Doctor Rafa Doesn't Get It

This is really bothering me. It's made very obvious exactly how much my self image consists of myself as being hyper intelligent, and very capable of grasping any argument a philosophically minded person sets before me (as I understand all the terms, etc.).

Doctor Rafa's Computer is Fucking Up Again

Sleep is a problem. I need to find a better way to need less sleep. I also need to find a way to get more work done faster, but I have a basic solution to that one. That is, I need to get off my ass and just do it.

Amazing how good a cure it is for laziness to stop trying to con and cajole yourself into working and actually do it, right then, no compromises.

Course, it's not as much fun as setting up a reward system, and it takes a lot more willpower...

I think sometime I'd like to do something--immensely practical and helpful for a while. I think that's why I keep coming back to the idea of doing some sort of volunteer work next year.

I'm not addicted to the idea of helping people, necessarily, though I feel that I have a certain duty to better peoples' lives (that inclination itself needs some investigation, and I'm not sure what else to say about it right now).

I do want to see myself doing something skilled (skilled particularly) that directly and immediately contributes to some change, a good change preferably.

Philosophy is the one thing right now that I know for -certain- I love doing, that I feel competent at to a great degree and that I think greatly forms my character out of all the things I like doing. I love philosophy, as a concept, as a striving for the best life, as a general goal of being an excellent human being.

I also think that to be a truly great human being you can't just be a philosopher. You have to be an artisan, and a lover, maybe a politician (read as someone who cares about a communal good, maybe)...a lot of things, basically.

But then, I also think maybe my personal best bet for next year would be doing something that's just fun for a year.

Bartending. Talking to people.

No reason I can't do both and more, I guess. Not really coming to any point, just mulling over an infinite number of possibilities. Good possibilities, most.

Guess in the end I have little to say, except--

I still need to find a way to sleep less. If I can't function with less than 8 hours a night, then I lose a lot of time. Maybe if I drink more water, exercise more.

But then, I don't really want to exercise more, and I drink all the water I want. One has to draw a line somewhere, on self regulation.

Doctor Rafa Found A Cocktail She Likes

I like being twenty-one. It was rather nice to pull Elena out, walk down the street to Da Vinci's, and start a good conversation over gimlets. And holy shit, gimlets are delicious, I wish I'd known about them before. Far as I can tell, it's just...gin, lime juice, sugar, and ice shaken together. Man, it was tasty.

I am worried about Elena, after a few hour long conversation with her. She's--quite depressed. Not in the "she's going to kill herself" way, but in the "if someone killed me, I'd have no regrets" sort of way.

I'm hoping to at least drag her out more, give her the chance to enjoy herself without having to put effort forward.

In other news. Doing work is nice. Getting organized for this paper is nice.

Watching House is nice.

Drinking red wine out of a terra cotta mug is nice.

Scalding coffee with the milk still half sitting at the top is nice.

Right now, I still feel a little down, despite all the nice things around me. I'm thinking it's because I'm by myself, and knowing that I can force myself to unclench, accept the reality, go back to focusing on the...nice bits.

I smell like lemon sugar. It's another of several perfumes I own.

Hoping to have a chance to play soon, as I really have an itch to scratch in this regard...

Clawing for an outlet,

Rafa

Doctor Rafa and Philosophy Bites

I've been trying out a bunch of podcasts this week, and so far my favorite is this podcast called Philosophy Bites (philosophybites.com). It's a 13ish minute show where these two guys (one of whom is apparently the author of Wittgenstein's Poker, a book I happen to be reading now) bring in specialist philosophers on various subjects.

The ones I've listened to so far have been on "what is an emotion?" and "morality without God."

Pretty cool.

Doctor Rafa Plays with the Internets

God, I love coffee. Of course, since I spent all my meals for the day on coffee, I'm a little stumped about what to do about food.

...but who cares. I have coffee.

I haven't really been able to eat much lately. Something about the feeling of being full is unsettling. Not unsettling in an upsetting sort of way, but I feel like I can't move, and I don't feel hungry all that often. Perhaps it's because I've been sleeping more? I do feel tired a lot more. I took a nap today for two hours...then got more coffee.

So, I've been trying to understand some fetishes that are very alien to me, lately. Just because--the topic interests me, and I like to know how sexual associations work, especially if they're ones I don't at all have. Right now I'm trying to understand a disease and pestilence type fetish. As in, someone who gets off looking at pus, boils, vomit, I guess scat would go here. It's not something I feel really at all, and imagining myself in those scenarios is pretty nausea-inducing, but I think I'm starting to get the idea anyway. How do you think it works? The mindset is--interesting.

I don't mean to freak anyone out with all this alternative-sexuality stuff lately, it's just been in my mind lately as an area of interest. Like, take people who are into amputees? What is the mindset there that makes a lack of limbs sexually attractive, makes that the important feature? Is it the helplessness, maybe (in the case of all four limbs, as seems to be semi-common). But then, wikipedia said that such people prefer only one limb, or one of each. Maybe it's just the mutilation? I'm curious, since again it isn't something that I automatically understand.

How about insects? Maggots in particular seem popular. Perhaps it is just sexual associations with the grotesque, or fear-adrenaline-fascination with death and the mechanical degradation of our bodies after death?

I admit I sort of think all this is sort of cool. Not sexual, for me, but cool.

Oh, and my professor brought up Body Identity Integrity Disorder (I think that's the official name) in Bioethics last class, and it was pretty amusing to watch the looks of absolute horror on the faces of my classmates. "There are people...who voluntarily chop off their -limbs-!" It strikes me that such people don't seem to think that mental illnesses are actually real. Their reactions are always something like "but why don't they just--not do that and get a real job, and a real girlfriend, and everything would be better!" It's idiotic, and easy to brush aside such people as ignorant, but I wonder at the average person's conception of what a mental illness really is. In my experience, people seem to see it as weakness, or a cry for attention. Also interesting, but in a slightly more depressing way.

Doo bee doo

Dear Andrew,

A quotation my friend Ryan shot at me. I thought it was great.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" --Walt Whitman

Did I mention Ryan's a Buddhist monk in training?

Heh.

Just wanted to share that,

Rafa.