The OCD Diaries

July 20, 2015

The Feel-Good Complex: A Chronicle of Bad Choices

With all the death and drama in my life recently, I tell people that I regret quitting drinking a few years ago. Few things appeal to me more right now than the sweet buzz a bottle of wine would give me.

I have no intention of falling off the wagon. I know where it would take me. But the fact is that I’m desperate to feel good lately. For now, I cling tightly to my vapor pipe. It won’t give me a buzz, but it’s a safer crutch than the other things I crave but can’t have.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/zAK_Qttgp2U

The memories are strong lately — specifically, memories of trying to feel good.

Age 18: I discover an after-dinner drink — Haffenreffer Lager Beer. There are little puzzles under the bottle caps, and your ability to solve them steadily declines with each bottle. I suck down three in quick succession so I can immediately enjoy feeling like I just absorbed half a keg of light beer. I feel good for about an hour. Then I throw up, nap on the cool, bathroom floor and watch any number of tripped-out movies with whoever was still around. I switch to vodka, because it’ll keep me buzzed with less intensity than the so-called Headwreckers.

Age 21: I’m pacing up and down the driveway of the old Revere house in a blue-green polka-dotted bathrobe. I’m freaking out because I’ve consumed two beers and an entire stick of marijuana by myself. I call my friend Dan and ask him to come over. He finds me in the driveway and takes me to Kelly’s Roast Beef for chicken fingers. I spend the rest of the night repeatedly blathering, “Heheh. Heheh. Haha. Haha…”

Age 31: I’m at my then-boss’s annual Christmas party. For the first hour I stand there like a stone, not knowing what to say to these people, many of whom I was butting heads with at the office. I’m offered a glass of wine. I suck it down and start to loosen up. I have another. And another. Conversation becomes easier, so I have another. I walk away realizing that enough alcohol will numb that itchy, edgy feeling I get around people. It becomes a habit.

Age 34: I leave that job and go to a company full of young, just-out-of college kids. The company likes to have long offsites where free booze flows like tap water. I make sure to get my fill, followed by my fill of food. There’s nothing quite like a food binge when you’re drunk. For someone like me, it’s heaven for the first hour, followed by shame and terror over my utter loss of control.

Age 39: I’m several months into my abstinence from binge eating. I’ve dropped 65 pounds on the spot and my head is clearer, but the defect in my head is still there, so I look for other things: wine — lots of it. It becomes a necessity every night with dinner.

By Christmas I realize wine is no longer compatible with a clean life — the kind I have to live, anyway. So I take my last sip on New Year’s Eve and put it down.

Age 45: Here I am, sober for the last 5 1/2 years. Life is tough and I miss my wine. So I clutch the vapor pipe as hard as I can, wondering what’s next.

pacman: y3t1 style by eddietheyeti-d6i1t1k — PacMan: y3t1 style, by EddieTheYeti

July 15, 2015July 15, 2015

An Open Letter to Berkeley Breathed

Dear Mr. Breathed,

I’m thrilled — thrilled! — that you’re bringing back “Bloom County.” I grew up reading your deliciously demented take on life in the 1980s. As a metalhead, my favorite story line was Billy and the Boingers. I loved that Steve Dallas casually decided that forming and managing a band with Opus and Bill the Cat would be more lucrative than defending serial killers.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/sNKCPk1tl9Q

When air traffic controllers went on strike and Ronald Reagan fired them all, you brilliantly turned it into a story about Santa’s Elves going on strike and getting fired by the President.

I equally devoured the saga of Steve Dallas quitting smoking and Bill the Cat getting exiled to the Soviet Union, where his job at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant ended badly:

BillTheCat

I could go on, but I think I’ve established my credentials as a “Bloom County” fanboy.

Now, I don’t mean to be an ungrateful fanboy, but I did feel that you lost your way at various points.

That jag where Opus was being hunted by pissed-off Mary Kay cosmetics saleswomen was a little flat. The time you turned Steve Dallas into the mirror opposite of his true personality also fell flat for me. I appreciate what you tried to do there. I just didn’t laugh like I did when Binkley’s old man agonized over whether he was a racist for not voting for Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential primaries.

You made me sad when you ended “Bloom County,” though the final installments, where all the characters were finding other comic strip character jobs, was wonderful. I think I was depressed for a week when the final strip came out:

cfb404fc9f047503eb3104b568b5767c

But then you created “Outland,” which was a yawner from the start. I tried to like it. I even named a pet mouse after Ronald-Ann when it became clear you were going to give her a lead role in the new series. (Ronald-Ann the mouse eventually got her head eaten by another pet mouse, but I digress…)

I think you knew you were floundering. That’s why you started bringing back the old Bloom County stars for visits. But it just didn’t click. All I wanted — all most of your fans wanted — was for “Bloom County” to come back.

Now it’s back and I’m giddy as can be. But I’m also a little nervous. Will you truly rise to the occasion?

The world has changed in 25 years and there’s plenty of fertile ground you can cover. Some things I’m hoping you’ll address:

What does Binkley’s anxiety closet look like in the post-9-11 world?
Is Steve Dallas going to get hooked on e-cigs and go back to defending killers? And is his mom coming back to lecture him (I hope)?
Is Milo Bloom editor of the Bloom Beacon now, and, if so, who are his favorite targets of scorn now that Senator Bedfellow is long gone?
Speaking of the Bloom Beacon, how well has it made the jump to digital media?

You can’t really go back to lampooning Prince Charles and Princess Diana, but you have tons of celebrities to pick on in 2015. Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton. Kanye West. And there are plenty of fresh political battles to sink your teeth into. I’m interested in what “Bloom County” thinks of government surveillance and the push to legalize pot. And Congress is more broken than ever. Surely you can have some fun with that.

And, in case you didn’t know, heavy metal is popular again. Bring back the Boingers.

Your biggest fanboy,

Bill

Bloom County Cast

July 14, 2015July 14, 2015

My Kill Switch

For someone accustomed to rising at 4 a.m. on a typical day, getting up at 7 a.m. is a lot like sleeping in. Lately, though, I’ve outdone myself in spades. Some days, I can’t seem to get out of bed before 9 or 10. I’ve been napping a lot, too. Not just cat naps, but three-hour stretches of being out cold.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/s3TRns_zssM

This is what I call my kill switch. During tough times, my body and brain simply check out.

Lately, it’s because of the chaos that comes from losing an aunt and a father eight days apart.

In the past, the kill switch activated during periods of high tension and drama. One time a hurricane was headed for Massachusetts and, living on Revere Beach, I was terrified of storm surge. During the wait, I curled up on the floor and proceeded to sleep through most of the storm.

Another time I got into a bad fight with a family member that sent me over the edge. I fell onto the couch and slept an afternoon away.

I think it’s a survival tool, albeit an inconvenient one that can kick in at inconvenient times. I also don’t like to sleep through life. But it’s all but impossible for me to control.

When I stop sleeping late and taking so many naps, it’ll be a sign that I’m through this latest rough patch in my life.

Man Lying Down

July 8, 2015July 7, 2015

OCD: A Researcher’s Best Friend

For all its insidious characteristics, OCD has it’s pluses. For me, one advantage is that when I grow obsessed about something, I research it to the ends of the Earth.

Mood music:

There’s the musical obsession: I’m currently locked on to all things related to Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. An obsession with the likes of Van Halen, Ozzy, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and more led me to devour every book and album having to do with them.

As a result, I can tell you the names of each album in chronological order, the year they were released and, in numerical order, the track listings. I can tell you about the highs and lows of these musical acts and the stories behind the songs, because I’ve inhaled one book and documentary after another.

There’s my obsession with criminal history. I’ve read just about every book about the Manson murders, Whitey Bulger’s reign of terror in Boston and the Amityville murders. I’ve seen scores of documentaries about each and recite the dates of the murders, names of prosecutors and defense attorneys and names of victims.

That obsession has also led me to visit the crime scenes of the Tate-LaBianca murders and the Bulger killings and the Amityville house.

My broader obsession with history has led me to read pretty much everything about the Roosevelts, Abraham Lincoln, the White House and Boston’s past. I’ve been to Roosevelt homes in Hyde Park, NY, and on Campobello Island, and I’ve been inside the West Wing of the White House and seen the spot at Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was shot, as well as the room across the street where he died.

One might consider this a lot of useless information, but I don’t think so. In my work and personal life, I’ve been able to apply what I’ve learned about many of these things. And, if nothing else, the research has been fun.

Researching the idle curiosities has given me skills that come in handy with work research.

It all goes to show that if you can bring the destructive side of your mental disorder to heel, what’s left can be a gift.

Brain Sponge

July 7, 2015June 19, 2020

Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys

Being a metalhead, one would expect me to hate a group like The Beach Boys, yet I’ve played them nonstop for a month now.

Mood music:

I started taking an interest after seeing a preview for the film Love and Mercy, in which actors Paul Dano and John Cusack play Brian Wilson during two stages of his life — the 1960s and the 1980s. I started playing the whole Beach Boys catalog, particularly the album Pet Sounds, widely viewed as Wilson’s masterpiece.

That album was a commercial disappointment when it came out in the mid-1960s. People expected to hear more songs about girls and surfing, but instead they got a series of musical pieces in which Wilson exposed his vulnerable soul for all to see.

I’ve been listening to Smile a lot, too. That album was supposed to be the follow-up to Pet Sounds but was shelved as the band — and Wilson’s fragile mind — fell into chaos. Wilson ultimately finished the album a decade ago and toured behind it. (There’s a great documentary about Smile on YouTube.)

Now I’m reading Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin, which chronicles his life from childhood through his many years of madness and finally to his 21st-century resurgence.

The attraction is that I can relate to Wilson’s struggles. I never heard voices in my head like he did, but I’ve suffered the kind of depression that kept me in bed, and I know what it’s like to overeat when depressed. His choice to explore his feelings on Pet Sounds was groundbreaking at the time and brave. It inspires me.

It’s also a great musical history lesson. Reading about the way Wilson wrote and recorded gives me a lot of insight into the techniques we’ve seen in more recent decades.

I won’t stop devouring heavy metal, but it’s fun to expand my musical horizons.

July 1, 2015

Thank You All

My family is overwhelmed and grateful for the massive outpouring of support and kind words in the wake of Dad’s death. I’ve heard from so many of you on my Facebook timeline, in private messages on Twitter and by phone.

Mood music:

I’ve written a lot about these final weeks with my father. I hope readers have taken it in the spirit I meant to get across — that while grief and loss is hard, there’s also a lot of beauty in the journey.

It’s been a hell of a week between Dad’s passing and that of my Aunt Marlene, but I’m overjoyed knowing that both are now free.

All the love and support comes on top of all the support I got last weekend when I did the Boston Walk All Night Against Suicide. Thanks to all your donations I raised $1,670 for suicide prevention programs. The walk lasted six hours and covered 17 miles in the driving rain. I met some great people along the way and we were cheered on all along the route by folks standing outside bars and hotels. My feet hurt at the end, but it didn’t last long.

Some of you continued donating to the cause while the walk was happening, which was awesome to see.

Now we’re preparing for Dad’s funeral. After that, we’ll take a few days to decompress. Then we go back to work.

I’ll be back to blogging soon. Meantime, I just wanted to say thanks.

June 29, 2015

Dad Was a Survivor

Note: This is not Dad’s official obituary — just my tribute to him.

Thursday we gathered by Dad’s bedside to say goodbye. He lived for three more days. That was Dad. He was a survivor, tougher than leather and stubborn to the last. Around 3 this afternoon, his journey finally ended.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/bT7bbgsyzKc

The last two months with him were a gift. By the end, nothing was left unsaid. He knew how I felt about him and I knew how he felt about me. We got to spend a lot of time trading wits and laughing about all the trouble I got into as a kid. He seemed satisfied with how I turned out.

His mind was sharp to the end, rattling off how he wanted his various business interests wrapped up, how he wanted money invested, how he wanted me to do things that were cheaper than other things.

Dad never had it easy. He faced crushing difficulties. He ran the family business from the time he was a teenager, when his own father fell ill. After the business burned in the Great Chelsea Fire of 1973, he rebuilt in Saugus, Mass. He and my stepmom expanded the business into a global enterprise and thrived.

He endured a tough divorce, lost his oldest child to an asthma attack, and helped my sister through long periods of crippling depression.

He had a lot on his plate with me, for sure. I was sick and hospitalized a lot with Crohn’s Disease as a kid. I was an outcast who rebelled constantly. I saw his efforts to make me work and earn my money as tyranny and gave him a lot of grief. But as I grew older, my work ethic kicked in and I think he thought that his efforts with me had paid off.

He was a man without a filter. He’d tell people exactly what he thought. If he thought you were getting fat, he’d say so. If you came to our house to find him walking around in his underwear, he didn’t care. He was a human honey badger.

Under the tough exterior was a heart of gold. He took care of his family no matter what. He took care of his employees, too. One time, when an employee needed some extra financial assistance with a newborn baby, Dad quipped, “I’m paying for this kid and I didn’t even get to have any fun.”

He loved the little kids. He loved to push their buttons and be a tease. He lived life on his terms right to the end. It was a sight to behold.

I inherited the habit of loving and teasing the kids. I’d like to think I inherited his toughness, too, but I’ll let others be the judge.

Thanks, Dad.

Brenner Paper Co. after the 1973 Chelsea Fire
Dad and an employee stand over the rubble of Brenner Paper Company after the 1973 Chelsea fire. Within a year, he had the business back up and running from a new building in Saugus.

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015

Thanks for Everything, Aunt Marlene

Marlene Brenner died yesterday at the age of 68. She was my aunt — my father’s younger sister — and I owe her a lot.

Mood music:

Aunt Marlene was a constant presence in my childhood. With my siblings and grandmother, we’d go on trips to the White Mountains and lakes of New Hampshire. Many a family meal was had at her house in the Point of Pines, Revere, which was a quick walk from my father’s house at the southern part of the neighborhood and my mother’s house from the northern section.

My parents divorced when I was 10 and I often hung out in that house to escape the difficulties. I loved that house. More often than not, it was a place for holiday celebrations.

At the family business in Saugus, my aunt had a needlepoint shop in the building for a time in the 1970s. I used to hide in her back room watching Saturday-morning cartoons on the little TV she kept in there. In later years my father put a shoe store in that space and my aunt managed it for many years.

I remember her checking the ingredients of every food package before letting me have it because I was often sick from Crohn’s Disease and wasn’t supposed to have milk.

Her family always came first. She focused on the family business at the expense of a social life.

She didn’t have it easy. She would often isolate herself from the rest of the world and skip family gatherings later in life. As a kid I didn’t quite understand that, but as an adult it was clear that like me and other family members, she suffered from depression.

She suffered a stroke in mid-March and never really recovered from it. Her decline coincided with that of my father, who is still hanging on in hospice as I write this.

It’s been a sad time for the family. But I’ve spent a lot of that time looking through old photo albums my aunt and grandmother kept, learning more about a rich family history I couldn’t grasp as a kid. That’s been a huge gift.

Mostly, my memories are full of family doing the best they could under often difficult circumstances. That includes memories are of my aunt taking me to the mountains and lakes, giving me crucial breaks from my own personal demons.

I’ll never forget that, and I’m forever grateful.

Rest in peace, Aunt Marlene.

June 15, 2015June 15, 2015

On Skipping Security Cons

On Twitter last month, friend and fellow infosec professional Marcus Carey suggested industry peers place too much importance on conferences:

There is no way these people that speak & appear at every conference should be taken as serious practitioners of their craft.

— Marcus J. Carey (@marcusjcarey) May 15, 2015

One can take the tweet several ways.

Mood music:
https://youtu.be/gWWWBvxEXZM

Some might say he’s criticizing conference organizers for roping in people who spend all their time speaking at and attending conferences and too little time in their organizations working on the daily challenges the bad guys throw in front of us.

Others might say he’s picking on people who attend a lot of conferences simply to be seen. I don’t think he is, especially since every time I’ve seen him in person, it’s been at a security conference. The conferences I attend have a lot of repeat speakers who I’ll never get tired of listening to, such as security pioneer Dan Geer. (Watch him speak at Black Hat 2014.) Other famous speakers have done a lot of important work over time but have become less relevant lately. I won’t name names here, but yeah, I’m tired of seeing them as keynoters.

The debate over security conferences will go on into infinity. Carey’s soul searching sparked something within me, though, and it’s unlikely it has much to do with his intent.

I love security conferences. I love traveling around the world to attend them. I’ve made countless connections that have taught me many lessons in how this industry ticks. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say my conference attendance led to my current job.

But I have to admit that as the years have gone on, I’ve become almost obsessive about getting to conferences. To skip them is to be invisible and irrelevant. To stay away is to no longer be respected.
That’s how my mind presents it, anyway.

In an earlier post I called it the security rock star mentality — the notion that you had to be seen to be relevant and that by getting around a lot, I thought I was somehow better than I really was.
Early on, as a journalist, I had to attend as many conferences as possible to generate content and feed the needs of a daily news machine. In my current role, the mission is more about promoting what my company does and collecting research I can bring back to base for future use.

My current job also involves less frequent travel. Some of that is because I can easily communicate face-to-face with colleagues around the world through Skype and other video-conferencing programs.
But I’m also traveling less because there’s a lot going on in my family right now. My kids have a lot of activities I want to be there for. My father has been in hospice and I’m trying to get in all the time with him as I can. And so it goes.

I’ve noticed something since grounding myself, however: My absence at security conferences hasn’t hurt my career or workmanship. Not one bit.

The people I like to see at conferences are all available to me on Twitter, Facebook, and increasingly on Skype. Most talks are recorded and end up on YouTube within hours of being delivered. And most importantly, less travel has meant more time immersed in my company’s research. I’m working with some of the best researchers in the industry, learning more from them than I’d learn from a hundred conference keynotes.

I’m not retreating from the conference scene forever. I still get too much value from events like DEF CON, Black Hat, RSA, ShmooCon and BSides to completely stay away. I expect to travel more frequently next year.

In the meantime, I’m staying home, being around more for my family and constantly working to improve my craft.