Apophenia

I find there are very rare chances in my day to day life to meet a really crazy person.  Sure, Victoria is full of the homeless and lots of drug addiction of course, but it’s not the same.  Of course where I work downtown lots of disheveled shuffle past, making random noises or half walking half dancing from the crack rock, but if movies and TV have taught me anything about mental illness it is just not quite the same.  And what makes mental illness even more interesting is the cultural context totally affects how people in that culture interact with them.  In some cultures people who mutter, hear voices, or have other collections of behaviors that set them apart from the average person are revered or treated as touched by divine or supernatural forces, or just generally treated special in some way.  In North American Eurocentric culture however they are treated as having a maladaptive problem that must be dealt with, like back pain or high cholesterol.

Of course this involves drug related treatment, and it seems like our society is at the point where any abnormalities or behaviors that don’t fit the norm need to be medicated, either at doctor direction or desired by the patient themselves.  And let’s be clear, this is the same culture that has normalized people imitating The Jersey Shore.  I guess having excessive over tanned skin and ugly haircuts isn’t enough to have someone committed to a mental hospital.  Ultimately, as with most other illnesses, it is more important that you are socially functional than any other sort of problems, mental or physical.  Being productive, having a job and some sort of friends and family life need to be hindered in some way before anything can be considered problematic.  This is probably why prohibition was revoked, and why many people choose to self-medicate, because as long as you can hold down a job and aren’t beating your wife, nobody cares enough beyond that how well you are doing or how you feel about this life you’ve been thrust in to.  How many functional alcoholics do you know?  There are few fates worse than not being able to fit in or get along with people around you, which is probably why people will do whatever it takes to change themselves, including self-medicating.  Even homeless people value their relationships with their fellow peers, and I’m sure some people who are addicted to hard drugs do them because it makes them feel like they can fit in, or at least participate in their subculture on some level.

The internet probably maintains the best chance for having an interaction with a sincere, down to earth Lovecraft style crazy person, since neither you nor they have to leave the house for this to happen.  And while if you spend a lot of time online you might be lead to think our civilization is at the apex of crazy people, I would guess this isn’t actually so, since people are just more apt to be open about their craziness online.  I’m sure many people have enough intelligence and discipline to confine their personality quirks online, and come across as perfectly normal when face to face. 

Recently though while reading recent Psychology literature on Emotional Intelligence I came across a term I’ve never heard before called Apophenia.  This is a condition in the scientific grey area of crazy-but-not-quite-diagnosis-crazy, studied in the context of the more extreme version as schizophrenia, described as the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.  A good example of this would be conspiracy theorists like 9-11 truthers, or Jim Carry in the movie The Number 23.  Like many constructs of psychology, this can have a wide spectrum of implication, and taken to extremes, can make a person’s lives problematic.  In my mind this seems to relate back to the problem of thinking you are unique, special or especially lucky, such as gamblers who think they can see the pattern in games of chance or finding images of the Virgin Mary in water stains and chicken nuggets.  Taken to a less harmful extreme are people like film students, who (in my personal favorite example) interpret a movie like The Exorcist as being some sort of metaphor for homosexuality, where two male ‘lovers’ exorcise the female from their lives, with the possessed girl being a corrupt, physically ugly being of power trying to confuse and control them.  While this is a fascinating interpretation, neither the writer nor movie director had any intention of making this the underlying theme of the movie. 

There has been some interesting research in apophenia, such as a study by Mintz and Alpert (1972) where they found that 40% of non-clinical participants hear the song “White Christmas” when played white noise and given a simple suggestion, and that those who are prone to hallucinations are more likely to hear it.  Another study using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (basically rubbing powerful electronic magnets across your skull) found that stimulating the left lateral temporal cortex reduced the perception of meaningful information in noise, and since TMS has an inhibitory effect it is thought that this type of thinking originates in this area (Bell et al, 2007). 

Sure, by the strict definition of apophenia, overanalysis of what is going on around you may be a symptom, but I don’t think anyone would argue this is a mental illness…it’s creative thinking.  Creativity itself is just connecting two unrelated ideas, and forms the very basis for progress and new ways of thinking in human existence.  Really, everything we do as humans can be thought of as over interpretation…any other animals just seek food, shelter, mating and relaxation.  We are different in that we are constantly striving over mentally conjured ideals to give us purpose, but is that not just extreme over interpretation of the world around us compared to the lives of the lions and the tigers and the bears?  Apophenia drives us to philosophize a higher meaning and gives rise to more complex forms of humor – such as upping the ante in repetitious humor by making the joke progressively more convoluted and complex, tying in less and less related ideas until the joke does not even resemble itself.  Overthinking things just seems to be a component of creativity, and might just be its very essence.  Seeing things that aren’t there are, depending on the situation, both genius and madness, the very root of paranoid – the only thing that sets them apart is application – applying apophenia to engineering problems such as architecture, energy or food production can make you a wealthy, benevolent savior, but apply it to social relationships, government regulations, secret testing and political intrigue and you become a paranoid schizophrenic.  The difference, I suppose, is between the practical, physical, directly useful, vs. abstract social order and what are they up to and what really happened at this historical moment.  Taking history at face value is almost certainly not what actually happened, as we know that the victors write the history books, but for reasons that aren’t clear to me this is frowned on at large.  Is re-examination of social policy frowned on for some deep rooted genetic level reason, or has the idea just been pounded in to our heads for generations as to be seen as a natural belief of order?

While the treatment of mental illness has many beneficial applications and has been helpful to people…epilepsy comes to mind as a good example, I can’t help but think of how much creativity as a whole we are losing to overmedication and stigmatizing minor mental illness…things like strange art, bizarre new inventions and radical social theory.  While many people feel like the problems they struggle with daily like depression and anxiety strangle and stop them from leading full lives, these problematic states often lead to amazing novel ideas.

Beautiful danger

I used to really obsess about the weather. When I first moved to Victoria I found it so bizzarre that it was, more often than anything else, 11 degrees, summer, winter and in between. I started using the weather network maps and resources, following the jet stream and checking weather and temperature patterns. It is obvious probably to most people, like it is obvious to me now that being surrounded by the ocean ends up having a regulating effect on temperature and other weather anomolies. Living where we are on the tip of the island, we are in between a few different major weather patterns, and so end up having much nicer weather than the rest of the island a lot of the time. Of course it could also be related to the ley lines running through Victoria, but maybe I'll talk about that another time.

Anyhow, we were ejoying the weekend of sunshine being offered to us, but after only a short time in the sun someone remarked of my friend i was hanging out with "Wow your face is really sunburned." We were only outside about 15 minutes.

This prompted me to go back to my beloved weather website, this time checking out the UV report. The index, which is dynamically updated, was resting at 6. And while 6 doesn't sound like much, after studying the scale this was considered "high"...although the scale goes all the way to 11+, EXTREME, which I would assume would cook us all inside our houses whether we're wearing sunscreen or not. Yes thats right, summer hasn't even started and we are getting astronomical UV ratings.

Take another look at the pictures at the start of this post. On the left is ozone averages from 2000, and on the right is the most recent ozone map. Most of Canada is right now in the 425-450 Dobson Units (units for measuring ozone concentration), except for southern BC (including Victoria), Ontario, Quebec and some maritimes. The other interesting anomole is over iceland/greenland, which I can only assume is due to the volcanic activity. According to the 2000 map the area is usually in the range of 475-500 DU, but is currently in the 300-325 DU range. And according to this website volcanoes create holes in ozone and can destroy ozone.

The good news seems to be that the ozone layer seems to be in better shape than it was in 2000, unless ozone just becomes more concentrated in summer perhaps. At any rate, I may need to invest in some sunscreen instead of just ducking indoors when my skin starts to sizzle.

I Like Food

I'm sure you feel the same way.  There isn't too many people I know who are like eww no get that delicious food away from me.  So I guess I was being a little naive when I decided to go out with some friends Friday night for some pub fare and found out that every place is busy.  everywhere.

Apparently there is an old saying that goes "if you want to lose money, own a restaurant".  I don't see how that could be true Friday night, where every table is busy and every waitress wishes they were anywhere else.  I don't know how much it costs to keep a restaurant running, but with the prices being what they are in Victoria, you have a hard time convincing me all restaurants are poor.  Victoria, being a tourist town, has a crapload of restaurants...so many that lots of them shut down during the winter because apparently their food is so shitty they need tourists who know nothing about them to keep them running.

People in Victoria like to eat food.  I've seen it.  And it's not like people don't have the cash.  Can you imagine a restaurant that is so shitty that even ravenous, loaded SUV's full of yuppies won't go to them.  Here's a tip about owning a restaurant: DONT MAKE SHITTY FOOD.  It might be cheap, but people won't come back, and its regular customers that keep your restaurant going.  I am a regular to some places around town, like the Italian Food Imports on Blanshard and the Fiesta Cafe at Douglas and Broughton.  I can tell they appreciate the regulars, because they make good food.  It's not gourmet or chichi fifi gimmick food.  Its decent portions for decent prices, and it tastes good.

One other tip, don't ever order pizza from Sarpino's.  It's worth than eating a decaying corpse.  If you're sitting around somewhere, too lazy to cook but really hungry, do yourself a favor.  Instead of ordering Sarpino's just go out to your back yard and grab a big handful of dirt and just start chewing on that.  I guarente it tastes better than the congealed piss they serve at Sarpino's.

Ripofflandia

This weekend I got to see one of my favorite Canadian artists, Buck 65.  However, the downside was that I paid the ironic amount of $65 for it.  Not that I dont' mind paying to see Buck 65.  I think $30 is a reasonable amount to see Buck 65, as long as he played for a long time.  I can't remember how long he played on Saturday, probably like an hour and a half.  He is a great performer.  He was by himself, with a turntable, mixer, scratch device and laptop to work with.  Last time I saw him was with DJ Skratch Weezil who did all the non singing work.  That was a great show too.

Besides that however, I wanted to see another great band, Holy Fuck.  We  were at Element where Holy Fuck was playing, and the opener DonkeyDong was already halfway through the set.
My friend Dave jumped in front of me wielding a Canadian, the cheapest beer at the bar.
"Hey I was talking to my niece, and apparently people were waiting for Mother last night for 2 hours and still didn't get in"

"Oh shit."

"Yeah.  I'm thinking if we need to see this show, we need to go before the Holy Fuck set ends, because other people are going to try the same thing."

"Shit man, we should leave right now then just to be sure."

"Okay just let me finish my beer"

We stuck around another 15 minutes and then headed over to Market Square.  There was no lineup, but the venue immediately filled up as soon as we got there.  We were there before 9 and we just made it under the wire.  We ended up drinking in the beer garden for the next 3 and a half hours, which wasn't so bad, but we missed Holy Fuck and none of the bands proceeding Buck (especially Jets Overhead) were terrible and deserved nothing less than being wholly ignored.

Point being, music festivals are not worth the cost, unless you are guaranteed to see all the shows you want to see unhindered.

Also, Final Fantasy didn't play because he was sick, or maybe he was "sick".  He canceled last time I went to Victoria too.  Anyways, I didn't get my moneys worth and a refund would be nice.  $60 * 2000 tickets = $120,000

Beerfest!

I went to Beerfest this year with one goal in mind: bankrupting Bavik.  This was because in the hours before, while I waited at work for my shift to end with baited breath, when I ran into Anton.  Or maybe I walked over to Anton's desk.  I don't remember that part.  Anyhow, I rubbed it in that I was going to be drinking beer and having fun at beerfest while he was looking after his children and maybe having sex with his wife, or whatever the hell else married couples do.  And he being also bored and liking beer read about this brewery from Belgium who apparently was losing money showing up at beerfest because the cost there was cheaper than what they would normally charge for their beer.

Well hello Bavik, and so when I met my friends at the gate, I told them my plan: I would drink all of their deliciously overpriced beer all the while celebrating the fact that Bavik was making somewhat less profitable business soliciting in my country.
Well after that we waited in line and got some tokens, and looking at the map set my scopes on booth 49.  But WOOOOAAAH!  We get there and what is going on, but their beer costs 2 tokens ($2.50 for 4oz of beer).  Everyone decided that getting beer from here would be nonproductive compared to all the 1 token beer they could drink.  So I conceded to the economic reality and we went off to drink some perfectly good one token beer.  And we did.  But of course, after a few beers I became disillusioned by the one token beer.  And I got all introspective and shit about what beerfest is all about...drinking really good beer.  So I went to the Bavik, alone, and got me a double bruin.  And guess what - even in my drunken state, it was some of the best goddamn beer I ever had.  It didn't even taste like beer.  All other beer I had had up to this point was piss before it.  I let the word out (and shared my beer with a lot of people) and it turns out everyone liked the beer so much we headed over there.  I had Witterkike Rose (made with fruits and vegetables, apparently) and that was awesome too.  I had other good times at beerfest, but I guess the lesson to be learned is that it pays to try and screw over breweries.

The best part of Beerfest was the last hour.  Much like the last hour at a bar, it is as if alcohol lets loose the hounds of hell.  I was tokenless by this time, but a friend of a friend, Lee-Anne had bought way more tickets than I think she could possibly spend without needing to ride out on a wheelbarrow, so I decided to see if I could buy some off her.  When I found her she was with this other guy we knew, Chris.  I offered some change and she said she would give me a token if I would hug copper cowgirl and get my picture taken with her.  I happily agreed, and we were off in search of her, which we eventually found talking to plaster man.  She wasn't posing like a statue anymore, but agreed to the picture.  Lee-Anne got caught up in the moment and decided instead to get her own picture taken with both copper cowgirl and plaster man.  The dude took the photos and I just hung out awhile admiring the spectacle, when after the picture he looked quite dismayed.

"Aw crap" Chris said with a note of shame "I put down our beer glasses to take the picture, and someone took them!  I put them down for like 30 seconds!"

"Bastards" I cried.  Who would do such a thing?  Not wanting to leave these nice people without a glass, I gave them mine to share, while I would track down my friends and share one of theirs.  They thank me and I wandered off, token in hand.

Around this time I finally ran into my buddy Kyle.  Now I had seen him earlier, but decided not to approach since at that exact moment a girl had her hand up his shirt.  Now, he was alone, and I needed a glass.  We exchanged pleasantries and I explained my glassless situation, flashing him my lonely token.  He was happy to help out.

"What do you wanna drink man.  I know where every single good beer is in this dump."

I suddenly decided I wanted an espresso stout.

"Yep I know exactly where the best one is" and we were off to Steamworks at booth 26.  I got my drink, but out of devious desperation I palmed my token, and noone asked for it.  So, I still had a token!  Yes, more beer was in my future!

I decided to go to get some Maple syrup beer from Bravo Brewery.

"That's 2 tokens man" he said to my rapidly falling face.
"But wait...I still have 2 tokens, lets go talk them into doing 2 for 3.  Its the end of the night, they'll go for it."

"Ah good idea." Normally I wouldn't have that much faith in talking a bartender into free beer, but Kyle has magic powers.  The man can sell arms to an octopus, so we marched over to booth 2.
Waiting in line, we realized we only have one cup!  This will make convincing him to give us 2 drinks great difficulty.  As we were fretting over this, this jovial pot bellied man passed us his cup.

"Here guys take this one.  I dun need it no more" he slurred.

We thanked him profusely and forged onward in line, a look of determination in Kyle's glassy eyes.  At the front of the line was our server, a nice enough looking chap, tall, long hair and glasses.  He gave us the "What'll it be" in a not unpleasant voice.

"We were after your maple syrup beer" Kyle said as the bartender cracked a beer to start pouring.  Kyle started fumbling around and looked surpised.

"Oh crap.  I guess we only have three tokens.  Can you do 2 beers for 3 tokens?"

The guy, still having a neutral expression, looked up from his pour.

"I can't do that man, it doesn't work that way, we got rules..."

He drawled on a bit, and Kyle, not exactly cutting him off and not talking over him started to speak as well, while fumbling through his pockets some more:

"We can give you some money...do you want some money...can you just do 2 for 3...come on man, 2 for 3, can you do it?"

This probably went on a lot less longer than it seemed, because the glasses dont' take that long to pour, and the guy, still looking down, started hissing in a stage whisper

"Gimmie your glass.  Forget it, just gimmie the other glass quick"

He filled the glass and we thanked him profusely.

I still had one token left.  I decided to spend it on a Lindemans Peche from the nearby booth one, and it was okay, but it didn't taste as good as the maple beer!  That beer was awesome and I would actually like some more.  

Dirty Meat

I had to buy pizza for lunch today since I forgot my money at home, and I have no FOOD at home, so I had to go home to get money for food. Since it takes me my full lunch hour to get home and back to work, I could only get something to eat that was:
-on the way between my home and work
-something i could eat while walking
I know what you're thinking and, its true I do come up with some wicked problem solving ability when I'm in a pinch. Not eating is also not an option since I get REAL cranky when I haven't eaten for a while.
So I go to the pizza place on the way whose pizza drastically resembles pizza you probably bought ate and loved as a kid: greasy, crunchy, not particularly good, but not Sarpinos (ZING) and as usual I get whatever is freshest, which at this particular wrinkle in time, was meat lovers. I would say I am a meat lover, even though what passes for meat in our society does not mean ACTUAL meat. So i'm eating this greasy chunk that may or may not have been some type of slug, and I have a flashback to Canada day.

Canada day was a pretty good time. It wasn't an amazing time, since I like most other Canadians had to work the next day. But I did get to go see the freemason lodge during their open house (which in Victoria at least is every Canada day between 10am and 3pm) and hung out at various points in town with my homies. But what stands out at this Canada day was our trip to John's Place.

John's Place is what I can only call the most overrated breakfast place in Victoria. While most breakfast places in Victoria are both overcrowded on weekends and overpriced, this one in particular also has some of the worst food I have ever eaten in a breakfast place that wasn't fast food. I had eaten lunch and dinner at this place before, and I was actually impressed with the food at that particular time. So I followed the logic that "hey, the dinners are good, if this is a breakfast place, the breakfasts must be GREAT". I was never more wronger in my life.

I ordered the eggs benedict, because I love eggs benedict but am far too lazy to make my own hollandaise sauce. So when I go out to breakfast, I can generally justify dropping $12 on some eggs benny because that is the only opportunity I have to eat them. What do I get? oh the eggs benedict are there, the hollandaise is present, and the english muffins are as english as english muffins can be, but here they have a friggin sausage mcmuffin chunk of bloated grease fat RUINING EVERYTHING. I have never wished I had thrown up in a restaurant more than the day I ate that meal. And I only ate it because of the starving people in Africa. I hope they appreciated it.

aww, crackie, aww

Let me tell you about Victoria. Victoria is a lush town full of many types of plants. Apparently the British loved it so much because plants grow so well here, so they brought their plants from all over, which tended to spread all over the place and spill out into our sidewalks, ocean and yards. That was hundreds of years ago, and not much has changed. Only in addition to flowers there are hundreds of crack lovin' street dwellers keeping it real the only way they know how: with the hardest drugs available on planet earth.

Where am I going with this? Flash to this morning, I'm walking to work downtown, going through the "sketchy district" which, compared to any other city on earth is a lot like wandering around an amusement park. An amusement park with Crackies!

I'm not trying to be derogatory by calling them Crackies. I love the Crackies and I think they add a lot of atmosphere to an otherwise overpoliced, dull city. Don't be misled by the picture though; they lack both Dave Chappelle's charm and also money to spend on really nice clothes. Real Crackies don't dress in pimpin' sparkling new threads. They wear the rejected bottom of the barrel second hand clothing. Again, this is not their fault and I applaud them for wearing clothes I wouldn't even consider for an oil rag.

This particular Crackie I passed by was doing just one variant of the crack dance - and there are many. This one involved the back and fourth sway, while chanting rhythmically to the unseen Creator, or perhaps one of the many gods of the crack pantheon. Actually I'm not sure if crack has an entire pantheon dedicated to it, or just one god of the drug pantheon. I'll get back to you when I get a chance to consult my Theologist.

The guy in the middle of his crack dance trance, as with all dancers, seem to be either reliving painful memories or maybe dreaming up new painful memories that never happened. Maybe they are doing something important or fulfilling. Someday I would very much like to write stories about what is going on in their dual worlds, kind of like that new movie with Jet Li and Jackie Chan, except not as crappy. This will be difficult, because, as you may have already noticed, I'm not a very good writer. But, like the Crackies, I bravely dance on.