I belong to a very small club. A one-man club. Actually, I belong to several: I’m the only person to be screwed by five Web designers in a row when creating one Website; I’m the only person to have had a spontaneous recovery from total hepatic failure; and I’m the only person in the world…
Swimming at last
October 28, 2013
Dave, The Best Therapist in the World, told me that my situation was similar to a person afraid of learning to swim. It wasn’t water that scared me but emotion. Feeling deep emotions was terrifying. I was raised to think that genuine emotions were dangerous. This was a tradition on both sides of the family….
Vergangenheitsbewältigung
October 28, 2013
The Germans are great at coming up with words to describe the complexity of human existence. Schadenfreude. “The humor one feels at another’s misfortune.” Laughing when someone’s pants fall off in public, for example. Backpfeifengesicht. “A face badly in need of a fist.” Someone who’s got the kind of face you just want to smash….
Optimizing the Website
October 24, 2013
Today I learned about optimizing the Website. The reason my Website is invisible to search engines is because certain things have to be done to make search engines happy. Why? “Because that’s the way it is.” As a child I got that answer from my father whenever I’d ask why we had to do something…
Good-bye, pessimists. I’m sorry.
October 19, 2013
My father Edward Joseph Wictor was the most pessimistic person I’ve known. His favorite pronouncements were, “It’s really scary” and “Nothing’s ever gonna get better.” Here’s Dad at the age of twenty-three in 1951, serving in the U.S. Coast Guard at LORAN Station Bikati. Dad being Dad, the only thing I know about his time…
Orphans
October 18, 2013
Today it finally hit me that my brothers, my sister, and I are orphans. Eric still has his mother, but the rest of us are parentless. We’re all fifty or thereabouts, so it’s not like we’re now helpless and terrified. I find it incomprehensible more than anything else. Though Mom and Dad died for nine…
Why won’t I just shut up?
October 17, 2013
I’ve gotten a few messages from people saying they disagree with what I write about life after death, the entity I call the Planner, reincarnation, etc. Some people think I’m completely deranged. They want me to just shut up. That’s okay. However, a clarification: I’m not like this woman. Only once in my life have…
Grady Harp review of Ghosts and Ballyhoo
October 17, 2013
Grady Harp has reviewed Ghosts and Ballyhoo on Amazon. Five stars! Thank you, Grady. I was going to write a post about how Mom’s death has left me in a state of hyper-irritation. Most of what I see and hear strikes me as unbearably trivial. The radio spews out the same set-piece political bitch-fests that…
Thomas Wictor unfettered
October 15, 2013
In a recent post I said that I was now unfettered, and that people who had done bad things would be held accountable. I knew that at some point, I’d write a post like this; I just didn’t think it would happen so soon. Scott Thunes said he wished he could see me really let…
Detox
September 22, 2013
I did it. Through sheer willpower, I’ve broken the last of my really bad habits. This was one of the most corrosive. It’s been several days now, and I’m still clean. The detox worked. After changing so much about myself that I didn’t like, I couldn’t stop going on a particular Website and fighting with…