Sounds like it is time for a space heater. $70, just use it to augment the heat in whatever space you are in. In this house, my room retains decent heat, moreso than the rest of the house, as it is probably too small of a space for its own radiator, but has one anyhow. Later on when the temps drop into the teens though, i will look into running something extra where i am at. Electroheaters are efficient and cheap and you can use them to just spot-heat what needs spot-heating, e.g., you.

I simply cannot afford to heat the whole house to proper comfortable when the outside gets below twenty. Not at $4 a gallon. I swear, we as a country suck at invading countries for their oil. That is a whole other tangent, but back in the day, when oil was like $0.70 a gallon or whatever the fuck it was in the nineties, my parents used to run this house about 25º-30º warmer than i currently do. That shit was awesome.

But yeah, in the modern era, i have found that whether or not i am physically cold, has one of the most massive effects available on how depressed i am prone to become/remain. It actually took me a little bit too long to figure out, honestly.

Well my soldering iron just fell to bits on me.

About to go buy another one today, I need to repair my Talman's input jack.

Le sigh.

The tip of my soldererer is broken as well, lent it to a friend and it came back not 100% working, and has got worse from there. It was only a tenner anyway so time to get a new one I guess.

That happened to me a couple/few months back with my cheapo Weller(and works perfectly well with the stand/PSU of that also). I replaced it with one of these: http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... CHsQ8wIwAg

And it is so much nicer than the one that came with the WLC100 station i had. Heats up quicker, is way quicker/easier to change tips on, and has a much nicer cord attached to it, which actually makes it much easier to handle because the one that was on the old one used to fight back and get twisted up all the time.

So at first i was sad about the old iron breaking, but now i am happy(ish, it is all relative ) because the new iron is like twice as nice to use.

I shall look into that.

I bring it up because it is one of the best ones that is more commonly available in random electrostores. I think i actually bought mine from Sears or something? If you have time to wait for mail order there are other options from folks like Hakko or Aoyue that are extra nicey for good cost, but for what is in general electronics stores, it is one of the finer choices.

Yeah I'm about to go christmas shopping which means going to the mall which means I'll have Sears and Ratshack in one place, and home depot and wal-mart in another. There also is an ace hardware somewhere in that area so hopefully I should be able to find it.

I liked my Weller, so I wouldn't hate sticking with them.

Arranging multiple single note lines and a bassline over my super tasty evil ska skank riff with the weird chordage.. It is is fun to sit down and transcribe all the little melodies and look at the relationships between each note and it's surrounding comrades.

FAILED. Panic attack too much to take.

Not suicide, just hit the booze haaaaard. Just to let ye know. I's fine...ish.

Well, I've hit it harder. 'S the problem with panic attacks, The symptoms could be so many other things which, er, well, trigger panic attacks. The whole yer gonna die thing? Yeah, not so cool.

The funny thing is after a couple days sober (as in not been drunk, no more than one an hour if I feel withdrawl symptoms) I'm more "want to live, dammit!" than depressed. I just have been in no shape to head down and finish my record, though I have been playing acoustic at home quite a bit.

I do have the suspicion my years of indecency left me hypoglycimic, and considering, well, in the immediate past my housemate commented "I haven't seen any dishes from you in the past week" to which I responded "that's because there weren't any"- as in you are (unintentionally, just depressed, no appetite) starving yourself to death. Somehow I managed to make it to rehearsal though, and seemed upon playback (record everything) to play pretty well. No comments from anyone, though I just held my head down the whole time and at one point actually stumbled into the wall. Apparently no one was looking for that one.

Oi snaxo, that is a rough bit of biz. It sounds like you are trying to take on several big things at once.

I am in a somewhat similar place, though with with different sorts of symptoms.

Keep things simple, i say. Rather than aiming to quit booze straight up, mayhap aim to prepare your body for that sort of chemical cataclysm. Eat right. Stay warm. From what i have found, such things help quite a lot in being able to weather the squalls of body/brain shitstorms.

I am taking my pills like an old person, it is nuts all the shit I'm downing. Funny thing is it seems to work, just truly enormous amounts of vitamins, minerals and herbs. I did not do as much damage to the emergency liquor as I would have even done on a normal day prior, so I guess it's not that bad. What kept me human/robot all these years was the fact I ate healthy. The times I've gotten really bad are the times I've let myself go and gotten really malnourished as a result, like, er, recently. And the physical symptoms from that are a kind of sick that triggers a pre-existing condition that does not stem from my boozing it up, but liquor being a relatively poor source of nutrients that fucks with your blood sugar... Yeah.

And I don't want to be some AA bastard about it either. Drinking didn't ruin my life, but severe untreated emotional problems didn't do me any favors. Thus, lots of drinking, I being the sort of alcoholic who drinks themselves sober. I fucked myself by being depressed and not taking care of myself, otherwise I'm as functional an alcoholic as you could desire. And would have likely quit (again; I've been on-and-off my whole adult life) anyhow simply for lack of the desired psychoactive effects- ie. this shit isn't working anymore. Like, I don't really feel a whole hell of a lot different save for a slight lessening of my brain's background noise- admittedly useful for an extremely active mind with an anxiety disorder.

Regardless I do have to ramp down the consumption simply because it is antifood and a barrier to my feeling unshitty again.

I will agree with Chris on eating right if you can. I know you are not one of those people that puts food at the top of the priority list, but a healthy Snaxie will be a better Snaxie. [/dad]

I am off day job for a few days and will be musicing more (as well as doing Krampus stuffs with my kids) so I will not be posting much the next few days but am monitoring things (eg: lurking)

Also @Snaxie use what I sent if you want, my hours are at all times.

Went to guitar center for the first time in like 2 years tonight.

Had to choose between
-Schecter 26 1/2 inch scale set neck v with blackouts and floyd
-Gibson SG special
- Esp Viper




One of them bitches is coming home with me soon

also played some mikrokorgs..... do fucking want.

Oh, dear goddess. I lost my entire rant. It was a quality one, too, including a picture of a man with a handlebar mustache holding a nutria:



I'm not even kidding. I put that in there as it is hilarious.

In short, tl/dr- I am one of the oddballs for whom it's just meds for psychological conditions and gets off it pretty easy- the problem is the psychological conditions much, much more than the drug. That's just a physical thing. I get off it pretty easy. The cultural stigma is that you'll turn into a fire-breathing demon touching the stuff and that is unfair- see above. We exist; not every psychoactive substance affects people in the same way. There was a bit in there about my dear housemate who has to deal with me flying off the rails (who has my problems but is on legit meds rather than following my path), the nature of addiction and psychoactive substances used medicinally, that not every alcoholic (someone with a physical addiction) is someone who'll think "I can do eet!" and crash their car, or go black out, beat someone up and piss themselves. Like, things do affect us differently because of our brain... circuit topologies, shall I say? There was some, I think, eloquent stuff in there and I can't get it back and am too tired at this hour to re-type it or recall it all.

Hmmm, I do love SGs so my vote is the special or the viper.


And chris has a Mikrokorg up for sale in the classifieds if you are interested in one. I'd buy it if I had the spare cash.

I just saw his MKK, i'll have to see how work goes the next few weeks cuz that's more of a want than a need at this point.


Gonna pick up the viper if it is still there this weekend. It's camo..... so I think i'll be sanding it down and replacing the EMGs with some BKPs.


Or not.


Oh well, off to drink and mow grass.

Yarr, that microkorg may be sold at this point.

Zozo, what buildest thou?

Snaxo, that adorable giantrat critter has a lollipop. And that mustache dood seems to be handing them out. I wonder if that is just his gig. "I just wander about nature, giving candy to adorable critters. Doesn't that wombat look like it wants a mars bar? Here you go wombat, i will help you unwrap it."

On AA/NA, i pulled one minirant out. In short, that is a system that does work, does realize that lots of folks have different reasons for drinking/drugs(self medication is actually a pretty common one), and does have a well organized support infrastructure for pretty much anyone who needs it. I have several friends who have been in the system, some lifers, some who just did it for a while until they didn't feel it was needed any more. If i have one problem with AA, it is that though many people will not need to be going to meetings for the rest of their lives, it does not account for this. Really if you think about it, it can't do so, but just the same, this is where the stigma application comes from.

Anyhow. Brain stuff is do difficult. Finding a permanent fix, probably such a thing doesn't exist. One fear i have is of medicating via traditional antidepressant/anxiety/whatever medicine means, and losing some inherent part of my personality in a chemical haze, or dulling the creative and productive side of me. The problem with self medication, is that you will wind up the same exact place at some point because the brain gets hungrier for the dulling agent all the time, but the basic physiological systems in place simply cannot support an increase in dulling agent after that point. Also, another problem is that i know folks who are on 'normal' antidepressants, and who are currently more sharp and productive because of it. The fear however remains that i would respond differently. I generally respond differently than many to chemical input. I admit to probably being wrong about this choice to avoid them, though. But it sure is easier not to start something, than it is to stop it.

IMO the way to treat all of it is to consider mental health a moving target. It just so obviously is that. What works now, may not work next year. What didn't work in high school, may in fact work brilliantly right now. I think that we should simply expect the treatments to evolve over time, to change, even to revert to older treatments, if that is what will level the brain/life out.

For me the trick is remaining alert and wildly productive. Whatever i need to achieve that, that is where i find the most mental balance. So i don't really find much relief in chemical self medication at any stage of it. In truth, i have no idea what works for me when it works. I just know that it hasn't worked correctly in a very long time.

And that i have probably set myself up pretty well at this point to achieve and retain a sort of stasis where i can expect at this rate, little to change for a long time. I crave hermitry, but without certain very key stipulations and arrangements, hermitry becomes a bit of an evil trap. You cut off too much of your inspiration sources, and too much of your peer/support network, and you at some point just find yourself cold, in a cave, with no idea how to simply re-insert yourself into the general population. Because really, at this point, you don't want to be out there anyhow. But at some level you realize that you left too much of your balance out there.

I am pretty sure that is why all of those drug refugees in the sixties/seventies started artist colonies. Community, minus dicks and old orders. It doesn't really work. By its very nature, a smaller community is exponentially less likely to "remain on the same average page" for extended periods of time(the moving target of mental health is true even of people who don't have mental problems that are obvious - everyone has mental problems, not everyone has mental solutions), but for a time it can be good.

In a way, the internet is the half-assed version of that. Every forum an island. Words and pictures on a screen do tend to fall a little short though, if anyone expects to have a virtual community provide the full experience of like an actual community(and many many people do these days). But the impetus is there, for refugee colonies and hippie farms.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I am a Tele convert.

Not a bad thing, as least you aren't going into offsets.