Here's an original new rule: from now on, if it's in italics, I didn't write it. Alternately, italics can be used on a single word or phrase to denote emphasis. You'll have to figure out which is which. It's like a game you can play by yourself all alone in a secret place.

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"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat."
"Isn't that just . . . bread?"

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I am now officially learning disabled!
Despite one's initial reaction, this is fantastic. The way I see it, I'm messed up academically, LD or not; this changes my status, however, from "underachiever" to "noble warrior in a struggle against adversity". As such, I am entitled to every benefit our social democratic state can give me.
It really is a purely academic distinction, too. It doesn't in the slightest change who or what I am, just changes the way I am dealt with.

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There is nothing more fun than name-dropping with psychologists, because they're bound legally and by oath not to acknowledge that they know the people whose names are being dropped. You get sort of a polite laugh and smile with a steely edge.

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I am in the midst of a mid-morning workathon deadline-o-vision, and as such there is no better time to regale you with tales of abroad. Whenever I do this, it will be a disconnected rumination, not a mere mundane rational reportage of mundane rational events.

Dental hygiene aside, the primary difference between Canadian cadets and British cadets is that, while Canadian cadets are dogmatically not taught to be child soldiers, British cadets, well, are. In Britain, with British cadets, we partook in British cadet training, and thus, soldiering.

Lying down on a damp patch of grass and thistle in a damp patch of southern Wales. Your throat claws at the air you breathe. Two concentric circles, a single iron bar, a silhouette, running. You breathe in, air like nails, out halfway. A trigger like shards of glass; squeeze gently with an even pressure. A jolt, a noise, a disconnect, and the silhouette is still running. Tracing its movement, lining up again, breathing, firing. And again. A trigger like shards of glass, stopping, clicking on nothing. Breathe. You lift up your head, neck like an iron gate, and breathe.

I have never killed, and never want to. Yet I have lain on the ground, lined up my sights with a human silhouette, squeezed the trigger. I have sensed the pin strike the bullet, heard the powders ignite, felt the projectile leave the barrel. I have been the projectile, followed the straightest possible line between two places, two people, felt the impact, the penetration. I have watched a man fall. And I have felt the rush, the adrenaline, the power, and I have aimed again, fired until the trigger clicks on nothing. Check bolt, release magazine, replace magazine, ensure it is seated correctly, release bolt, continue firing.

I have never killed, and never want to. I stand up, creaking, and brush myself off. Leaving the field, or leaving the trainer, the other cadets are euphoric. Wasn't it fun, they ask, wasn't it intense? No, I say. I am lying.

I have never killed, and never want to. I feel no guilt over what I did; all I did was play a game in the field, a game in the British army's trainer simulator. I played a war game, and I was exceedingly good at it. I feel no guilt over what I did; I feel guilty about what I felt as I did it. I really can't stand the person who lay in that field with a fearful intensity and an awful satisfaction as they emptied magazine after magazine. I lay in that field, and more than ever I can't stand killing, can't stand the military, and can't stand what we people are in some corner of ourselves.

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This just in -- I'm still a pretty relaxed guy, I'm just a relaxed guy who's never going to join the army. And you already knew that.

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Uch. Rereading that trite crap I wrote in that paragraph above, I'm three-quarters tempted to tear it out. I really think sleep-deprived me and rational me need separate blogs. We really hate each other.
Euch. Don't believe what that sleep-deprived "deep" kid writes. It's hyperbolic, poorly written, and full of pseudo-deep-emotional-shi'ite. Trite as hell, in my opinion.

I guess I should stick to non sequitor witticisms.