Detoxify

[Monday, April 16]

CS Lewis wrote somewhere that God, if we may say so, is very unscrupulous. And I don't know whether I want to nod in agreement or start drafting legal agreements for God to sign... Well, I can't take God to court--He is perfectly just, after all, which makes my chances of winning that argument pretty slim--so I'm stuck with nodding madly and sighing. Actually I think God has been dropping those hints for awhile now, but He only chose this past week or so to start in on the nagging.

Well, if you've been reading and you didn't doze off halfway through or click that handy little red X in the top right corner, you probably know I've been ranting a bit about the Brat. (Even the name I chose for him shows that.) And I've been ranting a bit about my uncle and his tendency to fly off the handle at what seems to be the merest of jolts... Yesterday in church, a song about thanking God for trials came up, and I found myself wondering what exactly I was thanking God for. Most people, when you mention trials, immediately get their imaginations full of stuff they get from the movies: you know, wild armies plundering and looting en masse, burning stakes, half-decayed zombies, history teachers... and it occurred to me (I don't know why I didn't notice it sooner) that emotional people might actually be a sort of trial as far as I'm concerned.

God never said that everybody would face the same sort of trial, after all.

That same song went on with stuff about learning to let God lead me through stuff, and about growing in Him (it's a short way of saying getting to know God better) through these things, and well... I guess this week I'm going to have to try to see what I can do, or more appropriately, what He can do through me, about it. Still, if He chooses to use me, His resources just became extremely limited. But then I guess He knows that anyway. And actually I didn't get that hint from the song alone... I saw a paper in my sister's Bible about unforgiveness and how to recognise it in yourself--and I found myself matching almost all the symptoms. It's not a good thing, since there's that bit about "forgive us as we forgive others" in the Lord's Prayer... very worrying, in fact.

So now... well, to be honest I've no idea at all what to do about it. Prayer is pretty much the entire game plan at this point, unless and until I find something else to do. (The something else isn't likely to be more effective than prayer, though.) Self-help books always say it's all in one's own self, but at this point I can safely say they're wrong about that. One needs Someone greater to help...

And then I've got whacked from several different directions about my health... or, rather, my lack of it. Like yesterday, when before captain's ball, we went for a jog (Claus wants us to bulk up in time for Copa de IBA), and I was the only one in the entire bunch who got woozy and wanted to throw up after it. The Gorilla says I got too much oxygen to my head due to the sudden increase in blood circulation rate, and I suppose he should know since he likes sports. Or when Free Tea started asking why I have red spots and little pin-sized holes on my face, and apparently got the shock of his life when I said my pimples are manually removed (as in by hand), instead of by tweezers and five different brands of toner, cleanser, freshener and goodness knows what else I'm supposed to use. Or when I looked in the mirror and found myself resembling a rather pale pear with a decidedly deformed-looking stalk. Or when my cousin (the 12-year-old girl) made me a cup of tea today, and filled half the mug with tea leaves.

(Chinese tea leaves are meant to be re-used, and half a mug of tea leaves would probably brew enough tea--with taste in it!--to quench the entire office's thirst. For the rest of the week.)

If that doesn't scream "Detox!!" I don't know what does. So far I've drunk the mug and re-filled it and re-drunk it maybe 6 times, and the taste is still there. For the life of me I can't tell what kind of tea it is, but I'm wondering if it's worrying that I haven't had the urge to rush to the toilet yet, even after all these cups, drunk over a period of the last 5 hours. Usually if I drink even a glass of plain water, I'm going to get a call from nature in the next hour or so. And so far nature hasn't placed the call yet... probably it forgot to pay the bill from last month and got cut off or something.

And again, I haven't the least idea what to do about this problem. Exercise is a nice suggestion, but just a tad impractical when one remains at an office until almost 8, then goes back to bathe and play an hour's worth or so of piano and then watch an hour's worth or so of anime before tumbling into bed, completely exhausted. Generally I try to do a bit of Bible study before the tumbling, but you get the idea. And even if I had time, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what kind of exercise I'm supposed to be doing. After spending a good half my life so far avoiding exercise, I've completely lost the knack for it.

(Pretty much everybody who's seen me play captain's ball probably knows.)

I did try to do this sort of thing before, you know--but when I asked the Pig and he said "weights", I totted up the figures and decided "costs too much". And running/jogging/etc activities are not at all my cup of tea. I used to think having company around would help, but then I realised that said company is almost always fitter than myself and runs faster besides, which is depressing. And gasping before one has gone 50 meters does take the wind out of one's sails. And sports like basketball or football always seemed to end in my glasses going into a ditch, or in my team losing (which, again, was depressing, but entirely understandable since I always tried to get my glasses, and by extension, myself, as far away from the ball as possible). And sports like badminton would rub the skin on my fingers off. And so on.

By now you probably have a pretty low opinion of my body... but then again, my opinion of it is even lower, so I shall merely shrug it off and say c'est la vie. My disaffinity with sports has reached the point where teams that I even pretend to support lose their next 15 games in a row, develop freak injuries, and have spectacular fights in front of the media that lead to multiple resignations and huge mob stampedes and picket signs.

I'm halfway through my 7th cup of tea, and I suppose when I wake up tomorrow I'll either be very detoxified or be very amazed to find myself immune to detoxification. It's a win-win situation either way, so whatever will be, will be. I don't really need to bother about it.

Well, of course my body isn't all that bad. It still functions--after all I'm still alive and somewhat able, but whenever people say I won't live long in it... well, maybe I'm being a tad morbid, but I wouldn't mind trading it in for a better model. I did mention once in the RBS that I don't really plan to live too long beyond 70... with eyesight like mine, I'll probably be blind by then and half-deaf into the bargain. And if I'm as weak as I am at 20 (biology textbooks says we hit our physical peak around now), in 50 years I'm not even going to be able to get outta bed without wheezing and needing to sit down again to catch my pacemaker, if I were to be so fortunate as to be in the 40% of people who survive the first cardiac arrest.

Which is why the question "Your money or your life?" really doesn't work on me. It's another win-win scenario. As long as I answer "money", I'm sure to get an interesting epitaph plus instant new body in heaven... or else the person asking the question might get discomfited and sit down for a nice long chitchat, or he/she might just pull out his/her phone and call the asylum to see if they've had any breakouts recently. In which case I don't get the new body so soon, but I do get material for another blog post, and possibly I'll manage to convince him/her that not all Christians are fanatics. Some are just plain weird. *grin*

I was reading a website last night about how some guy got cheated outta 550,000 by the Government and so set up a hate site for Malaysia. I'm opposed to hate sites, generally, since they tend to bad grammar and their choice of words is rather too strong for me, but I read that one anyway since I wanted to see what it would be like. I admit I disliked it very much, although I agreed with the general sentiment (that we still get a certain amount of racism here, that plenty of people are cheats, and we have lots of apes around). I do think he could've put more effort into explaining his case--I sympathise better with people who can explain their problems articulately--but he didn't, so I really can't say whether he was justified in his actions and choice of language.

Still, he did come across as rather a boor with too much fondness for bad grammar and the word "suck". It's not the subject matter that bothered me--I could even have added material to his little bit of invective--but the way he put it across was rather... off-putting, I found. Maybe it's just my automatic dislike for having opinions rammed down my throat, but... really. If he had 550,000 to get cheated out of, he ought to have at least bought a thesaurus and dictionary and put a little more time into telling people exactly what he thought, instead of resorting to little .gif animations and big red bold words with underlines.

(I don't like the colour red in large quantities. It's one of those colours that I prefer to take in small amounts, along with orange, yellow, hot pink, and a few other similar shades.)

And I still wish he'd explained how he got cheated and added supporting documentation to prove it, instead of just telling us he was cheated. With all those images already on his site, you'd think a few scanned papers wouldn't overload his bandwidth too much. (Of course, the government hasn't noticed his site yet... I think.) And it'd make a much better argument too... um. And I'd really have preferred it if he hadn't got so many links to porn on his site... I'm not trying to be a censor myself, but really. It just isn't appropriate.

[Tuesday]

It looks as if I'll be punching the Enter key another 2000 times or so today.

[Later]

I punched the Enter key 2000 times before lunch.

[Still later]

I just finished my daily hours, so have punched out (in a manner of speaking--I have no time card) and am now free to type.

You know what I said yesterday about trying to be patient? It looks like I'm going to need more help than I thought, because this morning there was a minor altercation between myself and my uncle. Nothing too harsh was said, of course. Arguments with me are generally characterised by the absolute lack of swear words--I have much more precise instruments at my disposal, thank you--but still, as far as it went it was a dispute.

It was all about the tea. My cousin used far too many leaves in the brewing, and when I threw them into the bin, they were seen this morning by my uncle, who immediately made a very teapot-like sound and began telling me how many leaves to use per cup... and when I told him I'd been given the cup, he immediately leapt to the conclusion that I'd asked for it like that.

Apparently he saw my cousin give me the tea. I, perhaps unwisely, muttered that if his senses were so good, he ought to have been able to hear me ask for it. Fortunately my aunt was around to defuse it, because it's entirely possible that we'd have begun a Cold War, or worse, a mutual tirade.

My uncle, as I've said, is rather rash with his words at times--and as for me, I don't know. I've not been in enough wars of words to know how I'd fare against him, and certainly he'd have more experience. But in any case it's not something I want to happen.

But I'm still a bit irritated about it, even now. I guess I ought to try to see his point of view, but really. I have never liked people even hinting that I'm being dishonest about anything involving financial matters, and when he said (it was a half-shout, really) that I'd asked for that amazingly overblown amount of leaves in my cup, it must've switched off my sanity. And when he said that he'd seen the cup being given to me, I wondered if his eyes were all that good. Because, you know, I never brew tea for myself. I didn't even know there was tea around--the leaves were dehydrated and looked like little pellets of some sort. And anyway he should have noticed I rarely drink anything anyway, and when I drink it's always plain water or something from a tin can.

But... aah, the more I think about it the worse I get about it. But if I don't think about it at all, does that mean I'm going into denial? Maybe I'm just supposed to let it be, since it's over and all by now. So I'll just tell my cousin not to use so many pellets if she ever brews tea again, and put on a verbal raincoat when I next speak to my uncle.

(Put on [a] verbal raincoat: (verb) The act of filtering out all emotion from any words being said or heard. My own term, so you can't use it in your essays. Too bad.)

Still, it's only Tuesday. (And my goodness, the weather is worse today than usual... I'm used to having a downpour around now, but so far, nothing but howling wind. Disappointing.)

[Thursday]

Gah. I hate my cousins--if hating is equivalent (in God's eyes) to murder, then I have murdered each one of them several times over. In extremely messy ways, too... Well, not all my cousins. I seem to get along better with my father's side of the family than with my mother's side... obviously I don't have an Oedipus complex, which I suppose makes at least one mental problem I don't have yet.

Like pretty much everything else in my life, this is not a sudden thing--more like a spot along a gradient. I've tried to ignore their little antics and rudenesses and general idiocy and assorted other things--I have no idea why some people think little kids are the epitome of innocence. As far as I'm concerned, the existence of little kids is proof of the existence of evil. And as for movies like The Omen--hah! Little kids don't need to be Satan's incarnation to be evil. They are evil, in and of themselves, and obviously don't need any help with it. My opinion on this matter, until further notice, is that little kids should be rounded up and given rabies, then put in a Coliseum to battle hungry _______ (insert name of ferocious beasts). (My money says the beasts take one look at the kids and flee.)

It's super annoying... well, the Brat started the whole thing with his incessant "I-want-(computer/sweets/TV/other)-NOW!!!" and crying when he didn't get it, and then I found out he'd learned his father (my uncle's) delightful trick of flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, and using a very wide vocabulary indeed to belittle other people's intelligence, sanity, diligence, value, pedigree, and speices. And then the 12-year-old girl decided that I was the kind of nice person who lets you walk all over them without so much as a frown. I probably shouldn't have taken her running in the rain, because now she's taken to tinkering with the TV's cords so I can't watch my anime series. (To clear things up, I only watch one hour of it per day, tops.) And the middle child just follows along, which just makes her more annoying because she doesn't even have her own opinion about me. And so now I have the three little Brats (let this term henceforth be expanded to cover the three of them) on my hands.

I almost want to resign "for health reasons"--their health. If this goes on much longer I just know I'll explode one day and leave little bits of them all over the place. Personally, I don't quite fancy having the death sentence... but then again, it would be a rather interesting way to go. But I'd better not go and psyche myself into it; I'll get to that point anyway eventually. With help from the three Brats, of course. Actually I rather think I'll enjoy it when it happens. When I get irritated enough, cruelty becomes fun... it's sick, I know. Or at least, decidedly sadistic. But, you see, if I were given license to do as I willed to them... I would make quite a festival out of it. Even with conditions like preserving their lives, no disfiguring scars, or no permanent disabilities. I read too much. God's still working on that sadistic streak in me, I guess.

I think I'm going to have to buy myself another BB gun, and plenty of bullets for it too. Then I'll just stash it in my bag and bring it with me everywhere. Every time one of the Brats annoys me, out comes the gun and I can choose between target practice (for mild offenses) and whacking them in the back of the head (for more serious crimes) and just clobbering them into unconsciousness (which at the moment has a great deal of appeal to me). Still, we'll see.

I've asked a few people for prayer--mostly people who already know about my violent tendencies. My own prayers for patience aren't being answered just yet, so maybe I can get some help and nag God into helping me sooner. *shrug* It does say "Ask and you will receive" doesn't it?

Comments

Robson said…
Gawd you type too much. By the time you get here you can publish a biography.

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