Chantix Day 5 & Novel Length Drivel

Saturday was day 5 of Chantix. I have not experienced any major side effects from the nicotine agonist, although today there were few moments while smoking, there seemed to be a noticeable decrease in enjoyment of the act. Since it was very slight, I am not sure it was due to the medication. The instructions direct the user to try to stop after the first week of use, or at least try, because it takes about a week for the drug to really be active in the body. Did I mention the packaging is exemplary? Each pill is packaged in its own bubble on a cardstock casing labeled with morning and evening, and each week is a separate package that is neatly tucked in cardstock rectangular purse of sorts. Very soft pastel colors, Very nice...

I did wake from I suppose what you would call a nightmare tonight. Although not a very heinous one. I only felt a moderate level of fear or sense of danger. I'm going to try to describe it.

Day 5 Nightmare

I recently received a call from a friend from almost a decade years ago. A beautiful nubile friend who although despite her beauty, somehow to whom I was never attracted. Once, she tried to set me up with her almost equally beautiful friend.

Her friend, a seemingly tough and confident girl, was short, yet stout having had been a cheerleader, and physically active for most her life.

I was dragged to one of the fancy bars in Nashville where all the young beautiful people hang out. Not only beautiful, assumeably talented, and moderately well off financially as they were all dressed like it was LA. There were young tanned women in skimpy dresses with big boobs, and young men, with their shirts unbuttoned down the fourth or fifth from the top with equally big boobs... well... more like chests.

We stood at the bar, I in the middle, as the crowd encroached on both sides. The smaller friend,
took her elbows raised them to the side as if to jokingly create and assert her personal space and proceeded to bump the back of the some oblivious Ken doll that was slowly backing in to her. He turned around, and backed off, it was, after all, a very attractive girl. Had she been a male, I would think there would have been words.

Dreams have no logic, time and physics are irrelevant, nor contended if the rules are broken. This is a reason I enjoy them. It is a chance to view freely a series of images or clips as a whole story with unhindered suspension of disbelief.

We were in an Olan Mills, a small, corporate, relatively low quality photography studio near a Kroger where I once used to live. An ex girlfriend used to manage and run a store on her own. She was only 21, and she ran the whole store. She had a tendency to be somewhat airheaded on account of all the marijuana she smoked. She lacked talent beyond the novice photographer as it seems anyone with a high dollar camera can take a crisp photo. That is why I say it was a low quality photography studio.

We were all there with my previous employers waiting to be photographed.

A large SUV with tinted windows and ridiculously large chrome rims pulled up. The passengers were the photographers.

I recently saw the SUV in the neighborhood where I live. I live near the ghetto side of Gallatin. I was riding with Ben, my housemate. I said to him, they should have taken that money they paid for those rims and that ridiculously oversized SUV and put it into a Roth IRA with a good return, or at least a good return money market.

Let's go, said the girls. There was some urgency. We had to go somewhere.

So they left as I ran into the bathroom to check my appearance. "Do I look OK?," I said as the studio began to fill up smoke from the fog machine. The one boss from my previous employer that I despised for being a bullshitter was getting his photo taken.

He used to talk big about every project we had and the possibilities of retail and mass production of our art. We might be printing a hundred thousand of these, it's going to be huge he used to say. He even at one time sold me on selling some of my own designs, sending it to mass retailers, saying that it might possibly get into JC Pennys or Target. He tried to pitch me going to his lawyer to get my logo trademark which would have been $1500, but I did it on my own for $375. Useless, but it was a good experience. It funny now, that yes, I might actually get in a retail store, but not because of him, and with the same exact designs with which he was going to try get "in."

In the dream, it seemed to be his idea to get photographed. It would be something he would suggest. As I left, the room was being filled with fogger smoke beyond necessary, almost in a comical manner, (Oh it's fine, it will look great in the photo...) as he posed for his photo.

The girls had left without me, oddly in a 18 wheeler with no container trailer, just a flat hauling rig. Somehow already nighttime, it sped down a road lit by the orange street lights, an odd illumination dreamlike even in reality, a road I have driven many times before at night.

I ran after them. In my dreams, it is natural for me to run fast, as well as jump high and far like Chinese kung fu films where they jump on treetops. In spite of the running and jumping, I could not catch up to them until they began going up a gravel road on the side of a hill of scrap metal.

Now daytime, I finally reached the back of the trailer, sitting on the back.

As we reached a top of the hill, another truck, a Mack truck hauling some construction material swerved to miss our truck sliding down the shoulder of metal scrap. I suppose we were at a metal recycling plant as the Mack truck almost fell into machinery that usually crushes the metal.

The girl kept trying to go up the hill, but all the tires were busted, and I now sat on a pair of rims with no tires as they try to spin with rough edges. The rim next to me had been torn and now protruded spinning metal like lawnmower blades. They seemed to get closer and closer, but I held tight on the rims on which I was sitting because I had the notion that if I let go, they would spin and amputate or mutilate whatever body parts of mine it would catch.

Just as I was to be in great peril, a man from the Mack truck came out and yelled "NO" to the girl to stop.

And I awoke. And I wrote this at about currently 4 am.

...

I now live in an area where I would consider a psuedo ghetto. Tobacco and liquor stores, pawn shops, fast cash paychecks, and run down stores are only a few blocks away. Fortunately, it's an area that is undergoing a slow gentrifacation. Nearby renovated historic homes are on sale for half a million dollars next to houses with with obviously lower income inhabitants. BMW and SUV line the roads the same street that dead ends into the projects only a few miles down.

Although I'm most likely perfectly safe, it does feel a little unnerving to see individuals walking by at odd hours in the morning under the cover of darkness. What does one have anything good to do at 1 am or even 4 am that they have to be walking at night?

Once a man walking by as I smoked stopped at the end of the drive way and stared at my direction for about 10 seconds. After he continued, I immediately put out the cigarette and went inside. Immediate possible danger helped me neglect my desire for longterm danger. It was probably a harmless person, weirded out that there was someone staring at him as well from the shadows of the house.

...

Anyways, having been exposed to the lifestyle of a lower class livelihood, as well as being on behavior modifacation drugs, I have started to ponder about the nature of human habits.

If my habits can be modified by a small pill no larger than a watermelon seed, if things that I do are based on my brains chemical makeup,

in general, are the actions of most any humans, provided you take in account some nuturing of environment, a general predisposition or accidental happenstance genectically or chemically to be a certain way?

Someone who thrives in the stock market business is most likely a workaholic and competitive.

Someone who gets by on welfare or a low income job is most likely chemically predisposed to being a personality trait that perpetuates that type of lifestyle.

Being that these predispositions will likely lead them to the lifestyle condusive to the traits, is being one way necessarily one way or another if we are unable to control the outcome without behavior modifacation drugs if there were such a thing?

I've read students without ADHD in universities, especially prevalent in the competitive, difficult ones, use Adderol to help them concentrate or cram for an exam.

Similar to crystal meth, or cocaine, it heightens the brains capactiy to reach a higher level of cognition and learning, etc.

I've never used it, but I have fancied the idea. What could I create artistically, if I could get my hands on this drug, if I could modify my behavoir in such a way, I could be on fire artistically for the duration of the drugs effects. I bet I would make some awesome things.... I wantz Adderol.

Being that there are ways to modify human behavior, I wonder, since as humans we judge the status of a person by their economic status or accomplishments more than we do by who they are, if we are judging their chemical/genetic makeup? And by doing so, are we saying that being a certain way is better?

When I was younger, I had an aversion to judging if things as right or wrong. I viewed actions as a mathematical vector, regardless of whether they were bad or good, they could be of equivalent quantification. It was the just the negative or positive outcome of an action that I felt should be judged for its efficiency or contribution to society as a whole. Since without societal definitions, there would be no right or wrong. So one must judge actions within the context of their environment and outcome.

If an action did not necessarily harm society in a direct manner, and mostly for the individual, then I did not necessarily think it was a bad action.

It was through relativism, that any action could be deemed irrelevant morally, only in a philosophical manner. Killing is acceptable if done in defense or war, but in case of murder, then it is wrong. Or are both actions regardless of syntax wrong? I would now contend that killing in any instance is almost always wrong.

(BTW, depending on the translation of the Bible, one of the 10 commandments is Do not Kill, or if altered by whatever government is in control, Do not Murder. ZOINK! So this United Stated, One Nation under God, in war... somewhat morally wrong, if you follow the Bible, which almost all Presidents claim some sort of Christianity.)

As I have gotten older, I suppose I have started to feel, yes, actions/things should be judged as right or wrong. There must be a basis of right or wrong, and judgment and action.

This, only of your own actions, not of others, unless put in the position of judging, whether you are teacher, parent, or judge. Then with judgment, one should act to produce the more positive contribution to society.

If by all persons, this philosophy was enacted, then there would have to be no worry about the status of society, but of course that can never be the case. It is a requirement of a society of characters that have variable decision making capacities, otherwise society would end up in anarchy, since not everyone can control themselves.

As just as I smoke, there are times when things I do, I know could be judged as being inefficient to society and myself, I do anyways because of the chemical makeup of my brain and bodily desires.

But the caveat of judgment is that, there seems to be a possibility of being pretentious or self righteous.

I think I had an aversion to judging other people as I had many Christians in my life that were hypocritical, but seemed at audaciously great ease to judge my actions.

It seems that some of our actions and beliefs are simplistically formed like Pavlov's dog that underwent classical conditioning through the ringing of a bell to signify feeding time.

In most my experience with my Christian upbringing, the most significant events surrounding my current beliefs are supported by negative conditioning. Through negative conditioning, I denounced at least those associated with the belief system, maybe in effect, much of the faith.

So, regardless... in judgment of myself,

Smoking is wrong.
Drinking is wrong.
Drugs are wrong, HA, unless they have a positive effect on your behavior.
Pornography is wrong.
Unhealthy lifestyle is wrong.
Being unproductive, only moderately wrong provided you do not become a liability to others or society. Arguments would be that if you are unproductive overall in the longterm of your life and do not save enough to support yourself in your old age, and have to rely greatly on societal financial support.. then wrong.

But being that I deem these actions to be wrong, mainly because of their lack of enhancing society, not really an moral issue, are those that participate in the same actions wrong as well?

It would be easy to judge people in lower income bracket to most likely be perpetuating their position in society because of the lack of ability to break free from habits that keep them from being "successful."

The existence of discount tobacco and liquor stores in the lower income areas are indicative that a majority have an addiction to inefficient behavior modifiers. Smoking and drinking are not conducive to making money. Three cans of tall boys being bought on a Wednesday does not say to me, this person is striving to better their lives and society, nor when I see an expensive SUV with chrome rims in the ghetto, do I think, ahhh, they know where to invest their money for their retirement...

So you know what, the people who live in the lower income areas, are yes, effectively wrong in their behavior. Wrong morally? Not so much...

I am also open to those of you who have a corporate job, or successful businesses to judge my actions as being inefficient and wrong in behavior, as if I were to have it right, I would not be living here. I have made wrong choices in my life, it's taking quite a while to fix them, but I'm moving on up... (BTW I could move out today if I wanted to live in a gated community and pay for the lease for the year lump sum, but I'm being miserly with my funds. But it's all relative... devious smile due to contradiction. Cause someone like McCain or Barak with millions of dollars income might judge those with only hundreds of thousands of dollars to be inefficient.)

But yes, like this blog I have been somewhat inefficient. I could have finished up an old design to resell for $500, but I didn't. I wasted the time on meaningless, ineffective meaningless drivel, although I think in writing this, it will be good fodder for conversation if I come across a personality that might enjoy intellectual mental masturbation. (I hate that term, but it's excellent, precise verbiage for this type of thought.)

;j