Saturday 6. [It's still Saturday on the West Coast, so I'm not THAT late...]

1. Who is the last person who you spoke to by telephone?
The lady from the dentist's office reminding me of my cleaning Monday morning.

2. Who is the last person you spoke to online?
Probably my friend C.

3. Which of the two have you seen more in person?
I've never met C in person, and I don't know if the lady that called from the dentist's office is one of the office workers I've seen or if they farm out phone reminders to somebody else.

And what is the thing now with referring to the patient in the third person? That's the second call I've gotten where they don't ask, "Is Frida there?" but just say, "I'm calling to remind Frida of her appointment with Dr. So&So on mm/dd at hh:mm." Dammit, I'm Frida [well, not IRL, but for the purposes of relating events in this medium, I am]. Stop talking to me like I'm somebody else, or like I'm a damn voice-mail machine. It's insulting.

4. Take the quiz: How is your self-esteem?
It says I have low self-esteem 32% of the time. What it didn't do, and this was a pleasant surprise, was hand me a bunch of nagging bullshit about how I should feel better about myself, blah blah blah. I've seen quizzes where, if your self-esteem wasn't in the 90th percentile, you were admonished to love yourself for the wonderful person you are, never mind the fact that very high self-esteem is a sign of a personality disorder. [Great thing to do to a person with low self-esteem, by the way: criticise them.] But I thought some of the questions were a tad dodgy. And it's not that this quiz is that bad, either, in case Patrick was wondering. It's mostly accurate in the sort of questions it asks. I'm just in a mood to pick things apart today.

You CAN'T always depend on people to help you out when you're down. If that's how you feel, that doesn't mean you have low self-esteem, it just means everybody else you know has it hard too. I know maybe two people who could and would help me out if, for instance, I lost my job. Everybody else in my family is either on welfare or Social Security. They don't have anything to help out WITH. The co-workers I know who would be willing to help out are just as broke as I am, and so are my friends. So how much is it a self-esteem issue and how much is it a matter of simply not knowing a lot of people with free time and money?

Then there's the issue of finding it hard to concentrate. That has to do with self-esteem? It can be a symptom of depression, which can be both a cause and an effect of low self-esteem; but it's a very tenuous link between concentration and self-esteem, since there are a million things which impair concentration:
~subacute CO poisoning
~lack of sleep
~medication side effects
~vitamin deficiencies
~boredom
~low blood sugar
~noise
~stress
~ADHD
~brain damage
~PTSD [which can, but doesn't necessarily, lead to low self-esteem]

As for deserving to be loved, I think it's debatable whether anybody deserves to be loved. [In fact, I think that whether anybody deserves anything is arguable.] Is it a matter of deserving? And can you love somebody just because they deserve to have somebody love them? I can't. If I don't love 'em, I don't love 'em. The end. That's just how I feel.

Then there's the question "You fear that you will never find true love." I didn't check that one even though I suspect I may never have another romantic relationship [not that I'm falling all over myself looking for one; I have enough goddamn problems] and even though I'm pretty sure the "true love" they're talking about is a romantic relationship. I've done enough bashing of the legions of retards who think that RR's are the only "true love," so I won't go into it again, no matter how richly they merit my derision. Since my definition of love includes familial love, love between friends, animal/human love, and a great deal more besides penis/vagina love, I've already found true love, and plenty of it, thanks. So I may or may not have skewed my result there, depending on whether the quiz writer was talking about p/v love or all love.

Sorry to get on the heart-shaped soapbox there, but I think love, and its definitions and parameters, is one area where this culture is deeply warped. Don't even get me started on the media's depiction of love and what it does to people's expectations. I'll be here all day.

5. What is the longest period of time you have gone without internet service since you became a "regular user"?
I think it was the four days that I was in the hospital.

6. How much did the lack of internet availability bother you?
Not much, but I think that was due to the copious amounts of morphine I was given. Also, I had CD's, hockey games, and the fX channel, so that helped. It's the old methadone strategy--substitute one drug for another.

Time for more coffee, and maybe breakfast. I think another batch of potato pancakes may be in order.

sbt/sbc