docplop

[docplop]

Chapters 2 and 3 of my memoir: Bee's Pickled Juice are live on YouTube.

[docplop]

I recently finished writing a memoir about my experiences with psychosis, drug use and universal weirdness. I haven't yet found a publisher for it, but I thought it might be a good idea to record myself reading it and putting it on YouTube. I spent a year working on this diligently, and while I don't believe my reading is very good, I'm not sure how else I'll get to share it with people. This video contains the prologue and chapter 1, and I plan on recording subsequent chapters every week.  I hope I can do this thing justice. Thanks for watching!SHOW LESS

Bee's Pickled Juice (a memoir) - by Brian Simms - Prologue and Chapter 1

[docplop]

It really is amazing to me that we can have the military come out and admit that they have extra terrestrial craft in their possession, and practically nobody cares. They admit to UFOs zipping around our airspace, and people are more worried about what incendiary thing the president said on Twitter. We get it, he’s an asshole and a troll. Try worrying about stuff that actually effects you, like Congress’s lack of action on Covid-19 relief for the country, and how they went on vacation without coming to an agreement on SOMETHING that would keep people from being evicted from their homes through no fault of their own. The E.T. news should be world changing, and yet the news only focuses on stories that cause outrage. No matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, your preferred source of daily news is more interested in your attention and outrage about the culture war than being objective and reporting facts. Legacy media has turned to crap. If the news media were responsible, then we probably wouldn’t even have a culture war. Your outrage was designed and manufactured by people who are making tons of money off of your misery, and they’re causing you to be more ignorant in the process. Next time you read something that makes you angry, try to repress your feeling of rage and observe that feeling. Question what it was that made you mad. Ask yourself who benefits from your outrage. If you look at the source material on which reporters base their stories, and you compare the two, you’ll find that nearly all of those reporters are disingenuous in one way or another. They call media “soft power”, but it really is the hardest form of power there is. They shape the very way you see the world. They can shape how you think. That alone should make you not trust them.

[docplop]

This started out as a reply to a Facebook post where someone claimed that Trump was going to steal the election. Because I’m a coward, who fears blow back from my peers for wrongthink, I’m posting it here. It’s my brief assessment of how I see things.

The democrats don't really care about winning.  Otherwise they would have gotten a viable candidate to run. Hand picking Joe Biden to be the candidate is just Hillary 2.0. Hillary didn't lose because of sexism. She lost because she's a detestable crook who was a bad candidate through and through. She thought that she'd win because it was simply her turn to be president. Joe Biden is going to lose because he's a racist with dementia who's in denial about his racism and dementia, and his whole platform is that he's not Trump. They want to rely on the postal service to handle our ballots? I've had three things get lost by the USPS this year alone. One item was recovered after a month of being in limbo. Why would I trust them to handle my one precious vote?

 Biden's slogan even sounds like a salvaged gaffe. Build Back Better? That shit sounds like a Make America Great Again ripoff that was thought up by a halfwit advertising executive's intern. Biden’s main criteria for picking a VP was that she be a woman of color. It barely mattered who it was going to be, as long as it was a woman with not-white skin. How do people not see that it's blatant pandering? 

Trump won't even need to steal the election to win, especially with Kamala Harris as Biden's running mate. People do not like or trust her. She was a ruthless prosecutor against non-violent drug offenders. Not to mention that with Biden's deteriorating health, she'd probably wind up president before the end of the one term he's pledged to serve. 

The democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot and blaming it on everything and everyone but themselves, meanwhile most of the people who vote democrat are too blinded by their loyalty to the party, paired with their hatred of the opposition, to think critically about the reality of our situation! Trump will probably win, and I totally blame the democratic establishment for it. Just because the democrats are the republican's opposition doesn't make them the good guys, which is to what I attribute their popularity among liberals. Liberals aren't even liberal anymore. Many people on the left want to do away with freedom of speech! How does that have anything to do with liberty? Republicans and Democrats all serve the same masters. No matter who wins, they're going to continue their divide and conquer crusade that they've been waging for  years. The only way we're going to come back from all of this is if people stop watching CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, and if they stop reading the New York Times and Washington Post.  Those news outlets have ruined the country, all in the name of ratings. The newspapers operate at a loss so they can control public perception.  Donald Trump's power only goes so far. The division we see throughout the US is caused by sensational headlines that are derived from contorted versions of the truth. The power that media has is so much greater than any branch of government, because they decide how to shape peoples' world view. They control how people see reality. With the abolition of free speech, their power would be absolute.

[docplop]

Sometimes I become overwhelmed by awe at the magic of language. It’s one of the greatest things that separates humans from animals. It’s amazing that something as abstract as a thought can be summarized with various arrangements of symbols. Where do our thoughts come from? It’s something that’s so basic; so fundamental, that we often take it for granted. We take for granted the fact that we can translate the concepts behind our ideas into words, which can be written for others to see, so they too may experience our ideas. And when we share ideas, we can allow those ideas to grow and develop. Mountains can be moved with just a few measly keystrokes. It’s a wonder that we live in an age where anyone can get online and share their ideas with the world. It makes me wonder if that kind of power can be trusted with just anyone. Even the fact that bad ideas can spread like wildfire across the globe with some clever assembly of letters is amazing to me. I just wish that bad ideas weren’t so insidious. They’re like mental viruses. Still, I appreciate the freedom to share ideas. It scares me that people want to limit that freedom. If we don’t allow the ability to share all ideas, we might suppress some of the best ideas because they may have unattractive aspects to them.

Everything about the world today seems like a dream. A bad one. Not a nightmare per se, but one that just feels strange, like people don’t seem to use reason anymore. They think with their feelings. Their feelings are based on lies and half-truths. The public is constantly fed bullshit that doesn’t reflect the nuance in the reality of most situations. There are better ideas out there than the ones you’re fed from the news media and twitter. I dare not talk about them, because people are rabid fools today and will react violently to things they don’t want to hear. I don’t want to be ostracized for entertaining a controversial idea. I think controversial ideas need to be talked about calmly and rationally. That’s impossible in today’s climate. I’m admitting that I’m a coward here. I don’t want to face peoples’ anger. I become overwhelmed by adrenaline when people become angry with me, and I become shaky and anxious. I hate the way it feels more than keeping my thoughts to myself, so I’ve learned to prefer to keep my thoughts to myself. I recognize the irony in my posting this, but I don’t feel that anything I’ve said here should be controversial.

[docplop]

I have bipolar type 2, so I think that may have had something to do with it. The delusions were severe. It started with thinking I was being group stalked. I worked for a local taxi company and I thought people who worked for Uber were following me and deliberately making my life a living hell. It's difficult for me to remember the exact reasons I believed this, but it was a belief I had for a pretty long time. One day after this delusion had developed quite a bit, I started believing that the people following me were omniscient. I ran away from my city, I drove to my dad's house which is about 3 hours away. While there, I felt like my dad was initiating me into a secret society that could use magic to do almost anything. We were watching the Daily Show and I believed I had a conversation with Jon Stewart through the TV. I couldn't find the cameras on my end so I thought it was more of the magic that I was being introduced to. After a while I went to the guest bedroom where when I looked out the window, I thought of a thunderstorm, and then suddenly lightning started but striking pretty rapidly. I believed I created the storm from my anxiety. I lay down, closed my eyes and tossed and turned all night with. no sleep. The next morning, I got up before my dad, talked to my grandma, who also lived there, and left to go back to my home city. But when I left, I got side tracked. I had the radio tuned to A.M. talk stations and I believed that the radio was communicating directly to me. I got the wind idea to just start driving aimlessly, believing it would take me somewhere meaningful. I heard songs on the radio from some of my favorite artists from the 90s, but they were versions I had never heard with lyrics that spoke to me like never before. I believed it was Jesus talking to me. I decided to drive to California (from Virginia), and started heading west. I saw a sign outside of a farm house that said "Longview", and having been a huge Greenday fan as a kid, I thought I should stop there. I pulled up to this big house on a beautiful property, and thought, "I'm home!" Or rather it would be my home some day. The grass had recently been mowed. I took off my shoes and walked around the property in pure Bliss longing for this house to be my home. I picked a peach off of a tree out front and to this day it was the best peach I've ever had. The house had a pool with a cabana next to it. On either side of the pool, there were three rubber snakes on each side. I had all kinds of crazy theories about the snakes. I walked over to the cabana, and inside was full of relics from my childhood. It dawned on me that I hadn't earned my stay at such a beautiful sanctuary, so I got my shoes and walked back to my car. I looked up at the sky which had turned gold and purple and all kinds of colors in between. I saw planes overhead, and thought, "the only thing keeping me from being able to fly like those planes is my belief in gravity. Someday I'll fly.".

As I drove, I saw numerous lights in the sky that I believed were alien space crafts abducting people all over the map. I started following signs that had seemingly significant names and numbers on them. I passed under a giant overpass, and when I say giant, I mean like it was an overpass for humongous cars driven by 30 foot tall giants. Suddenly I thought I had passed through a dimensional gate and was going to meet these giant people. I found a row of normal sized townhouses and decided to ask where I was ( my phone lost all service, including GPS). There was a chair next to the road that was the size off a small house. I knocked on a few doors, but nobody answered. So I decided to press on.

Being in giant land, I thought that maybe I belonged there, so I started driving down wooded roads looking for my new home. It was night time by this point, and the radio was sending me messages more than ever. I thought the late Dave Brocky of Gwar fame was telling me to find his house. I drove up to a house that had a light on in the upstairs room. I parked, and when I got out of my car, a spotlight shined down on me. I looked over too my right, and a light came on under a newly finished porch. I walked over to it, and when I got there a green light turned on by a staircase, so I decided to climb the stairs. Another light came on at the top of the stairs over by a door to what looked like someone's living room. I called out, "Dave?" As I knocked on the screen door. A thin man with no hair walked out from behind a counter carrying a glass of red wine and in a polite English accent said, "I think you have the wrong house, mate.".

I apologized for the disturbance and ran back to my car and drove away.

After that the memories are a little fuzzy, but I spent most of the night driving aimlessly through George Washington National Forest. I parked at one point and decided I wanted to sleep under the stars. I grabbed a jacket from my trunk and some clothes I fashioned into a pillow and lay down in the grass and started stargazing. I remember seeing two sets of three stars in triangular formation moving around in the sky. I was pretty sure they were two triangular UFOs floating silently above me. The sky was beautiful, but I felt vulnerable, so I got back in my car and continued driving aimlessly.

After a few more hours and a few more attempts at finding Dave Brocky (who, again, was already dead at the time, and it's not like I knew him personally) I was extremely thirsty, and was looking for some water. I found a quaint little church, and thought, "Perfect! I bet they have a spickett somewhere outside.". When I got out of the car, I heard what sounded like huge amounts of water flowing through what I imagined to be a giant organism. I wondered if I had been abducted by one of the UFOs that I saw and was on some kind of holodeck. I walked over to the church and sure enough found a spickett. I had a beer mug in my backseat that someone had given me, so I grabbed it and filled it with water from the spickett. The water was warm and it tasted like how I imagined female ejaculant to taste. It was salty, cloudy and viscous. I spit it out and yelled," What the fuck?!"

I got back in my car and drove without any kind of destination in mind until the sun started to rise. Having no idea where I was, I started looking for a gas station so I could get some gas and a drink. I ended up in a small mountain town and found a gas station who's sign read "Liberty". I wanted to get a beer to calm my nerves and hope for some sleep, but they wouldn't sell it to me. I asked for a cup for some water, and filled it up at a sink by the coffee maker. The water that came out was cloudy, salty, and viscous just like the water from the church spickett. At this point I was sure I was on an alien space craft, and was in some kind of simulation. Everyone I saw seemed to be both staring at me, and evading eye contact at the same time. I left the gas station and continued my aimless drive.

As the sun rose above the horizon, I marvelled at the beauty of the Appalachian mountains. I found my way to Rte 66 and started seeing signs for towns that sounded familiar. I got off rte 66 at a stop where I found a Starbucks. Still thinking I was in a simulation on an alien ship, I thought everyone I saw was a lizard person in disguise. Terrified, I ordered a cup of tea that was supposed to be infused with peach. The tea tasted like it was the same salty, viscous water as before but with some other flavors. I pulled the tea bag out and thought I saw little pieces of meat in it and assumed it was human meat. Trying to not react, I looked at my phone and finally started to get service again. I called my girlfriend and told her what had been happening to me. I was terrified. I was sure that there were people or aliens or something monitoring my every move. The only option I had was to trust that I was actually talking to my girlfriend. There were many phonecalls made between my girlfriend and one of her friends that we figured out lived near where I had ended up.

I want to wrap up this story now.

My girlfriend figured out my location. She told me to stay put and that she'd come get me. Miraculously she found me a few hours later and took me to her friend's house. When we got there, her friend told me I could sit in her kids' backyard tent while they figured out what to do. Before getting in the tent, I looked into the front window and thought I saw one of my ex girlfriends inside talking to my girlfriend and her friend. This scared the shit out of me, because that ex was a sociopath and couldn't figure why she'd be there. I got in the tent, and after a few minutes I started hearing some kind of liquid being thrown onto the tent. I assumed it was my ex throwing gasoline on the tent and that she was going to burn me alive in the tent. I freaked out and broke the zipper to the front flap while trying to escape. When I got out there was nobody there. My girlfriend and her friend invited me in for dinner and an Ativan. This calmed me down and we spent the night there. The whole time I was there, though, I heard that rushing water that I first started hearing by the church. I still thought I was on an alien ship. The following morning I was driven to a hospital where I was admitted to a psych ward for several days. The whole time I was there, I believed I was being kept away from Earth where there was a global Holocaust being perpetrated by the aliens. I believed they were replacing everyone on Earth. I probably should have spent a lot more time in the psych ward, but was released about a week later with a new prescription for anti psychotics. I've been taking them ever since. For probably a year after this, I was still unsure about everything in my reality, and to this day (6 years later) I still have fleeting doubts. I have wanted to write this experience into a book ever since, but haven't had the motivation or focus to do so, as my ADHD is still bad, and haven't been able to structure what needs to be told. This is probably the longest version I've written thus far, and still feel like I'm not doing the experience justice. Thanks for reading, if you've made it this far. Feel free to ask me any questions.