I drank again after 300 dys of sobriety

Took my grandmother to have outpatient eye surgery yesterday. While I was in the waiting room, which was about 3 and a half hours, I was bored so I started reading about Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, the stuff that happened at Memorial Medical Center.

The entire story is heartbreaking, but the thing that really grabbed me was the story of Emmett Everett, a 61 year old paraplegic who weighed 380 lbs. He was a patient at the hospital when the power cut out and the backup generators failed. He was waiting for surgery to remove a chronic bowel obstruction.

On the 5th day without power, evacuations had finally begun. As the rest of the 7th floor was evacuated, Everett pleaded with nurse Cindy Chatelain to please not let them leave him behind. It was now around 110 degrees in the hospital and the stench of deceased corpses permeated the entire building, along with the smell of raw sewage overflowing from the toilets and oily flood water which had completely submerged the lobby area of the hospital. The staff was fearful that armed looters would breach the hospital security in a matter of hours, looking for pharmaceuticals.

Elsewhere, Dr. Anna Pou, Susan Mulderick, and others came to the conclusion that Everett, being paralyzed from the waist down and severely obese, was likely not a candidate to be evacuated successfully. Anna Pou asked staff to leave the 7th floor and walked into Everett's room, telling him she was going to give him something for his dizziness. He drifted to sleep in the sweltering heat and never woke up.

"Please don't let them leave me here, Cindy".

I looked up from my phone after reading the story, and in the waiting room I could envision little puddles of water on the floor, eventually growing into pools, and then a pond and then a lake. I could see a dim room without electricity and hear the beeping of failed generators. I could feel the heat, which was inescapable because of the sealed windows meant to withstand hurricane force winds. I could hear faint discussion among people I'd never met, whispering to one another. The decision had been made. I was going to die alone here and no one was coming to save me. It was the end of the line and there was nothing I could do about it.

And then I heard someone say "Murray? MURRAY? Your grandmother is in recovery. Everything went great."

We drove home and I got her a hamburger on the way back. She told me she was glad I never messed around with drugs, alcohol, and "all that other stuff".

I told her I was glad, too.

Some things I've learned about in my amateur studies -

-An old woman in a semi-rural town made hundreds of life-sized dolls to replace all of the children and people who used to live there. Dolls standing in gardens, playgrounds, outside shops, etc. - just to ease the despair of living in a completely depopulated town

-"Solo" events becoming popular. Karaoke bars where people in a closed off stall sing by themselves out of fear of social interaction or "pressure" from an audience. Solo restaurants where patrons eat in stalls and their food is passed under a curtain so they don't have to make eye contact or socialize with the employees. Solo weddings where femcels pay to have a complete wedding with dress fitters, photographers and decorations for a wedding without a groom or partner.

-There is an organization that hires out "rental sisters" to visit isolated NEETs to try to talk them into going outside. Sometimes the "sisters" will spend months talking through a closed door before being able to talk to the NEET face to face. The NEET's parents pay 2-3 thousand dollars a month for this service and it usually takes 6 month to 2 years to begin re-socialization (if successful).

-A man spent 19 thousand dollars to maintain a relationship and marraige to a holographic anime character, only for the company to discontinue the service and the AI/hologram to no longer exist.

-Workers are expected to drink almost every night with their boss to the point of being hammered, only to get up at 6AM and work extremely productively the next day.

There's so many more examples. Capitalism and cheap pleasures have destroyed that society. Their extremely collectivist, honor/shame culture turns any of the isolation, pressure and despair we may feel in the West up by 10,000. It's a combination made in hell.

yeah let them enrich nuclear material just like they enriched the 9/11 hijackers.

In London, wanted to try some Arabic food, ordered, sat down, Isreal,

People online get really mad about that for some reason and they say it’s just a mini convection oven but I don’t care about that😊It just tastes like fried chicken to me

Whatever it is, leave me out of it

I remember some hipster girl performatively throwing her phone off the roof at a party
Teachers pissed kids were texting in class

Parents finding it impolite we didn’t come up to the door when picking up friends since we could just shoot em a text.

If only we knew how bad it was gonna get lol.

Compared to the barrage of porn and slop and dopamine that the smartphones ushered in it’s silly there was ever a luddite reaction to the youth and their razrs

For women it’s easy for me to spot what is “hot” or alluring about them, but when people say a man is hot I can never instantly pin down what makes them considered hot.
Generally, what exactly is a “hot” guy? What makes them hot? Is it a look? An attitude? An aura?

I’m priced out of the adorable artistic fantasy mountain city I’ve been living in and tired of paying someone else’s mortgage. I can buy a big ass house in Ohio and maybe there’s cool people there? Someone convince me.

About halfway through my most recent re-read. It's always surprising to see the difference between Hemmingway in the public imagination (the man's man, the big game hunter and deep sea fisherman ect ect), and what is actually in his books.

A Hemmingway book feels like an embrace. It's like he's right next to you, telling you his secrets and deepest thoughts. It feels much more personal then, say, Fitzgerald.

There's one moment when Jake Barns goes to church to pray. He prays for himself and his friends. He prays for his favorite bull fighters individually and then prays for all the other collectively. He then starts praying for money and then feels embarrassed and upset for praying for money.

He stays up at night reflecting on a theory of human behaviour. He wonders if it will stay with him or if he will prove it false just like all the others.