Dream
Posted on June 13, 2011 in Dreams
I’m flying in a plane with an open compartment like you would find on a luxury jet. There is a family with a few children and a man in a gray business suit who I am told is a wizard. He has seized control of the plane with his magic and is going to crash it into Disneyland so his heart — which is buried there — can rejoin his body. I suddenly find myself walking on the street near Disneyland. I look behind me and see a huge wall surrounding California Adventure. I walk toward what I think is going to be the entrance to the parking lot but find myself in the backroom of a convenience store. For the rest of the dream, I obsess about the magician and the plane. Does it make sense that if he crashes the plane, he will become one with his heart again? The question jumps back on itself, repeating until I break the noise with the silence of my awakening.
Dream
Posted on June 12, 2011 in Dreams
I am in a large classroom with several other people. We’re holding the door shut against I don’t know what. (Vampires, ghosts, evil spirits?) When they get inside, they find the person that looks like them and paint them in bright poster colors. (Do they die?) I look outside into the darkness. Seems that our room is mounted to a railroad car. Is it safe? A fluorescent deer stands on the platform. No, that means it is not. A horse tries to get inside, but some of my companions hold the door shut as the train begins to move. At first the town is dark — the things have taken over — but as we move to the edge of town, the houses are decorated for Christmas with increasing garishness.
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral No. 101
Posted on June 12, 2011 in Roundup
Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. William James
Climate Change and the Elephant in the Living Room. When I was a young man, I lived under the shadow of [[nuclear proliferation]]. We were all convinced that we would die in an exchange of [[mutually assured destruction]] aka MAD. The Bomb was necessary because they had The Bomb we were told. Much of the activism of the eighties was directed to ending this scenario. All look hopeless until [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] came around and put [[Ronald Reagan]] on the spot: it was either drop his Star Wars plan or make his administration look like the pack of war-mongers that it was.
Unfortunately for today, we can’t expect our greatest foe — the earth’s atmosphere to make a bold move like Gorbachev and shame us into granting it concessions. It has no propaganda ministry to put out the word of its good intentions. It can only attack us through catastrophes.
While temperatures are moderate here in Southern California, my friends in the rest of the country have been put through a firey furnace. This year has shown that global climate change is a fact with all the tornadoes, strange winters, and heat waves not to mention the hurricanes which are yet to come. One party has cornered the market on climate denial: this was the week when [[Rick Santorum]] called climate science “junk science” and called for strict controls on what people could see on the Internet. Perhaps if Santorum forgot about online hot spots and took a walk in the heat burning down Pennsylvania, he might get a clue. As the first two articles below show, we are in a bad place when it comes to climate. The Republican response to these scientific facts isn’t to provide an alternative to the Democrats’ response: it is to do nothing except those who point out the truth. We need to do with GOP what we do with an abusive, alcoholic spouse: divorce it!
- Carbon Release to Atmosphere 10 Times Faster Than in the Past, Geologists Find — Which means it is exceeding previously clocked natural rates. Which points to artificial stimulation. Also see this article about how global warming is happening faster than ever.
- Weinergate Zealotry On Right And Left Exposes Underage Girls To Risk — I had assumed that they were adults. I hold the people who published their details accountable, however. They knew. Now read these jokes.
- Romney Wrong on Deficits, Auto Bailout — “Wrong” somehow doesn’t express this. “Lies” is better.
- Top ten things Rick Perry doesn’t want you to know about him — This is what we should be seeing more of, not misogynistic gossip about Palin and Bachman.
- Cheezburger founder tells newspapers what they have been doing wrong — Can I Haz Real Journalism?
- Sex, Politics, and God — God didn’t remove King David for his sex scandal and it was worse than what Weiner did by far!
- Censorship Gone Too Far? Canadian Catholic School Bans Rainbows — Left wing “political correctness” calls for rewriting the rules of etiquette; right wing political correctness calls for oppression and censorship.
- Air Quality Worsened by Paved Surfaces: Widespread Urban Development Alters Weather Patterns — I’ve known for years that all that asphalt and concrete made me miserable
- How a Roman Ship Carried Live Fish — A floating aquarium?
- The Pinhegg – My Journey To Build An Egg Pinhole Camera — I have always wanted to do this — but with an egg?!.
- Getting shouted at makes you work harder, but not smarter
- NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Approaches Protoplanet Vesta — This could be the start of the most interesting-least terrifying science story of the year.
- Feminists don’t think all men are rapists — Rapists do — This makes a lot of sense to me. Violent people don’t think they are any different from the other guy. Abusive parents, for example, will insist that other parents beat their kids.
The Soul as Hamburger Meat
Posted on June 11, 2011 in Depression Loneliness
Imagine a soft, gray rock domed and striated like a hamburger bun. No life here, you think, then you notice the blue gray beady eyes blink. It opens its maw and takes you in, chewing toothlessly on your chest. Paralysis prevents you from crying. Oh save my soul, oh save my soul, oh save my soul, you murmur but the dire suspicion that you don’t have one overwhelms you.
A few days ago, I had a conversation with my therapist. It amounted to this: I believe with good evidence that I am a good person. Many years ago, when the mania swamped my common sense, I rushed into impulse buying and sudden, unthinking action. I’m calm now, doing my best to be kind. Irritability electrocutes this kindness at times, but mostly I remember my etiquette. But I don’t think I am likable and I find the world perverse on this score.
Take for example the case of one person I know. We’re sitting next to a young man with cerebral palsy. A young girl sees him and asks us what’s wrong with them. My companion says “Aren’t you glad that you aren’t like that?”
This person is loved by all except me. This person enjoys the world. Friends call to see how this person is doing all the time. Loneliness is not their curse.
I have only Lynn who loves me. And while I love the world, I am mostly alone in it for the many hours of the day.
My therapist says that the experience of this other person should give me heart. If this mean human being can find friends, so can I. But I retorted “If the world is filled with such people, how can I trust anyone?”
I do my best to be a good listener. But I have found that the blessing for this are many people who do not know how to listen in return. The legions come and give me advice. I cover my head with my hands and wish to cry. The other good people of the world have no time for me. I know it is not because I am bad. It is because I am not likable, not even hamburger meat to them.
This Ohio Congressman is Dead
Posted on June 9, 2011 in Accountability Folly Watch Gender Micro-blogging
I saw it over and over again, the clarion call of progressive Democrats angered by the unjust denunciations of Anthony Weiner and his amazing penis. His Monday press conference hurt. Ever since he admitted he lied, progressives have sought to salve their disappointment by reciting a litany of Republican sex crimes.
This particular story blazed across Twitter like a tangible blessing direct from the hand of God: Ohio Congressman Is Convicted in Sex Case, but Aide Says He’ll Run for Re-election. Here on the very day of our disgrace it seemed that the game was even again, even ahead a little. This guy had slept with a 16 year old and he had no qualms about putting his name out before the voters again. The Republicans could be silenced!
If you go to the article and examine the fine print beneath the headline, you will see the date: May 27, 1989. No one noticed this. The matter becomes even more comical when you realize that not only has the Congressman resigned, but he has been dead for over a year.
I hated beating this parrot on the counter, but someone had to do it before we choked on its feathers. ((I disagree both with the people who are pressing for Weiner’s resignation and those partisans who are trying to even the score. The end of this affair takes place in 2012 when Weiner’s seat comes up. His constituents — not the House or the media — should decide what is to be done with him.))
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It Moved Like a Cat
Posted on June 8, 2011 in Creatures Neighborhood
The man had two dogs — a small white one that snapped at Drake and another larger, brown dog of unknowable breed in the dark. “There’s something out there,” he said. “A cat.” He held out his arms to show how big it was. “I didn’t see what it was, but it was this big and it moved like a cat.” Could it have been a raccoon? Or a possum? “No, it wasn’t. It moved like a cat.”
We parted ways. I climbed the grassy knoll where the gingko tree grows behind the condos and looked for it. “It could have been a bobcat,” I said to Lynn. “But I am more worried about a coyote.”
Nothing moved in the dark groove between the gingko and back wall.
Dream
Posted on June 7, 2011 in Dreams
I’m distracted from talking to my mother while playing a video game. I open the front door and find a fit-figured guy wearing a small box over his head. “Chato?” ((Not the Chato I know in real life. It’s funny how I don’t see these things while I am dreaming the dream.)) I ask. Something is wrong here. He’s come all the way around the block to see me. An episode has come over him and he needs help. “We’ve got to do something,” I say to him. “There’s a meeting that is both a DBSA ((Depression Bipolar Support Alliance)) group and a Toastmasters’ Club.” He agrees to go. The club is holding a speech contest. We decide to get dinner first — some egg rolls at a Chinese takeout. As we are going to get them, an Argentinian grabs me by one of my belt loops and begins telling me how I should order my food. I squirm away from him. When I get the food, I realize that I have to tell the people at the Toastmasters’ club that they will have to make a choice: they aren’t doing much to help people with bipolar disorder, just using the affiliation to attract members. I think I can tell them nicely that this has to stop.
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral No. 100
Posted on June 5, 2011 in Roundup
“My father, who hated guns & had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.” ~ Harper Lee
Weinergate. Weinergate is the latest waste of time by a media that should be chasing down corruption instead of sex scandals. ((My friend Milt Shook on Twitter tweeted “Was just told “we have to get answers” re Weiner prank. Really? Or WHAT will happen? The republic will crumble? Ppl need to get a grip….GOPers are trying to kill Medicare, taking food away from poor, refusing to help tornado victims. Pardon if I don’t care abt a dickpic.)) Someone told me that we can’t assume that [[Anthony Weiner]] ~didn’t~ send that impressive photo to that woman because we have only his word that he was hacked. ((Guilty unless proven innocent, anyone?)) I promptly responded that we only have ~his~ word that he is not a cannibal. I haven’t seen firm proof that Weiner wasn’t hacked — it is too neat that many of his accounts turned up with the same crap at the same time and that the guy who “outed” him turned up on Twitter on April 11 and has hit on Weiner incessantly ever since. (See the Smoking Gun article below for other strange details.) I made the crack that the Tea Party followers were after Weiner because his wife looked better than theirs. “Oh, that’s just so deep” said one reactionary tweeter who had, as her avatar, an unflattering photo of [[Michelle Obama]]. No, of course they don’t judge on appearances.
- Are taxes in the U.S. high or low? — Proving once more that the GOP is run by lying rich crybabies. Also see this article on whether the poor pay taxes or not.
- The Wolfe At Anthony Weiner’s Front Door — It’s looking more and more like a GOP operation. Check out this report on the planning of the attack on Weiner. The goofs did it right out in cyberspace for everyone to see!
- The Mistake of 2010 — Other than electing the Tea Party, which was also bad for jobs.
- Should Coulda Woulda — The White House is so busy playing politics, it isn’t fixing the economy
- The Problem of Republican Idiots — Maybe we are worrying about the wrong people? I wonder if Michelle Bachmann & Sarah Palin serve to discredit women in politics.
- The Making of a Monster — Srebrenica is all because this man’s daughter shot herself with his favorite gun — what was she trying to tell him?
- The NCAA and Jim Tressel: Giving Eric Cartman the Moral High Ground — College sports makes college a joke.
- Why the Jefferson Memorial Dancers can dance alone in their room. — I don’t agree with the assertion that the activity was fatuous, but this is a good discussion of what makes civil disobedience a powerful tool.
- Too young to wed: The secret world of child brides — Also see this article about a 10 year old being sold into prostitution.
- Malta votes to legalize divorce — Now only the Phillippines yokes people for life, adultery and domestic violence be damned!
- How to Stump Anti-Abortionists With One Question — Can you guess it?
- God is not a Christian — Wise words by Nobel Prize Winner Bishop Desmond Tutu
- Movin’ Meat: The Deadliest Cough Syrup — How do you overdose on homeopathic cough syrup? By adding too much water?
- Students Struggling With Math May Have a Neurocognitive Disorder Called Dyscalculia: Disorder Affects Roughly as Many People as Dyslexia — Abstract math is very hard for me, but I did fine at geometry.
- Japan Earthquake Appears to Increase Quake Risk Elsewhere in the Country
- 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor — Yes, they have such an easy time of things. Tell the Tea Party to go – well, you can guess.
Notes on the DBSA National Conference Part 2
Posted on May 31, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Suicide
People at the conference tended to know that they were sick for the most part. There may have been one or two exceptions — such as the young woman who broke off from the Meet and Greet to have a drink in the hotel bar (Such compliance!) and maybe some of the family members. Most tracked themselves well and recognized if they were stable or in episode.
Psychiatrists call the ability to understand that we are in a state of mental disturbance “insight” and its lack [[anosognosia]] ((Which is also the term used to describe people who have suffered brain damage and do not recognize the extent to which their use of their limbs or their senses have been compromised.)) The point at which we realize things are messed up and we can’t go on living like this was epitomized by Susan Blauner’s talk. Blauner, who her therapist described as an “angry young woman using herself as a pawn”, spoke of waking up in the hospital with a tube running down her gut and her arms tied so she couldn’t remove it. A moment of terror ensued in which she realized that the pills she had choked down were coming perilously close to exterminating her. “I don’t want to die,” she thought. “But if you don’t want to die,” that still small voice of her conscience asked her, “why did you try to commit suicide?” ((I had a similar moment. No sooner had I been admitted to the hospital after considering slashing my wrists, I went up to the nurse’s station and began demanding my diabetes medications. Why, if I wanted to die, did I do this? asked one of the nurses. It was the next day that Dr. Speare diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. I hadn’t a clue, though I knew my mind was turbulent and out of control.))
Though most therapists would disagree with her model, Blauner sees her [[suicide]] attempts as something other than a mere call for help. She sees them as an addiction . The desire to put herself in a place of mortal peril was akin to what she heard in addiction groups where the pressure of the desire to do it would grow until it was overwhelming and she would have no choice but to break down and do it.
She has since risen beyond this.
The next morning, actress Laura Burke identified herself as one of the 45% who knew they were mentally ill and often dismissed because they weren’t like the people who didn’t know they were sick. Her [[schizophrenia]] pushed her to the point where she had lost her abilities to think and be expressive. She spoke of “losing the emotional wiring to feel sorrow or to feel joy” — a different sort of place from the bipolar disorder I suffer. Yet I felt kinship when she spoke of the numbing that was a response to our vulnerability.
Her perspective had its political themes. She acknowledged the Left perspective that there is a culture of fear out there that “pollutes our minds so that we fear everything except fear itself.” The common panacea of the day for this — Hope — has its own pitfalls, however. Desire for results can be destructive in its own right. When we replace the numbing — the loss of empathy for others — with the expectation that things will change right now, we kill ourselves with shame when we don’t meet them. The hope that we will meet the approval of others, of being enough is what I would call a kind of edgemanship. If we do not successfully walk the line as our illness pushes us, we fall into a state of shame.
There’s a past, there’s a future, and there’s a present. We thrive when there is a validation of the suffering that we feel, when we are not forced to deny it, to try to change it, or push it away. Life is workable. There is always “the brilliance of possibility in the present moment” which is the only place where true change can happen. Relief is to reframe your illness, she concluded, to celebrate life as it is.
Which is different from what many mental health professionals shove us towards.
I note that our pain is often invalidated. There lurks the view that we should not call ourselves by our illness because this is to lead us to failure which is marked by lack of conformity. I take my meds because I am bipolar. I will not sacrifice that self-label because it “reduces me to my diagnosis.” I call the shots here. From moment to moment, I can change this to suit my purposes and my comfort. When you tell me how I should label myself, you make me surrender control to you.
From Laura’s drama therapy workshop:
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell the truth. — Oscar Wilde
And now simply some thoughts from Clarence Jordan who believes in the resiliency of the human species:
“Two things people like to talk about when they have never experienced it: being mentally ill and being in the military.”
“Without resilience, how would you have been able to get past the trauma in your life?”
“We are seduced by our illness into doing the things we should not do — there is more incentive to be sick in our system than there is to be well.”
“Life is not a dress rehearsal. There are no go-rounds. This is it. Please engage with life.”
Cruel Hacker Tricks: Bullying the Mentally Ill
Posted on May 30, 2011 in Internet Privacy Mean People Stigma
We cheer for [[Anonymous_(group)|Anonymous]] as it strikes against those who are out to destroy our freedom through corporate interference, but there are currently faceless individuals who undermine the point of that kind of freedom by attacking political rivals ((Witness the hacking of [[Anthony Weiner]]’s Twitter account over the weekend which not only inconvenienced him, but embarrassed a Washington state woman who received a picture of a man in his undershorts.)) and those who are advocates for change and understanding. This [[cyberbullying]] is now focused on Beckie0, a young woman who has created several videos and photographs informing her audience about [[trichillomania]]. She does not advocate trichillomania, but tries to get people to understand why hair pullers pull.
We who live with mental illness periodically put up with this kind of dirty trickery. I have been subjected to it, but not on the level that Beckie is being made to experience. Every morning at 4 a.m., the hackers start on her accounts. She is going through the British equivalent of her final exams, which is layering anxiety upon anxiety.
To the hacker(s): Your behavior indicates that you are one of us. It is time to face your insecurities. I cannot see what kind of threat that a talented young woman such as Beckie0 represents to you. That is a matter between you and your therapist. Get a grip on these issues before you end up in jail or, worse, before you go full throttle after the most helpless victim you can ever choose: yourself.
Dream
Posted on May 30, 2011 in Dreams
I’m going to the Claremont Graduate School to complete a degree in social science. Or is it English literature? I’m looking at student housing there. They have a pair of brick residential towers that resemble the cross-based dorms at Claremont McKenna College. I want to keep my cats (which look nothing like any of the cats I have ever kept). The people running the dorm say that this is OK. The Graduate School is located at the northeast corner of the Claremont Colleges (which is not where it is located in real life). I climb the stairs to my apartment. Am I married? I don’t know!
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral No. 99
Posted on May 29, 2011 in Roundup
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. ~Abraham Lincoln
These past few weeks have seen some of the harshest weather in memory. Tornadoes hit several states — including California which is as famous for its twisters as Wyoming is for its liberals — and snow fell in New York until very recently. We’ve been having rain well into May and if more falls in June, I will not be surprised. What we can expect from previous years has been distorted beyond all recognition and yet not a single news agency has made the connection between these events and global climate change because that is not politically correct in an age where the order of the day in journalism is “controversy” — a world where nothing is proven, especially where scientific facts point to major industry practices. I’m looking to see more denial and a major depopulation of certain red states as climate-denying lemmings rush to escape the fury of pollution driven winds.
- A Link Between Climate Change and Joplin Tornadoes? Never! — A very succinct discussion of the confederacy between media and big corporations in maintaining the silence.
- Disabled Abandon Wheelchairs, Protest Medicaid Cuts — No one bothers to speak of “compassionate conservatism” any more. It’s plain that they hate the disabled and they don’t care who knows. (Check out the video below) Wait, they have this kind of compassion.
- L’Affaire DSK: The Perp Walk That Demeaned Us All — The media says it is either that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is too fat and ugly to have done this woman –therefore she lies — or that he is another rapacious French sexist pig. Either take is to be condemned. We must get to the truth.
- Tennessee Court says that Islam is a religion — One of the week’s biggest eye-poppers. What else do you call a collective of people that engages in prayer and good works?
- Company Sells Gun Oil Laced with Pig Fat to Deny Muslims Paradise – And you know the guy who makes this stuff is so proud of what he did, he won’t reveal his name?
- How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory — One of the most paranoid men alive tells how he did it.
- GOP Response To Town Hall Backlash: Ban Recording Devices And Censor Citizen Journalists — Transparency my butt!
- Why “moral” people act unethically — Truly moral people see themselves as having faults that must be compensated for
- Is the extreme right pro-life? No, more like pro-control — I’ve long suspected that abortion is little more than a chit used against progressive forces wreaking good change. Also see The blessing of abortion
- Intuitions Regarding Geometry Are Universal, Study Suggests
- 8 Words That Should Never Appear in Your Twitter Bio — Not guilty of any of these, but I see plenty who are.
- Children Learn Language in Moments of Insight, Not Gradually Through Repeated Exposure, Study Shows
- Hypomania and the Culture of Western Medicine — Some nice suggestions for slowing the pace of medical appointments.
Kurt Rutzen testifies before the Minnesota Senate about the impact of the budget cuts for the disabled. He asks “What about the people who don’t have families to care for them?” Kurt lives with cerebral palsy.
