunk to get stolen. Groceries included. Hell, if I saw somebody with their trunk open, I would be tempted, and y'all know I don't believe in stealing from private individuals unless they are specifically and currently my enemies.

Then again, I'm tempted by leftover food on guest plates whenever I walk past the dishwashers' station during service. (Voice of Bart Simpson: "All right! Trash cookies!") Hunger + disinterest in social propriety + severely diminished sense of disgust = wanting to eat trash cookies. Sigh. But I resist, mainly because if people saw me eating post-dining-room food, I would be embarassed. See? Self-esteem is inconvenient too! If I didn't care whether I embarassed myself or not, sure I'd be miserable, but I'd get trash cookies!
*chuckles*

So, yesterday we watched The Number 23. It was quite good, actually better than I expected. Reminds me of a simpler, saner House of Leaves with a happier ending. Given the extreme horrifying awesomeness in House of Leaves that still leaves lots of room for spooky though. It would have been more fun if I hadn't already been exposed to the Discordian Law of Fives. Which states that everything can be mathematically transformed into, or is otherwise related to, five, and that the harder you look the more true you will find it to be. Ergo, no number chases a human; the human simply drags the number behind them while running blindfolded. Through the magical forest of cause and effect. Barefoot.

But Dave, Dave really groked that movie. He was telling me it's going right into his top 5 movies and stuff. Because the main character's kind of crazy is the exact same kind of crazy that he, Dave has, only with different consequences and contents, obviously. Me, I don't obsess, though I admire people who can. I don't always admire people who do. But the capacity is impressive. Great focus, great emotional force, great attention-paying, great mental processing capacity, great stickiness. Cathection, I mean, powerful cathection. All these fine qualities are disordered of course, in an obsession; but disorder is an open door! An illusion which begs to be transformed into its sister illusion, apparent order! Just as order begs one to find in its interstices, apparent disorder, that which falls outside the frame. Meh. So says me, for whom obsession has never really been a problem. Every transformation looks beautiful and fascinating until you have to drag and twist and shove your being through it inch by painful inch.

I think I should make note of my names for the three reagents. In alchemy they're called mercury, sulfur and salt. Mercury the universal dissolver, sulfur the universal coagulant, salt the bringer of equilibrium. In the Kingdom of Loathing they're called magic, moxie and muscle. Magic allows you to cast spells, moxie allows you to dodge attacks, muscle indicates your hit points and the power of your attacks. I don't think there is an official Discordian version--which is just as well, ain't much "official" Discordian anything. For me, I like to refer to the three things as shiny, sticky, and pointy. Because that's how they feel inside my brain. When you think about it, with four infinitely subdividable "element" categories of mental content, and three different reaction types through which they may be interrelated, you really can extrapolate the proliferation of all possible psychic experience from these essential mental/emotional states.

So, to clarify: Shiny attracts your notice. Sticky binds emotion or thought to other emotion or thought. Pointy separates emotions and thoughts, from each other or from your notice. This three-ness is also shows up in my Anatomy of Trust notebook as the little "eye-hand-mouth" dude who represents consciousness. The thing of three things, the three reagents, are really a super-slow-motion screenshot of consciousness in action. It's important for us to study the three reagents with our conscious attention so that we are better able to USE our conscious attention, by becoming informed of how it works!

And a person who obsesses, has had their shiny overwhelmed by their sticky, meaning that whatever their pointy is pointing at, it's not what it oughtta be. An obsessed person gets stuck to one thing, and stops noticing everything else. And the universe gets annoyed when you don't pay attention to it! It's like going on a date and only looking at the girl's fingernails and ignoring the rest of her entirely. Which is as good an explanation of The Number 23 (the fascination with the number, not just the movie) as anything else. 23 is the fingernails of the universe.