June 16, 2011

I went to watch the fights and somebody started a hockey game

"In Canetti’s system, production is nothing but “the modern frenzy of increase.” Since “increase” is a characteristic of crowds, production becomes just another instance, a double one, of the crowd gone wild, for goods and consumers each make up a crowd."


Here we sit broken hearted
Came to sip 
but when the crowd departed
The Cup became glass
Our City lost all its Class
to an Unruly Mob  
who looted Lord Stanley's fob.
They lobbed 
 newspaper boxes 
and looted the Bay of watches and clockses, 
Time stood on its ear
as all watched with horror
The City's aflame,
and now we're the poorer...
For these louts and these goons
Their 15 minutes secure
Like their chums from '94
the hockey game was a blur.


The nimrod natives were restless
fuelled on Booze, and blood on the bongo
And in the flash of a flash grenade
We forgot about  Luongo.


It is a "world class city " til
you get poked in the eye
stabbed in the gut, 
while on-lookers stand by
We watched the game, 
the world watched the fires.  
The Prius, the Hummer, the BMW tires
A Mob Dressed in sportswear of Corporate Colors
A Flash Mob all a Twitter, as the twits turned over cars, burned the Red Carpet, and the portable Shitter.

Finally the Mob burned out their rage                                                                                                                                                                                                                      and in the end, 
who remembers our hockey heroes upstaged?
The Canuck's season is over, 
to the streets we must clean up 
And get ready for football                                                                                                             
The Lions host the Grey Cup.
                                                                                                             




June 5, 2011

Another Way of Drowning in your own body

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_18211068?nclick_check=1

"Leonard Lloyd, of Oakley, is a retired marriage and family psychotherapist and former probation officer who said he is familiar with being helpless in the presence of human tragedy.

"The emphasis on inaction by potential rescuers is misplaced," he said. "Every indication is that this man was determined to end his life just as he did. It is tragic that he had come to the point that he no longer wanted to be alive. People close to him tried to talk him out of it, made extra efforts to get him to return safely home, to no avail.

"But the tragedy is not that rescuers did not stop him, but that all previous efforts, such as mental health care at (a local psychiatric hospital) and presumed aftercare were not sufficient to lift his chronic depression.'' "
The emphasis of this story has been the inaction of the firefighters, as well as the crowd of 70 onlookers to a lesser extent.
The real story is not that 70 people and professional life savers failed to help, but as the comment above states, "the tragedy is ....presumed aftercare (was) not sufficient to life his chronic depression."
Chronic depression is a form of drowning in your own body. (One of the highest google searches for this blog is the post I wrote in regards to my father's death from congestive heart failure Like Drowning in Your Own Body)
As anxiety increases to unmanageable levels, we feel a sensation of panic similar to drowning. 
Unfortunately, I can speak of both of these experiences on a personal level.     
Once as a teenager, the morning after a night of drinking, my buddies and I decided to swim across a lake for a lark.
All very well, until I reached the midway point and realized I was exhausted.  I started to sink.  When people speak of a "sinking feeling", I know that feeling.   There is not much like it.  I saw my buddies well ahead of me.  
All around me, water.   Below me, more water.   
Were there boaters out on the lake that could help?  No.  I knew in the split second (minutes) that I had a choice.  To live or not to live.  To be or not to be.  
I wanted to live.  I found the where-with-all to make it to the other side.  And when I got there, I was almost blue.  
I said to my buddies, let's walk back.  
Walk back?  There is nothing but mountains, trees, and bears for miles.  That is not an option. You have to swim back.
And I did, because I am here today.
Flash forward to 2007.  My well documented heart attack.  Once again, near death.  Once again, deals made with God to let me keep on living.   
I said," if you want to take me, take me.  But if you have something more for me to do in this life, please let me live."
And I did, because I am here today. 
5 months after my heart attack, depression overwhelmed me.   Depression was not a stranger, but this time it was different.
This time it was serious, and life threatening.   When you feel that sinking feeling to the point that you cannot even make the decision to sink or swim, to want to swim, to want to go on.....well, that is what depression is.
It is not feeling sad.  It is not having the blues.  
It is overriding panic, anxiety, indecision, and most of all, the feeling that you are not in control of your own body.  Not in control of your own mind.  Not in control.
Another way of drowning in your own body.  
In the words of Samuel Beckett, "I can't go on. I'll go on."


June 3, 2011

National Donut Day - we bow our heads in silence

 Homer, patron saint of donuts.  D'oh Nuts.  Second cousin married to second cousin Floor Pie.  Closely related to Don't make friends with salads.


Did you know....
14 billion donuts consumed annually in the US.

Did you know...
Top donut consumers are not yellow.

Did you know....
But they do live in the midwest.  What else can you do in winter?  Make babies?
What do you do when you are too fat to make babies?


Relax.  Eat a donut, pal.














Here we see one of the 7 wonders of the world:


The Krispy Kreme Bacon and Eggs Burger.

Seriously, what more is there to say.

Did you know that donuts are the #2 baked good in the United States, second only to bread.

Damn bread.

Is there no justice?

With all the cops eating donuts, you think there might be justice.

Justiced Donuts. Mmmmmmmmm.

HAPPY DONUT DAY!!!!!!!

June 2, 2011

They attack from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain

Brain Shivers
What doesn't cure you, may kill you yet.


Akathisia, or acathisia, is a syndrome characterized by unpleasant sensations of "inner" restlessness that manifests itself with an inability to sit still or remain motionless (hence the word's origin in Ancient Greek: from καθίζειν - kathízein - "to sit" with a privative a as prefix expressing negation or absence; literally meaning inability to sit).


Akathisia may range in intensity from a sense of disquiet or anxiety, to severe discomfort, particularly in the knees. Patients typically pace for hours because the pressure on the knees reduces the discomfort slightly; once their knees become fatigued, they sit or lie down.




High-functioning patients have described the feeling as a sense of inner tension and torment or chemical torture. 



Jack Henry Abbot (1981),a convicted murderer and author, described the effects of akathisia produced by antipsychotic drugs when given without the necessary medication for side effects (e.g. procyclidine) as may occur in prison and even sometimes hospitals:
These drugs, in this family, do not calm or sedate the nerves. They attack. They attack from so deep inside you, you cannot locate the source of the pain ... The muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside of your mouth and your jaw locks and the pain throbs. For hours every day this will occur. Your spinal column stiffens so that you can hardly move your head or your neck and sometimes your back bends like a bow and you cannot stand up. The pain grinds into your fiber ... You ache with restlessness, so you feel you have to walk, to pace. And then as soon as you start pacing, the opposite occurs to you; you must sit and rest. Back and forth, up and down you go in pain you cannot locate, in such wretched anxiety you are overwhelmed, because you cannot get relief even in breathing.

—Jack Henry Abbot, In the Belly of the Beast (1981/1991). Vintage Books, 35–36. Quoted in Robert Whitaker, Mad in America (2002, ISBN 0-7382-0799-3), 187.