Don't Look Down

Click to tweet:  .http://clicktotweet.com/wEtZd . WARNING:  INCLUDES BOTH GRAPHIC IMAGES OF COMMON PHOBIAS AND A DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL MATTERS.

There is a great variety of phobias, some of which are common and extensions of more rational fears, such as acrophobia (heights), arachnophobia (spiders), the dark, loud noises, balloons popping and thunder or loud noises.  These generally make sense, although probably the hardest to understand is arachnophobia, at least in the British Isles.  There is also a "second league", as it were, of phobias such as buttons, cotton wool balls and being overwhelmed by peacocks.  I myself have a button phobia.  In these cases, there may not be so much a reason as a cause.  For instance, i believe my button phobia is based on an instinctive aversion to skin blemishes such as sores, blisters, boils and warts, which we have because it means we avoid infection or sexual partners who are not going to be good at parental care or even pregnancy.  Of course, in my case this fear misfired and became a button phobia.  It is quite disabling in fact, because it makes it hard for me to dress formally and would impair me going to job interviews or working in offices.  It was actually really hard for me to make this video because of the buttons in it.

Similar to phobias are forms of epilepsy with very specific stimuli.  There is a case on record of a man whose seizures were triggered off by the sight of an open safety pin.  It's fairly easy to imagine a form of epilepsy triggered by seeing or feeling buttons.  More commonly, epilepsy can be triggered by strobe lighting of course, and certain kinds of "op art" can also cause fits in some people.  This brings me back to the idea of being overcome by peacocks, because this is a phobia but also, for the peacock, a sexual display.

Sexual kinks, deviations, paraphilias, perversions, call them what you will, similarly can have an explanation based on cause and effect where an early experience starts one on an idiosyncratic sexual career.  A fairly well-known example would be feet and shoes - many people think the reason shoe and foot fetishism is so common is that they are in the line of sight of crawling babies and that the association can therefore grow quite easily.  Other kinks are more arcane and seem to be in-born, but the archetypes are often fairly clear, examples being leather, rubber (skin-like), inflation (erection or pregnancy-like), vaporization and disintegration (orgasm), looners (both) and so on.  BDSM - bondage and whips - is perhaps more complex and harder to explain in this way.

In other words, i think fetishes and other sexual kinks are the other side of the coin to phobias, and that both are linked to epilepsy.  It's obvious why someone with unusual sexual desires might want to keep them - they derive a lot of pleasure from them - but less obvious why someone with a phobia would want to retain that.  My answer is twofold in fact, and i only addressed one issue in the video.  Firstly, as stated, it's part of me and i think i need to accept myself as i am.  Secondly, to be honest a world with buttons in it is just wrong and it needs to change to accommodate the needs of us button phobics, even though we're a tiny minority.

...and along came an asbestos spider!  Which will either help or hinder, i think.  I may have struck it lucky through having made a video which mentions spiders just as the asbestos tarantula news broke.  Consequently, i've cheated and inserted the tag "asbestos". People are afraid of asbestos, after all, though probably not phobic.

There really could be a world without buttons though.  As a child, i used to imagine a world with no buttons or wheels, which was however high-tech.  It had touch-sensitive panels and sliders instead of push-buttons and knobs respectively.  I was strongly influenced by Arthur C Clarke's idea of air cushion vehicles, which ironically did use rotary motion because of the propellers and fans.  I have, however, considered the idea of a peristaltic hovercraft which pushes itself up by farting air down forcefully.  It wouldn't be very quiet of course, so active noise cancellation, another obsession of mine.  And then there's the Caroline Timeline of course.

Zeerust.

Laid

Click to tweet:  http://clicktotweet.com/f29jc . I went vegetarian 27 years ago and progressed to veganism a year and a half later.  I did absolutely fine for about two years and made sure i had enough vitamin B12 from yeast extract and the like, along with addressing the other problems such as essential fatty acids and so forth.  I am still convinced that veganism is a healthier and viable option for the vast majority of people.  However, i am no longer vegan.

After about two years, i began to experience various symptoms which i attribute to vitamin B12 deficiency.  Vegans usually have more folic acid in their diet than vegetarians, which masks the pernicious anaemia associated with classic B12 deficiency but are at least equally susceptible to the neurological side, and i was no exception although i also got the symptoms of anaemia.  Specifically, i lost my sense of smell, started to hallucinate (particularly the smell of peppermint) and acquired a particularly boring psychosis which was basically just poor memory and concentration along with a sense of depersonalisation a bit like the one associated with alcoholism.  I accidentally set fire to my bed due to not being able to smell, although to be fair i do tend to set fire to things by mistake quite a lot.  As a result, i went back to eating dairy, although only in small quantities and i have now more or less recovered (my memory is still poor though).

The reason i think it affected me in that way is probably either to do with my stomach lining not secreting enough intrinsic factor or malabsorption via the terminal ileum of my intestines.  Most people would not only do absolutely fine on a vegan diet, but thrive better than on others.

I am not going to pretend it's better not to be vegan as far as ethics are concerned.  As far as i'm concerned, lacto-vegetarianism is only justifiable as a transitional state towards veganism and it's probably the worst of both worlds if you eat a lot of dairy, which is impossible to justify in almost any terms.  However, i would also say that some diets which include meat are ethically better than some diets which exclude it, for example eating roadkill compared to a vegan diet consisting largely of processed food with a lot of food miles on it, and various other factors involved mean that the issue is not clear cut.  Nor have i got anything personal against meat eaters.  It isn't even cheaper to eat dairy compared to being vegan, although i do use dairy as a source of free nutrition.

Just wanted to say that really - sorry everyone.

Sometimes beds really are on fire, but not with passion and love.  I wanna tell you a story.

Back in the day, i underwent a certain kernoodle (which i can't spell) with a certain Westphalian.  Since it was rather cold, i turned on the gas fire in my room, which was rather close to the mattress.  I had lost my sense of smell.  After a few minutes of - well, smoking a ciggie to be honest, but not me - this particular heterochromat noticed the smell of a different kind of smoke and i proceeded to empty the contents of a glass of water over it, which successfully quenched the fire.  However, i persisted with my veganism for quite some time after that.

Another experience i underwent as a result of my veganism was becoming mildly psychotic, and the thing about that was - it was really boring.  No unusual beliefs, no conviction that i was being followed, no threatening visions of demons.  Just poor memory, reduced attention span and depersonalisation, oh, and the occasional transparently obvious hallucination of the odour of peppermint.  I don't know if that's what B12 deficiency is normally like for vegans, but i should also point out that my brain can't do psychosis properly.  I once took many times the apparently effective dose of Psilocybe with no discernible consequences, and have taken six times the maximum recommended dose of Hypericum perforatum without any anti-depressant effect.  The reason i mention the latter is that since depression often involves a realistic assessment of one's world or life, anti-depressants probably work by loosening one's grip on reality.  It's not that simple of course, but it explains the problem quite well.

I'm not saying i can't go mad or that i'm in some macho way able to "take double anything you could".  I'm just saying my brain doesn't bend that way.  Speaking of which:

So there you go, you grey whistling void, another day in the outer darkness.