Funny quote of the day

I’m not a sworn Democrat by any means, being cynical of the whole political process in general (hey, I grew up in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, you’d have to be an idiot or a nutcase not to be cynical), but I thought this following quote funny.  Found it as a comment to an article on the Washington Post’s website regarding the firing of the State Department’s Chief of Security in response to the mishandling of the contract soldiers deal.  Anyhow, here’s the quote:

“…being and voting Republican is like running in the Special Olympics; your team may win, but you’re still retarded.”

 A classic!

Link to Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” Video

Ok folks, this is the video I have been watching over and over again. It has got to be one of the most haunting and sad songs ever. And yes, one of the few covers that is better and more powerful than the original. This was the song that kept running through my head yesterday as I sat on one of the beaches at Point Reyes National Seashore watching the waves crash against the shore.

Why I love horror movies

First off, I know I am in a relative minority of grown adults who still like the horror genre.  In this post, I will try to figure out, for myself and others why horror films still holds such appeal.  First of all, I think my fondness for horror movies stems from the fact that it brings back memories of childhood, where many kids liked the idea of being scared and the existence of boogeyman, ghosts and monsters went pretty much unquestioned.  Going to watch a horror movie as an adult lets me slip briefly back into childhood for a couple of hours.   I really enjoy the suspention of disbelief that watching a horror movie requires.  It’s a temporary escape from reality that I always get great enjoyment from.  Also, it happens to feel good to get a good scare.  It’s like riding roller coasters, you get to experience “controlled danger.”  On the one hand, you feel like you are in danger, on the other hand, you know you are perfectly safe.  One reason I love both horror movies and roller coasters. 

A second reason I may be attracted to horror movies is that I’ve always had an interest in topics relating to the supernatural, so horror movies with ghosts are my favorite.  I’m not a big fan of the slasher flicks.  I think gore is a poor substitute for psychological horror.  And not particularly scarry, just gross.  It takes a great director to be able to instill fear without having to resort to special effects.  It is often the unseen that is more scary.  In movies, and in real life.  Rear Window, although a suspense movie, is a good example. 

Some favorite horror movies off the top of my head (and in no particular order):

• Halloween
• The Nightmare on Elm Street series (which is the crown jewel of my DVD collection)
• Event Horizon
• The Silence of the Lambs (one of my favorite movies of all times) 
• Rob Zombie’s remake of the original Halloween
• Rob Zombie’s House of a 1000 Corpses, and the sequel, which I can’t remember right off the bat
• Poltergeist and it’s sequels
• Devil’s Backbone (Spanish language film by Guillermo del Torro)
• Three Extremes (3 mini-movies by 3 different Asian horroro movie directors)
• Many of the Asian horror movies, which tend to be more truly “creepy” than the slasher, blood, guts and gore types that the American directors are so fond of
• High Tension (French film)
• The Shining
• The Exorcist and Exorcist III
• Resident Evil trilogy
• Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, i.e. George A. Romero’s zombie movies
• 28 Days Later 

Hauntingingly Beautiful Songs

Some that I particularly like and have been listening to lately:

 Johnny Cash’s remake of Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt.”  Especially if you watch the video.  Cash intended it has his own eulogy.  The video is very powerful. 

 The Beatle’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Vivaldi’s “Winter” from The Four Seasons.  Masterful!  The speed at which the solo violin is played is a pretty good match for the speed at which my mind races during manic episodes.

 When listening to these songs, I can almost feel like there is a knife twisting in my heart.  I can almost feel a literal pain.  Weird eh?  But I’ve never been accused of lacking imagination.  I guess that is one of the positives about being bipolar: your emotions and moods literally rule you. 

So far, the first couple days of going cold turkey has me experiencing several negative side effects.  I was feeling super jittery for a while, accompanied by the inability to sleep.  I have now resorted to taking an antidepressant (trazadone) that is now more commonly prescribed by psychiatrists as a sleep aid for those with bipolar disorder who have trouble sleeping.  Fortunately, it works great for me.  I am much refreshed this morning.

A Scottish Poem

Gotta love Google!  I was writing an email to a good friend of mine, wherein I used the phrase “woe is me” in one of my not too infrequent whines.  Anyhow, it then occured to me that I did not have the slightest inkling where the phrase came from and how old the phrase was.  So, being the fan of Google that I am, I hopped onto that particular search engine and typed in the phrase.  I was surprised to see that it was used as far back as the late 1700s by the famous Scottish (yes, Scottish!) poet, Robert Burns.  Here the cool-sounding poem: 

Ah, Woe Is Me, My Mother Dear

Paraphrase of Jeremiah, 15th Chap., 10th verse
1771-1779
Type: Poem

Ah, woe is me, my mother dear! A man of strife ye’ve born me: For sair contention I maun bear; They hate, revile, and scorn me. I ne’er could lend on bill or band, That five per cent. might blest me; And borrowing, on the tither hand, The deil a ane wad trust me. Yet I, a coin-denied wight, By Fortune quite discarded; Ye see how I am, day and night, By lad and lass blackguarded!

The poem is courtesy of a nifty website where the uncommon words are linked to a pop up with some modern equivalents in various languages.  The link to the site is:

http://www.robertburns.org/works/7.shtml 

My ideal reincarnation:

Ok folks,For those of you who like me, I am making you promise me that, in the unfortunate event that I should come to an untimely end at some point in my life (hopefully far, far into the future!), you will all pray (wish upon a falling star, sacrifice some poor animal to a long dead deity, whatever floats your boat), that I be reincarnated as a dog (preferably of the small variety) belonging to a rich, childless, gay couple (with good taste in clothes, mind you).How I came to this desire: a friend and I met up for lunch near my work today, and we happened to sit next to a cute gay couple with their “Paris Hilton” type dog, a Chihuahua.  Both of us got the sense from her attire and her owner’s mannerisms that the dog’s wardrobe probably cost more than all our clothes combined.   I got the sense that this dog does not shop at Target or Walmart, or heck, any generic department store. I spoke with the owner, being the curious (OK, nosey) person that I am, and promptly found out that the dog loved to travel and had been to most of Europe and South America, I got the sense that this gal don’t travel by no economy class, I think she was a First class passenger all the way. Also, her daddy had some human necklaces he got from Juicy Couture cut down to size for doggie neck adornments for the pooch. AND, get this, which shows how ridiculously some people with too much money on there hands likes to waste their money, he even bought his dear, beloved pooch a DIAMOND encrusted buckle-style pendant from CARTIER (a super high end, ridiculously expensive watch and jewelry brand), and had it turned into a dog collar. Oh me, oh my! For those folks who have had the chance to peruse one of those shops before (my aunt is a big fan), none of their items can be considered moderately priced for most sane people.To reiterate, me wants to be a rich gay couple’s beloved doggie in my next life!

THE END!

J

Yikes! Manic episode in evidence! In written form!

Yikes!  Reading this, I just noticed how awfully written this first blog of mine is.  Quite painful to read, actually.  My only excuse is that I am in the process of going off my meds cold turkey and one of the symptoms of a manic episode is racing thoughts.  I think my last post is a good example of what someone with racing thoughts has going on in his/her mind at any given moment.  The thoughts keep on coming, with no end in sight, and at a rapidly increasing momentum.  That is the way I feel right now.  It is hard to concentrate as I have thoughts zooming in and out of my head at a breakneck pace, and my body is fidgeting more than usual.  Bear with me dear reader, it shall get better soon!

First words from a newbie blogger

Hi gracious readers,

I thank you first and foremost for stumbling onto what are bound to be some very random, off-the-wall posts, about a variety of different topics. This whole blogging phenomenon brings back memories of when I first started using the internet, before there was such a thing as the world wide web, and when graphical user interfaces were a few years into the future. Remember those days of Prodigy and AOL, when one of the major modes of communication online was through the various bulletin board systems and chat rooms ? And when USENET was a heavily trafficked medium? These days, I doubt most of the youngsters even know what USENET is. And for those of you not in the know, the internet back then was still peppered with plenty of porn. I got into it before even porn was commercialized. Yikes! Does that mean I am old? Most likely.

Anyhow, this blogging phenomenon reminds me of when I used to write a newsletter of sorts that I would send out to people that I didn’t know that was actually interested in what I had to write and thought that I had a good writing style. This was back when I was 14, mind you. It’s been a while since I’ve last tried this type of “creative” writing, so I will leave it to you, dear reader, to tell me if I have maintained my knack at entertaining the masses. And yes, this blog will be chock FULL of run-on sentences, a practice that I am particularly fond of and one that my teachers tried to beat out of me at all costs. So, yes, I do indeed know that it is poor form to write in such long long sentences, but since this is MY blog, and I happen to like them, you’ll have to deal with it, poor reader.

This will be a social experiment of sorts. I’ve always wondered who read blogs and whether complete strangers actually read the blogs of other complete strangers.

I’m getting sleepy so this will be it for an intro. Topics that I mean to cover in future blogs: bra straps, my adventures on craigslist, giving middle school students the option of taking contraceptives without their parent’s consent, the crazy religious right, my knack for finding Catholics to date even though I am a staunch anti-formal religion type. Oh, and I guess most importantly, I will be writing plenty about my thoughts of being a bipolar gal living in this crazy world.  And an explanation of the whole antipretzel thing and how that got started (thank you Thomas!)