Apparently, he told another longstanding DAN activist that he "would have sacked me months ago, but only kept me on because he felt sorry for me". Which means that all my fears of redundancy (see, eg here), which i spent so long managing to convince myself were just paranoia, were true.

I really do fail at existing.

I feel like i am living in a nightmare that i can't wake up from. Everything has gone crazy and incomprehensible. Job has broken down completely, employer getting more and more unreasonable, paranoid, aggressive, authoritarian and impossible to work with until late last night he phoned me to supposedly sack me by text message (possibly to pre-empt me quitting). This all apparently over differences in organising an action which he was all for until incredibly recently. Friends suggest taking him to court but i don't think that would be either right or possible.

Physically and mentally, i'm a mess. Not eating properly (ravenously hungry but gagging on food every time i put it in my mouth), not sleeping properly, stomach pain, diarrhea, heart rate going crazy, getting overloaded to the point of meltdown by ridiculously tiny things, struggling with all forms of communication. My flat is filthy and mouldy and i have absolutely no energy to do anything about it, washing up feels like an impossibility, let alone cooking (I have a fridge full of food which is probably going to go off because i don't have the energy to cook it).

Scared shitless to think about my future. Pretty much no chance anyone else is going to be willing to employ me as a PA now (even if i knew anyone who was looking for one), and i'd already given up on every other sort of work after 2 years of unemployment and pretty much no response at all to job applications before being "lucky" enough to get this job. Despite occasional arguments, it was by far the "best" or at least nearest-to-good job i have ever had or even hoped to have. Feel like a complete failure for cocking up something that was about the only close to stable income situation i have ever had, but more to the point, was my only chance of saving up enough money to enable me to do the MA that i've been wanting to do "next year" for... easily the last 5 years.

I was on track to have enough for at least my course fees (if not living costs too) by September 2010, assuming my income stayed the same. Now... no chance. Too old, not disabled enough, and not closely tied enough to a particular area for any trusts to fund me, ESRC don't fund taught MAs, and don't think i have much chance of getting a Leeds MA scholarship (only 15 of them for the whole uni, which is one of the biggest in the UK). And Colin Barnes is threatening to retire in the next couple of years.

I don't know what the fuck else i can do. Really not at all far from complete hopelessness right now.

a footless black scythe
wheels, screams freedom to the sky
vanguard of summer

This weather should be making me feel really good. Instead, it's giving me wildly dissonant mood swings between the (real, but ultimately superficial) physical/sensory good feeling induced by the weather and huge heaps of frustration and isolation because i feel like i don't have anyone to share it with.

Feeling like i'm stuck in this city doesn't help. I know it's the sensible thing to stay here because i have a steady income, and that means that my medium-to-long-term goal (self-funding an MA) is doable if i stay here for another year, but i only have one friend i would count as close enough to call a "real" friend here, and she's moving to Wales at the end of July, and i don't have *any* friends in this city who are within 10 years of my age (which isn't exactly as young as i'd like it to be, either... being 27 is a reminder of just how many years i feel like i've "wasted" in terms of being without either a partner or a solid, stable social life).

I do have good friends close to my own age in other cities, but it feels like an uphill struggle keeping in touch with them, and i can't help thinking that if i was living in one of those other cities, i'd actually have a social life that was vaguely coherent and i'd actually, y'know, just casually *do* stuff with friends, rather than having to put all the effort into chasing after them all the time (and possibly drive them away in the process). I'm really feeling the loss of my formerly-closest and longest-running close friend ever (the friend i wrote about here), who i've had to accept, after several months of trying and failing to get through to her by phone and a long and heartfelt letter to which she hasn't replied, is no longer a part of my life... which leaves me feeling very unpleasantly without continuity between my past and present.

It's also hard trying to disentangle sexual, intellectual and generally-social frustration from one another - they all seem to entwine together in this big gestalt at the moment. (The other negative of good weather is that the sexual frustration is amplified, both by the general improvement in my physical/sensory well-being and by there being more women in revealing clothing around, the latter of which also makes me feel like a hideously lecherous straightcismale privileged/entitled dickhead.)

Really wanting to spend some time just casually hanging out with someone right now. Still, the weather is ensuring that i can't feel my depression *too* deeply or consistently (it almost has an anti-depressant-like effect that way on me) - i just keep going up and down in a way that makes me feel very inconsistent and dissonant. (Ironically, right now feeling far better and less frustrated than when i started writing this, all of 20 minutes ago...)

It was between me, beccaviola, foibey and possibly, but not definitely, tartful_dodger (or one of his previous identities), and it was about PA work and what it would look like in a less capitalist, more autonomous society. Want to use it for a proper blog post. For some reason cannot find it on the journals of any of the 3 people above, despite having gone back to earlier than it could possibly have been on all of them. (My guess is that it was probably around November/December, but i could be wrong...)

I've written and then scrapped several kiloword+ rants about this topic, and got more frustrated with my inability to write coherently and accurately-representatively-of-my-thoughts each time*, so i'm just going to say:

This is me.

This is one thing i am considering possibly doing about it.

Any thoughts or advice gratefully considered.

*I think i may be in one of those phases where i can express myself much more concisely and/or coherently in response to communication from other people, rather than starting from scratch trying to write about myself.

Bloody hell, i'm 27.

Is fucking good.

I wholeheartedly recommend it to all autists, crips, transpeoples and freaks of any other description.

That is all, for tonight.

Woke up at about 4am last night with an incredible feeling of profound "wrongness". Took me a couple of minutes to realise that it was in fact physical pain, and once i realised that it was absolute agony.

Actually phoned NHS Direct and ended up arguing for ages with the woman on the phone line (and wasting £10 of phone credit) because she basically just kept parroting the line "go to A&E" and wouldn't a) tell me how long the wait to be seen was at my local A&E (2 1/2 miles away, and no way to get there but walk at that time of night) or b) listen to me trying to tell her that, based on the 4 or 5 times that i have had this set of symptoms before, the symptoms would be entirely or almost entirely gone by the time i got seen at A&E and therefore i would be treated as wasting hospital time. *Eventually* she did give me the number of the A&E reception, who weren't much more helpful but at least seemed to get the concept.

Walked out to high street to credit phone at cashpoint and buy painkillers (yay new 24 hour shop nearby!). Decided no way was i walking 2 1/2 miles in that temperature. Called A&E reception, asked them what waiting time was, was basically told it could be anything between 20 minutes and 3 hours. Symptoms were fading anyway, so took a couple more ibuprofen and went back to bed. A&E receptionist person *did* tell me about out of hours GP service, which i hadn't previously realised existed outside of remote countryside areas. (Although for that i would still need to know my GP's phone number... which i don't.)

So, symptoms: basically, a sort of hard lumpy swelling (which sort of feels like a twist/blockage in something... kind if like if a hosepipe gets twisted and swells up) above/behind my right testicle, accompanied by very intense pain. Has happened to me probably about 5 other times, with varying degrees of severity, first when i was about 16/17 (which was the worst and longest-lasting time... tho this one was possibly as bad in intensity, if not as long in duration). Lasts about 3-4 hours. The testicle remains tender and slightly painful to the touch for a day or so afterwards, but the swelling completely vanishes. Ibuprofen actually has a fairly quick and noticeable effect on it, suggesting it might be inflammatory in nature.

The problem with it in terms of seeing doctors is that it's gone - completely asymptomatic - by the time i can get to one. With my record of having been as good as told by several GPs that all my physical issues are psychosomatic and i am a hypochondriac (which couldn't be further from the truth actually, given my extreme *fear* of doctors and hospitals), i very strongly think that if i went to a GP about this while presenting no symptoms i would be treated as a timewaster/Baron Munchausen/taking the piss... especially with the prurient snigger factor of testicles. I am sort of worried about it tho...

Any suggestions?

i want to fall backwards with you into infinite black dub oceans and chant down every downpressor with footfalls like the agony and ecstasy of the creation and destruction of universes

i want to walk with you in the fields and over the hills and under the blue shimmering sky in the sweet pure spirit of summer of free love of peace and understanding

i want to lie in your arms and listen to antony hegarty and tracy chapman and sinead o'connor and i want us to cry cleansing tears together, from jerusalem to judah,

and i want your whip upon my back and your fists in my face in the gritty sweaty undergrowth and in the grinding and the pounding and the blazing and the darkness, i want us to be fucked off our faces together.

and out of the cold and the dark i want us to rise and feel the heavens quake before our light like a mountain

LOL WTF???

"Swans fight it out in cathedral test"

If i didn't know that the Daily Telegraph was a real (and generally quite conservative/right-wing) paper, i would have thought that swan story was an entirely made up, slightly-subtler-than-the-Onion parody of British Tory racism...

Those nasty, vicious, "dirty fighting", immigrant BLACK swans, threatening our native British WHITE swans... and if they win, the CATHEDRAL will FALL DOWN!!!!1!!!

And we don't even know how they got into the country! They could be ILLEGALS! And, even worse, we're "prevented by law from intervening"! It's Political Correctness... gone MAD!!!!11!!!

/sarcasm

(Incidentally, i'm sure the "prevented by law from intervening" bit is false - Australian black swans, as a non-native species, would not be protected under any UK wildlife law, and i'm sure it would be perfectly legal to capture them and take them into captivity, say at a local zoo or bird sanctuary. And i'd be willing to bet that the "cathedral will fall down" legend is a load of old cobblers...)

Fuck, that was heavy.

Was not expecting that twist. The counter-twist didn't defuse the effect on me. :(

(Although i think i missed one or two crucial lines that would have made the counter-twist clearer. Missed a few other lines as well, thanks to a combination of Scottish accents, my APD and my crappy buzzy telly. Think i might have to re-watch it with the subtitles on...)

2 other things that come to mind:

1) That conversation between the mother and son about "putting her away" was horrible... alright, possibly intentionally so, but i wish someone in the film (even if the point was that neither of them were aware of it) had mentioned assisted independent living as an option.

2) That art/photo exhibition was totally out of order... as a "surprise" - without her consent? No. Not acceptable at all. Wish that had been explicitly critiqued in the film too, rather than it just being Emotional Teary Moment.

Oh, third thing - we don't actually find out where Roberta ends up living in the end. I suppose the presumption is that Roberta, Kenny and Ruby form a household, but it isn't clarified.

Was a very well made film in that no one in it, not even Roberta herself, was total hero or villain. Assisted suicide doctor guy reminded me of Peter Singer as described in Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her meeting and debate with him.

Probably not a good idea to have started watching it at 2am, on reflection...

1. Blog more often.

2. Sort my finances out such that i am saving money on a long-term basis (in particular, by opening a credit union account, with the main thing i am saving for being a future postgraduate degree).

3. Do *something* about this whole unwanted-sex-drive/sexual frustration thing by the end of 2009 (either a relationship or something physical/chemical).

4. Read/watch the huge pile of books and films i have bought and not got round to reading/watching (some of which i have had since at least 2006).

5. Learn enough about computers to not have to rely on other people to get this one functional again every time something goes wrong with it.

6. Have a social life.

There may have been more, but right at this moment i cannot think of them...

This is one of the awesomest, creepiest things ever.

It should be one of the Angels in Evangelion...

So a friend posted a link to the recent puberty blockers news story on Facebook, and there was some interesting debate there.

There were a lot of people (primarily genderqueer but not trans, as far as i could see) coming out against it primarily because of the subtext of there only being 2 possible genders that a person could want to live in, thus that such physical treatments (and presumably physical transition in general) reinforces the gender binary - to which i responded:

ok... still low on verbal coherence spoons, but felt i had to come back to this...

you know my utopia is a world in which no one is gendered anything, and the whole social concept of gender doesn't exist. thing is... even in a perfect social world, there would *still* be people who have a physical/hormonal need to change their *sex* (as in, gonads, genitalia and hormone levels). for some people, it's not a sociol/political thing, it's nothing more and nothing less than an impairment.

therefore, i think these drugs should be available to the people who need them. and people who truly are transsexual (in the "it's about physical sex, not gender" sense) very definitely *are* capable of making unambiguous decisions about it at a very early age - my friend twiggy, for example, knew she was a girl despite having boy bits for as long as she could remember, and i saw her with my own eyes go from chronically depressed (worse than me) to practically ecstatic *as soon as* she started taking the hormones. i know of others who tried to cut off their penis at the age of 6, or ftms who tried life threatening stuff to stop themselves starting to menstruate, etc...

see here: http://questioningtransphobia.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/puberty-blockers/

(and that blog in general, also a lot of the stuff at taking up too much space: http://takesupspace.wordpress.com )

yes, there is a lot of fucked up social stuff which means genderqueer-but-not-transsexual ppl *might* be pressurised into early transition and regret it, but frankly i think that's a lot less likely than the opposite, those who need to transition being denied it, at least in current political climate.

(continued cos got too long)

and i get really pissed off with the assertion that "transitioning transsexuals reinforce the gender binary", cos they really don't, or at the very least no more than the average cis man/woman in the street does - what really reinforces it is the medical gatekeeper bullshit that *forces* people to conform to binary gender stereotypes in order to get the hormones/body modifications they feel they need. if that wasn't there, and ppl could get hormones and/or surgery on a libertarian model of informed consent, then they wouldn't have to do all that crap... so don't blame trans ppl, blame the misogynistic and gender-binary-defensive medical establishment...

so yeah. probably more, but i am knackered and its nearly 3am, and i should be in bed. apologies if this is really incoherent (and for my apparent inability to use capital letters)... i will re-read tomorrow to check that i haven't inadvertently said the opposite of what i mean by misplacing a "not" in a sentence or anything...

(yes, facebook seems to kill my ability to use capital letters for some reason... probably the "chat" applet...)

to which i got this response:

the problem with imagining a world without gender is that you are already locked into a discourse that makes it impossible. a discourse wherein the very way that you and i think (and the way you think you think, the way you think about thought itself) is structured beyond your control and beyond your knowledge -- and it's certain that gender forms an integral part of that discourse. so trying to imagine a world without gender is impossible because the position from which you imagine it is one that is very definitely, fundamentally, informed by gender! (sorry about the exclamation mark, just wanted to add emphasis) i find this comes through in the way you argue the point you make. there can be no *need* to change sex without the pressures that accrue because of gender roles and social pressures, etc. it's a difficult point because it complicates everything. it would be so much simpler if it were the case that some people just *need* to change their **sex**, independent of any gender issue. unfortunately that could never be possible.

to which i don't really know how to respond... any ideas?

(also, being genderqueer-but-not-trans myself, i would be interested to know whether actual transitioning trans people would agree with my argument - not wanting to fall into the trap of representing experiences/positions not my own...)

I see parallels between the need for the social model of disability to recognise the reality of impairment and the need for socialism in general (but particularly in the economic sphere) to recognise the reality of ecological limits and environmental problems.

Postmodernism, Marxism and (some forms of) radical feminism all fall into similar traps of denying physical, biological and/or ecological realities.

The disabled people's liberation movement is, if not the only, then the strongest example of a movement that is necessarily both libertarian and socialist. Does it resolve potential contradictions between libertarian and socialist political theory/ethics/philosophy?

Is really fucking weird, when you actually think about it.

Who invented the idea of using a hot bit of metal and some steam to get the creases out of clothes?

Or the idea that having creases in your clothes was bad, really...

Been trying to subvertise some Children in Need stuff. Downloaded an image from a colouring book site of the Pudsey bear, and done most of what i want to do, but am having some trouble with the colours - namely, i have been trying to get red, and can get it in the colour pallet, but when i actually try to put any red into the actual picture, it comes out as a muddy green...

(and no, i know i don't have undiagnosed red-green colour blindness...)

This is as far as i have got with the image:

second edit: ARGH HOW DO YOU UPLOAD AN IMAGE FROM YOUR OWN COMPUTER ONTO LIVEJOURNAL??? I can't work it out... i'll have to post it on my facebook or blogspot or something and link to it here, i guess... anyway the original, totally un-altered image is here - i have coloured Pudsey yellow, added vampire fangs and changed the text to "BBC CHARITY VAMPIRE"...

I want to turn the spots on his eyepatch/bandana thing red, and add some red to look like blood splatters on his fangs and paws.

(I also haven't worked out how to save the image in another format, eg .jpg or .gif instead of .png... not that it matters much, i'm just finding GIMP a bit un-user-friendly... tho i do love the name ;) )

Went out to a music night for the first time in ages last night. It was a "pirate themed" dub/funk/drum'n'bass benefit night for Palestine solidarity in a very nice (if not optimally accessible or findable) new city centre warehouse venue.

Pretty good mix of music, mostly drum'n'bass while i was there but bits of roots/dub, ragga/dancehall, 60s/70s funk and sort-of hip-hop/breakbeat type stuff. 90s ragga-jungle is the awesomest; pretty damn happy-making to see all the pretty, "ultra-hip" uni student types geting properly sweaty dancing their arses off to it in a crowded (although not TOO crowded) little basement...

The ceiling of said basement was (at maximum) 2m, which slightly cramped my dancing style, given that i'm about 1.8m tall and tend to get a good 30cm off the floor while really hard skanking to jungle or steppers, plus the hands-in-the-air suff. Was kind of funny in a vaguely-feminist way to see the majority of the women dancing completely freely while the majority of the men (and a few very tall women) were being cramped by the ceiling, tho.

Was really fucking good to get really into dancing in a proper public party with big speakers context. Surprised myself with my energy levels... in fact, surprised myself by deciding to go in the first place, given that it's REALLY out of character for me to go to anything like that on my own/without a group of friends to go in with and back with after. A few people there who i knew and chatted a bit with, but spent most of the time just dancing. Was conscious of being the only person (most of the time) on the dancefloor not in a circle/group, but didn't really care that much, which is really good as very often i get so paralysed by self-consciousness around that sort of thing that i just walk straight out and end up going home depressed and/or crying. Also wasn't jostled much, which i think helped.

I can get to feel like dancing seriously is my spirituality... hence the username & icon. Need to post on proper blog about that. Also, it's about the only thing that seems to pretty much entirely negate my sexual frustration... at least while i'm "in" the music. My knees are feeling it today, tho.

Did end up walking home when the event was going to go on for another couple of hours, but that was mainly because i didn't want to fuck up my sleeping patterns *too* much, given that i have to get up for work 4 days out of 7. Did get the isolation/alienation thing, but nowhere near as badly as could have done.

It was actually a tune on a podcast - DJ Spooky's remix of Barrington Levy's "Under Me Sensi", here (Oct 20th), to be precise - which tipped the scales of my decision to go out. It really is amazing how much energy music can give me - i got home from work utterly knackered, thinking there was no chance i would feel up to going out and i would get an early night, then ate and had a cup of tea while listening to the podcast, and suddenly felt uber energised.

It's annoying that winter both increases my need for social interaction and decreases my tolerance for it (along with my belief that anyone would want to socially interact with me), but i think that was a fairly successful anti-SAD intervention...

I actually seriously considered calling in sick this morning, for the first time in this job yet.

Very, very lucky to have an employer understanding enough to not mind me turning up an hour late, as long as i text him to let him know beforehand. (Mind you, i pretty much always end up "working" about an hour beyond the time i'm "supposed" to finish, depending on where exactly the kind-of-fuzzy-in-my-case boundary between "work" and "non-work" time lies...)

Taking an hour and a half from my alarm going off to actually being able to get out of bed is not good.