I saw two squirrels quarreling in a tree this morning. Maybe a turf war? Maybe a mating session? It is mating season, after all.

I imagined what squirrel sex would be like. Sex in the wild is pretty much rape. Every time I see a cat, bird, squirrel, bug, or any other living thing besides humans having sex, it seems to be this violent, almost deadly activity. There’s always a struggle, scratching, biting.

So a male squirrel finds a female up in a tree, and jumps on top of her, knocking her off the branch from which she stands. The two squirrels are falling, from the sky, with the male getting positioned and trying to penetrate. The female just wants to survive the fall, so she saves them both by reaching out and grabbing the trunk of the tree.

The two slam down on a branch and the male loses his grip on the female. They both bounce, jolted by the kinetic energy from the fall. They both tumble some more to a lower branch, where the female tries to collect herself. She clutches the tree trunk, determined to not fall again.

The male doesn’t skip a beat, completely consumed by lust. He snarls then leaps at the female, clutching her with his powerful hands and feet.

The woman lets go with one of her hands, the other still holding onto the tree, preventing another fall. The woman, scared for her life, scratches at the male and kicks him in the chest with both legs.

Pinned between the tree and the brooding male, the male sandwiches the female and puts all his body weight atop her. He penetrates the female with his penis and rapidly thrusts his hips.

In tears, the female her screams, “I’m already impregnated, you idiot!”

The male’s face is red with desire, his wide mouth lets out loud, primal moans of pleasure.

The male ejaculates inside the female, recovers for a split second, than scrambles down the bottom of the tree.

That’s what I imagine it was like. Squirrel rape is how squirrel babies are born. The female could already be preggo but the male doesn’t care. As far as I know, they don’t have some shared language to where the female can say, “no thank you, I’m taken.” I mean, maybe they do. Maybe squirrels practice monogamy, I have no idea. I haven’t studied squirrels or researched them to know if they have some sort of social order or not.

All I do know is that most animal sex looks a lot like rape. Just some squirrel rape going on here, nothing to see, people!

It’s almost tragic being human. If I were a squirrel, I could just go have sex with any female I wanted. As long as I’ve got the physical strength, the persistence, and the motivation, it’s open game. Sex whenever I want it!

Being human, there’s this social dance that has to be played. It has to be done with grace, patience, and consideration for the other party, or the whole community will ostracize you.

LOL, I’m not complaining that rape is not acceptable. I’m just taking a humorous look at how most of the animal kingdom seems to work, and how humans compare. I rather like the absence of rape from civilized communities.

It goes both ways, you know! There’s a lot of women out there who are stronger than I am. Or men who are stronger and into other men. I wouldn’t want to be raped and therefore I do not want to rape someone else!

Natural law is a lot simpler. That’s what I’m trying to say. In the case of sex, I appreciate the increased complexity.

4 packages shipped out today. Two trading cards ($11 value), two bundle packs of 4 8GB USB flash drives ($12.50 value per pack), and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence DVD (~$7 value).

I’m thinking of lowering my prices on P-Memories booster packs. I’ve got some of them priced as high as $62. One really rare K-ON booster pack is over $100. They’re not selling! I had 3 sales on booster packs, total. I was thinking that these booster packs would be flying out the door because of their rarity, but I’m not seeing that.

The weekend is my best time for sales. I think I will lower prices after this weekend, unless I get booster pack sales. I have a $590 investment on my latest acquisition, and they’re not moving. I need much more movement!

I did the math. If I bring in $15 per booster pack, that’s something like $1800 in sales. That would be an AMAZING return! And that’s just the booster packs. There are 8 booster boxes which aren’t even factored in to that amount.

I figure my booster boxes can sit on my shelf for a year or so before they sell. Those will be my big buck sales which happen once in a blue moon. Singles and booster packs I want to be flying out the door right now. Those I should be letting go at a minimum profit margin.

Well, I suppose everything should scale. Singles have the minimum profit margin. Maybe a flat 30%. Booster packs would have a 30% margin, plus $3. Booster boxes would have a 30% margin, plus $10. Something like that.

Drive those sales! That’s what I want to be doing. Maybe a social media account would be in order? Monthly giveaways, perhaps? I could do a Gleam giveaway and give extra entries to people who follow my store on eBay. That would probably increase some sort of ranking on eBay. Maybe I’d get cross promoted more? IDK how that works, but it might be worth a try.

I’m also interested in trying OpenBazaar again. I’d try it if there was a good way to synchronize eBay inventory. If not, it’s probably not worth the effort. OpenBazaar has never been worth the effort.

I’m actually not even going to try OpenBazaar. I’m starting to remember my rants and raves about OpenBazaar. I’m starting to remember the terrible UI, the bugs, and the disagreeable developers. Just no. I’ll try a different p2p market, but not OpenBazaar. OB is already on my shitlist and there’s no good reason for me to remove it.

I wonder if I can write 1000 words really quickly. I’m trying an experiment. I have 25 minutes on my pomodoro timer, Good Time. The experiment is to see if can write 1000 words in that time.

I’m using WordPress’s built-in word counter. I started at 1041 words I believe. In order to accomplish this goal, I’ll have to reach 2041 words by the end of this pomodoro session.

I’m doing this primarily because the past few weeks I seem to have been struggling to write. Well, I have had no problems reaching 2000 words every day. The problem is that it takes me a lot longer than I have done in the past. I seem to take 3 or 4 pomodoro sessions to complete a journal entry.

Perhaps it is just that I am using a pomodoro timer that I get the feeling that writing is taking too long. 4 pomodoro work sessions equals 2 hours. That’s a pretty good pace for the word count!

Nah, I do feel slower to write. I hold thoughts back. I censor myself.

Today I did not censor myself. This is apparent by how I started this entry off with a dramatized reenactment of squirrel sex!

There seems to be all sorts of animal breeding going on right now. I see a pair of geese every few days going off on their own and making their honky noises. I see pairs of birds clashing together under trees. I see rabbits… existing, and therefore assert that the bunnies are bumping uglies in a bush somewhere.

It’s springtime, the time of year when love is in the air and women go into heat. Is that how it works? I have no idea. I am probably the last person to ask to answer sex questions. LOL.

Alrighty then, what is on today’s todo list?

It’s Friday, so I already took care of the important chore of taking the trash bin to the street. I already exercised, running 10 laps around the firepit and walking another 10. 3.8km. I’m thinking eventually I will increase that number to 5, since a 5K is common distance for running events.

It might be nice to train for a 5K to where I can run the entire thing without stopping for breaks. I did one 5K in my life where I ran it non-stop. That was Pioneer Day 2016 maybe? I forget the exact year.

That was an event put on by the LDS church in Spokane Valley. It was a 5K around the neighborhood close to the Spokane Temple, then there was a big all you can eat breakfast afterward.

The run was excellent. I had been training, but had never run 5K non-stop until I pushed myself to do just that during the event.

It was a great run. The proceeding breakfast and mingling was not so great. I saw a bunch of people I would prefer to never see again. My family was enjoying the plethora of pastries, scrambled eggs and sausages and there I was downing four bananas. (I’m vegan)

I was forced against my will to attend church when I was younger. I started to feel trapped in the religion as I started to realize how I was only a believer because it was coerced into me. Now I have a lot of resentment for being in that situation.

Any organized religion triggers my fight or flight response. I immediately distrust any person in an authoritative position in a church. I stay away, and shut out any religious discussion from my life.

I don’t know if, “a lot of resentment” is accurate. I rarely think about it anymore. I rarely think about it because it’s not a part of my daily life anymore. I’m free from that. I don’t get pestered by church people trying to get me to attend. I might get a postcard every few years with an invitation, but it goes straight to the trash.

Maybe I’m just suppressing the actual feelings I have for organized religion because I live in an apartment owned by my parents. My parents are my landlords. I feel a certain obligation to keep quiet on this issue because to upset them about something so core to their believe system feels like a risk to my privilege of housing.

I’ve had this idea in the back of my mind that I’ll officially leave the Mormon church once I move out. Leave if I aren’t already. I sometimes worry that when I die, there will be some religious fuck head reading some passage from scripture. I don’t want that. I’d prefer a non-secular funeral. Just say some shit about how I lived, how I had a good time, and how all things come to an end. Scientific. Bittersweet.

Aaand I failed the 1000 word challenge in 25 minutes. 1828 words. Too bad, so sad!

I could definitely write 1000 words in 25 minutes, but the content quality would go down significantly. Might be a try for a future date! That date might as well be tomorrow!

It’s amazing how attractive some of the women are who do yoga videos. I hardly notice during the yoga, because I put all of my attention into myself while I try to practice. It takes a lot of focus to hold strange poses that are often uncomfortable.

I’m really feeling a benefit to daily yoga. With daily practice, I feel a lot more limber and flexible. My stress levels are way down. I feel a balance with my body that I’ve never felt with any other activity.

I’ll be keeping up with yoga. I felt so stiff in my back this morning, and I was dreading doing even one down dog. The above video made me do one, and I instantly felt relief from that stiffness. It’s like that every time I’m stiff! I’m stiff so I think I need to lay off the exercise. I put it off to avoid the discomfort, only to later realize that I was uncomfortable only until the time when I did yoga!

Yoga is a godsend, for sure. A next-level practice that I will incorporate into my life for the rest of my life. A calming, peaceful practice of mastery and symbiotic usage of my own body.

And I’m at 2000 words now. Onto the next thing! Japanese study.

31. I am special; I will not change myself for anyone.
32. I choose hope.
33. The answer is right before me, even if I do not see it now.

I’m grateful for Jisho.org, the free online Japanese to English dictionary which teaches things like kanji stroke order, radicals contained within kanji, word pronunciation and more. I use it almost daily to help me remember the constituent parts of kanji.

I’m grateful for free yoga videos. I’m grateful for the yogis who share videos and spread this wonderful practice with others.

I’m grateful for permanent markers. Writing utensils are an abundant technology which often go uncelebrated. Not today!

If I allow myself to be placed in a, “less than” position, I become subservient and I am no longer an equal to the person I am subservient to. Doing this creates a master and slave relationshi; A master and slave are not equals.

Excelsior!