Into the Void

Brought to you by the U.S. Government Bureau of Superheroes.

I do not have the words to express my anger over the lack of response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Too little, too late, they are saying.
I would be a much harsher critic.
The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) is responding to the needs of the mentally ill caught in the chaos. Donations are needed to help finance this important work.
Are you a consumer caught in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina without meds and without the resources to replace them? Are you trying to help a displaced mentally ill person? Please go to the NAMI | Hurricane Katrina Resource Guide. You’ll find hints on getting replacement meds - even if you’ve been relocated out of state.

Dear Leslie,
Thank you so much for your generous gift on 09/03/2005 in the amount of $—– to NAMI, the Nation’s Voice on Mental Illness. With your support, we are building a future of recovery, respect, and opportunity for people with severe mental illness.
You will receive your acknowledgement and tax receipt statement shortly via postal mail.
Sincerely,
NAMI Donor Services
http://www.nami.org/donate

I plan to give 2 days take-home pay over this weekend. Do you work? I challenge you to do the same. Unemployed or disabled? Give what you can.
It’s going to take at least 12 weeks just to get the water out of New Orleans. Count on giving more. Much more.

IOL: Inventor of rape device prepares for launch

A controversial device, which its inventor claims clamps itself to a rapist’s penis forcing him to seek medical treatment and be revealed to the police, will be launched by a South African woman on Wednesday.
The “[tag]Rapex[/tag]” device is inserted into the vagina by a woman who feels she is at risk of rape, and if she is attacked, small burr-like teeth will attach themselves to the tip of the rapist’s erect penis, explained inventor [tag]Sonette Ehlers[/tag].
As he withdraws and becomes flaccid, it is only possible to remove the device by surgery, Ehlers said ahead of a launch and demonstration at Kleinmond near Cape Town.

This works better than one of those electric dog training collars.
Update, 9/24/2005:
In retrospect, what kind of a life is it when a woman practically expects to be raped on her way back from the grocery store?
This article from [tag]Amnesty International[/tag] is a chilling summary of the state of [tag]human rights[/tag] in [tag]South Africa[/tag].

One day widder biddy Wussley is all so sad….
He sez:
“Nobody WUVs me enny more… I think I will just commit sewer pipes in a big nasty way and make my mommy all mad and everything!”

Google Groups : alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die
Very old ST:TNG humor. I almost named this blog after it.
*spoiler* don’t go if you liked Ensign Wesley Crusher or if you dislike skull fragments.

Caveat: I’m an electrical engineer. Do not construe this to be medical advice.
It is NOT.
I have chosen to use allopathic meds as the basis for my treatment, and I will not change my mind - at least not until after menopause! But with my pdoc’s blessing I am allowed not only to take supplements, but to choose them myself. I don’t take the supplement-du-jour, I wait until they’ve been proven out and people have been using them for a couple of years.
I am taking:
SAMe, mitochondria food. It has been proven effective in mood disorders and my psychiatrist suggested this one. A couple of studies showed some anomalies in mitochondral functioning in bipolars, probably mediated by the cell rather than in the mitochondria themselves.
The mitochondria, small organelles within each of our cells, provide the main source of energy at the cellular level. They use glucose and oxygen to modify a molecule called Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP) and change it into another substance called Adenosine TriPhosphate (ATP). Coincidentally our cells break down ATP for energy, and so the mitochondria are still with us. Without them, we’d very quickly die.
Incidentally, mitochondria are symbionts - they are foreign, they even have their own separate DNA. Fascinating stuff. They must have been parasites that infested our prokaryote ancestors.
Pantothenic acid - another mitochondria food. I’m going to choose between this one and SAMe at some point.
Lipoic acid - necessary in utilizing Essential Fatty Acids (EFA). You’ve heard the fuss about Omega-3s and Omega-6s. EFAs are an effective single supplement for bipolar disorder. There has even been preliminary information relating ADHD in children to low fat diets. Your brain is over 60% fat.
On the topic of evolution again, there some evidence that the sudden brain growth that resulted in our species was enabled by an increase in EFAs in the diet. It’s likely that this level of EFAs wasn’t available when we came down out of the trees and into the grasslands. However, the level of EFAs needed could have come from seafood, from our protohominid ancestors who found a seashore environment.

The continuing saga of the Linux Laptop…
The battery wasn’t warranted, so I didn’t expect it to work. It didn’t. I ordered a new battery on ebay, should be in early next week. S’okay, I have an AC adapter to use until then.
I borrowed a LinkSys WUSB11 USB network I/F from work to try under Windows 98. Alas, I didn’t have the right USB cable.
The next day I borrowed the correct cable. Alas, I lost my router in the power failure that morning. It was the only computer accessory in the room that wasn’t on a surge suppressor. Of course, my new surge suppressor is in there in the box waiting for me to set it up. Eh.
So anyway, I ordered a new wireless router, a USRobotics USR8054. This is what I had, and I liked it. Very easy-to-use interface - with online help. Good deal! I also ordered a combination floppy disk/flash reader that caught my eye. It has to work in one of the computers, right? And just to be thorough, a Belkin F5D6020 Wireless Notebook Network Card for when I return the WUSB11. There were a couple of articles on how to get PCMCIA network cards to work with similar laptops.
I can see that this is going to be one of those easy projects that turn into an expensive pain in the butt. My favorite kind.

I graduated high school in 1975.
The world was in constant change from the time I was little. New paradigms all around. Students protesting an unjust war, many minorities fighting for equality. A great human awareness of our place on the planet and in the cosmos. Even the pop music carried the message.
O Brave New World, that hath such things in it! The opiates of the masses - TV, religion, the double-edged sword of technology.
Some eye-openers - Kennedy’s assassination was the first time I developed in interest in American politics (my mom was English, and a Queen made a whole lot more sense), Barry MacGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” which was the first time I became aware of war as something more than Army Men shooting rifles at some vague, dehumanized Enemy. A Life Magazine article with the first pictures of a human fetus in the womb. Martin Luther King’s assassination. [Update 11/22/2006 See comment below.]
The space race, John Glenn, Apollo 1 burning on the pad, men on the moon.
One day a college student’s voice rang across the campuses - “Oh my God, they’re killing us!” and the Age of Aquarius ended. The hippies became real estate agents and business executives. *My* generation became dopers and freaks, because the beautiful future we looked forward to no longer existed. We just weren’t prepared to live in the new Dark Ages.
Nixon’s resignation. Leisure suits. Disco. What a wasteland the ’70s were.
The space shuttle. Reagan’s Evil Empire Speech. The Challenger disaster. I was working on a telemetry system for Edwards AFB when that happened. There had been a great movement to engage the public in the space program, and in technology in general - the Teacher in Space idea was a very good one, even if the main lesson learned was that space travel is still dangerous.
I would go in a heartbeat.
I guess what bothers me is what bothers everyone my age. The human race makes the same mistakes over and over. It seems like the written word might have been helpful if only people would back away from the TV and read once in a while.
Opiate of the masses.

I could have gone on SSDI in 1999. I chose not to. Instead, I went back to school for one more semester in the fall of 2000 and finished up my BSES at 42 years old. I’m not sure whether I’m experiencing a slow decline or whether I’m just having a couple of bad years. But I’m going to work for as long as I can. Maybe next time I’m out of work I’ll apply for SSDI. And maybe I’ll go for my master’s when it happens. Who the hell knows?
I want to be my best, whatever my best is. I expect everyone to be the best they can around me. I understand physical and mental limitations. I don’t understand not trying.
Anybody who wants a Hallmark card can go to Eckerd’s and buy one. That’s not what the Bipolar Planet is all about. That’s not what I’m about.
To quote Timothy Leary, “The future of the human species is to learn how to use our brains.” We are the ones who can do this, but it comes with a price tag.
So are you ready to join the Bipolar Planet?

The anthropological literature has whole books on how different cultures view mental illness. A bipolar makes a perfect shaman, because unmedicated we tend to have periods of remission between any episodes of talking to Dog.
How we perceive our own level of functioning is an important part of the diagnostic criteria. I quote from pendulum.org:

The symptoms are a cause of great distress or difficulty in functioning at home, work, or other important areas.

It seems fairly obvious that if your job function is to have psychotic episodes, then the symptoms aren’t going to create difficulties at work.
I completely agree that many of the prophets and Christian Mystics were mentally ill. I believe that they were putting forth Truths that were only available to a shattered mind, a mind that has no stake in the status quo. This is the meaning of “thinking out of the box”.
We are stigmatizing mental illness in ways that go far beyond any distress or difficulty in functioning that we experience.

Pendulum Resources is opening new bipolar forums, probably in early September. You can get a sneak preview now.