Year: 2007
copy W
Posted on January 6, 2007 in Courage & Activism Internet Privacy
Bush wants to know what you are writing. He says that he doesn’t need no stinking [[warrant]]. He can go in at any time at all ’cause he’s the pResident. (Makes you wonder what he’s been up to behind those closed doors. Is he really making a plan to control Iraq or to control us?)
My pal Bill the Lawyer has a plan and he asks you to be part of it:
Let’s all make it easy on W. Send him a copy of every letter you send by U.S. Mail. At the bottom, make sure you put “copy George W. Bush.” Your co-workers will really be impressed. Tell them that you know George wants to know what they are doing at work. That will impress them, also. Or they’ll think you’re a lunatic. The U.S. Postal Service delivers 212 billion pieces of mail a year … even if 1/100th of 1% of that mail is copied to the White House, that’s almost 100,000 pieces of mail a day going to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20500. And while you’re at it, copy Dick Cheney with all your e-mail or take a moment and drop him an
e-mail right now. He’s been pretty quiet of late.
This could be more fun than a [[Google Bomb]].
Fifty Questions
Posted on January 5, 2007 in Memes
Will Brady did it before me.
- When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? Damn. There’s that bald spot.
- How much cash do you have on you? Why? Are you planning to rob me?
- What’s a word that rhymes with “DOOR?” Floor. Not the best question.
- Favorite planet? [[Titan_(moon)|Titan]], which is technically a moon, but very cool because of a story I read yesterday. Seems that they discovered lakes of [[methane]]. I hope that this time I can get in on the shoreside properties at a decent price.
- Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone? My adopted sister.
- What is your favorite ring tone on your phone? This question proves that there are people who have less of a life than I do.
- Do you “label” yourself? Well, yes and no. The name “Joel” is a handy label for people to refer to me by. It’s rich with meaning.
- What shirt are you wearing? Blue longsleeve with very skinny white and yellow stripes.
- Name the brand of the shoes you’re currently wearing? Materialist little meme isn’t it? Saloman
- Bright or dark room? It was dark until I turned on the lights so I could read the brand name on the shoes.
- What do you think about the person who took this survey before you. I don’t know him personally but we’ve exchanged some cordial emails and comments. He’s a happily married man, just like I am.
- What does your watch look like? Who needs a watch when you have a cell phone?
- What were you doing at midnight last night? Reading In the Shadow of the Winter Palace. Damn, those Tsars had the life. Would have hated to live in a country where only one person was free, however, even if I was that person.
- What did your last text message you received on your cell say? Happy New Year.
- Where is your nearest 7-11? Damn. I can’t think of one closer than Orange, about twenty two miles away.
- What’s a word that you say a lot? Cat.
- Who told you he/she loved you last? My wife, of course.
- Last furry thing you touched? Virginia Mew who was in one of her lovey moods and kept pressing herself against me, reminding me of the closeness that a dolphin has to the water
- How many drugs have you done in the last three days? Done as in recreated? None. Nine if you count the medicines. Ten if you insist on the chocolates.
- How many rolls of film do you need developed? Two.
- Favorite age you have been so far? Dunno, but it sure wasn’t 48.
- Your worst enemy? There’s a loaded question. Decline to state. Person will let it go to their head. Big enough ego trip there to start with.
- What is your current desktop picture? A picture of some white alders in Holy Jim Canyon.
- What was the last thing you said to someone? “No” to a realtor who asked “Is this house for sale?”
- If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be? Being able to fly would be great just so long as I also knew how to land. Hate to lose my ability to walk. The best things in life, after all, are free.
- Do you like someone? ? Like, have a crush on someone? My wife, of course.
- The last song you listened to? The finale of La Boheme. MIMI!
- What time of day were you born? In the evening.
- What’s your favorite number? 47. The official [[Pomona College]] number.
- Where did you live in 1987? [[Menlo_Park%2C_California|Menlo Don’t Park on the Street Between Two and Five in the Morning]], California
- Are you jealous of anyone? Not at this time.
- Is anyone jealous of you? Sure. Sometimes they read this blog and get all hot and bothered.
- Where were you when 9/11 happened? In bed. It was early here on the Pacific Coast. Not even nine.
- What do you do when vending machines steal your money? Give ’em a good kick, threaten to turn them into metal scrap, and then walk away with a sigh.
- Hey Will! You left one out!
- If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be? I would be on my arm and it would be henna.
- If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be? Tough choice, but I think I’d pick Spanish.
- Would you move for the person you loved? Of course! She makes the money! I’d better have plenty of mood stabilizers on hand.
- Are you touchy feely? When I express my emotions, I like to leave a bit of air.
- What’s your life motto? Ignore the idiots.
- Name three things that you have on you at all times? My glasses, my wallet, my wedding ring.
- What’s your favorite town/city? Tough call. San Francisco, Paris, [[Ljubljana]] all come to mind.
- What was the last thing you paid for with cash? Dinner at Charro Chicken.
- When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it? Fuck. Been a long time.
- Can you change the oil on a car? On older models. Not sure about the truck and Lynn’s car.
- Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her? Another been a long long time.
- How far back do you know about your ancestry? I can go back to Denmark in the 17th century.
- The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy? Thanksgiving, 2004.
- Does anything hurt on your body right now? My lower back.
- Have you been burned by love? Who hasn’t? No sense brooding over it. Not at my age.
Insert Another Trite Metaphor For A Corral #17
Posted on January 5, 2007 in Daily Life
OK, Hussein’s hanging continues to be a big story. It’s my roundup.
Friday Anteater Blogging – A Giant Comes to Orange
Posted on January 5, 2007 in Xenartha
The graduating class at the University of California at Irvine has taken up a collection to bring a giant anteater to Orange County.
Their effort contributes to an ongoing project at the zoo to build a half-a-million dollar grasslands exhibit to house greater rheas, guanaco, and the Giant Anteater – which would be a new addition.
I think they should name it Spout.
Sneaky Spammers
Posted on January 4, 2007 in Site News Spam
Wordpress users might find comments that half-sound like they are “on topic” but refer back to nonexistent blogs and email addresses.
Normality Revisited
Posted on January 4, 2007 in Bipolar Disorder
I was writing like a Leo Strauss-trained neoconservative last night when I blogged about normality. Rewriting it helped only a little. Here’s another, briefer try for the users of Cliff’s Notes:
I separate the normal/abnormal axes from the sane/insane ones. When I use it, normal and abnormal refer to brain function. As a bipolar, my brain does not function normally. Due to misfires among the neurons, I experience the discharge of weird thoughts and perceptions. These are not normal: people who do not have my biochemistry do not have them to the degree that I do.
Sanity and insanity are terms which have been used in a different way from how I use them here. Usually they refer to an individual’s ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Faulty brain chemistry can contribute to this inability, but I have already designated them as abnormal. Because I can’t think of another term for it, I use sane/insane.
Sanity consists of one’s trained ability to recognize one’s mental states as normal or abnormal. I declared that a person who suffers from hallucinations, for example, can be considered sane if she knows that her hallucinations are not real. Likewise, I held out the likelihood that a person who persisted in believing a false premise against evidence could be called insane.
I cannot think of another pair of words that describe this second pair of conditions well. Suggestions are welcome.
Bad Nonviolence
Posted on January 4, 2007 in Courage & Activism Occupation of Iraq
A press conference about reform is not the place for adolescent defiance of authority.
Insert A Trite Metaphor for a Corral #16
Posted on January 4, 2007 in Roundup
The lame duck Republican congress breathed its last today and the new era led by Nancy Pelosi began. In other news:
- Stars must ‘check science facts’ – and take some basic science?
- But It’s Thomas Jefferson’s Koran!
- Protecting Internet Democracy
- Steve Irwin death footage to be destroyed – Hopefully no one made a copy
- What Were They Thinking? VA Cartoon Makes Light of Vets’ Mental Health Issues
- Mother Wonders if Psychosis Drug Helped Kill Son – Another Zyprexa horror story?
- Jury still out on fish oil for depression
- Moon River: Titan’s Polar Surface Dotted with Lakes of Methane
- Mysterious object crashes through roof – Possibly a meteorite
Perceiving Normality
Posted on January 3, 2007 in Bipolar Disorder Genetics Psycho-bunk
Show me a person who says that there is no such thing as “normal” and I will show you someone who lives in denial.
What It Meant to Be A Serf
Posted on January 3, 2007 in History
The following passage from Edward Crankshaw’s In the Shadow of the Winter Palace illustrates the nature of the institution of [[serfdom]] in Russia, some conservatives’ ideal of the “good old days”:
Count Peter Sheremetyev and his son Nicholas were manic builders. All their money, and much more, went on the building and maintenance of palaces and the provision of extravagant entertainments in the grandest imaginable manner….
These were intended not as places to live but in effect as permanent architectural set stages….[[Kuskovo]], exquitsite in the Palladian style, its construction supervised from start to finish by a serf architect, Alexei Mironov, besides its suite of connected reception rooms, its vast ballroom, its state bedroom modelled on the bedroom of [[Louis XIV]] at [[Versailles]], its [[rococo]] garden pavillions, and its vast park, contained at one time three separate theatres (one of them in the open air), for opera, ballet, and drama. The stage designers, the scene-painters, the actors, dancers, and singers and musicians alike were all serfs. Barbara Cherkassy had brought with her dowry a number of gifted painter serfs from her own family estates. The Sheremetyevs themselves clearly went out of their way to develop latent artistic talent in their own serfs and to acquire others who showed talent. Some, like the builder-architect, Mironov, were very gifted indeed and in the West would have carved out independent careers. The leading soprano in Nicholas Sheremetyev’s opera company at [[Ostankino]] (where the theater with all its elaborate machinery is still intact), Parasha Koyaleva, was widely renowned; the daughter of a blacksmith serf on one of the Sheremetyev estates, she was picked out by her master at the age of eleven, trained as a musician under the best masters in Moscow, taught French and Italian. Besides winning fame as a singer, she was a great beauty, and in the end her master married her. It was somehow characteristic of the Sheremetyev world that after building up his famous opera company, giving the first performances of Gluck and Mozart in Russia and marrying his prima donna, Nicholas Sheremetyev suddenly became bored with playing impresario, disbanded his company, and returned his celebrated troupe to household and horticultural duties.
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #15
Posted on January 3, 2007 in Roundup
The news dashed out in all kinds of different directions.
2006: The Year in Review
Posted on January 2, 2007 in Roundup
There are those who have used things that I have written in this blog as a way to attack me for the sake of gathering power for themselves and those who have told me that because of these attacks, I should not keep a blog. This is a response, a testament of truth about the thoughts I had over the year. And in giving this, I offer my thanks to those who expressed their affection for me because I spoke my mind.
Began the year with reflections on the differences between me and the unafflicted. Some crosstalk about stigma and the way the unafflicted view us follows. I remember my first sociopath. (And more arrived in my life, unnoted, this year.) Questions about using sanity as an excuse for boorish behavior. The price of being deterred from seeking psychiatric help and the costs of living within a bubble beneath the sea. The Mania Meme. An encounter with an osteopath. Confused by my language? Here’s a glossary. Tom Cruise might learn from Why I take meds — but I doubt he’ll try. The depressive side of bipolar disorder as a black hot lava bomb of narcissism. Belief that there were WMDs in Iraq amounts to a normie delusion. A very rude man who needs to be on lithium. Feeding Ecstasy to pigs. “How are you?” as a means of interrogation. Tips and more tips for talking to a bipolar. Biblical parenting.
How anxiety makes us think better. My knee gives out. How compliments and positive predictions served to bring me down. Where blue stands for numb and green stands for living again. On being a boring bipolar. How I was affected by the film Capote. Life and the World reduced to two Big Black Steel Balls. Wreaking positive change tires the heart. Easter as a lonely holiday for an agnostic. Using bipolar disorder as a way to fend off Nigerian email scammers. What I said to a refusenik about the meds and the disease. The time I thought myself a stalker. The nature of my cycles does not follow the classic “crash” scenario. Lost at Sea with Vincent. Why I don’t see many blank faces. Bullroarer. Why it must be safe enough to talk about our symptoms and our frustrations and how some people make places unsafe. Where cotton replaces razor blades as the feeling of suffering.
Experiencing asthenia. Therapists among the bipolars. The odd knobs of the past and cloaks of confidentiality. Mania as a horizontal landslide. Hallucinations. The side effect of drumming my feet. Where I eschew the “different realities” cop out. (I do it again here.) The Sims 2 Bipolar Edition. A friend dies and a subsequent bout with angels. Then eight days of silence. Followed by an account of my recovery with notes on meal planning while depressed and about blown minds. I only wrote one article about my participation in the DBSA national conference. It was about Tom Wootton and The Bipolar Advantage.
Is finding myself interesting egotism? Being misdiagnosed in college. Aerosol chemotherapy (aka Santa Ana Winds). I describe the shape of the missing piece. What happens at four in the afternoon. I will not hold back holding back. On the origin of small hopes. Asking for a face instead of a hockey mask. Why I have trouble answering lies in a public setting. How the barroom afflicts even the sober. A single phrase about obsession. Don’t give me “I did the best I could“.
All of this and many things more were me.
Resolution for 2007: Not to punish myself for being more in touch with my feelings than others or for having the guts to be truthful and open where others prefer to hide.
