Nothing ever happens: or, my first psych nurse

Some days you may ask: why am I seldom writing long, in-depth  pieces about a particular topic of burning interest? Why instead do I resort to gifs, little videos, wacky things, etc.?
Because I have, literally or figuratively speaking, had it.

I've just had it.

Had it with trying to be A Writer and make Sales. Had it with internet popularity, followers, likes, views. Had it with  high school redux and that awkward feeling surging up my neck like a conspicuous red blush.

Had it with competition.  Of any kind. Want to just go walk in the woods,and probably will. Don't want to think about the past and all the things that sucked, and all the things that were beautiful, because all of it is over and both are gone forever. Want to dwell in Now exclusively.

Not good at this, but am practicing.

I DO look back at writing three novels after literally decades of effort, and selling nineteen copies and getting the best reviews in the world, or no reviews. So I have quit.

Quit all that effort. I am now Loose. Free. Not to be branded or categorized.

I tell myself pain is part of life, that it's all about letting go, then I think: ah, screw it, I'm NEVER letting go. Holding on is what I have learned to do all my life. Don't tell me to surrender the one thing I'm good at.

So  this is why you don't find a lot of in-depth writing from me any more. It was killing me. Don't be a writer, it will kill you unless you win the popularity lottery, and I almost guarantee you you won't.  Unless the genetics are just right, or the phase of the moon.

Killer chinchiller

             How dare they make coats out of these?

Dance, Otzi!

A relaxing stroll along the river

A VERY scary gif!

Stay tuned for the sound version of this (with special effects), which I will be posting on YouTube.

The Paw of Death! (Bentley vs. the troll)

LaurenZ and me

Weird are the ways of the internet. Weeeeeeeiiiiiirrrrrrd.

For suddenly one day, I saw one of MY videos on a famous YouTuber's channel. I don't  remember how I found out, except that suddenly my views shot up from the usual zero  to something like 800. Wowk!  I didn't know what was going on. Then in the comments, people kept saying they were sent there from "LaurenzSide", which I'm afraid I didn't know from a hole in the ground.

It took a lot of  chasing  down to actually find the video where said LaurenzSide "quoted" my stuff. It was, well, it was weird, but  so were my videos (she actually used bits of THREE of them altogether), and it was kind of a mixed feeling to see someone comment on them, being not quite sure she really liked my videos or just thought  they were quirky and bizarre.

Which, well. . . 

So I did the only thing a non-YouTuber can do. I video'd  her video. I mean, I took my camcorder and made a video of HER video, which included MY video.  So we ended up with a video of a video of a video! It went in a perfect circle.

As a YouTube-channel-having-person (NOT a YouTuber - you have to be doing ads and making money to be that), I know my stuff is pretty much in the public  domain. And yes, I've had a few comments, not always complimentary, but that comes with the territory. In fact, lately I've had a lot more than usual, and so far people have been great. I mean, sweet! These seem like young  girls, but on the internet you never know who they are.

LaurenzSide called me a "sweet woman", and I must confess I have never been called that in my life before. She cautioned her subscribers not  to be "mean" to me. I don' t know where that idea came from (except that it's the internet.)  But no one has been mean, and in fact, so far it's been warm and cozy.

When I get five new subscribers in a week, and four hot-cocoa-and-fuzzy-slippers comments, it makes me think that maybe-just-maybe I'm not doing all this in vain, that somebody actually sees it, that - 

Oh hell no. But I'm going to keep  doing it anyway.

Short takes from my YouTube channel

Suicide: in the jaws of the dragon

Since my readership is very slim, to say the least, I feel relatively free to talk about a subject no one seems to want to mention. It's tiptoed around, or recoiled from, both from fear it will happen to someone they know, or from the kind of entrenched stigma that buries certain topics due to intense shame.

I heard of a death not long ago, and it was not someone I knew. I read the announcement on a friend's Facebook page, and even though I am removed from the situation, I found it disturbing. It pertained to a 42-year-old man, a teacher, who died suddenly and shockingly, leaving the family "devastated". There was a very long passage about what a beloved figure he was among his students and colleagues. All through this description of the man's life, I kept thinking, suicide. I could not be sure, but it was written all over the passage, the shock and despair that seemed beyond a more natural death. Certainly no other cause of death was listed anywhere, which was unusual for one so young. Even the long passage about his achievements and his status as a much-loved figure carried a faint sense of "we don't know how this could have happened to a man like this". Not homeless, not a drug addict or an alcoholic, but the kind of person who would never think of such a thing because he was so  accomplished and well-liked.

Then, a couple of weeks later, there was a sort of updated statement, saying that the family had thought it over and decided to talk about the fact that he had committed suicide. One of the first things they said (which was also included in the first notice) was how gentle his passing had been. They insisted "he felt no pain". I was stunned. I have experienced suicidal depression, and it's like trying to pull yourself out of the mouth of a dragon before you are ripped apart or immolated. There is no peace. It is never painless. How could it be, if you've just decided to destroy yourself and deprive the world of a totally unique human presence - forever?

I assume they were referring to his lack of pain AS he committed suicide, or lack of pain AFTER he committed suicide - neither of which make sense to me at all. No, you don't feel pain when you are unconscious. Or dead.

I don't blame the family for all these tortuous twists and turns. Obviously it's important to them to think he didn't suffer, which after a suicide is as incongruous a statement as I have ever heard. I cannot be too judgemental, however, as they were reacting the way 90% of people do. But it does point up how people struggle with this raw fact, that people do, yes, DO commit suicide, even if their anguish and despair isn't obvious to others. ESPECIALLY if. This man had been, apparently, acting for most of his life, and one day he just couldn't do it any more. Or so it would seem.

More odd things struck me. The fact that his memorial is taking place in a bar shook me, because then I wondered if he was an alcoholic. Perhaps not, and I am sure the family would vehemently, even angrily deny this. But surely, somewhere in academia, someone else might be - statistically, even! - and perhaps a recovering one. Someone who can't or must not drink would have to sit around with people who are drinking, perhaps rather heavily because they are in so much pain, supposedly in their colleague's honor, and the alcoholic at the table - even if sober - must sit there smiling with a gut full of unexpressed grief. 

The expectation is that everyone will sit around sipping scotch (they even mentioned this specifically) and heartily sharing funny and fond reminiscences and anecdotes about a man who JUST KILLED HIMSELF BECAUSE HE COULDN’T STAND BEING ALIVE ANY MORE. Of course, if you cry and feel agony at such a gathering, it’s completely inappropriate to express it, and you have to leave. What are you supposed to do - sit at a table, in a bar, in a public place, and put your head down on the table and sob with raw anguish? Or is raw anguish completely inappropriate these days?

Your choices are to leave and run to the bathroom (meaning someone else at the table is in the awkward position of having to run after you while the rest of the party looks at each other uncomfortably), to stay and bring the rest of the party down and completely kill the atmosphere of heartiness and humor, or - 

The only option that is socially acceptable is to just swallow your grief and pretend you're all right, even enjoying the evening. Everyone else is, after all - aren't they? If they aren't, who is going to start talking about it and ruin the occasion? You can do your crying  at home.  

But when you get home, you find it has all turned to stone. 

Does this set of impossible choices have anything to do with the social dynamics that lead a man to take his own life? Does it have anything to do with agonizing loneliness, with a sense of being set apart from everyone else, afraid of your own feelings? Of having to "keep it up", swallowing it continually for years and years and keeping the act going until one day it fatally implodes?

Memorials are “celebrations of life” now, with no tears or grief allowed unless it’s “happy” grief (whatever that is). At very least, you are expected to run to the bathroom and do it there, along with other bodily functions. I don't know what the answer is, but when I heard about the memorial in the pub, even in the first announcement where cause of death was mysteriously not mentioned, I winced. The idea of a "wake" may still be around, and I'm not against it, but I don't think these generally take place in a public space. 

There is no suicide rule book, no etiquette, but I am alarmed at how quickly people jump to hide the scars, even to minimize what has happened or reassure everyone that it was, after all, a painless event - at least for him, a man ending his own life. But painless only in the unconsciousness that leads to death, a conundrum I will never be able to resolve.

Alpaca dreams

Elizabeth Holmes: blink and you'll miss it

A fine bromance

A fine romance, my good fellow
You take romance, I'll take jello
You're calmer than the seals in the Arctic Ocean
At least they flap their fins to express emotion

A fine romance with no quarrels
With no insults, and all morals
I've never mussed the crease
In your blue serge pants,
I never get the chance, this is a fine romance!

A fine romance, with no kisses
A find romance, my friend this is
To lack half the thrills that a healthy crime has
We don't have half the thrills
That the march of time has

A fine romance, with no clinches
A fine romance, with no flinches
You're just as hard to land as the Ille de France
I haven't got a chance

My heart isn't made of plastic
You're too sarcastic,
This is a fine romance!

First film of human figure, 1890

Prickly pear

Kitty up a tree!

I never get tired of watching cat rescues. The Canopy Cat Rescue guys are my heroes.

Hoax, hoax, HOAX!! Why people are still falling for internet deception

Don't fall for the hoax: Facebook isn't restricting your News Feed to 25 friends

Rob Price Business Insider
Aug. 11, 2018, 9:45 AM

lThere's a viral Facebook post making the rounds that claims the News Feed is restricting what you see to just 25 friends.

Spoiler alert: It's just not true.

No, Facebook is not restricting the content you see on your News Feed to just 25 or 26 friends.

Over the last few months, a hoax has been making the rounds on the social network. It claims, in essence, that Facebook has implemented an algorithm change that means you will only see posts from a select few of your friends. Anyone else is flat out of luck.

The hoax encourages users to combat this by copying and pasting a faux-informative message about the "change" — and then asking users' friends to reply to the post.

Here's one example Business Insider has seen (the wording often varies slightly):

Hello Friends - I'm jumping on the bandwagon too....Fighting this Facebook algorithm change, because I'm noticing I am not seeing so many of my friends posts. Here is how to avoid hearing from the same 26 FB friends and nobody else. This post explains why we don't see all posts from our friends. Funny, I thought if I followed you on Facebook I would see what you post. Not anymore.....

Your newsfeed recently shows only posts from the same few people, about 25, repeatedly the same, because Facebook has a new algorithm....

Their system chooses the people who will read your posts. However I would like to choose for myself, therefore, I ask you all a favor- if you are reading this message leave me a quick comment, a "hey" or sticker, whatever you want, so you will appear in my newsfeed please!

Otherwise Facebook chooses who to show me and I don't need Facebook to choose my friends. Please copy and paste on your wall so you can have more interaction with all your contacts and bypass the system. That's why we don't see all posts from our friends.

Hold your finger down anywhere on this post and "copy" will pop up. Click "copy". Then go to your page, start a new post on your page, then put your finger anywhere in the blank field. "Paste" will pop up and click on it to paste. Thank you all!

Variations of this hoax have been circulating since at least February 2018, and Facebook comprehensively debunked it at the time. But that clearly didn't halt its spread.

The problem is that by the time a fooled user realizes it's total hookum, it's too late — they've already copy-pasted it, sharing it with their friends, allowing it to keep going viral across the social network.

That said, there is an extremely convoluted and twisted kernel of truth in here — Facebook's algorithm does make judgement about which of your friends it thinks you want to see content from, and then prioritizes them in your News Feed. And engaging with these friends' posts (and them engaging with your posts) will make them appear more frequently.

If you feel you are seeing only a limited number of posts from a limited number of people, there is a tried-and-true trick that will give you a different view of your News Feed: have it show you the "Most Recent" posts rather than its default, "Top Stories."

To do this on the desktop click on "News Feed" in the left-hand column and then on "Most Recent."

This view of the News Feed is harder to find on the mobile app. First click on the "three lines" symbol (next to the notifications bell symbol). Then click on "See More" then on "Most Recent."

But the "facts" this hoax claims, and its purported fix? Dead wrong.

BLOGGER'S TWO CENTS. OK then! I would have completely ignored this bogus thing, except that in the last two days, two of my Facebook friends have copied and pasted the "hold your finger down" version, along with "This REALLY WORKS!!" AND "Four of my friends told me this works!!" These are not people who write in this style - in fact they are published writers - so it's obvious to me they DIDN'T WRITE IT!!

Any time anything is copied and pasted in this way, it means something funny is going on, or something not-so-funny. "Viral" things that turn out to be completely bogus make me angry. It dismays me when I see otherwise intelligent people falling for something so completely lame. It highlights the "I saw it on the internet, therefore it must be true" mentality that is still going around among people who seem to have powers of discernment. Perhaps they WANT it to be true (while we're using all caps), but that doesn't mean it is. 

When you get this sent to you or see it posted and it's from a friend, it's a knee-jerk reaction to believe it, because your Facebook friend who would NEVER delude you is sending it. That person conveniently ignores the clunky, exclamation-point-ridden style which screams "cut and paste", and the ludicrous repetition which means someone has glommed together a couple of the many versions of it without editing. This one randomly claims "four different people" have had good results with it, which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt. . . (And I am so glad these were four "different" people, not four of the same person.)

I will perhaps believe these things - perhaps - if I see them written in that person's OWN voice and in their OWN writing style. (I just can't get off this all-caps thing!). If they then tell me what their personal experience has been with this method to "bypass the system", well then - 

Yesterday a Facebook friend posted another version of this (and there are always overlapping versions going around just to muddy the waters), and was debunked by discerning friends. Today, another friend (a writer friend) posted this:

All right. Four different people have told me this genuinely works and I miss seeing a lot of my friends posts. So I’m gonna give it a try. I heard you do have to comment and some say you don’t ?? What gives ?
Yes Adding bypass It work It WORKS!! I have a whole new news feed. I’m seeing posts from people I haven’t seen in years.
Here’s how to bypass the system FB now has in place that limits posts on your news feed. I
Their new algorithm chooses the same few people - about 25 - who will read your posts. Therefore,
Hold your finger down anywhere in this post and "copy" will pop up. Click "copy". Then go your page, start a new post and put your finger anywhere in the blank field. "Paste" will pop up and click paste.
This will bypass the system.
Thank you It WORKS!! I have a whole new news feed. I’m seeing posts from people I haven’t seen in years.

Can I pick this apart? Would a professional writer say "friends posts"? Then there is "some say you don't?? What gives?" This is NOT her writing. Definitely not. Nor is this: "Yes. Adding bypass It works It WORKS!! Come on, people, that is nuts."

I might believe it, perhaps, if someone posted, "I saw this thing about bypassing the Facebook algorithm and decided to give it a try," with personal results. Which would be exactly nothing.

People say, "Hey, it does no harm." Yes it does. It leads me around by the nose, it deludes me, and I hate that. As with fake news, I no longer know what to believe. What a waste of energy, and what a phony and disappointing vibe to get from a Facebook friend.

A long time ago I got a "questionnaire" I had to publicly fill out, all about the color of my panties, my bra size, how I behave when drunk, how many men I've had, etc. It was all in the name of "breast cancer awareness". This was nowhere near the date for that day and turned out to be a complete hoax designed to embarrass people, including me (and it was sent by a close friend!). But if you refused to take it, people were hurt, angry and edged away from you, or even unfriended you for "not caring about breast cancer". At very least, you were chided for being a poor sport for criticizing something that was all in good fun and completely harmless.

I care about breast cancer, but what I don't care about are bogus posts meant to humiliate me in public and blur the line between genuine information and absolute dreck. This truly is a life-and-death matter, and meaningless questionnaires are of no use, cause confusion and even do harm. But a number of people claimed it actually DID "raise awareness" of breast cancer, meaning women all ran to have a completely unnecessary mammogram, or just said, "OH! I had no idea there was such a thing as breast cancer. I'm so glad I'm aware."

Meantime, let's say it all together:

Yes Adding bypass It work It WORKS!! It's just that the university professor who cut and pasted the message was having an off day.

"My doll's eyes are MOVING!": the video that rocked the internet

Why is this video so significant? I'll tell you why. It isn't. But unlike most of my YouTube videos, which garner somewhere between one and ten views, this one got 18,500 (and counting - every day that I check, it's higher).

It has long been my belief that there's something "off" with YouTube's view-counting system. Weirdly, it's skewed in favor of those who get the most views. Multi-millions and even BILLIONS of views are now possible for monetized channels. Meantime, little old me gets a handful, if that. Sometimes if I look on my video manager, the number of views is wildly different than what shows up on my page.

So what is going on? And does YouTube care? All I know is, every once in a while something happens on my channel that is WAY weird.

Awhile ago, someone named LaurenZside https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBnbqt4VRhotq2TQjkIi2A liked one of my videos - well, liked it, or thought it was weird. (It was.) It was this one:

In this one, the trolls do absolutely nothing. The thing is, I think people assume I am a little old lady who is so demented, she thinks the trolls ARE doing something - not to mention talking to her and voting in the latest Federal election. They don't get that this is supposed to be absurd and crazy BECAUSE they don't do anything.

LaurenZside is very popular, though I am not sure what she does. Probably gaming, if I knew what THAT was. She has lots of fans, most of whom seem to be young girls. Their thumbnails are unicorns and rainbows and such. Soon, I was getting hundreds of views for this video, not to mention comments. People kept saying they "came from LaurenZ". I did finally find the clip she posted in which she shows a few seconds of it. She must have posted a link to it or something.

That's cool, it's kind of fun, and it doesn't really matter what LaurenZ or her fans think of me, so long as they are entertained by this. 

But wait, there's more: "My Doll's Eyes are MOVING!" was made as a lark a very long time ago when I had a VERY brief fling with reborn dolls. I was too cheap to buy real ones, so got some fairly convincing knockoffs from eBay for about 30 bucks. Nobody really watched it, the usual scattering, and a very few comments saying the doll's eyes were NOT moving, that the effect was from shaking the camera, which is probably true. Then: KA-BOOM! 18,500 views, all at once it seemed.

The only other time this happened was when a short video of the family singing Happy Birthday to Ryan went nuts. Not exactly viral, but over 80,500, and for why? It's cute, yes, but most of my stuff is mighty cute, isn't it?

When I finally tracked down the LaurenZ video, I realized the "My Doll's Eyes are MOVING!" video was also mentioned, and a tiny clip included, even with my voice in it!  This explained the (for me) avalanche of views, which wouldn't be a blip on most YouTubers' radar. But fun for me, and even funner reading the comments. Everyone seems to be good-natured and willing to enter the spirit of the thing, even while INSISTING it's just the camera shaking (which it is).

Relevant passages are at  1:58 and 7:58. I have just taken a video of HER video showing MY video, and I want to see if they cancel each other out (perhaps a self-erasing video?) or disappear into a vortex of immeasurable depth and terror.

Hiking in Hawaii

SOLVED: the mystery of the Narwhal!

                                               The mystery revealed!

I WILL fit in this box.

The view

Curling with kitty

               What a man won't do for his cat.

Ghost owl

Corset Queens: a Victorian gallery

Catfight!!

       Go full-screen, you've got to hear that "meow"!

Cat Drag Race

Elizabeth Holmes: time's up

                                       Time's up.

I WANT THIS TROLL!

I. Want. This. Troll.

Don't ever start a collection, of anything, or this will happen.

What happened was - I don't know if I want to go back that far! Let's say I had a troll collection already, but somehow it was never complete. I felt guilty about every purchase I made, since we're on a very modest budget all the time.

AND THEN.

And then, today, rummaging in my wallet for my bus pass, I spied - a cheque. It had my name on it. I had almost forgotten I had it! And it had a tasty amount on it, too, very tasty.

The Canada Council for the Arts had sent it to me, not for a specific work but for contributing to "the arts" through publishing three novels and writing approximately 300 book reviews and over a thousand newspaper columns over a substantial period of time.

Pay.

I don't get pay from too many other sources. It also delighted me because it easily covered ALL my trolls, most of them costing five bucks and none of them more than forty (most of that being postage and handling).

I couldn't think of anything more apt than covering the cost of all my trolls with my Canada Council cheque. But do you realize what this means??

That's right. We're square, and I can once more feel guilty lusting after new trolls, looking on PicClick (an eBay search site) late into the night. My last "big guy" was most unusual, looked brand new which he couldn't be, and had a totally different configuration, as if made by another company. The troll world is odd and full of anomalies and huge gaps in information. I assumed however that he would be my last "big guy" and that if I got anything else, it would be a small Wishnik, simply because I didn't HAVE any Wishniks and it made a hole in my collection.

But I don't like Wishniks. I tried to like them. Their bulging eyes were pretty much their only outstanding feature. Most of them were old and the worse for wear, with sad clumps of hair coming away from the scalp. Some had no hair at all. The larger ones had hideous flat, elongated heads with huge ears and evil faces. No charm at all.

Wishniks were a direct knockoff of Dam trolls, which are still the gold standard for collectors, mainly because there are just more of them, at different price ranges, different manufacturing dates, and with vastly different designs. Wishniks are just, well, Wishniks. The ad that used to run when I was a kid irritated me: "Just let a Wish-nik/Let you come smi-ling through." They have double horseshoes engraved on the bottoms of their feet. 

Plus they just cost too damn much, $40.00 or more for a small troll in so-so repair.

Whether I get this "big guy" troll or not is undecided. There were a ton of photos on the eBay page, which was nice because sometimes you only get one grainy one, so I was able to make this wonderful animation. Often when I finally make my move, the troll is gone. Or I suddenly change direction and decide that I hate that troll and want something else.

THAT troll.

Post-mortem. Sigh. It happened again. Somebody bought that troll. That troll that was far too expensive for me, anyway. This is what happens when you start a collection. And the weird thing is, I've never collected anything in my life before!

Now I know why.

Horse joy: kicking up his heels