Sunstream

This wasn’t maliciousness to my mind so much as it was pure selfishness, but our school guidance counsellor fucked up in a vulnerable moment (particularly for me, but pretty much everyone who had to witness it as well), then doubled down on it and somehow made it worse.

One morning I came to school and my class was really somber. I found out that a girl’s mother had died yesterday- that girl was part of my friend’s group and I’d just met her mother a few weeks earlier at friend’s birthday party; she was lovely. A drunk driver had hit her on a roundabout at 12 midday, of all times, and she’d passed before they’d even gotten her to the hospital.

This was traumatic for my friend on every level, I’m sure, but it was my first experience with second hand grief, so you can imagine it was a bad time to go ahead with the scheduled guest that morning who was there to do a very graphic presentation about drunk driving involving sound effects and acting out a car collision.

I feel sorry for the guy, in hindsight, because he probably hadn’t heard a chorus of horrified screams and spontaneous sobbing in response to one of his shows quite like that, before, but that was on the school admin, anyway. What the fuck were they even thinking? “Yes, yes, we’re all sad about Jessie’s mum … So anyway, this is how she died, in real time!”

So, moments before this bloody show started up, another close friend of mine turned up late and was confused at our dismayed faces. No one had taken her aside to tell her (the bastards. Why would you not take the girl’s close friend group aside to tell them first? Jessie’s mum was like a second mum to some of us), so I found it was on me to convey it. That really sucked. A lot. I was clumsy, friend was distraught, you get the picture.

This bitch counsellor, though… When the completely inappropriate presentation got to the graphic bit, my friend took off crying down the hall 'cause fuck all that, and I made to as well. The counsellor stopped me (like she thought I was trying to go after her), and fucking made me sit down and watch the rest of that show, clinging to my other friends trying to sob as quietly as possible and not imagine poor Jessie’s mum at the moment her death. We were like, what, 15, 16 years old?

I don’t know how the hell my feelings about this bullshit got back to the counsellor, but I think my mum must’ve called the school after I came home in floods, because again, this fucking bitch called me aside right as the bell rang to go home to (figuratively speaking) pin me down and explain to me why she was totally right to do what she did and she hoped I understood that she did the right thing, blah blah blah.

I just nodded along desperately, getting more and more anxious because my one bus out of there had a very narrow window to get on, and eventually had to interrupt her to beg her to let me go home. I got to enjoy the sight of it driving off without me and had to call my mum to pick me up over an hour later (side of the road on a hot Aussie afternoon- no there was no bus shelter, no the school wasn’t open to let me hang around 'til my Mum got in).

Goddamn, I still think about that sometimes. It’s not even close to the worst I’ve heard of teachers, but it’s just so petty and unkind it somehow pisses me off more than overt cruelty. Like fuck off, you can’t gaslight me into believing you had my best interests at heart with bullying tactics.

Oh yeah that’s right, that same counsellor told me I had depression, too, when a) at that point in highschool I absolutely did not and it came out of left field completely, and b) when I did start to suffer from anxiety and depression she was as useful as a cat flap in an elephant house. Shocker.

Fuck you Mrs Whatever-your-face-was. I only remember you by the dumb nickname everyone gave you and that’s fair enough because you’re also dumb.

If what everyone else said hasn’t already put the wind up you, this portion of an article below details why lithium fires are so freaking bad.

Once lithium battery fires take hold, they are notoriously difficult to put out, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. There have been several reports of fire departments being unable to extinguish burning EV batteries, which—amongst other things—led to Tesla issuing specific guidance to firefighters as to how to deal with such fires. There are several reasons for the severity of lithium battery fires. For a start, they burn extremely hot, and have a nasty habit of spontaneously reigniting when you think you’ve extinguished them. They also burn for a long time. If there’s any elemental lithium present, it will react with moisture in the air to produce lithium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. Hydrogen gas is flammable. Very flammable. Lithium-ion batteries contain little or no elemental lithium, but any that is present—it can form on the anode during the charging process—can present a very unwelcome surprise. The nature of the electrolyte used can also be a problem—some high-specific energy lithium-ion batteries use a flammable electrolyte that contains lithium hexafluorophosphate, which can decompose into the thoroughly unpleasant hydrofluoric acid during a fire. Lithium ion fires also produce a variety of other gases, including oxygen, which means that simply smothering the fire doesn’t work, because the fire essentially generates its own fuel. Several of these gases are flammable, and can ignite explosively, while oxygen, not flammable itself, causes other materials in the battery to burn much hotter and more rapidly. Both carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are also produced, which can present breathing hazards to firefighters. Generally, the best thing to do with a lithium fire is to stay a long way away from it and let it burn itself out. Of course, if it happens to be, say, the car or e-bike in your garage that’s on fire, this approach may prove unsatisfactory.

Or, say you put a fucked up battery into your phone, then your phone into your pocket… Well, you might be golden if you also decided to start carrying lithium ion gel with you everywhere you go, but barring that, you’ll make a pretty charred shish kabob in short order.

You’re not even supposed to charge your phone near combustibles like sheets and clothings, ideally, or overcharge your batteries (to avoid overheating).

I’ve heard the uncanny valley affect also being attributed to ancient ancestors encountering other early non-human-but similar competitors. The effect of, “Oh look, another Neanderthal- Wait, shit, not like me, abort abort!”. I don’t know how likely that is, but it’s an interesting thought.

If you’ve not watched Mork and Mindy, that’s worth it. It was Robin William’s breakout role in television, so if you know Robin, you know what you’re getting. It’s delightful.

I’ve been really getting into Korean tv on Netflix lately, too. Best watched with subtitles and no dubbing. My gf and I have been watching Good Manager, which is about a tacky mob accountant trying to run away from his problems by skimming flagrantly from all of the dodgy businesses he manages. He gets hired at a large corporation and thinks he’s onto his biggest scam yet, but the accounting team are sincere, the managers are psychos, and he’s still got a glimmer of heart beneath his red hair dye and 1980’s Sears catalogue suits that makes stealing from big business really, really hard when they take it out on the little guy. It’s had me absolutely rolling; people’s facial expressions, their theatrics, and vigorous use of the leitmotif really brought it together. 10/10, for me.

I watched a looot of Animal Planet when I was a kid, so I didn’t have many illusions. I could never figure out how the fuck birds did it, though. I figured that male birds must have extendable bits somehow, but female birds have a tail in the way.

We kept ducks when I was a kid, and during the time that we kept a mallard, he would straight up stand on the female duck’s backs, and that struck me as terribly inefficient. To support this, none of the female ducks ever laid fertilised eggs, so I figured he was just terrible at it.

Little did I know about the horrifying intricacies of duck mating. I’ll thank the internet for informing me in later life… Yeesh.

I’ve been going to a psychologist fairly regularly (fortnightly or monthly) for over 2 years, and I do generally have a positive self image, now.

I didn’t start going just to gain better self image, but it came naturally the longer I spent articulating the problems I have and the goals I want to achieve.

When you answer questions about yourself, your thoughts, your ideas and values (specifically when you SAY them aloud to another person), it tends to expose your internal biases; against others, as well, but particularly yourself.

Negative thoughts said aloud, repeated, begin to sound like hyperbole. It’s easier to catch yourself being unfair, mean, critical or thinking with no nuance about yourself, when you have to articulate it.

Even writing my thoughts down worked better than just thinking them. Feelings were no longer vague and undermining, they were nameable and confrontable. Having someone verbally intervene in unfair self judgements- and to highlight and celebrate my personal wins- is infinitely rewarding.

I feel good about myself, overall. I see my good, bad and neutral traits, and the bad is easier to tackle or accept when I know good and bad don’t cancel each other out. Many things can be true at once, and it serves me nothing to fail to see my wins.

Almost no one I know is fully evil, bad, useless or selfish, they always have at least one thing that’s worth celebrating.

I decided that, now that I can see my good, I’m allowed celebrate, enjoy and share it, because the bad doesn’t grow without my permission anymore, and they’re not in competition; it’s just all me. Complex, like everyone.

Too right. Someone in my household reminded us that we used to use munted all the time, so we’re bringing it back into our vocab, haha

Munted - mutated, fucked up, borken

The Fifth Element. Still in my top ten list, and always will be.

Wait, so does symbolic memory transition to being primarily language? I assume we retain symbolic memory in some capacity?