What's troubling you lately?

Tomorrow will be 15 years since I've lost my dad

I've honestly felt pretty good lately, which is new to me.

Work is going to hell and i'm apart of working with lazy young people who think they are entitled to anything they want and they get it, no questions asked

My eyes keeps on going up and they stay up and it started a few years ago and what most annoying when I am playing a game of bingo on the last game they go up also when I am not expecting it

Damn. I boxed for a short time, sparred a few times a week for months. Had a few instances of being punched and having my vision go black for seconds. I wonder sometimes how that may have affected my brain. At least you’re aware of the concussions, and the lingering symptoms that follow. All we can really do is try to prevent any further damage. 

Oldest son is starting school. Not so troubling, but it wasn’t that long ago that he was a baby. I’m trying to do activities with him before he starts. Dude just wants to play Doom and Wolfenstein.

Got a surgery coming up on my left foot

I'm only going to say this for your sake even if I risk being wrong. I think CTE is largely pseudo-science. (WWE said so too while giving millions to Chris Nowinski's NGO.) It's just another Satanic Panic for moron suburbanites. I'll make the case as thus.

One, this came out in the aftermath of the Benoit murders. CTE was a smokescreen for WWE in particular to shroud its business practices for years. When I saw the 2004 Wrestlemania a few years ago, I stopped watching. Those guys looked like circus animals. There was never a period when the company had more steroids, and I'm including the 80's. Even Funaki was HUGE for someone who was 5'7". People think the 80's was worse but those guys were all much taller and had bigger frames.

CTE was also therapy for wrestling fans and performers alike. They just couldn't grasp that someone whom they liked smoked his wife. We're talking about someone who had been juiced since he was 16 years old at the youngest, refused to get off of roids, and it was known that his steroid abuse was contentious to his marriage. He just picked up another shipment.

I read a LOT of true crime. The problem with the CTE claim is none of that explains why he gave Daniel Xanax. That alone points to premeditation, so 1st degree. What happened between him and Nancy is less known, was probably more impulsive, and could be second or first depending on how long he beat tf out of her. He was clearly cogent enough to tell different lies to different people from his neighbor, management, and peers. CTE wouldn't have passed muster in court even if jurors had known about it. Reality is that family annihilators tend to be male and neurotic workaholics, and Benoit was all of that

People mention the religious angle. I don't see the relevance. Benoit wasn't quoting Scripture to management. He found in Eddie Guerrero some kind of support system where Scripture was used. He knew he would off himself at some point. Ok, he drops Bibles off. I don't see what that has to do with CTE

When Test died, it was a similar thing. He had CTE. So someone who was much younger, didn't take even a quarter as many bumps, and so on, had the same condition as Benoit did? OK. Then every full-time wrestler has it. I don't see wrestlers commiting homicides left and right

I don't think a few punches, seeing stars, or anything else like that is going to do you in. A fractured skull is different, but you still recover from that. I fractured my skull once. It was bad enough that I had to stay at a hospital for 3 days. I fell asleep at random points for a few months. Funny thing is I performed better academically after that, so one had nothing to do with the other. Wrestlers generally don't get fractured skulls. I'm not aware of anyone having gotten an injury like that.

Problem with Scientism becoming a kind of religion is that hysterics tend to internalize conditions now. I've been seeing this for 15 years with Asperger Syndrome, where any lazy kid who plays a lot of video games and works dead end jobs suddenly thinks oneself a genius for having it. Same with "autism," personality disorders, gender identity disorder. I'm not saying none of those things are real. It's just strange that all of those, and suicide levels, started to explode since the internet came around. It used to be a thing 20 years ago for people to "test" their IQs online. Then it was the Myer Briggs test that hardly no one references anymore.

I now see academics on Twitter mention that they're "first generation" college grads, have autism, so on. It's all for social capital, because I know more than a few who are "first generation" but leave out that they're the first to have graduated from an ivy league school. It's a product of striver culture

I don't think self-identifying with CTE or (always at least) psychological disturbances are a result of striver culture. Humans inherently search for meaning. Read Mircea Eliade on religion. Without religion, people still look for meaning but they seek to explain their alienation with a lot of very contentious issues like those. It's very weird to me that suicides have exploded while crime has remained low. Suicides always increase with crime. Yet the inverse is happening. WEIRD. Sign that maybe online culture is screwing up a lot of people in the head

One way or the other, no one can prove you have CTE. You can't get a brain scan. You can only see what you can see. Maybe you aren't getting enough sleep. Maybe you're getting normal pains that come with age that you seem to think, from a preconceived notion, is CTE. Maybe you drink alcohol, which can and does mess with one's memory if you do it enough. The best cure for CTE, to the degree that you do have it, is to stop getting concussions or any kind of head damage. Stimulate your brain maybe by learning algebra or even calculus. The brain is a muscle. You have to work it out

I'm only saying this to you because this CTE thing became a weird craze. The Nigerian doctor was known to cook up results. Will Smith is a crap actor. Kids aren't playing sports anymore. People remark how some boxers sound dumber as they age. Thing is, most boxers probably aren't that intelligent in the first place. It's a trade for people who'd largely be in prison without it. Take away the promoters, the hype, the promos, and listen to them talk after retirement. They wouldn't need to be punch drunk to sound less than intelligible. What do you think Mike Tyson's IQ was when he was 19? That's true of a lot of pro wrestlers too. Flair is cogent. He also took tons of bumps in his 30+ year career. He also comes off as kind of average intellectually, even if he's good with words. Think of a rap singer. There are tons who can do both. I had a few friends who played college sports, so head damage. That didn't stop them from going back to school to study computer science


I'll say this too about Benoit. There's no possible way that someone can do a high functioning job like being a highly paid WWE wrestler and have the brain damage akin to an 85 year old. That's simply not possible. That's not a job where you just come to work and wrestle. You have to deal with McMahon, his daughter, Kevin Dunn, writers, agents, different storylines changing on the fly, making dates, flights, hotels, eating, media appearances. That's a lot of rout memory involved since wrestlers like him especially navigate towns by having visited there. Yet in all of this CTE talk, he never missed a single date. You find me someone even 65 years old who could do all of that without a lot of help throughout. It's disgraceful that the wrestling industry and fans alike try to whitewash what he did under a post hoc insanity defense

I'm not suggesting that head damage isn't real. There's something to it. I also think it's way overblown and that WWE has taken precautions for PR reasons, to whitewash the few years preceding Benoit's death, and that CTE safeguards keep them from future liability, just like "anti-racism" training from HR now keeps labor divided from unionizing and to keep them from discrimination lawsuits

I just don't want you to freak out or to get in your head that you've fried your brain. To the degree that you have, stop putting yourself in a position to take head blows. I hate seeing a whole generation of young kids be convinced that they got something wrong with them. When I grew up, only one really emotionally disturbed kid was on ADD pills. We knew because he'd have to go to the front office for it. Now, it can be up to a third depending on the district. That's just a wild change in the last 25 years.

Makes you wonder why schools don't have kids read "Brave New World," where your woes can be taken away from soma, where corporations run everything, where kids get sexualized at age 12, and consumerism is the drug of choice. That's really what America is today, and both sides are fine with that

My husband and I discussed his ketamine tonight and funding it. I told him that I don't think depression and anxiety are his issues. I just think he's neurotic af and thinks that problems exist when there aren't any to be found. That then fuels his anxiety. That takes you up. What comes up must come down. That's depression. He doesn't agree with me strictly. But when he told me he had a cold every 3 weeks, I said "That's not possible. You only get that if you have AIDS or something. You either have a cold or you don't. When a cold gets defeated, you get the immunity." And so he goes to the doctor. It's an allergy issue, easily treated with a nasal spray. He texts me that I was right. I usually am. Same with a lot of stuff