There are only two constants in the human world: Pain, and Fear.

Without pain, humans cannot know their insignificance.
Without fear, humans cannot know their own mortality.

A little something I considered while sitting on the toilet for the third hour straight. This morning I woke up with stomach pain and diarrhea. Now, diarrhea I get all the time. That didn't worry me. What worried me was the stomach pain. Dear God, the stomach pain. I was immediately faced with the petrifying possibility that I had acquired the flu. Not swine flu; I wasn't afraid of that, just normal flu.

I despise the flu because when I get it, my stomach goes apeshit and massively swells up and become inflamed. The result is agonizing pain. I've been cut, sliced, scratched by cats, mauled by vicious dogs (note the scars all over my face and hands), flown face-first into the floor at full running speed, and other fun things. But that kind of pain doesn't even begin to compare to this stomach pain. Memories of my last hospital visit where Canadian healthcare showed its wonderous ability to totally ignore and neglect people, where I was left writhing in unending pain for over four hours before they pretty much just sent me home. I managed to solve that debacle by investing a few hours into forcing myself to vomit, which had the added effect of leaving me in painful convulsions for another half-hour. Needless to say, it's not a series of events I want to relive.

So, the first thing I do is scarf down a ton of milk in some vain effort to get rid of potential acidity; the pain originates largely from massive amounts of gas, but once it gains momentum no amount of waste disposal will save my stomach from hell's toothy maw. So there I was, sitting on the toilet, expending just as much of an insane amount of waste as I was the last time. (For someone who hadn't eaten anything, taking non-stop bathroom breaks every 5 minutes for over 10 hours and then throwing up like 10 times in a row really got me thinking: Where the fuck did all this stuff come from? The body must hold an insane amount of food in it.)

I occupied my time by watching Day[9] Daily VOD's; my screen is perfectly visible from my bathroom, so that helped pass time. Finally the stomach pain began to subside and I managed to go back to sleep for a half-hour or so.

Only to get up a few times to add more content to the mix. Now my ass burns. A lot. It hurts to stand, it hurts to sit, it just hurts. But I seem to have dodged the big bullet. My stomach still hurts a bit, but I am confident that if this was the flu that my immune system has finally shaped up after years of being mortally sick and managed to fight it off.


Okay, on to business.

I've been thinking about what to post on dA. I thought yesterday, "Well I might as well make some nice renders of my old models if I'm not going to be doing anything new for a while." So I loaded up 3ds max, opened my render scene which I had deconstructed from one Sarge made, and tossed in the Glecterror. Incidentally, the shadows freaked out and turned into single-shaded blobs, the model appeared insanely bright, and the render crashes. Okay. So, I try again. Same thing. I try with a different model. Same thing happens.

WTF? I haven't changed the scene or anything since I rendered the Grand Vindicator; which renders just fine. I don't know, I am completely clueless when it comes to 3d stuff, and max often baffles the hell out of me. I think I'm out of luck, or I'll have to make a new render scene, but I suck with lighting and shadow setups.

I did ask for a camera for Christmas, though. Nothing big and fancy, just something to replace that POS fraiser gave me that I can't recharge. Once I have it I'll be able to take pictures of our cats, my collections, myself in erotic poses, and whatever else comes to mind (A while ago I used the last bit of battery power I had in the old camera to take shots of some spiders that turned out decent).

A few days ago I met up with Mister Black Physician again. He doubled my Wellbutrin dosage, so now I take a total of two 3mg blue pills. I haven't noticed an effect yet. He also gave me some Ativan, a supposedly highly addictive and potentially hilarious drug, to use when I have anxiety attacks. So far I've had an anxiety attack and used it but noticed no effect. I also take flaxseed oil capsules now - three of them, to offset the slightly heightened cholesterol the Zyprexa/Olanzapine gave me. Maybe this fiasco is a result of those capsules. Great!

Overall quite the uneventful week. I spent a day making a massive article related to modding on CC, and I posted a video about the Great Destroyer in AO.

youtube.com/watch?v= PBRXnSaB-sk (Copy to address, remove space between = and P)

There's the video. You should check it out even if you only know about Starcraft in passing. I explain some of the difficulties I faced with the unit (really badly, missing a lot of information, derp derp) and show off his cool custom effects.

/e aaargh dA's damn smilies are destroying the link! Horray for user-end work when they shouldn't have to do anything.