I weighed myself yesterday and the scale placed me at a whopping 122 pounds! Which isn't very whopping at all, but I was pleased that it was so close to my "goal" weight of below 120. C'mon, Wes, you're almost there!

I have "goal" in quotes, by the way, because it's not a serious goal -- I'll definitely raise an eyebrow if my weight rises above 130, but anything below that is fine with me. Weighing less than 120 pounds, however, would amuse me greatly.

In other news, I took my blood pressure at the machine at Giant yesterday. I don't quite remember all of the readings, but apparently I have either a crazy high resting heart rate or a crazy low one. Not that I was necessarily "at rest" or relaxed, as the way that thing squeezed my arm unnerved me considerably. "Relax! Oh, by the way, I'm going to squeeze the bloody pulp out of your arm and you may faint. But never mind that -- relax!"

Making matters worse, there were signs posted around the machine that specifically stated that children should not be using it without supervision -- yet three children had been jumping around and screaming and pressing random buttons on it while their mother spoke with the pharmacist and did not watch them at all. I fucking hate to see things like that. And then, when she finally took them away, the guy in front of me just sat down, stuck his arm in the machine... and waited with this idiotic grin on his face as if the machine were going to magically start itself. After about half a minute, he looked back at me and was like, "It's broken," and I'm like, "No, you fucking moron, you need to read the goddamned instructions posted right on the fucking machine." I ended up having to read them aloud to him. It's not so much that I minded doing it -- or that it was any trouble for me to do it -- but hell! If you can't read, you should be somewhere learning how to read instead of using the stupid free blood pressure machine at the local supermarket. I'm not so sure I was actually more relaxed when I did it the second time and got the crazy low reading, but I was watching the meter thing and found myself more/less trying to manipulate my heart rate to make it more acceptable. I think I ended up holding my breath.

Anyway, considering how stupidity affects me -- and how frequently I encounter it, whether it involves other people in person or flipping awful songs I've overheard or ridiculous things I encounter online -- my heart is probably perpetually racing. Perhaps someday I will have a heart attack and finally be able to relax.

I hope y'all are doing well!

When you almost put toothpaste
on the cotton swab
you intend to use
to clean your ears

Just a quick post to apologize to everyone for the lack of posts, e-mails, responses to comments, and so forth that has occurred lately -- with the laptop fans making these highly disconcerting sounds, I've been kinda scared to use the machine and have turned it off at almost every opportunity. That said, last night I successfully disassembled the laptop, removed and cleaned the fans, and reassembled the machine, so I'm confident that I'll be able to do it again when my replacement fans arrive sometime next week. And then, barring any other unforeseen technical difficulties, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming!

I hope everyone's 2009 is off to a great start.

...but maybe now I can join the IT Crowd! Funniest. show. ever.

Despite what I say in the lengthier discussion, I'm not really sure what compelled me to try my hand, voice, and visage at a video log -- but here we go. So yeah, if you've never seen me in person and would like to point and laugh at my awkward mannerisms and rambling speech, now you can! The 24-second test video is below, followed by a much lengthier three-part discussion behind the cut. As note at one point, I really hadn't intended for it to be so long -- I neglected to time myself and ended up rambling on for 23 minutes. Eat your heart out, Vice President-elect Joe Biden!

Part 1 (6:40)

Part 2 (8:35)

Part 3 (8:06)

And get this: there's even more stuff that I wanted to discuss, like that this mindset mine is arguably unhealthy because it makes me significantly less motivated to go out and "succeed" in social and/or material contexts, since I largely have everything that I want -- or at least what I feel it is important to have -- aboard the floating citadel in my psyche. (Even a room filled with mannequins!) Perhaps I'll save that for a future vlog or a text follow-up (or even the comments section below, if it comes up there).

Anyway, let me know what you think. I may post this on YouTube, but I obviously have no aspirations to be some widely-watched YT celebrity -- I don't ever plan to care enough to add special effects (beyond the fades) or cut stuff out or even work from a script (though outlines or checklists may be helpful in the future) so keep that in mind when offering criticisms, comments, et cetera. There's also no need to suggest that I not ramble so much or make shorter videos, since I am both well aware of those issues and inclined to agree! And while I certainly have no plans to transform Wesoteric into a vlog -- this would be a biweekly feature at the absolute maximum, and probably more like a monthly thing -- do let me know if you'd balk at video entries even that infrequently. I certainly have no problem with text entries, and as noted I'm infinitely more comfortable with them. 🙂