Random Rant and venting thread for general or specific rage

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

I think I just did something stupid. My work ethic is resurfacing. The lab now has 4 computers with loose ethernet cables. Basically, the tab on the clip that plugs into the computer has been snapped off and the cord will come out at the slightest jostling. Currently the cables are being held into the computers with Scotch tape, but that's not the best solution. I'm constantly battling the Microsoft demons to keep the machines online so that the huddled masses can get their MySpace fix. Frankly, I'm tired of someone jerking the computer off the network and then having to spend 20 minutes of my Bejeweled time getting the cable back in.

So I decided I was going to fix it myself.*

First, I poked around the interwebz for bulk spools of ethernet cable. My Google-fu was weak and I only found ready-made cables of varying lengths. That's nice, but not what I wanted. I can't afford to replace 4 cables at $20 a piece. I shot off an e-mail to my high school buddy, E to see if she knew of any retailers that sold bulk spools. E was the one in our year constantly hacking the network. She found quite a few holes in the school's new security software (including HR's list of employee social security numbers), but quit telling them about problems after they tried to yank her computer privileges. E's advice was to get a bag of clips to replace the broken ones. A bag of 50 runs $15-$20. Unfortunately, I still need a crimper, which I also can't really afford and I'm not buying just for this one gig.

I had no choice but to e-mail IT to see if they had one and admit to my superiors I might be able to succeed where they had failed.** And that I'm willing to do it. Supervisor N has put in the request to IT to see if they'll let me fix the cords. I really didn't want this particular skill to be out in the open. I wanted to keep the mystery.

* I have crimped ethernet cables before. Once. Several years ago. However, armed with Google and Wikipedia, I am reasonably confident in my abilities. As long as I can see the wires.

** I'm pretty sure the IT guys know how to crimp a cable. Or at least know how to look it up on Wikipedia. But they were supposed to be getting me brand new cables, and that's where they have failed.

[Princess 35]

You're not supposed to go above and beyond JM!

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

i know! what's wrong with meeeeeeeee?

[Bad furday 57]

You're supposed to be a complacent, docile worker! An unthinking automaton, a cog in the great machine of progress! ;)

[Uncle Du 22]

Bah, do what makes you happy!

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

yay!

*quits job, joins circus* :D

[Bad furday 57]

Jm......trapeze artist? lion tamer? bareback horse rider? Clown? :p

[TheUnknown 39]

Jm......trapeze artist? lion tamer? bareback horse rider? Clown?

Why am I not surprised that the words "JM," "Furday," and "bareback" are all in the same post?

[Bad furday 57]

:lol: :rofl:

[Radioactive Isotope 29]

Jm......trapeze artist? lion tamer? bareback horse rider? Clown?

Snow Cone seller

Jm......trapeze artist? lion tamer? bareback horse rider? Clown?

Why am I not surprised that the words "JM," "Furday," and "bareback" are all in the same post?

bad, Unknown. BAD! *swats with newspaper*

[Uncle Du 22]

Classic!!

[Princess 35]

It's just missing the beeurdwail

[Bad furday 57]

*cackle*

Gooood! Goooood!!!!

And Jm...you run away to the circus and all you can aspire to be is Snow Cone Seller? Tsk tsk!

*shakes head in disappointment* :p

[Andy 60]

Jm......trapeze artist? lion tamer? bareback horse rider? Clown?

Why am I not surprised that the words "JM," "Furday," and "bareback" are all in the same post?

It's just missing the beeurdwail

UNNNNNKNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!

*smacks head on desk*

[Uncle Du 22]

You see, it's just not the same when one has to be reminded of something... :p

[Princess 35]

Yeah

[Andy 60]

I hadn't seen it yet! :p

[Chickenman 9]

I've been trying to write this particular rant for a good month or so, but either the words won't come to me, or I lack the energy to do so. Whatever.

This is going to be an intensely personal rant, but I really needed to rant my thoughts into words and I also needed to vent to someone, anyone, even if you guys aren't going to read it. Anyway:

Lately the entirety of my existence has collapsed into self loathing. I mean, I'm a depressed whiner at the best of times, but I really hate every fiber of being.

It's been over a year since the ex dumped me, and while doing so was the greatest gift she could have ever given me (I thank her every day. Figuratively, I mean. I'd rather eat glass than talk to her), I still haven't bounced back. Part of it is the fact that I'm socially retarded and can't handle meeting new people, female or male, or I just can't handle social situations in general. In addition to that, I'm just not an attractive prospect at all. I'm an insecure, angry, critical asshole, and these are my good qualities. Years and years of anger directed outward at others and actual hatred directed inward at myself have etched a permanent scowl on my face, to the point where people keep their distance because it looks like I'll kick their ass if they so much as make eye contact with me (Which they should really reconsider, because I'm the very definition of a pushover: Weak, out of shape and a coward.) Even when I'm happy, I look in the mirror and the scowl is there. But mostly people see this anger projected onto when I'm actually feeling numbness behind that face. Numbness is really the emotion I feel most often. This anger at myself isn't so much white hot as cold and brittle. So you can see how the ladies want to strike up a conversation with the guy staring holes into the wall. I'm not interesting, I'm not skilled at anything, there's nothing to make someone want to hold a single conversation with me, nevermind spend actual time with. Physically I'm not exactly a catch either. Though my loose t-shirts for the most part hide it, there's no denying the fact that I'm getting fat on gallons of soda and a never-ending stream of junk food, both of which I consume without end throughout the day, because, ewok, there's nothing else to do. Only my superhumanly fast metabolism is keeping me from becoming truly obese, and hell, that's not going to last forever, now is it? I haven't been fit since I quit the wrestling team in sophomore year, and no matter how much I try, my exercise plans always seem to get overruled by the Internet and and king size boxes of Junior Mints. And capping this chiseled physique at its peak is a haircut that makes me look like a lunatic, but that I can't seem to do a ewoking thing with. It's not quite an afro and it's not quite Albert Einstein (Although I'm already getting white hairs at the ripe old age of 19, from all the stress I place on myself. I'm just looking forward to the ulcers, myself.). I've tried to do something with it to make myself look less like the guy on the subway holding a conversation with his half-of-a-shoe, but it's uncontrollable. Overall, I'm absolutely sick of the way I live. Emotionally and physically, I am completely unfit to date anybody and as much as I'd like to make some changes to my life, I've found myself unable to do so.

I'm socially retarded. All of the social cues I should have learned as a kid, I just...I never picked up. I mean, I'm not in full blown social outcast mode, I've learned just enough to bring me close to normalcy, but just missing it. I can't meet people, and I can't even hold conversations with the people I do know. I can't tell when to cut something out, and I'm hypercritical of everyone I meet, pointing out their flaws in casual conversation if I'm close enough to them, thus hurting those that are closest to me and keeping those fortunate enough to not know me very well far away. The worst is that I've never learned how to manage a friendship. I can't hold on to them. From what I've gleaned from other people talking about their own social failures (which can never seem to hold a candle to mine) it's not exactly an easy thing to do, but I just seem to get very close to someone and then suddenly the connection disappears. My friends are the most important people in my life, but I can't hold on to them and I get slowly crushed as I realize that what we had (Or rather, what I had imagined we had) is shimmering away. All of this hurts a hundred times more than it normally would because, more than anything else, I wish I was the popular guy that everyone likes. I wanted nothing more badly in high school, and that certainly never ewoking happened, and won't happen in college either. There's been one class my entire life where I was the class clown, which got me laughs but also earned the annoyance of my peers at the same time, and that's the closest I've ever come. For the longest time, it's killed me that rather than an extroverted guy that people genuinely like being around, I'm this introverted loser that chases people away before they get the chance to talk to me. In all of my classes so far in college, I've just sat their, escaping into my iPod as an excuse for why I'm not chatting with my classmates, trying to appear anti-social rather than socially deficient. There was a point in my life where my idiotic shyness vs. popularity paradox convinced me that I must have some kind of disorder, and so I diagnosed myself with one I read about online, and tried to talk to a shrink. I ended up talking to a psychiatrist (or psychologist, it's one or the other) whose answer to my problems was to start taking medication and whose meetings with me consisted of telling me that I need to do better in school is the only way to get a better life for myself. Thanks bud. I couldn't have figured that one out on my own. Telling me s*** I already know and not showing me how to fix it isn't helping. By the way, turns out I didn't have that disorder, so instead they diagnosed me with ADD and continued to collect money from my parents' paychecks for months afterwards. And I'm still a social retard. At least I had a small group of friends who helped me through all of this, and who I could trust with me life. Until they turned against me in Senior Year, thus ruining that year and destroying what little social life I had. ewoking w00t man. Though now I'm babbling (as though this whole ewoking thing hasn't been one long babble). Long story short. I can't connect with people in any sort of meaningful way, and I'm doomed to be a freak of society for the rest of my life. I'm just not a pleasant person to be around, and you'd have to be ever so mildy nuts to want to shackle yourself to me for even one conversation. ewoking w00t, right?

I observed from an early age that being funny got you friends and got you some semblance of respect when you couldn't really stack up in any other meaningful way. This is why I developed an interest in comedy at an early age, and tried to make my sense of humor the defining characteristic of my being. Of course, all of this observation on the practical aspects of comedy came from observing others. It turns out, well, I'm not funny. Never have been. Prided myself on being funny, but I'm not. At all. Even close. Every once in awhile I get lucky, and I chalk those up as a comedic victory, and as I chalk up more and more of these accidents as comedic gold, I somehow convinced my subconscious that I was a funny motherewoker, even though my conscious mind realized that 99% of the time I was just being annoying and making people hate me, something that Subby never seemed to figure out. Sure, I've done stand-up and gotten laughs, but it's not amazingly hard to get a bunch of drunkards to giggle a little at a joke about leaving a rollerskate at the top of the stairs your pregnant girlfriend is descending. (In my defense, I'd like to point out that that particular joke is not as horrific as it sounds, and is not about the inherent hilarity of a forced miscarriage. It's more of a tongue-in-cheek jab at misogyny in general. But let's face it, most people aren't going to pick up on the sarcasm and the joke just isn't one of my prouder moments as a "comedian.") I'm just not a funny person. I mean, I've spent much of the past 4 or 5 years studying comedy harder than I have my actual schoolwork. I know how jokes work from the Freudian level of what makes us laugh to the little tricks like the rule of the three and what a "topper" is. I can scarcely enjoy comedy anymore because I've broken it down to a science. But it turns out when it's my turn, I'm just not funny. I don't have it. And yet that's what the delusion that is my life is based upon. Sure I'm an asshole, but people will appreciate me for the funny. Sure, I don't have any discernible skills that can get me a job outside of sanitation engineering, but that's okay, cause I'm funny. I'm an ugly motherewoker, but I've got a shot with a woman because women like humor, and god damn it, I'm funny!

There was supposed to be another paragraph or eight in here, but I've lost them, and it's 3 in the ewoking morning anyway. In summation, I wish I could turn these failed 19 years around to prevent the next 19 from being just as big a massive s***ball. I've already blown my formative years, but I'd give anything to at least save the years where I actually leave my mark on the world. No matter how hard I try though, it seems like all I do is repeat the same failures, because I'm an idiot, and I'm pathetic. So w00t.

Thanks. Just needed to get that off my chest.

[Bad furday 57]

Awwww..

I mean...Chicken, are you my twin? I can relate to some of what you said. :???:

[Link 3]

So I was gonna rant, but Chicken wins.

[Link 3]

Hey, um. Where did the debate thread/forum go? I had an interesting discussion with someone the other day and I want to see what you guys' takes on it would be.

[TheUnknown 39]

Chicken,

I'm still not sure what's the best route to take in responding to your comment. I was going to make a joke, but when I'm in my depressive mode (which is increasingly often), I'm not in the mood for humor. Then again, when I leave my cryptic status updates on Facebook hinting at just unhappy I am, I never seem to get the response I want in large part because I really don't know. So, I don't know if this is what will work best with you. Truthfully, I've found the only way to break out of a depressed mood is to sleep it off.

Anyways, I'm going through the same things you are. I've been diagnosed with ADD, anxiety, and depression. I've been told there are multiple forms of anxiety with definitions and delineations often shifting in psychology academia, but I know I have the form called social phobia, aka, social anxiety disorder. I'm nervous to talk on the phone to order pizza. I gag when I go to see my friends. I feel along even with others. I'm bad about separating myself from others and retreating to a corner or a chair, where I feel secure. (I also have some generalized anxiety and the occaisional panic attack, but that's a different story). And there's a reason why I don't have a real picture of me here or on Myspace or on Facebook.

As for the depression, there are times when I think the only things keeping me from leaping off the eighth floor of the parking deck on campus are 1) having a fear of death that overwhelms in desire to just free myself of my problems, 2) picturing my mother and my aunts crying at my funeral, and 3) lacking the balls and the motivation to actually do it.

I'm seeing both a psychologist and a psychiatrist (the psychologist works through things with non-medicinal therapy; the psychiatrist is the one who prescribes the meds, to answer your question). I have decided to go ahead to take medication for ADD and for the anxiety and depression (it seems that anxiety and depression are b****** sons of the same father; anti-depressants are sometimes/often prescribed for anxiety) while also receiving psychological therapy to eliminate the root causes of my anxieties and depressions. For example, I have a lot of death-related anxiety, which I've been told has resulted from the death of my dad and the fact that I still haven't really deal with it. Basicially, I need to be able to function: to be able to keep on task at work and at school, to be able to be around people and not always be uncomfortable, to not be so depressed.

So, my advice is to find a psychologist to help you deal with the root causes of the ways you feel while also taking meds to help you function. Hell, if you want, I'll give you the number to MY psychologist. I know actually seeing her in person isn't plausible, but maybe you could talk over the phone or something. I don't know if that's the right path, because I haven't quite started it. So, this is something of the blind leading the blind.

Also, for what it's worth, here are some websites that my psychologists' practice links to. They're pages with info on ADD, anxiety, and depression, respectively, including info on how to find therapy and support groups.

ADD: http://www.chadd.org/

Anxiety: http://www.adaa.org/

Depression: http://www.ndmda.org/

[Chickenman 9]

Thanks man.

I ended up with the exact same diagnoses as you, ADD, anxiety and depression. One of the things that has made the social anxiety easier is the very thing that's made it extra miserable, I'm half introvert and half extrovert depending on the situation. In a performance setting, I'm able to forget about it and just do it. Although lately, and especially with improv, I've been in my head a little too much. Whatever, I'm rambling. Anyway, it seems that the only way I'm comfortable in a social situation is when I've got at least 2 or 3 close friends present. In that case, I'm Jim Carrey-esque. 1 on 1, I tend to take the lower status in the conversations, I'm the follower, the subordinate, and it chafes me, but whatever. But meeting people is hell. I'm just hoping it comes with time.

I used to have the same exact trouble with pizza ordering. I used to have to write down exactly what I was going to say before calling, rehearse it a few times, and then make the call. I still do it from time to time, but mostly for organization, so I make sure I get the order exactly right, but even that stems from me wanting to avoid embarrassing me over the phone, which I'd still find a way to do it. I'm still a very detail oriented guy in general from not wanting to look like an idiot. Sometimes that ends in me stressing on something that's a nonissue, but eh. What are you going to do. The best thing I've found to do is force myself to face the thing that's stressing me. When you run you're going to eventually get run down, so turn around and run towards it at full speed. I was going through the same thought process when I asked my ex out that I went through when I'd order pizza. Take a deep breath, and then just dial it (or ask her, depending on the analogy. ) before you can stop yourself. It's like skydiving, or the regular, less extreme form of diving. Jump before you realize what the ewok you're doing, and at that point you have to deal. Order a pizza a week, force yourself to do it, and that'll probably become second nature before you realize it.

I understand the suicidal thoughts too. I was a miserable little b****** in Freshman Year, possibly even more than this year. I'd see a car coming my way while I was walking on the sidewalk, and I'd just kind of slightly hope that it would suddenly lurch off course and nail me. I didn't want to kill myself, but if there was some sort of random happenstance, I wouldn't have minded. I sometimes had the same thought for a fleeting moment when the train I commute on pulls in to the station. It's a fleeting thing that I don't seriously give thought to anymore, but sometimes I wouldn't mind some horrific accident befalling me, though I'd never be proactive about it. My advice is to persevere through this stuff. It's dark and stormy weather, but I'm not entirely too cynical to think there might not be sunlight when the storm passes (And I'm a cynical ewoking b******).

Although to be terribly honest, I'm not exactly feeling that way right now. I'm ewoking up in school once again, my romantic prospects are nonexistent, my social prospects almost the same, my future looks like one big clusterewok of failure. I can't fit in with society, I'm a loser in the exact sense of the word, and there's absolutely no hope for me.

[TheUnknown 39]

I used to have the same exact trouble with pizza ordering. I used to have to write down exactly what I was going to say before calling, rehearse it a few times, and then make the call. I still do it from time to time, but mostly for organization, so I make sure I get the order exactly right, but even that stems from me wanting to avoid embarrassing me over the phone, which I'd still find a way to do it. I'm still a very detail oriented guy in general from not wanting to look like an idiot. Sometimes that ends in me stressing on something that's a nonissue, but eh. What are you going to do. The best thing I've found to do is force myself to face the thing that's stressing me. When you run you're going to eventually get run down, so turn around and run towards it at full speed. I was going through the same thought process when I asked my ex out that I went through when I'd order pizza. Take a deep breath, and then just dial it (or ask her, depending on the analogy. ) before you can stop yourself. It's like skydiving, or the regular, less extreme form of diving. Jump before you realize what the ewok you're doing, and at that point you have to deal. Order a pizza a week, force yourself to do it, and that'll probably become second nature before you realize it.

Well, I was using ordering pizza as an example of how bad my social anxiety is. If I have trouble ordering pizza, something routine and which I'm in stronger position, you can imagine the difficulty in, say, disputing library charges, or dealing with the insurance company, or discussing politics with a raging right-winger, or doing a job interview. I suspect your method or some form thereof may be a part of the therapy, but I don't think solely doing it that will be enough. And to be brutally honest, the way you're going about it doesn't sound like it's working too well for you, either. It's not merely shyness that'll go away after I'm more familiar with a person or used to the situation. It's almost continuous. It alleviates from time to time, in the same way my ADD lets up or the depression goes away, but those are rare days.

I'm so nervous with people, trying desperately to find something to talk about and often not being able to connect, which makes me depressed. I'm worried I'm going to make a fool of myself or piss someone off and risk a precious relationship. My voice goes up, making me even more self-conscious. I lose my sense of humor and can't tell stories. I don't think on my feet. And this is with my friends, people I've known since middle school; it's not merely shyness.

[Chickenman 9]

Well yeah, I was just responding to your example with a general strategy that you can apply to other situations. And you're correct in that it hasn't solved the problem, but it has allowed me to accomplish some things. Although it doesn't seem to work now, because my anxiety seems to have mutated into something else.

And you're preaching to the choir about social anxiety. I put a lot of research into it. And while I'm sure therapy is certainly the right approach for some, I don't want it to be for me. I tried professional help once, and I'm not willing to again. I'm living with the hope that I can figure it out for myself eventually. Improv has worked wonders for me, and I've been overdosing on it as self medication (even though I suck, which further depresses me, but meh). Maybe college will improve once I'm actually living in the same state as my campus. Who knows.