Month: June 2006
Visions without Hallucinations
Posted on June 18, 2006 in Hope and Joy Rage & Annoyance Stigma
Sorry, anniversaries are tough, but if you are reading this, chances are you are one of the good people.
Not Razor Blades, But Cotton
Posted on June 18, 2006 in Body Language Psychotropics
So does Joel suffer, not in razor blades but mounds of cotton.
Lesbian Filmmaking: Tell Me the Truth
Posted on June 17, 2006 in Film Sexuality
Floating below a flaming wing of rogallo today. Lynn was in a fiery mood because the DVD player heated up and refused to play her latest selection from netflix. I kept going out to our box to find that my selection — Little Voice — had not arrived at all, damning me to a lesbian film piece called Chutney Popcorn.
While I like lesbians as people, I don’t get most lesbian cinema. Perhaps my taste polyps been abraded away by centuries of male domination of the media. Or maybe some of the filmmakers just aren’t any good. I’m not threatened by these films. I’m just bored. And on a hot summer night, it doesn’t make for restful viewing.
I know that there must be good lesbian filmmaking because there are good women directors (some of whom may well be lesbians — I can’t even tell you how many wives Steven Spielberg has had.) Your recommendations?
Clublez may be a lead, but this tends to follow the lead of a male erotica connoisseur, read Lecher.
Spilling the Guts
Posted on June 16, 2006 in Health Humor?
My arm’s been weak so pardon me for not writing more,
Valet in Orange
Posted on June 16, 2006 in The Phone
Excerpt from actual conversation with “Rachel” regarding meeting at Westminister’s Asian Garden Mall:
Joel: OK, parking is in the back. [Turning humorous here.] There’s a monk by the back door. If you want, just lift the lid of his begging bowl and put a dollar or so in it.
Rachel: What are we supposed to do, pay him for parking?
Bush Dislike as a Disease?
Posted on June 16, 2006 in Citizenship Journalists & Pundits Liberals & Progressives Stigma
Appearing on MSNBC’s Situation with Tucker Carlson (2/14/06), conservative talkshow host and film critic Michael Medved linked an Oscar nomination he disapproved of to a mental illness he called “Bush hatred”:
“This Bush hatred is a disease, and it’s completely obsessive. And it’s reached the extent that if you take a look at movies that are nominated for the Oscar this year, one of the frontrunners, in fact the frontrunner for best foreign language film, is a film made in the Palestinian Authority.”
“Bush-hater” has been a favorite epithet of Republican partisans since 2003. A Nexis search shows the term appearing 45 times in 2001 and 38 times in 2002, before burgeoning to 493 mentions in 2003, mostly near the end of the year as discussion of the 2004 presidential campaign began in earnest. The term went stratospheric during the election year, with 1,340 mentions, before settling down to 621 in 2005.
As Medved’s peculiar analysis demonstrates, the Bush-hater tag—especially when coupled with words like “disease” and “obsessive”—is meant to pathologize and marginalize opponents. After all, to be called a “hater” in itself suggests irrationality, and commentators like Medved leave little doubt that they see their opponents as actually imbalanced. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (9/26/03) described Ted Kennedy’s blaming the Iraq War on White House “fraud” as evidence of “blinding Bush hatred” and “partisanship on its way to pathology”; MSNBC host Tucker Carlson (10/20/03) warned of the “crazed monomania” resulting from “Bush hatred.”
When I criticize my liberal and progressive allies for using the language of psychiatry to attack political opponents, it is largely for two reasons: to end the perpetuation of stigmatizing language; to establish that my disorder is not an evil but a disease; and to stop associating people who suffer from mental illness with kooky ideas. I do it because I believe that liberalism and progressivism are founded on compassion and that such language is not compassionate.
I do not believe that conservativism is compassionate as it exists today. There is every evidence that it believes that our illnesses are to be beaten or shamed out of us or dissolved by the introduction of pills into our system. It lacks a sense that illness is difficult and just doesn’t go away.
Read Steve Rendell’s article about the pathologizing of political opposition to Bush. More could be said here, but it is a beginning.
Men’s Locker Room 3
Posted on June 15, 2006 in Gyms
A short, hunched scion of Scotch-Irish roots needled some other guys about not doing their full workout. When he turned around, I saw that he had a flat face and a broad grin made all the stupider by the fact that he wore his baseball hat backwards. Later, after I showered and went home, I passed him on the exercise floor. I straightened up my spine and pushed my shoulders back. OK, Spanky, I thought. This you can’t have.
Summer Mania
Posted on June 14, 2006 in Mania
Yes, I know all about this. God, I hate this time of year.
Abilify
Posted on June 14, 2006 in Psychotropics
when I used it to replace the Risperdal (my blood sugar was too high) I was, within the hour, feeling like a paper cutout marionette slapping about in a stiff breeze.
Dinner at the Bipolar Restaurant
Posted on June 13, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder Humor?
I want to thank everyone who contributed their ideas for a Bipolar style restaurant. After reading the comments, I realized that it would be hard to create a bistro where the guests are brought into the bipolar experience as in the restaurant in darkness mentioned yesterday. But we can come close.
Here are some characteristics:
- You would be surrounded by frowning people.
- The food would be hospital food. If you did not eat it, they would not let you go home until you did.
- The food would make you constipated or dizzy or wanting more and more and more.
- You’d be obliged to drink large glasses of water between every course.
- The waiters would take notes on your behavior.
- Voices would tell you that the waiters did not like you and that they wanted to poison you. Other voices would just say things like blab blab blab over and over again.
- Whenever you lifted a fork or knife, the staff would watch you especially closely.
- Half the waiters would tell you that you were a deadbeat. The other half would tell you that if you just accepted God, you’d be saved. Besides, God never puts anything on your shoulders that you can’t handle.
- They’d serve you a great dessert but take it away before you were finished eating it.
- When it came time to pay for the check, you’d find that you could not leave until you paid for everyone. The amount would be more than you could pay.
- You’d leave the restaurant relieved that you were out of it. When you got home, however, you’d discover that the restaurant had moved into your bedroom.
