Journal t0qer's Journal: Quick money makin schemes... 2
I'm poor as hell, but i'm smart, I live in silicon valley. I got an idea and a garage. Totally illeagle but i'd rather do this than sell dope to make ends meet.
I've been looking at these motherboards lately. My hero in the world of programming built a jamma cabinet using a duron 800mhz
setup and dos. Good old fucking dos, makes me think back to novell IPX drivers, anyways.
There's a lot of shady little liquor stores, video rental places that would love to upgrade their current bootleg street fighter to a 3000 in 1 arcade machine I bet. I think I could easily sell the board and perform the upgrade
for $300 bucks. Shit I got the entire mame romset
More so, I might even be able to convert these machines to internet devices. Yes that's right, play street fighter and surf the web in dos.
Aww fuck, I shaved my head clean today, I know i'm going insane. I'm still losing a ton of weight, I'm starting to look like a skeleton. I cannot put my finger on the root of my despair. It grips me to where I
am completly frozen and unable to move sometimes.
I try and come up with these crazy idea's just to make myself feel better I think. Like somehow dreaming up idea's all day is going to get me anywhere. I screwed up, but my parents did a great number on me too.
When I was 12 my mother had me committed to keep my father from seeing me. Ever been a 12 year old with a 138iq in a crazy house full of crazy adults?
It was a great year, I was 12, had a paper route, Good close buddys that I still talk to to this day, a romantic interest with a girl 6 months older than me named janet marty. 2 years had passed since the cops took me away from
my old man for the religious beatings he gave me. Of course my mother was an insane person who couldn't accept the fact that I was happy, after all she was miserable from living with my father and if she could prove he
affected me for the rest of my life, possibly she could go after him some more.
She kept trying to get me to go to counseling, which I just didn't want to. Heck I wanted to go to campbell creek to jump off the bridge or go fishin with manny. Go hang out at pizza my dear on wednesday night all you can eat
pizza night with my girl. Life was so much better than it had been at dads. Heck I even had an appleIIc and was learning how to make computer animation in Movie Maker by electronic arts. I was even over the wounds my dad
inflicted, and I wanted to reconsile our relationship. But my mother didn't want this.
She kept insisting I was a problem, and my father offerered to take me for the summer. The day he was supposed to pick me up she called a shrink down from valley medical center (county mental health) to have a look at me. When
she started with the "How Do you Feel today?" bullshit I told her no thanks, nobody would be picking my brain today, I need to go outside to wait for my father.
As I reached for the door, my stepfather grabbed me, I fought, he threw me on the couch and him, my mother, and the lady all sat on my chest. I wasn't gonna go down that easy. I was screaming my head off, they tried putting
their hands over my mouth, I took some nice juicy bites. My stepfather ran off screaming, came back with a dirty wet dishrag and stuffed it into my mouth as a gag. The police came, handcuffed me, and took me down for observation.
During the observation I tried to talk as rationally as possible. I tried to keep my cool. My father stopped by, but since my mother told the lady he was the root of my evil he was escorted away by the police.
After 72 hours it was decided I needed 2 weeks in another facility called monte villa. I would spend 6 months there before the insurance ran out. That was the only reason I was declared "Ready to Go!" Anyone who knows
a Dr. Freedlander should imeadiately go seek a second opinion. The man had no scruples then, I doubt he has them now.
He would try to induce symptoms in me through medication. On a depressed day I got a healthy dose of halodol "See the patient is lacking motivation" Maybe a little ritilin to make me bounce off the walls so they
could restrain me. Lock me in a little 6x9 room to let me piss on myself. Telling me everyday shit like "oh your iq was 138 now it's 136, you must have left your brain in a basket" Asswipe, now that i'm old enough
to understand it all better, OF COURSE THERE WOULD BE A 2 POINT VARIENCE IF:
A. THE TEST IS GIVEN UNDER STRESSFUL CONDITIONS
B. IT WAS A DIFFERENT TEST.
His job was to lie to me, to get me to hate my father, to get me to hate my fathers family. Evertime I tried sneaking a phone call to my fathers family I would be ripped off the phone and drug into restraints.
He tried to break me every way he could imagine. He stuck me in a room with a molestor named Kieth Harris. Freedlander even asked me if there was anything going on, he knew damn well what was happening. I knew if I was going to
make it out of this I would have to keep my mouth shut otherwise he would be able to convince the courts that I needed shock therapy. Yes folks, this asshole wanted to fry my brains good.
I kept trying to annoy the fuck out of him and his staff by calling the patients rights advocacy every day. One day they sent some big ol lady down to mediate. They sent their biggest cunt bag of a nurse to argue that I
needed to be kept in. She knew all the right things to say to push my buttons. "Toq why did you shit in the garbage can in the spare shower?" Searching for answers, was I to tell her I just got assraped and I ran
in there to wash the dirtyness off, I shit in the garbage to cleanse my asshole?
"I had to go real bad, I didn't wanna slip on the floor or shit in the shower, so I went to the closest place I could". Fuck,
sometimes I wonder if my cowardice in keeping my trap shut was the good choice. Had I said something then and there my life's course might have been different. I was a child, being lied to by a professional that took a hippocratic
oath. A manipulated, medicated tool for getting that insurance money.
My fathers family was fighting a desperate fight to save me from my mother and this mad psychiatrist. When all you see are walls, and group therapy, and adults smoking, and some stupid fucking idiot getting the coke cans taken
away because the dumb broad uses them to cut herself, you actually begin to take on your enviroment. You go from normal, to a lunatic without even realising it.
Most insurance at the time only gave 2 months of mental health. To get it up to the 6 months was a work of pure evil. First they drained my mother and stepfathers insurance, then freedlander showed my mom how she could get a
court order for my dads insurance to pay. That motherfucker is a blood thirst vampire I tell ya. If you're seeing him now I hope you're having second thoughts.
When it was all out, they just sort of release me. I went back to junior high as a REAL POPULAR kid oh yeah! Little girls chasing me around "Looney BOy LooneY BOY!" My mother made it worse by insisting that the
school keep me medicated, despite it making me fall asleep in class. Now I was one of those special kids that went to the nurses office to take crazy pills, the stigma was more than I could stand. The school refused me woodshop
because they thought I was going to cut off some poor kids head.
I started to crack, seeking social acceptance I started to do any dare anyone would throw my way. My friends dared me to moon the class one time, it felt good to finally do something that made people laugh at my command
than laugh at will at me.
Unfortunately this got me in trouble too. The cops came to my school and scolded me. My mother took this as an oppertunity to get me locked up again. My mom used to like to tell her she was the boss of me, despite
me being older. I started walking out of the house when my sis jumped in front of the door.
"YOU AREN'T GOIN ANYWHERE!"
ROOM!"
I met a real nigger in juvinile hall that night. Sorry if you black folk out there don't like me using that word but that is what he was. All night he threatened to kick my ass if I didn't play some hand slapping game with him.
Fucker nearly made my hands bleed. Kept talking to me about how great it was to sell crack and steal hubcaps. This was what ghetto niggers did in the 80's. Yeah sorry, 14 year old crack dealing pursesnatchers who have dark skin
are niggers. Hate to tell you that.
My fathers family got a court order that I be placed in the childrens shelter while the adults figured out what the fuck to do with my life. Great now the people that fucked up my life were in court trying to decide how
to fuck it up more. My family was in the unfortunate bind of trying to make my father look like he was a decent father so he could take me home. My mother kept trying to prove my fathers abuse was the root of my mental
illness's and I needed to go to a state mental facility. Then after 4 months my savior stepped in.
My grandmother took me in and started trying to rebuild my confidence. She bought me all new clothes, toys, I even had my own bathroom in my bedroom! Sweet fucking jesus life was going to go great from here! But as usual
with my sorry ass life, parents fucking shit up and all, it went in a direction she never knew would take course...
A lot of you may wonder, why do I name names in my posts? It's revenge, no matter what I could do to them in real life, I will have eternalized their villany in my writing. There is nothing worse I can do to them. (*note paraphrased movie quote)
Till next week, this is toq ending another rant.
No great solutions (Score:2)
That's some story. There's no real response to something like that except to offer some support.
My life hasn't nearly been that sucky, but I went through a divorce. It's really hard to say how it affected me, but I know that I was a very shy, withdrawn child. I had a handful of friends, but I was picked on a lot. I wasn't the most picked on, but if you had a scale of popularity where 10 gets the most abuse, I was probably only a 7 or 7.5 (you sound like a 9.5+). There's no question that the abuse sucks, and what makes it worse is when certain teachers (I know you know what I'm talking about) look at you with disdain like "Why don't you just straighten yourself out so that they don't pick on you??". Or "Why don't you just grow some guts and stand up for yourself"? Yet the fear is almost paralyzing at times.
The thing about it is, when I got out of high school and began to be an adult, I had a two roads I could really take. The "social outcast" road, or the "somewhat well-adjusted road". I really made a concious effort to "fix myself" and learn to relate to people in a normal way. It was both a concious and an unconcious effort. I was a computer science major in college, and when I saw some of the "uber geeks", I was just repelled. Even though I could relate to them intellecually, I just didn't want to go down that road and become those sad, lonely shells of people. And then I looked at other people, and decided I want to go down the other road.
It took an enormous amount of effort to overcome my social limitations. But these things ARE possible to learn. I'm still not Mr. Social, but I married a socially-normal girl, and have two great kids. I can relate to people pretty well, and that has served me well in business. In fact, I would say that has been KEY to my success. I'm 37 now, by the way.
I think one of the most important things that I did was to get rid of my past and not dwell on all the humuliations I suffered in Junior High and High School. It's almost like a decided to become another person. I remember going back to my 10 year reunion, and people were blown away by how much I had changed. I was a different person.
Like I said before, I'm not going to say that my life even remotely compares to yours. But perhaps the solution is the same -- pretend that your past doesn't exist, and decide which road you want to go down.
You know one of the ways I overcame my shyness and social problems? It's sounds stupid, but I pretended that I was socially confident, like I was in a play. It was almost a caricature at first, but after a while the patterns started to change as learned more about real social interaction. I knew some people that had social confidence, and I emulated their behavior. It was that learning process that eventually allowed my own personality to come through.
There were a LOT of things to learn, particularly about when to inject your knowledge and when not to. Being geeks, we often think that anytime is a good time to say something like "Say! Did you know that blah blah?" and launch into some long technical discussion. There are times that you can do that, but there's a lot more to conversation that trading facts. :)
Anyone, this has turned into a long ramble. I don't know if any of this is interesting or useful to you, but the biggest point I want to make is that you CAN overcome your limitations, no matter what your background is. It sounds cliched, but it really is true.
Good luck. If you ever feel like you want to e-mail someone who understands geekiness and has a foot in both worlds, feel free.
P.S. This is too freaking long to spell check and grammar check, so please forgive any errors. :)
Re:No great solutions (Score:2)
Not a big deal, rumor is stephen king is terrible in that department, which is why he has so many proofreaders.
I'm slowly getting over things now. My fathers family isn't the screwed up mess my mothers is, they've been there every step of the way for moral support. Unfortunately they were in that bind where they couldn't bad mouth my father. As an adult I can understand that now.
I just gotta get a job again, make money and be happy.