Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The Terror Pulse aka I Against I
Sometimes, when I tell people that I have an anxiety disorder, they respond to me with "Oh, I think I might have that" or "I get really anxious anytime I have to speak in public" and it makes me shake my head. It's true that sometimes in our everyday lives we feel anxiety, but until you have lived with an anxiety disorder you have no idea. I don't get mad with these people, I don't even explain the difference between what they are experiencing and what I live with. I just silently wish that they never find out first hand what I live with on a daily basis.
What I have is called Generalized Anxiety Disorder and it is a mental health condition in which a person is often worried and unable to control their anxiety. That is a very clinical look at it. In reality, GAD can best be described as living in a world that alternates between brief periods of calm and long periods of terror. What does that mean? Here is an example: Today I came home from work and checked the mail on the way up to my apartment like I always do. When I got upstairs and opened the first piece of mail addressed to me, I saw that I'd gotten a check from a class-action lawsuit that I've been waiting on for the better part of 5 years. Let's back track...
Today was a good day. I was in a good mood today (if you know me, you know that this NEVER happens). I felt no worries all day, I felt "normal" for 90% of my waking hours. The moment I opened that check was the moment all of that went away. There was a brief second of joy which was followed by about 4 hours of agony. I couldn't shake the feeling that something horrible was going to happen. I'm having a heart attack. I'm having a stroke. Did I get stung by a bee? I think I'm having an allergic reaction. I'm dizzy. I can't focus. Hi, baby girl...daddy is happy to see you. Why is she looking at me like that? Does she know that daddy is about to die? I think she can tell. What was that? My ears are ringing....I can't breathe....CALM
Repeat
Calm
Repeat Repeat Repeat Repeat
Calm
Repeat.
THAT is what an anxiety disorder is. The inability to shake off what "normal" people wouldn't give the time of day. Everyday is I against I. It's trying 50 different calming techniques and coping mechanisms to end up at the same horror. It's feeling like your life is being controlled by some evil force. It's fighting to leave the house on a daily basis without having a complete meltdown.
Now, I don't say this to make light of everyday anxiety, because that ain't no picnic either. I say it just so people realize that "there's levels to this shit". I'm fighting the same battle as the guy or girl who has a crippling fear of public speaking with the only difference being that I might not even be in the presence of something I fear to be crippled by anxiety.
I haven't posted anything in a while and I know that this is kind of bleak, but this is what is going on in my world and that is the type of shit I post about. I kinda just worked up the balls to put this out there and I'm too dumb to not stop myself from doing it. At the same time, I need release and this is all I got.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Good-Bye
All moderately amusing things must come to an end. As a farewll, I'll leave you with one of my favorite songs:
Minusmensch
The grey wind covered the last windows with dust
Where are all the souls?
buried and expelled
degenerated to ghostlike shells
You can see the behind weak backs
Bended, their face buried in their hands,
corroded by poison, paralyzed by ether
Fading figures.
Where is all the yearning in their leaden faces?
They hunted it down and killed it
Drowned in wine and estranged via syringes
set into whores and paid with cold.
Disembodied, gasping, I tumbled
In the flush of a thousand cold lights,
through this night of neon,
That I'll never belong to
©LANTLÔS
The grey wind covered the last windows with dust
Where are all the souls?
buried and expelled
degenerated to ghostlike shells
You can see the behind weak backs
Bended, their face buried in their hands,
corroded by poison, paralyzed by ether
Fading figures.
Where is all the yearning in their leaden faces?
They hunted it down and killed it
Drowned in wine and estranged via syringes
set into whores and paid with cold.
Disembodied, gasping, I tumbled
In the flush of a thousand cold lights,
through this night of neon,
That I'll never belong to
©LANTLÔS
Monday, August 22, 2011
Ain't No Captains on This Sinking Ship
If you hadn't noticed (or just got here from Jupiter), there seem to be a couple of large, looming issues in the political world these days. In the midst of all of the chaos, we're gearing up for one of those swell election things that you people like so much (©George Carlin). I, personally, find this coming election about as hilarious as watching Wacka Flocka teaching a philosophy class. When viewing the credentials and ideas of the presidential hopefuls (including our current head of state) through the lens of our current and upcoming problems as a country, I nearly convulse out of sheer terror.
Let's start with the GOP candidates because there is just too much fun to be had there. I have yet to hear any of the GOP candidates say something that wasn't either A)complete fallacy B)highly implausible or C) batshit crazy. In other words, they sound like political candidates...just exceptionally bad caricatures of them. Of the front runners, I thought Rick Perry seemed like the most normal of the bunch and a really strong candidate for the GOP. Then he talked and all of that was melted away. Michele Bachmann seems like she has a tenuous grasp on reality at best and I'll vote her as "President Most Likely to Burn Illegal Aliens at the Stake" if she wins. Mitt Romney doesn't seem like he'd make a bad President, he also doesn't seem like he'd make a very good president. Plus he's a Mormon, which isn't inherently bad, but can you see a gaggle of mouth-breathing rednecks in Arkansas voting for a Mormon? Sarah Palin is always lurking out there also, but I think she's having a hard enough time nailing down the English language as it is. Additionally, she's already proven that, given the opportunity, she can talk her way to the bottom of any list.
Now on to President Obama. Remember when Obama was elected and we had a Democrat-controlled congress and that was supposed to be the gateway to a Utopia? If so, I'm sure you also remember the Democrats wasting two very valuable years doing absolutely nothing and getting voted out of office. Our current president is fast on the road to that same fate if SOMETHING doesn't get done. I'm not going to say that the Obama administration is a failure, because I don't think you can say that yet. I do, however, believe that if he and his administration don't make some big time decisions and show some level of unifying leadership in the coming months then he's done. He hasn't done anything reprehensible in his time in office, but his administrations inability to affect the change voters were sold could be the nail in his political coffin.
This is all very important because of how close this country is to backsliding out of the "Super Power" category. Most Americans can't fathom the day when the world doesn't look to Uncle Sam as the red, white, and blue vehicle of progress and innovation. The problem is that the rest of the world can fathom and welcome that day. Far be it from me to look to politicians for direction, guidance, and most of all leadership in a time of despair, but with the way Americans have become the textbook definition of apathy we must. As unromantic as it may be, we don't need politicians that we necessarily like or feel like we can trust; we just need politicians that will do their jobs. With most of the current crop of presidential hopefuls I have little confidence that we will get any of those things.
Let's start with the GOP candidates because there is just too much fun to be had there. I have yet to hear any of the GOP candidates say something that wasn't either A)complete fallacy B)highly implausible or C) batshit crazy. In other words, they sound like political candidates...just exceptionally bad caricatures of them. Of the front runners, I thought Rick Perry seemed like the most normal of the bunch and a really strong candidate for the GOP. Then he talked and all of that was melted away. Michele Bachmann seems like she has a tenuous grasp on reality at best and I'll vote her as "President Most Likely to Burn Illegal Aliens at the Stake" if she wins. Mitt Romney doesn't seem like he'd make a bad President, he also doesn't seem like he'd make a very good president. Plus he's a Mormon, which isn't inherently bad, but can you see a gaggle of mouth-breathing rednecks in Arkansas voting for a Mormon? Sarah Palin is always lurking out there also, but I think she's having a hard enough time nailing down the English language as it is. Additionally, she's already proven that, given the opportunity, she can talk her way to the bottom of any list.
Now on to President Obama. Remember when Obama was elected and we had a Democrat-controlled congress and that was supposed to be the gateway to a Utopia? If so, I'm sure you also remember the Democrats wasting two very valuable years doing absolutely nothing and getting voted out of office. Our current president is fast on the road to that same fate if SOMETHING doesn't get done. I'm not going to say that the Obama administration is a failure, because I don't think you can say that yet. I do, however, believe that if he and his administration don't make some big time decisions and show some level of unifying leadership in the coming months then he's done. He hasn't done anything reprehensible in his time in office, but his administrations inability to affect the change voters were sold could be the nail in his political coffin.
This is all very important because of how close this country is to backsliding out of the "Super Power" category. Most Americans can't fathom the day when the world doesn't look to Uncle Sam as the red, white, and blue vehicle of progress and innovation. The problem is that the rest of the world can fathom and welcome that day. Far be it from me to look to politicians for direction, guidance, and most of all leadership in a time of despair, but with the way Americans have become the textbook definition of apathy we must. As unromantic as it may be, we don't need politicians that we necessarily like or feel like we can trust; we just need politicians that will do their jobs. With most of the current crop of presidential hopefuls I have little confidence that we will get any of those things.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
One More Piece of Unsolicited Advice...
Spotify is 3X 'Fantabulous Resplendence' (©3Floyds). Go here download it and move on with your music listening life.
NOW Companies Want to be Economically Responsible
Please take 3 minutes out of your day and read this article. It deals with the rise of corporate income and how it is in contrast to our rapidly declining economy. Good, quick read.
I found the part of the article where they discuss how corporations are reluctant to spend their ever-growing profits on hiring and investing rather mind-boggling. One corporate asshat had this to say:
Now I'm far from a genius (shut up), but in an economy that depends on consumer spending as its backbone, wouldn't hiring more people and investing those surpluses cause people to have more confidence and spend more thus sparking the economy and the economic recovery? Isn't the economy weak because there are no jobs and therefore no oil to grease the American slurge wheels? It seems like you're trying to use the problem as the reason why you can't solve the problem.
What do you think? Am I just looking at this completely wrong?
I found the part of the article where they discuss how corporations are reluctant to spend their ever-growing profits on hiring and investing rather mind-boggling. One corporate asshat had this to say:
The labor market is weak, which hampers consumption, notes Charles Biderman, chief executive officer of the research firm TrimTabs. "So without growing income, where's the money to buy more stuff?" he says. "Absent a change in demand, the fact that companies have all this cash, well, good for them. It's not going to help us."
Now I'm far from a genius (shut up), but in an economy that depends on consumer spending as its backbone, wouldn't hiring more people and investing those surpluses cause people to have more confidence and spend more thus sparking the economy and the economic recovery? Isn't the economy weak because there are no jobs and therefore no oil to grease the American slurge wheels? It seems like you're trying to use the problem as the reason why you can't solve the problem.
What do you think? Am I just looking at this completely wrong?
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Owned - With a Slice of Politics
"What was their correction policy on their Enron rating? What was their correction policy on their Lehman rating? What was their correction policy on their Bear Stearns rating? They don't have an error correction policy — they have an error denial policy, and the (Securities and Exchange Commission) is absolutely right to step in."
Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, on an SEC proposal that Standard & Poor's and other credit-rating agencies post on their websites when a "significant error" is identified in their methodology for a credit-rating action
Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, on an SEC proposal that Standard & Poor's and other credit-rating agencies post on their websites when a "significant error" is identified in their methodology for a credit-rating action
Sunday, August 14, 2011
You're Not That Special
When I was in elementary school I remember having several concepts drilled into my head that I thought then and still contend now are utter bullshit. One of them was the concept that no one's opinion is wrong; which is something that is just senseless. The two that have pissed me off the most over the years are: 1)everyone is unique and 2)everyone is special in their own way. Seriously? Don't get it wrong, teaching children tolerance and inclusion is something that I wholeheartedly agree with. What I don't agree with is the way this sort of preemptive apology for mediocrity and idiocy has become par for the course in society these days.
This disease isn't the creation of the schools of this country,in fact, it probably started at home. We all grew up with those kids who were flawless in their parents eyes. The kid who would hit you in the face with a G.I. Joe and his mom would complain to your mom about what a bad kid you were when you beat the shit outta him. That child was the product of his parents constantly telling him how great he was. He was their precious little snowflake (©Fark) and although everyone in your neighborhood considered him an insufferable asshole at the age of six, they praised him at every step along the way. He never learned to be a good person because he was rewarded for being a fuckwad. If he was getting low grades, it was the teacher's fault. If he didn't play in the little league game, the coach was an asshole. If you beat his ass for being a little fucker, you were an out of control miscreant who needed better home training. He was never at fault.
When this little assbag went to school, nothing changed. He learned at home that a halfhearted apology and a little ass kissing made all the trouble go away. He also had his home teaching reaffirmed: he was special. His mom told him he was special and now his teachers all said he was special so he began to act like he was special. Never mind that the teachers said that we were all special (we'll get to this in a second); they were really only talking about him.
Now that kid is a 30 year old man. Every time something doesn't go his way it's "fuckin' bullshit, man". You can tell who the women are who don't laugh at his lame jokes or fawn over him because he'll explain to you that she's "just a bitch". He's the guy who does the least work and gets the most praise because he plays the game and kisses the boss's ass instead of working hard like the rest of us. This is all because he's been told the same thing since he was a newborn: you're special.
Let's just skim the the surface of the ludicrous nature of telling children that everyone is special. How does that make sense? If everyone is special, doesn't that just make us all normal? How can a superlative that is supposed to differentiate between the mundane and the exceptional be applied to everything? It would be like calling every athlete the greatest of all time. You can't possibly have something be special if there is not a normative level of achievement by which to measure and differentiate between. None of that stopped millions of parents and thousands of teachers from spewing this nonsense into children's heads for the better part of three decades.
We have a society full of "special, unique" people now. Everyone has to be handled with kid gloves so as to not offend their special nature. There is no personal accountability because no one is ever wrong. We've morphed the concept of respect into this Frankenstein of mindless phrases and actions because that is what has become socially acceptable to the special people of our society. I can do what I want when I want because I'm unique and special and you have to respect that. By the way "you have to respect that" translates to "give me my way" in special. You can thank our Baby Boomer parents and their entitlement issues for that one.
Most people aren't close to special. Hell, most people aren't even unique; just walk out your front door and count the multitude of same looking, same acting, same talking people in just your neighborhood. It amazes me that we preach individuality to our citizenry while bemoan anything that doesn't conform to convention as being "weird". If you don't dress the same way, like the same things, parrot the same ideologies, and enjoy the same entertainment that the vast majority does then you are boxed off into a little island of odd. So, different is bad and conformity is good as long as you conform to one of the three or four socially acceptable groups that allow you just enough difference to be just like everyone else. How exactly does special fit into that?
Every person you know has a long list of flaws and imperfections that they carry with them every day, but that doesn't mean we have to celebrate those imperfections. Ghandi was special. Martin Luther King,Jr was special. Albert Einstein was special. The guy who cures cancer will be special. There is a reason we can name those people out of the billions on Earth and the countless number of people who've come before us while most people on your street don't know your name. That is what makes special "special".
This disease isn't the creation of the schools of this country,in fact, it probably started at home. We all grew up with those kids who were flawless in their parents eyes. The kid who would hit you in the face with a G.I. Joe and his mom would complain to your mom about what a bad kid you were when you beat the shit outta him. That child was the product of his parents constantly telling him how great he was. He was their precious little snowflake (©Fark) and although everyone in your neighborhood considered him an insufferable asshole at the age of six, they praised him at every step along the way. He never learned to be a good person because he was rewarded for being a fuckwad. If he was getting low grades, it was the teacher's fault. If he didn't play in the little league game, the coach was an asshole. If you beat his ass for being a little fucker, you were an out of control miscreant who needed better home training. He was never at fault.
When this little assbag went to school, nothing changed. He learned at home that a halfhearted apology and a little ass kissing made all the trouble go away. He also had his home teaching reaffirmed: he was special. His mom told him he was special and now his teachers all said he was special so he began to act like he was special. Never mind that the teachers said that we were all special (we'll get to this in a second); they were really only talking about him.
Now that kid is a 30 year old man. Every time something doesn't go his way it's "fuckin' bullshit, man". You can tell who the women are who don't laugh at his lame jokes or fawn over him because he'll explain to you that she's "just a bitch". He's the guy who does the least work and gets the most praise because he plays the game and kisses the boss's ass instead of working hard like the rest of us. This is all because he's been told the same thing since he was a newborn: you're special.
Let's just skim the the surface of the ludicrous nature of telling children that everyone is special. How does that make sense? If everyone is special, doesn't that just make us all normal? How can a superlative that is supposed to differentiate between the mundane and the exceptional be applied to everything? It would be like calling every athlete the greatest of all time. You can't possibly have something be special if there is not a normative level of achievement by which to measure and differentiate between. None of that stopped millions of parents and thousands of teachers from spewing this nonsense into children's heads for the better part of three decades.
We have a society full of "special, unique" people now. Everyone has to be handled with kid gloves so as to not offend their special nature. There is no personal accountability because no one is ever wrong. We've morphed the concept of respect into this Frankenstein of mindless phrases and actions because that is what has become socially acceptable to the special people of our society. I can do what I want when I want because I'm unique and special and you have to respect that. By the way "you have to respect that" translates to "give me my way" in special. You can thank our Baby Boomer parents and their entitlement issues for that one.
Most people aren't close to special. Hell, most people aren't even unique; just walk out your front door and count the multitude of same looking, same acting, same talking people in just your neighborhood. It amazes me that we preach individuality to our citizenry while bemoan anything that doesn't conform to convention as being "weird". If you don't dress the same way, like the same things, parrot the same ideologies, and enjoy the same entertainment that the vast majority does then you are boxed off into a little island of odd. So, different is bad and conformity is good as long as you conform to one of the three or four socially acceptable groups that allow you just enough difference to be just like everyone else. How exactly does special fit into that?
Every person you know has a long list of flaws and imperfections that they carry with them every day, but that doesn't mean we have to celebrate those imperfections. Ghandi was special. Martin Luther King,Jr was special. Albert Einstein was special. The guy who cures cancer will be special. There is a reason we can name those people out of the billions on Earth and the countless number of people who've come before us while most people on your street don't know your name. That is what makes special "special".
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