I am a freak.

But not such a freak that there isn't a name for it. Google "Marcus Gunn jaw wink" if you want to learn more about it.

Somehow, knowing that it's common enough to have a name makes me feel better.

The U.S. military has been studying the suicide rates of it's members and one of the aspects being looked at is the occupation held by people who suicide. A basic summary of the results of studying possible relationships between occupation and suicide in the military can be found here. According to the study the most suicide-prone job in the military is:

French horn player

Yeah.  I suppose if my job was to blow on a horn I'd eventually want to kill myself, too.  At least whistle blowers can have some sense of purpose in life from what they do.

Hope apparently isn't all it's cracked up to be

In some cases folks do better without it.

Quote of the day:

Women are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.-Starling

I think it's the not being in the market that so many guys have trouble getting through their heads. A woman doesn't even have to be a lesbian to simply not be interested in hooking up with someone at the moment. Why is that so difficult a concept for some people to grasp?

The quote was lifted from here

U.S. military is going to launch a study to better understand why people suicide while in the military. Evidently the rate now exceeds that of the civilian population which is not usual. With all the variables that the study plans to examine it is to be hoped that they'll also look at the possible role played by the "stop-loss" orders that are extracting more service involuntarily out of the people who have already served. It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between the two.

I don't have to live like this.

That phrase caught my attention and i've been mulling it for awhile now. It's true. It's something of an epiphany. I don't have to live like this. But then the question is: How do i want to live? What do i want? What is the best way of getting there? Having had to cope with depression of varying degrees of severity for most of my life i've had lots of practice with staying out of touch with how i feel about almost everything. So if there's aspects of my life that i don't want how would i be able to improve on it if it really isn't clear as to what i do want? Even if it isn't possible yet to be terribly articulate about what i want, it's getting easier to figure out what i don't want.

I spent some time today looking through newspaper clippings and other assorted papers, most of which are momentos of other phases of my life. Some i kept but there were others that ended up being tossed because there's no foreseeable way for them to be useful to me in the future. Science doesn't want me anymore; i've been away too long so why should a reprint of an article from a biophysics journal be kept? Even if i myself wanted to get back into laboratory work there's no reputable lab that would hire me so why keep something that reminds me of something i can never go back to and would probably make me acutely miserable if i did?

What is it about some people that they think the solution to not having a particular, personal relationship with a given person is to murder that individual? That's so messed up on so many levels.