Started yesterday.
So there's new Pinky phone.
The France thing seems to have stopped on the little Pinky blog.
It stopped briefly on the big Pinky blog and then started back up.
Again, this has been going on very regularly all day long 24/7 for over 5 years from only one user in France with possibly a second device thrown in for a little sport.
Was easy to notice it was interrupted when my old phone was officially deactivated. I've written several posts through the years regarding specific synched post hits that have identical phrases and topics with what I'm saying in a psychologist's office at the same moment. It started when I called out Vivendi, basically the world communications oligarchy.
I'm sure some of you find that boring. You completely miss how alarming it is that you've got listening devices around you 24/7 that AI monitors and tags across the webs, and you'll never see it happening unless you are a stats watcher like me. They've got years of collected personal info on all of us. It's not new. It's all automated.
On to other things.
I don't think I mentioned last week except on Twitter that Trixie croaked off. She was a Black Australorp with a skin problem, possibly a nervous system problem like localized tingling or maybe even arthritis along her spine or something. She picked all her feathers out around the oil glands above her tail and over time continued to rip feathers out along her spine until her back was bare in a long narrow triangle, with the base just above her tail and the point at the back of her neck where she couldn't reach any higher. I've raised chickens all my life and never saw that before, so I feel like it was a localized pain thing, maybe. She lived to a year and 3 months old. The last couple of months she was still laying and eating well but didn't feel like venturing very far from the henhouse while the others wandered around. She seemed fine otherwise, no other problems. The other hens were unaffected, so it wasn't a parasite or anything viral. At the end of her last day she was suddenly too weak to hop onto even to lowest rung on the roost and snuggled into the straw under it. She died peacefully in her sleep. 😔
I don't tend to gossip about people I game with but one guy in particular was one of the sweetest monsters I ever met. Sometimes when it's over you just need to obit someone, so here we go. I'm not going to name him or anything, I'll just call him 'he'.
He first contacted me early spring of 2021. Come join our group, etc. Very normal, groups are always recruiting, but this guy was way more chatty in DMs so naturally I was wary, years of experience with sweet chatty guys always having some kind of agenda. But over a month he wore me down and I joined his group. He wasn't the leader, but he was definitely working that group to get what he wanted. It seemed like everyone liked him, but every little bit I pulled him aside and was like Look, not all players have the financial capability to put as much into game as you push for, don't push so hard to get something YOU want. And he was always super sweet about it, but it was a continual daily cheerleading effort to grow his own wealth on group support. I'd never seen anyone work so hard for game wealth, so smooth like he was ace in customer support or something.
Over time I learned he was around 50, very mathy, I'd say typical autist type who had learned long ago how to survive in his real life jobs by very sweetly manipulating coworkers and bosses. It's a rare talent, most people have no clue how used they are for a very long time. Watching that technique in game was mesmerizing. His patience for ends justifying means was almost top quality evil because underneath everything was this very innocuous selfishness glossed over with sticky sweet cheerleading.
Over more time I learned that he'd played a coup on a previous group, breaking them literally in half and taking members with him to a new group whose leader was a sucker for his sweet persistence. It wasn't surprising, then, when about 4 months after I joined his group, he led another coup to still another group. He'd been sweet talking a new leader who had bigger ambitions and higher ranked players and apparently talked his way into forming a new group with part of that person's old group and our group. Basically, two groups were ripped apart over this move. I followed more out of morbid curiosity than anything. I'm not a terribly ambitious player.
The thing about gaming is when you work with other players in groups over time, you get to know them a little, and you forge relationships no matter how minor. You get used to people. In gaming, people come and go regularly, there's no real commitment, but it's still a camaraderie in its way. What I further learned about this guy was that he's actually not a gamer. This was his first ever online game, his first experience with group gaming, and he had absolutely no feelings for the actual people gaming, despite all the sweet talk. He was very, very good at getting to know people and then using them for his own gain and making it all look like it was something we all wanted. I continued to pull him aside here and there to remind him people are real and it's not really cool to expect them to keep putting so much effort into his personal game goals, keeping in mind he used the group leaders to 'get rid' of players who didn't perform to his expectations. I went out of my way to hammer out very specific details with the new group leader about expectations so new recruits would have a heads up. I don't believe in pulling rugs out from under people like a dictator.
So that went on about 9 months before I finally decided I just need to pull out, my real life was way too hectic to keep up with that group, despite that I'd been given a nice rank and was regularly put in charge of the hardest event in the whole game. Our group was amazing, and everyone said it was thanks to me showing them how to remain stress free and still stay on track with goals. I found out later that the group literally exploded after I left, and once again, another coup happened, and the way he slid into one of the top 5 groups in the entire server, you know he was sweet talking his way in way before the coup happened. He'd already been planning it, didn't have a second thought about dumping everyone else in a ditch, and the group leader he left was so devastated that he told me he didn't have the heart to game any more. THAT is how people are affected by players who sweet talk and use them for months on end.
Fortunately, I've group gamed for years and I know stuff happens. I'm almost like the psychologist of group gaming everywhere I go, was always into social psychology in my degree program. It took awhile for me to adapt to group gaming myself because I'm autist and have my own difficulties with interaction, but basic takeaway is that some people simply don't respect others as living breathing life forms with feelings and have no qualms about treating them poorly. This guy was sensational at it.
So in the time I knew him, in one year flat he pulled off 3 coups, leaving wakes of devastated corpses strewn around, and as far as I know, I may be the only one he contacted afterward to stay in touch. He originally opted not to pursue friendship outside of game, so he blew that chance. Trying to stay friends with me with sudden real life tidbits was almost like a desperate hook for validation or something. So let's continue with his real life.
He refused to share much of anything real to any group, although we eventually found out he was married and had a grown son. The lockdowns were very depressing for him, but instead of finding connections in game, he found challenge and nicely stepped all over people. That made me wonder what his real life must be like. He seemed competent intellectually, very sensible with strategy and planning, but I'd never seen anyone put so much effort into other people without actually connecting. Was his real job like that? I kept thinking how he'd be great at human resources, hiring and firing, or maybe customer service and support, because he just wouldn't get caught up in guilt about anything he had to do. I never did find out what his real job was. But after the last coup and his attempts at 'friendship' (with an agenda, he needed validation), it became obvious the lockdowns took a toll on his marriage. His wife went out drinking with girlfriends after the lockdowns lifted, and he stayed home gaming. THAT was weird. He was so obsessed that he literally stayed home gaming. And then she left him. And he evidently finally found someone to take to a hotel room, called her his "GF" which I found distasteful, and then mentioned enjoying McDonald's coffee with her outside watching the sunrise.
And that was the perfect picture for what kind of man he is. EFFICIENT. I can't imagine what all his wife must have put up with. I was appalled he only offered McDonald's breakfast *outside* before the very brief tryst was over for the day, especially at his age. I didn't want any more details than that, I've had quite enough of his personality. I get that he's probably struggled all his life with being autist, but to live this long and not pick up on how his own attitude was devastating people all around him is just sad. He didn't keep me as a friend because he cared about me at all. I wasn't anyone special. I was conveniently nice to him after he bombed everyone else. That was it.
I needed to get all that off my chest. I am like that, morbidly curious about people and how they wind up like they are, but I rarely go to that length finding out what I know. Like I said, he was mesmerizing. It was like watching a super villain.
I'll have to come back to this. I'm taking my mother-in-law to an eye appointment today and I need to get a few things done first.
Ok, I've got a few minutes before I have to go. I didn't mean to make it sound like that guy had no life at all. After lockdown lifted he had a somewhat extravagant vacation planned, so he evidently had money, but we never knew if he would be traveling with anyone or alone. The way he brought up real life was a bit mysterious and I don't know if that was on purpose, but game just seemed so all-important that everyone around him was run ragged keeping up, many pumping real money into advancing and leveling faster because he was so impatient for his goodies. In a nice way. I started the game about a month before him and while it can take many people years to complete all the chapters, he's already in a top group several chapters way ahead of me. Money seems to be no object.
Ok, letting that go. Next thing that has been on my mind is the story about the axe. I'm not going to look up where it comes from, but when I was young I read a fairy tale about a young woman who was preparing for her wedding the next day, and as she was going down the cellar steps to get something she noticed a big axe stuck in the ceiling above the steps and got caught up in seeing a terrible future where one day one of her own children might be going down those same steps and be killed by that axe falling out of the ceiling. She was gone so long that her mother thought to check on her and found her crying on the cellar steps. She told her mother the story about what if that horrible thing happens, and her mother sat down and wept with her, what a terrible thing. After they were gone so long, other family members showed up, heard the story, then joined in the weeping, wringing their hands. Who could prevent this terrible future? Why did this have to happen?
Eventually, the young woman's fiance found the entire family weeping together on the steps, asked what was wrong, and they explained how awful it would be someday if his son or daughter were going down the steps and that axe fell on them and killed them. Without a word, the fiance reached up over them and pulled the axe out and put it away where it belonged.
In real life I am that guy married into a one of the most continual crisis drama families I've ever seen. I bring this up because of the stuff in the past posts, the continuing fail situations that keep missing a series of opportunities because the emotional flux is so chaotic that they can't stay focused on priorities and timing their goals. Ironically, these are people who live long lives and seem to thrive on stress. Fixing some of their problems looks so easy to me, and I can see exactly what to do when to make all the right things happen, but no matter how much time I invest in trying to relate key information leading to winning situations, focus flies off the rails.
I've learned over the years to just stay emotionally distanced, don't get dragged in, stay focused on my own life, but as we're all aging together I'm seeing worlds of deep pain coming because they'll not get the closure they all need. It's one thing to ignore another family's bitterness and anger for years, it's another to realize how that will affect me personally when the central person dies gruesomely in a filthy house with neglected dogs and a drug addict in the way of anyone else attempting to help out. At least I've convinced them to get more involved, daily checkins, making sure she's eating real food, much needed home maintenance and once a week house cleaning and helping her bathe. I can't even tell ya what it was like for me watching her totally recluse into grown grandkids squatting in her house like a drug den and the entire property turning into white trash complete with vehicles parked any old where with raised hoods left up rain and shine, trash thrown out back of the house. We're in a nice neighborhood, retirees around us include a judge, police, couple of teachers. All the neighborhood kids have grown up and moved on, but next door is a sad little comic strip. The yard used to be stunning with rare collectible flower bulbs and bird houses everywhere, now it's junky and neglected.
If that were my mom I'd have been down there every day all through the lockdown. I'd have kicked the dogs out long ago and called cops on the druggie. If she were my mom I'd have called 9-1-1 when she fell and her head was bleeding instead of covering for a dangerous situation to protect someone else. If she were my mom I'd have stomped everyone flat by now letting an old woman live so alone and so trapped to the point where she may not have even bathed for months.
I'm very allergic to dogs so I haven't been able to go into the house since the lockdowns started and that guy moved in. She's not my mom so no one listened to me saying she needs to be checked on because their own cranky baggages about the past were so distracting to them. Their own hurt feelings from the past were as big a deterrent to caretaking as their repulsion for their nephew. The most ridiculous part of all was that out of 7 adults (her 4 kids, 2 of one their kids and a friend of theirs), she was the one trying to get a hard to control dog out to pee and she can barely walk across her own house as it is between vertigo and arthritis. She's a tiny woman and she's 90, it keeps blowing my mind how little any of these people can grasp of how difficult her life might actually be and that she may not be choosing this but surviving it, especially if she's being pushed around, both figuratively and physically. Just because no one can figure out why she isn't asking for help doesn't mean she wants to live like that.
It's also triggering my own flashbacks of grinding through 15 years of being DPOA to both my own parents and their lengthy demises. I already know what is coming and how it's going to affect everyone. I can't even imagine going to the grave bitter. Having to watch the people around me grind their wheels in the mud over not understanding why their mom doesn't love them is very wearing.
Now it's today.
I just wanna say, compared to the way my mom went down and how difficult it was dragging across miles and years handling situations, this one next door looks so much easier to me. Everyone lives close enough to actually be helpful, she's still on her feet and able to talk coherently, and she actually has a fixed income and medicare paying bills. The idea, the possible visual that she could be found cold on the filthy floor with starving dogs licking her corpse is unacceptable to me. That alone should be the driving force behind everything else. Nothing else should even matter in that light. Who *lets* their mom die that way??? I want to pull the axe out. They're not bad kids, just ridiculously traumatized with no penchant for long-term problem solving. Emotional gut reacting is more riveting and destructive than anything to them.
I've gotta let that go and move on. It's actually kind of hard to move on because in another situation I'm watching from a distance, a person a little older than me has been so ridiculous about neglecting her own health that she's recently arrived to a place where doctors at a big cancer hospital say the tumor inside of her is the biggest one of that kind they've ever seen, ever. She's breaking records. And instead of dealing head on, she's still hiding it from people who depend on her, so once she abruptly goes down into a months-long recovery from a whopper of a surgery, everyone else is suddenly left scrabbling for what to do about the hole that just ripped into their lives after promises to do this or be there for that. I mean, how would you feel if a sibling promised to watch your house and be caretaker for someone plus the neighbor's dog while people in both homes are on a cruise and some other vacation and then *bam* surgery the day before you leave. That level of awkwardness could all be avoided, but nooooo. I wouldn't even care but since my kiddo is the only person privy to the secrets and sworn not to announce and used continually for attention and support while she's juggling a baby and an autistic kiddo of her own is the most imbalanced emotional dysfunction I've ever heard of. I thought it was bad watching them go through hurricanes from a distance, this is worse because it's neverending. My patience with some of the ways people think is growing so thin I can barely keep from going full sith and remote tearing up the city around them with the dark side. I've been having to do extra extra relaxations and distractions just to stay in my own timeline and be good for the people around me. I'm always the one stepping back letting others walk their paths and figure out their own stuff, but lately I wanna just smash all their legos and rebuild. I'm sure the prednisone didn't help that at all.
Ok, I allowed all that to come out, now let's redirect. I've gotten a couple of pictures lately that I keep forgetting to post anywhere.
It's really beautiful outside but it's been so hot it's hard to go out there.
So the phone calls have really stepped up this last week but yesterday was almost off the hook. Direct calls from sales reps for purportedly legit publishing companies coming almost back to back from different states now on my unlisted number, like what are they doing, passing it around? And now they're using my real name. Since the new phone change. Between the weird blog stats suddenly dropping and the weird phone calls coming in all right after my phone deactivation (with years of documentation on privacy invasion) is almost like I'm being flat out told I'm being monitored and there's no getting away from that. Whatever. AI games and stuff.
Gotta let that go, too. Not sure what continuing to make that point is about, maybe I just feel like pushing back.
I know this is long, leave me alone. Blogger keeps trying to tell me my text is too long to check for grammar corrections. Suck it, blogger.
I think I just needed to put all this somewhere so I can walk away the rest of the day. I need to enjoy doing a few things without anything dragging me down. Here I go.
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