Sure is a windy day here. Yep.

But that’s what you got blogs for! To explain in excruciating detail how your day went so you can just refer people making small talk to it and you can move on to better, more interesting topics.

(That’s why Lileks is such a scintillating conversationalist)

We all “…have lots of opinions on controversial, upsetting, conversation-worthy things.” – doesn’t mean anyone else wants to hear them.

Half of the job of conversation is listening. You wanna spout off? That’s what blogs are for.

Half of the job of conversation is listening. You wanna spout off? That’s what blogs are for.

I dissent. Blogs are terrific because they’re communities for people who want to read about and discuss politics. That’s the reason we’re drawn to them- because they provide interesting (albeit stilted) conversation that we don’t get elsewhere.

Small talk is just the threshold, and I usually find that asking questions about my conversational partner and his or her interests will quickly illuminate common points of interest that allow deeper discussion to take place. Right now I’m interested in just how many people are hetted up by laundry day, and how their meds are working out for them.

So who is forcing anyone to engage in small talk? I guess the subtext here is that you have have all these wonderful meaningful nuanced thoughts that you’re just dying to discuss, but all these terrible boring louts just keep asking you if you like your job. Grow up. Conversation is a two way street. Each party has a responsibility to engage the other on a level that’s interesting and satisfying. And small talk, when done in honesty and warmth and genuine interest in others, can be very satisfying indeed. And it can even lead to a conversation worthy of your lofty ideals.

Love your blog, by the way – long time reader, first time commenter!

Small talk is just the threshold, and I usually find that asking questions about my conversational partner and his or her interests will quickly illuminate common points of interest that allow deeper discussion to take place.

I find that in large gatherings, most people like to gossip about other people. Which I simply find utterly boring and with no redeeming worth.

‘Course, I’m a cranky introverted curmudgeon anyway.

Who is this Ezra chap? Bit of a wanker, is he? Bit of a child? Bit of a jejune auto-didact numbskull who thinks disdaining “small talk” makes him deep, interesting or–wait for it–“authentic”?

I, too, found small talk “excruciating,” at one time. But that time was when I was 14, you see, and in a constant indignant huff (as teenagers always are) about being “honest” and so on. Shorter Ezra: I’m too intelligent for this superficial world.

Tell this putz (idiot; fool) that one way to keep himself awake, the next time he’s subjected to what the rest of the grownup world thinks of as “socializing,” is to think of something witty and interesting to say about topics other than those of which he is proud to know something. Any moron can natter on about his major. It’s the mark of a *real* intelligence to, etc.

I guess the subtext here is that you have have all these wonderful meaningful nuanced thoughts that you’re just dying to discuss, but all these terrible boring louts just keep asking you if you like your job.

Basically, yes.

My problem, honestly, isn’t with listening. I love listening to people when they’re talking about something I’m interested in. I have certain friends that I’ll call up just to discuss (not spout off to, but actually discuss) things like music and movies and politics and sports in-depth.

Also, I have a job (not going to go into details, but you can probably figure it out) where I have to do a LOT of listening to other people talk about themselves. I do a very good job of listening, but at the end of the day it’s draining, and you just want to talk about the things YOU want to talk about.

And small talk, when done in honesty and warmth and genuine interest in others, can be very satisfying indeed.

You’re wrong.

I find that in large gatherings, most people like to gossip about other people.

I find they’d much rather talk about themselves! Of course, they don’t let me out much, so my experience may not be that of others.

You’re wrong.

I begin to see why you’re dissatisfied with your conversations…

I begin to see why you’re dissatisfied with your conversations…

I begin to see why you can’t pick up on droll humor.

I begin to see why you can’t pick up on droll humor.

Um, ew. Bye.

Um, ew. Bye.

I’m sorry for being rude, I’m just having a shitty day. I’m normally not this obnoxious. I’ma step away from the keyboard for a while and calm down. Sorry again.

Good thing about small talk is you get to talk about the weather.

which is all fucjed up.

“‘Course, I’m a cranky introverted curmudgeon anyway.”

Brad. You should come to my superbowl party. I’ll have a houseful of us. I’m a collector.

I’m sorry for being rude, I’m just having a shitty day. I’m normally not this obnoxious. I’ma step away from the keyboard for a while and calm down. Sorry again.

Thanks for the apology and I do understand – it’s somethiing I have to live with as well, and that may be why I feel so strongly on the other side of the fence about this small talk thing. Having moved from NYC to Philadelphia recently, I’ve been dealing with a little culture shock. The people I deal with daily are much less likely to be competent, driven people who express strong interests and opinions. I’m not trashing Philly, but that’s just how it is. My own response, to keep me sane, is to try to find the good in it – everyone has a self-absorbed lout living in their brain, and everyone has a curious, interesting side as well. I have to work harder to get past the lout, to get to the interesting person. Adopting the mindset that Ezra expresses would be a one-way ticket to Misanthropyville for me.

And I am sorry about your day…

I dunno. There is a theory that I have long suffered from ADD, self medicated, of course. I’ve always described it as “monkey mind” (stolen decades ago from Herb Caen), where my funny little thought process jumps and swings rapidly from topic to topic. I find interacting with people to be very pleasurable because I can usually keep the conversation from going down a rathole, and there is usually a lot of laughter (and perhaps a bit of competition) in conversations I’m involved in.

Except on the phone. Gawd help me, but I hate that fucking thing!!

mikey

Small talk is a dull but necessary skill, it’s how people connect, like it or not that has to happen before anything can start.

North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. A kicking of asses.

Sports is by its nature small talk.

So, how about those Mets?

No, not sports, but an underrated womanly art, small talk done strategically.

Adopting the mindset that Ezra expresses would be a one-way ticket to Misanthropyville for me.

Yeah, I see that side.

I think the point I was trying to make in the original post before I started acting like an asshole in the comments is:

a.) I enjoy having “deep” conversations about things that I’m interested in- music, politics, sex, movies, etc.

b.) Not everyone enjoys talking about those things with me, and I can’t really blame them.

c.) It’s still important to have small talk with people about the things that they’re interested in, even if they’re not your forte. You can still enjoy and appreciate someone’s company even if you don’t have “deep” discussions with them.

d.) THAT SAID, if I’m dating someone long-term, being able to have deep conversations is a must. Because after sex, you have to talk, and it damn well better be interesting (and yes, I’d prefer to fall asleep, but that’s just the way things go ;-)).

Also, sports is small talk, but it’s also pretty geeky. Think about it- you’re talking about other guys wearing silly-looking uniforms running around on a field or court. That’s a small step above talking about LARPing, people.

I love small talk when I’m incredibly drunk.

Yeah, I see that side.

I agree with everything you’re saying here. And I think that I was objecting most forcefully to Ezra’s tone, not so much to anything you actually said. Ezra seems to think he’s trapped in this world of smalltalk with no way out – which if course is what happens if you’re not really engaged in the conversation… and he seems to think that he’s just too deep and subtle for ordinary mortals – which shows exactly the same kind of self-absorption that he’s railing against.

I see that we could have a deep conversation about shallow conversation – but alas, I’m off to be fitted for a tux 😉

“North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. A kicking of asses.”

So strong they can’t serve it by the pitcher, and it only comes in 4=packs.

and yes, it is the best. beer. ever.

For those in SE Mass, it is carried by Lukes Liquors (several locations).

I used to do dollar taco night at that brewery on a weekly basis… .yummm. taco’s n’ stout.

North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Stout

OK, that’s next on my list. I’m way into Rogue’s Chocolate Stout as well. In fact, that whole damn brewery kicks ass.

I’m getting angry, maybe I’ll step away too. We’re just not gonna have this conversation are we? Typical liberal horseshit. We are complaining that we don’t like smalltalk. The goal is to move from chickenshit to compelling conversation. Women have no particular role in this, huh, we better not say that, for we don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes of conniving females. The move from nonsense to compelling talk is a contrived process, usually generated by subtle and savvy women. Pay attention, dammit, give some credit.

The move from nonsense to compelling talk is a contrived process, usually generated by subtle and savvy women.

…

Elaborate? I’m not following.

I’m remined of an old Life In Hell comic where Binky, at a party, starts ranting about how boring and shallow everyone is. The host finally asks him to leave, and in the last panel he stands by himself, outside, mocking the party-goers (using his hands as puppets) while the others can be seen inside dancing and having a good time.

I took that little bit of social wisdom to heart, back then… and while it obviously didn’t stop me from becoming the guy who points to 20-year-old comic strips as revealed wisdom while commenting on some other guy’s blog, I probably had a lot more fun in the meantime for having done so.

So, Bradrocket, did you see that Charlie Kaufman’s new flick is going into production?

She-Hulk?

She-Hulk?

You’ll put your eye out, kid.

So, Bradrocket, did you see that Charlie Kaufman’s new flick is going into production?

No, but I’m psyched for it. What’s this one about?

You’ll put your eye out, kid.

Here’s hopin’!

Maybe I take it too seriously, but it’s like an ethos for me, I am a cultural feminist and we are all but extinct, sorry but I’m defensive about that.

Women set the tone, they do stuff. Start looking for it and it’s there, women rescue stalled conversations, they guide discourse by being the first to risk self-disclosure that doesn’t put themselves in the best of lights, they create a climate that makes people feel safe and easy even as they tumble you into unchartered territory. And they get no credit or recognition. There is a hint of receptivity and even submission in the manner I’m praising so am used to getting feminist shit for that. So what. I’ve talked a lot to radical women who are very deliberate about social arts and they’re like scientists about methodology, and though it’s a lot about gestures and tone of voice that don’t translate easily online, they can be found, on this blogroll, even.

I think what flawedplan is saying is that women are, on average at least, better at conversation than men. I don’t disagree. But I have a really stupid question, and I’ll probably get flamed out the wazoo for it:

Has anyone read “How To Win Friends And Influence People?” I know, even the title is cliché, but it actually makes some very good basic points about what we’re talking about here – all the more refreshing because it’s in simple, insensitive, male-centric old-tymey language (“man” instead of “person” and so on…) I wasn’t expecting what I found in that book.

Women set the tone, they do stuff. Start looking for it and it’s there, women rescue stalled conversations, they guide discourse by being the first to risk self-disclosure that doesn’t put themselves in the best of lights, they create a climate that makes people feel safe and easy even as they tumble you into unchartered territory. And they get no credit or recognition. There is a hint of receptivity and even submission in the manner I’m praising so am used to getting feminist shit for that. So what. I’ve talked a lot to radical women who are very deliberate about social arts and they’re like scientists about methodology, and though it’s a lot about gestures and tone of voice that don’t translate easily online, they can be found, on this blogroll, even.

Asking us men to appreciate subtle and deliberate social arts is probably asking a bit much of us. I mean, we probably DO appreciate it, we just don’t understand what we’re appreciating. Here’s a typical stream of consciousness for us:

“I like this beer. It is good beer. I wonder if there are any bowl games on tonight. The chick in the corner has a nice ass. I’ll try talking to her after another beer. Ooooh, I see a bag of chips!”

And at some point we realize, “Hey, I’m having a very nice time chatting- what a fine and relaxed atmosphere!” And at THAT point, at THAT point we SHOULD be saying, “Gee, the women hosting this party have done a great job of making everyone here feel comfortable and included and free to express themselves!” But it’s too subtle for us, you see? We are not subtle creatures.

Kaufman linky

The working title is Synecdoche, New York. (I would’ve suggested Metonymy, Ohio but I guess that’s already taken for the next Bruckheimer epic…)

If you’re of a mind to, you can use Teh Google to truck in a leaked copy of the script, but I refuse to look.

Also, it appears that Phillip Seymour Hoffman is going to be playing the lead. Su-weet.

I still haven’t seen Lynch’s Inland Empire. Did you see it?

I’m experimenting with a new technique of lying to people. You make up lies to make their ordinary small talk into something interesting and amusing to you. I personally do not stick with the lie if they integrate it into the small talk- I explain that I made it up in service of this or that amusing image. It works OK. You have to do it with a very sensitive hand or you just come off as some kind of asshole clown lying to people and jerking them around. You’re not trying to get laughs, you’re just fucking around a little bit.

Very true, no intuition and men cannot feel.

“I like this beer. It is good beer. I wonder if there are any bowl games on tonight. The chick in the corner has a nice ass. I’ll try talking to her after another beer. Ooooh, I see a bag of chips!�

“Uh oh, I need to fart. Maybe if I just let it out a little at a time. Whoops! Did I really bet two hundred bux on the colts? Oh, it’ll be fine. I need to buy new underwear. Hey, that chick looks like my eighth grade math teacher. Maybe I should switch to scotch. Hmm, wonder if anybody here has a doob. I oughta get up early tomorrow. Can anyone tell this isn’t a clean shirt? Wow, that dude has weird hair. I shoulda worn a hat tonite. Hats are cool. Ok, one more beer, then scotch.”

This is a fun game!!

mikey

INLAND EMPIRE looked really good. The best way to go into a Lynch movie is by accepting that it will be structured as a dream, and thus not prone to the same logical story arc as most films. Even so, I hear INLAND EMPIRE was ridiculously confusing.

I haven’t been to the movies in quite a long time. Last film I saw in the theatre was A SCANNER DARKLY.

Brad, if it helps, whenever I get stuck in boring small talk conversation that goes nowhere, one of the things I do is pretend I am a leprechaun. That instantly livens up the conversation.

Very true, no intuition and men cannot feel.

We can feel. We’re just taught not to show it.

Wow, that dude has weird hair. I shoulda worn a hat tonite. Hats are cool

GASP! I like hats, too!

mikey- the first rule of sports gambling is betting on the Colts in a playoff game. it’s like better on the white guy in a boxing match.

rather, the first rule is to NEVER bet on the colts in a playoff game.

Shorter Brad and mikey: “Yeah, we do trivial small-talk, we just do it on the inside.”

As part of my unofficial duties as a spouse of somebody whose job includes fundraising, I have to spend a lot of time talking with older rich people and their spouses at social gatherings, and it’s inappropriate for me to be controversial, upsetting, or outrageous, or even memorable, really.

So what I do, and it turns out to be fun for me, is make a big effort to take an interest in the person I’m talking to, and get them to talk about themselves, but in ways they may not initially think of.

People love to talk about themselves, and rich or powerful people especially like to talk about themselves, but if you let them just go on without shaping the conversation, it is boring or an exercise for their egos.

I like to ask people where they grew up, what their family was like, what kind of music they enjoyed as kids, how they met their spouses, stuff like that. Most people never get a chance to go down memory lane in their day to day life, and when they have a willing listener it’s a treat for them.

I’m really not interested too much in what kind of real estate deals Mr. Big Bucks is into, or how Mrs. Big Bucks is redecorating the salon. But I AM interested in hearing how Mr. Big Bucks first started out when he got out of the army, or how Mrs. Big Bucks used to play the piano in high school, or how he proposed to her, or the small apartment they lived in when the first got married – I like hearing about these things, it’s like reading a storybook.

Plus, they feel kindly to people who take an interest in them like this. Which is helpful with the fundraising.

“I’m a cranky introverted curmudgeon anyway.”

You are, but I’d say a cranky introverted nut worth the cracking. You’re a music nerd, and so am I, and I don’t tend to come at people too intensely when we first meet, so I think that worked well. I’ve seen you attacked with overly social behavior and shrink from it. Sure you did. It was annoying. You’re kinda like my cats. Give you a little space to approach when you’re ready, and you’re a sweetheart. Run after you and pet you when you’re not ready, then that’s the death knell!

I find that I like a dance between small talk and the heavy. I have NO tolerance with people who want to engage me in a discussion about their latest thoughts about theater or the Bush administration when I’m waiting to hear my friend sing at karaoke or trying to order a beer. I think it’s all about timing. So the person who is paying no attention to the greater social situation and shows up, at a party, with a specific very heavy topic they want to discuss… SADLY, NO, I’m not interested. Now if the conversation organically gets there, then cool, but if I feel like you’re torquing everything just to match what you’re thinking and you’re showing no interest in the rest of the world at large, my interests, the current environment, then please go away.

You are, but I’d say a cranky introverted nut worth the cracking. You’re a music nerd, and so am I, and I don’t tend to come at people too intensely when we first meet, so I think that worked well. I’ve seen you attacked with overly social behavior and shrink from it. Sure you did. It was annoying.

LOL, my friend Abby, everyone, here to tell you about my non-blog life! 😉

I’m with my fellow Brad on this. The weather is fucking boring, let’s not talk about it.
Also, I really need to see Inland Empire. It’s supposed to be his most experimental work since Eraserhead.

Now if the conversation organically gets there, then cool, but if I feel like you’re torquing everything just to match what you’re thinking and you’re showing no interest in the rest of the world at large, my interests, the current environment, then please go away.

Yeah, I think that’s fair.

I think people need to find different places for different conversations. I try to get my political ya-yas out on teh blog and at Drinking Liberally, where I know people like to shoot the shit about this kinda stuff.

I wish I could think to people instead of talking to them. Of course, they’d probably want to kill me instead of ignoring me.

Small talkers are fine with me. I tune ’em out and have an internal dialogue much like mikey’s above. It’s them low talkers what piss me off. You can’t tell if they’re being yawningly trivial or deeply interesting. Speak up, dammit!

Funny thing is, I HATE Eraserhead. Mostly that freaky sheep baby, which was straight out of a nightmare (and I realize that was the whole point, but still). I think Lynch is at his best when he takes small-town noir and turns it on its head (see: Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks).

Small talk is an art form that people use to ease what would otherwise be potentially awkward social situations. As such, it’s just a skill one learns, like which spoon to eat the soup with. It’s rarely ever something done for “fun” – but it sure as hell is useful the next time you’re at the company Christmas party and the regional manager – the one who’s a conservative Christian and a religiously Republican voter – ends up seated at your table for the evening.

That being said, I’m actually horrible at small talk and find the whole experience more painful than naked breakdancing on hot concrete. I’m a bit envious of folks who have interests that are more ordinary than mine, because they have so much fertile ground for being able to strike up interesting chit chat with others. I don’t mean that in an ironic, elitist way at all. The fact that I don’t like sports, hate TV, and rarely find a movie interesting enough to want to talk about afterwards – but could make fun of Niall Ferguson as the stupid man’s Oswald Spengler for hours – sort of limits the types of social gatherings I end up attending.

People seem strange to me most of the time. I don’t understand ’em at all.

Everyone has that the one Lynch they don’t like. For most it seems to be Lost Highway, but that’s my fav by him. I can’t stand Wild At Heart cause of Nick Cage, and as good as Blue Velvet is, Dennis Hopper doesn’t scare me, he annoys me.
I like Lynch at his most dreamlike, but that’s my pref in film in general. Kurosawa’s Dreams is one of my alltime favs.

Hmmm. I make a crappy movie nerd. I loved Master and Commander. I really liked A History of Violence. I haven’t seen the new Pirates yet but I think the Cap’n Jack Sparrow character is an amazing construct. I know, pretty vannilla, huh. Movies that confuse me piss me off…

mikey

BTW, speaking of Lynch, this poster hangs in my downstairs bathroom.

Celibacy for celluloid! Punish bad cinema!

I don’t like small talk either. People ask me about my day, I think about it, and then I find I’m so bored I can’t say it out loud. For the most part, I find that people like to talk, and I like to let them.

And if we’re talking about movies – did anyone see [i]Stranger Than Fiction[/i]? What did you think? I thought it was beautifully constructed, and I liked those on-screen graphics showing the exact measurements of stuff as Will Ferrell counts them.

And if we’re talking about movies – did anyone see [i]Stranger Than Fiction[/i]?

Bloody hell, why does the way you do italics have to be different on every single website?

Don’t worry, Brad. Ass-chicking chicks with long, straight hair and fingerless gloves = teh hawtness lol waffle-rofl. I’m hoping that Tifa* will return my emails someday with something other then a court order.

“non-blog life”? Nope, you lost me there.

Small-talk is, indeed, boring and excruciating. But not without it’s uses.

*AC Tifa, not FFVII Tifa.

I literally can’t stay awake during Lynch films. Something about the “dreamlike quality” or whatever. About thirty minutes and I’m out. Which is bad, because I don’t want some freakly Lynch dream reprogramming.

or the deeper meaning of Ghostface Killah’s latest record

“Fishscale” is easily one of the best hip-hop records of the decade. Ghost is for my money the top MC going right now– he has amazing flow, genius lyrics and tons of personality.

It’s one of the best records of 2006 regardless of genre, along with the Yo La Tengo, Mastodon and TV On The Radio records.

ADB: Everyone has that the one Lynch they don’t like.

Yep. For me, its Fire Walk With Me. What a freakin’ gyp that thing was.

Brad R: think Lynch is at his best when he takes small-town noir and turns it on its head (see: Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks).

Yessir. I loved Wild At Heart, too. How could you not love the classic American road picture mashed together with The Wizard of Oz and filtered through Lynch’s surreal lens? (Also, Laura Dern in that movie… Teh HAWTNESS).

If we’re talking She-Hulk, there’s only one thing to say. Only if drawn by Byrne. He makum purty superheroines, mmmmm.
Also, any woman who isn’t 7 feet tall, green, and built like a porn star has neither self-respect nor good schooling.

ADB: Everyone has that the one Lynch they don’t like

Dune. He should have done Return of the Jedi like Lucas asked him to. That would have been sweet.

Or fucked up. Probably both.

See, I love FWWM. Garmonbozia n all that, though it’s really the postscript to Twin Peaks, not a stand alone work. Still, it’s intense as hell. The only thing I didn’t like was the changes in cast, but if lara flynn boyle was too busy puking to work for lynch again I guess you can’t force her.
My problem with wild at heart is, as said, nick cage, who I can’t stand in a he’s boring as hell and confuses whispering and yelling for acting kinda way. Had anyone else been the lead I’m sure I would have loved it.

I must be weird, I don’t have a Lynch I don’t like, but my favorite is either “Wild at Heart” or “The Straight Story”. His use of light and shadow in WAH is amazing, like a Dutch master on film.

Recently finally got to see “The Motorcycle Diaries”. Very, very good. I’m not bothered by subtitles, and know just enough Spanish to pick up the sense of the conversation by ear. Watched it through three times in one weekend. Also watched “Waking Ned Devine” which was a very funny movie. I’ve actually seen a lot of good movies lately.

In the last month, I watched Apocalypse Now and read Heart of Darkness, back to back. Interesting to compare the two.

Small talk? I don’t mind it. I’ll talk to a tree stump, though. I shamelessly talk to myself and Kitty Cheese when I’m alone. No thought is truly complete without articulation.

Can’t linger, cleaning, laundry, and cooking (chicken cacciatore) today… daily life isn’t boring, you just have to find the fun in everyday activities. I used to have a life like a soap opera, and when I was younger, that was fun. But now, I find that what I most enjoy is a good book, an interesting conversation, nice wine, and a hot soak in a bubble bath. And lest you think I’m acting like a geezer, I still like a good metal show and am not yet uncomfortable with the bar crowd. 🙂

Ahhh, Candy, you had me at geezer…

mikey

I once wrote a paper comparing apocalypse now and heart of darkness in how they relate to the mythical Other. I think the main flaw in both, a necessary, at times beautiful flaw, is that neither Marlowe nor Willard nor Kurtz recognizes the basic humanity of the Other, only the brutal aspects of it. The flaw is necessary because it goes to the heart of the critique of the imperalist project.
This is why I can’t do small talk. I get too heavy too quick for most people. I’m weird. Have been since ferever.

I’ve tried before, in vain, to engage in small talk. I’ve since given up on that and have learned an even more valuable art: pretending you care. As long as you remember the last sentence, it looks like you’ve been listening the whole time.

Apparently most people do prefer to engage in small talk — if the alternative is to listen to me ranting drunkenly about the little-known episode in Egyptian history when Pharaoh Apop-Tosis III died of a surfeit of crocodiles. Frau Doktorin Penny has told me so, on many occasions.

OK, sure, it’s contrived when conversation moves from chit-chat to deeper topics, but I like it when that is a collaboration, but then I’m a chick, so what the hell do I know {flips hair and giggles, looking around to see who is watching}.

Yeah Brad. I totally narc-ed on you, but I was vague, so it’s cool, right?

I also tend to use the internet as a place to talk about things I wouldn’t be as likely to talk about at a social gathering, on my and other people’s blogs, Ask Metafilter, Flickr, social networking sites (yes, still different from real social life), etc. Some of us are born with too many thoughts and have to spread them around so as not to drive those closest to us to thoughts of offing themselves!

Rogue Shakespeare Stout is awesome. Kudos.

First off, I’ve always found Lynch’s films boring, overwrought and weird-solely-for-the-sake-of-freaking-out-the-squares. Whenever some hipster-approved movie or filmmaker is suggested to me, I immediately flash to the two-hours-and-change I’ll never get back from Lost Highway. Secondly, there’s a new She-Hulk monthly out and it’s pretty damn good. Dan Slott and Julian Bobillo are doing it, and it explores the She-Hulk’s life outside superheroics, mainly her second career as a lawyer. One of the better books amongst the miles and miles of crap DC and Marvel are putting out these days.

Anyhow. Like Brad, I used to have a job that involved talking and listening to people. I was a journalist for a variety of publications in a variety of places. I’ve talked and listened to high school softball coaches, hunters who’d shot really big deer, old ladies celebrating their 100-plus birthday though they’re barely aware they’re in the world, cops, crooks, transvestive prostitutes, accident-scene witnesses, crackheads, Deadheads, greedheads, soldiers, sailors, Klansmen, star quarterbacks, the kid who blew the game-wining free shot, the mother who shot her abusive husband after years of beating, the father who hasn’t talked to his kids in years and doesn’t know if they know he’s alive, bums, businessmen, astronomers, astrologers, bullshit artists, prechers who really mean it, gun nuts, a handful of truly worrying animal advocates, hippies, yuppies, church ladies, budding porn stars, future dentists, a number of very famous people, and a retired cowboy who made barbarian-type swords for folks who want to buy that sort of thing. And then I had to write about them.

I also used to drink heavily and had the disturbing tendency to gobble mushrooms and acid whenever they were presented. This never failed to put my mouth in gear. I’ve also got a life-long love of esoteric information, the weirder the better, and the end result was sort of Cliff Claven with a thick Southern accent.

I quit drinking, and all I do is smoke pot. I got burnt out on the writing gig (done the sum total of one blog post in the past year) and I keep home and hearth together with a job as a prep cook in a local eatery. I work by myself, don’t interact with customers and I don’t have to interact with the rest of the staff should I so chose. They’re a good bunch of kids, but more days than not, I’m downstairs listening to my tunes*, reading my books**, and generally having a good time. I don’t go out much anymore, and I used to go out seven-nights a week***, and I thoroughly enjoy my solitude.

When I find myself in convorsation these days, I find myself very uncomfortable if I have to take the lead. Matter of fact, that very quality has pretty much ruined my chances in a certain bespectled local bartender as well as quashing my interest in her. If someone talks, I listen. If they ask questions, I answer. More often than not, the convorsation will drift into interesting territory. People like to be listened to, and I do think our culture encourages us to be talkers rather than listeners. I’m a bit disturbed at how easily many people will open up to all sorts of things to, apparently, the first cat who actually listens to them. It freaks some people out.

But if they don’t, I just sit there and smile until they wander off to find someone more interesting to talk to and leave me to my tremelous thoughts. I claim no great wisdom, but I think I’ve learned that convorsation, small talk included, is what you make of it. Like someone said above, you can’t force interesting convorsations with people, but there’s no reason to hang around some boring, self-absorbed dingbat just to be engaged.

Plus, the more one smiles, the more others wander what the smiler is up to. ‘Course, I smoke a lot of weed, so that probably has something to do with it.

* Nobody, and I mean nobody seems to be interested in classic R&B, Southern soul, Chicago blues, and ’70s and ’80s era country music in Athens.

** Predominately books on physics, philosophy and Medieval history these days. Apparently not convorsation starters.

*** And I had me a real good time, too. Gotta love college towns.

Pharaoh Apop-Tosis III died of a surfeit of crocodiles

At least he did it for the good of the whole, though, eh?

Hell’s donkeys, all that gobbledygook and I left out the most important part, the one thing far too long in the journalism field taught me: ask questions. If one finds oneself mired in small talk, ask the other person questions. Get definitions. Find out what they really mean when one’s compaion says what he or she says.

Not a hard-and-fast rule by any means, but I have found it helps seperate the wheat from the chaff. That, or it just plain weirds a lot of people out to have a long-haired, scruffy looking, wild-eyed stump jumper with an illegal grin asking them so many questions. Could be me, in other words.

’70s and ’80s era country music in Athens

At the J&J Center? Or the Silver Saddle?

As Flawedplan and Jillian have already said, “small talk” is an essential social skill for primates living in groups larger than an extended family… it’s the way two or more talking primates negotiate past our reptile-brain stranger! — eat? run? screw? piss on? hardwiring and figure out how we can share space, maybe even work together, maybe even have FUN together. And, as Flawedplan so brilliantly explains, our particular talking-primate culture has arranged it so that it’s usually women who are responsible for monitoring the small-talk conversation streams to find out what new group members are happiest discussing, and to shape the ensuing conversational pairings so that each member feels they’ve achieved maximum benefit for minimum effort. Of course, for all their hard work, women are summarily dismissed by the (mostly male) Deep Thinkers as trivial, brainless little networkers who have no interests beyond gossip, babies, pets, weather, interior decoration, the local worship community, and the price of bread. The Deep Thinkers, of course, prefer to discuss History, Sports, Science, the Arts, Philosophy, and Economics – which have nothing to do with trivial women-talk crap, after all!

Seriously, as someone who has been diagnosed with ADD, I believe that one reason that political blogging has taken off so fast and so successfully is that a LOT of physically awkward, socially inept, high-IQ, tech-happy autodidacts suffer from some degree of attention-deficit disorder. And blogging in its current form “rewards� the sort of fast-response, high-verbal, novelty-seeking behavior that is stereotypically ADD/ADHD. As one of my few non-ADD-tending friends once said at the Thanksgiving gathering a group of us has kept going for more than 20 years now, “You all can have six different conversations at once… but you can’t have one conversation at once!�

The only thing worse than talking about the excrutiatingly dull details of your everyday life is listening to someone else describe theirs. I can’t tell you the number of truly useful things that once occupied space in my brain that were pushed out by being inflicted with the truly trivial travails of others.

The hell of it is that small talk is like driving across country on an Interstate … you get the breadth of someone’s life without really learning anything meaningful about them.

God, I feel like such a failure as a girl now!

(sob!)

tigrismus,
I work Saturdays, so I haven’t been out to J&J in years. And though I’ve never been to the Silver Saddle – not even sure if I’m thinking of the right place – my experience with sho’nuff country bars is that folks who are country fans to near exclusivity have short memories, particularly for what’s apparently seen as a rather embarassing decade for both modern country fans and hipster country fans. Everyone digs on the Outlaws, the Second Coming of George Jones, or the last stands of folks like Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard. Don’t get much call for Earl Thomas Conley or Gary Stewart or Johnny Lee or Dottie West. I don’t understand it, but what the hell.

Mikey, Matt T., and anyone else here who’s found themselves with “too many thoughts and have to spread them around so as not to drive those closest to us to thoughts of offing themselves!”: For the lucky ones among us, prescription drugs can help a lot. The first time I took Ritalin, at the age of almost-40, I walked into a bookstore on my lunch hour to buy the recommended handbook for adults with ADD*. And for the first time in 30-plus years, I walked out of the bookstore 40 minutes later with the book I’d gone looking for, and withoutthree or six or a dozen other books that looked interesting but I couldn’t afford them right then even if I’d had the time to read them…. and when I realized this, I actually stopped dead in the street and thought, “Damn! Do normal people feel like this all the time? If I’d known this 20 years ago, I’d have conquered the world by now!”

Best way I can explain, the drugs make me feel like my brain is a radio that’s always been prone to drifting between stations, and the pills let me snap onto one signal and stay there. Incidentally, both nicotine and caffeine have similar effects on people with non-neurotypical brain chemistry… you can actually graph both the rise of Starbucks and adult ADD diagnoses against the number of places one is no longer allowed to smoke in America. Statistics on illicit self-medication are obviously harder to compile, but if one has always relied on coffee, cancer sticks, alcohol, or pot in order to finish a project, well…

*Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood, by Edward M. Hallowell, John J. Ratey, John J. Ratey. A very easy read, primarily written by a neurosurgeon who is also ADD, and well worth reading even if it’s just everyone around you who seems to have these issues.

The rightwingosphere may have redefined the meaning of “small talk.”

Hell isn’t “how are you, I am fine, the weather outside’s delightful etc….” Hell is having to read the gibberish the wingnuts are saying every day. I can barely stand it anymore.

Matt, I was just chain-yanking. I didn’t go to bars in that era, but ooh, the stories I’ve heard about those two places! Let’s see, hair bleached out so white it would glow under the black lights, the stabbings, the shootings… and those were just the women! Seriously, any time you saw the Silver Saddle in print it was a crime report.

Thanks, Anne. When i first discovered amphetimines (hint – kennedy was still prez) I knew I was onto something special. When I did my last line of crank in May of ’94 (didn’t know at the time it was my last line or I would have enjoyed it more) I embarked on a different way of coping. Still miss the speed, most every day, but my life and health have improved, most especially my relations with law enforcement and local government.

At this point I work in a creative field, am mostly comfortable in my own skin, spend most nights at home, read, write and listen to music (hey Matt, remember rusty wier?), so I’m not one to go down the speed road again, legit or not. But thats assuming I can continue to stumble about semi-directed and still arrive at a pre-selected destination. At some point, I would be willing to reconsider a position constructed primarily out of fear….

mikey

ADD thing is totally true. I’m a card carrying ADD-er from way back (diagnosed at age 8 back in the 70s!) and now I have a PhD in Psych, and I specialize in ADD. AND I blog, so I’m constantly meeting other people who are extremely active online who eventually bring up “the question”. Do I think they have ADD? And often, the answer is yes. People with this style self-select into this fast-paced, multi-topical online world. Couldn’t agree more.

And for the first time in 30-plus years, I walked out of the bookstore 40 minutes later with the book I’d gone looking for, and withoutthree or six or a dozen other books that looked interesting but I couldn’t afford them right then even if I’d had the time to read them…

Doesn’t everybody do this?

The first time I took Ritalin, at the age of almost-40, I walked into a bookstore on my lunch hour to buy the recommended handbook for adults with ADD*. And for the first time in 30-plus years, I walked out of the bookstore 40 minutes later with the book I’d gone looking for, and withoutthree or six or a dozen other books that looked interesting but I couldn’t afford them right then even if I’d had the time to read them…. and when I realized this, I actually stopped dead in the street and thought, “Damn! Do normal people feel like this all the time? If I’d known this 20 years ago, I’d have conquered the world by now!�

I had a similar experience with the serotonin balancers when I was in a bad way…just the knowledge that people could exist without being fucking miserable all the time was as life-changing as acid was. I don’t take ’em anymore (although I will in a pinch) but the sense of perspective gained was invaluable.

I’m looking into this Ritalin thing. What you’re writing about seems suspiciously like what I fantasize it should be. Thanks for mentioning it.

Oh, hey, and while I’m thinking about it…..

Do most people tend to browse the ‘Net with eight or nine windows on totally unrelated topics open at the same time? Because it never even occurred to me to wonder if that were common before this.

I have a complex now.

Do most people tend to browse the ‘Net with eight or nine windows on totally unrelated topics open at the same time?

Multiple tabs, multiple windows, and sometimes multiple browsers.

UPDATE: Oh, I also like talking beer. My current favorite brews are Arrogant Bastard Ale and Rogue Shakespeare Stout. Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout is pretty darn good too.

New Belgium Brewing Co. (http://www.newbelgium.com/) all the way. Fat Tire, Sunshine Wheat, Blue Paddle Lager. yum yum yum

Do most people tend to browse the ‘Net with eight or nine windows on totally unrelated topics open at the same time?

The maximum the particular computer will support. On this machine, that’s two firefox windows, six tabs each. Unless I’m running Illustrator, in which case it’s one window, six tabs. At the office, a much better ‘puter, it’s more like five windows, five-six tabs…

mikey

the first rule is to NEVER bet on the colts in a playoff game.

Y’know, the problem with conventional wisdom is it’s just so damn, well, CONVENTIONAL…

mikey

Jillian,
Yeah, I do that, too. Blows my brother’s mind. I also generally read three or four books at a time, skipping around whenever my attention wanders.

mikey,
Off the top of my head, I can’t remember if I’ve ever heard his recordings, but I am familiar with his songwriting work. I’ve a deep affection for the Texas troubadour type, and the aforementioned “interviewing…famous people” includes me getting the chance to hang out with Terry Allen and Ray Wylie Hubbard at various times in the past. Cool old(er) dudes indeed.

tigirmus,
I’ve been to joints like that. Quit hanging out at them when three-hundred pounds of muscle, gut, beer and mean threatened to stomp my “hippie, college boy ass” because his old lady mentioned how much she liked my hair. Figured the stories I got from those places weren’t worth the inevitable ass kickings that such misunderstandings might bring. Still, those joints are much like any other non-music oriented bar: the music’s just for background, and people want the familiar, preferably what they hear every day.

Anne Laurie,
Oddly enough, one of my cousins commented over the Christmas get-together that she thought my I had ADD. I don’t know. When I have to concentrate – when I have to take care of business, happy birthday, King – I can get it done. If I’m engaged in reading something, it takes physical violence to disengage me from the book. Otherwise, my world is a rolling stream of bright, shiny things, and I can’t get shit accomplished unless I have a definate goal thrust upon me from an outside source. Since giving up the journalism gig, I’ve been at loose ends with regards to the whole “what I’m going to do with my life” because I can’t get anything more than started before I wander off to something else.

So who knows. That being said, I went through a spot of serious depression a few years back – partly brought on by the disillusionment with the whole journalism thing – and the thought that maybe the world would be better off without did come into play. However, I did the whole therapy thing and the whole mood-balancing medication thing, and both of them worked so well that I was soon able to move on to the whole new-outlook-on-life thing. I highly recommend such to any and all, with the caveat that it may not work as quickly as it did with me, but it does help. And, to quote the late, great Doug Sahm, a little bit is better than nada.

Thing is, and I’m not trying to trivialize those who truly suffer from ADD, I’m sorta digging the stochastic approach to existence I’ve got going on. Granted, it ain’t making me rich, but it beats the living shit out of the weekly news magazine grind. Y’all have no idea how much I used to dread weekends.

I don’t get the multiple window thing; too messy. If you haven’t tried it, Tab Mix Plus will give you a bazillion tab options like opening new tabs immediately to the right of the tab you’re on rather than all the way to the right, or it’ll colour them red if you haven’t looked at them yet, etc.

Small talk is a balancer – it brings your ego back to balance, and brings your flaws into the spotlight.
I’ve been a self medicator my entire adult life, and every time I’m seated at that table of misfits at a wedding I race to the bar for a 7&7.
But after two I realize the people I’m sitting with are PEOPLE, with the same flaws and scars I have, and probably have dealt with them in eight different ways, the same as the seat count at our table.
Things get easier after that. I start to listen, and react. It’s not that painful at that point, in fact it’s sort of an experiment. What will they reveal with the right question? What will I reveal when they respond? I used to abhor the process, but now I enjoy it.

OT I know, but Latest Atlas Vlog has doing some awesome comedy stylings. I particularly like the fact she takes issue with a CBC television show for not demonizing Muslims.

On topic, I use 57 bajillion tabs to browse. I keep pretty much every link I open open until I have decided that I have osmosified all the information possible, which can be two, three hours before the “oh yeah, I was reading that.” realization kicks in. Of course I am borderline OCD (among other worse things) so I don’t let the least of my neuroticisms bug me.

Crap, I should learn not to comment when I’m tired…

There once was a young man called Sven
Who’d been OCD since way back when
He’d count peas on his plate
And make wall-hangings straight
And this kind of thing would drive him nuts.

Damn, Bubba, that was brutal. I mean CLANK!!

While eating a pie made from lime
And discussing OCD at the tiime
Bill was washing his brother
‘Cause she smelled like his mother
But his limerick, at least, would rhyme

Fixed!!

mikey

Somewhere I read that small talk, particularly gossip, evolved to replace the bonding function that was once served by picking nits out of one another’s hair. This left our hands are free for, at first, I would imagine, picking fruit; then holding a martini and a cigarette; now using a keyboard and mouse.

Although I can see that it is not a popular position on this thread, I abhor small talk. This is not because I am above it, but because I am not good at it. So, alas, for me I guess the free hands will have to serve as puppets, as I stand alone, mocking the party goers.

Somewhere I read that small talk, particularly gossip, evolved to replace the bonding function that was once served by picking nits out of one another’s hair. This left our hands are free for, at first, I would imagine, picking fruit; then holding a martini and a cigarette; now using a keyboard and mouse.

Making such an observation is small talk, and you’d probably get a good laugh and quite possibly an interesting conversation about evolution, prehistory, cultural anthropology or whatever going. In other words, you, and others here who have slighted their chitchatting abilities, are filled to the utmost with beans. Yea verily I have spoken.

Off topic…
Army asks dead to sign up for another hitch.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.

“Army personnel officials are contacting those officers’ families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters,” the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night. (Watch how the Army is trying to make amends Video)

The Army did not say how or when the mistake was discovered. It said the database normally used for such correspondence with former officers had been “thoroughly reviewed” to remove the names of wounded or dead soldiers.

“But an earlier list was used inadvertently for the December mailings,” the Army statement said, adding that the Army is apologizing to those officers and families affected and “regrets any confusion.”

If small talk is basically talking about one’s work, I have just been handed the most incredibly small-talk-proof work assignment in the world.

About 2 weeks ago I was told to project-manage the installation and operation of new parking equipment in my company’s parking lot.

You can imagine the fascinated response I would get at dinner parties discussing the wonders of thermal ticket dispensers, anti-pass-back keycard settings, and ground-loop detectors for barrier arms…..

better to stick to the weather.

Also off topic, but related to earlier post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJvJ-dIC3pE
The Secret Life of Brian, full thing. 48 minutes long.
Should be the full thing, anyway. I haven’t finished loading it all.

Damn, Bubba, that was brutal. I mean CLANK!!

Okay, let me give it another shot.

An obsessive-compulsive named Rex
Was a slave to his syndrome’s effects
He’d wash hands night and day
And then got carried away
On a stretcher after he read this part of the limerick and threw himself under a bus.

Dateline Fort Pierce, MT. American Army R&D specialists announced today that they would contribute to the expected upcoming “Surge” of troops to Iraq with a Zombie Battalion. The Zombie Battalion, the 666th Undead Battalion, would ultimately be based in Port Au Prince, Haiti, but initially would deploy directly to Baghdad. A spokesman for the Battalion, a Captain indentified only as “Z” said the unit would take on front line combat ops against the militias and death squads. “What do they know about death?” he was quoted as saying. “The insurgents have developed tactics that endanger our living troops, but we do not believe they have developed an understanding of how to stop Zombie combatants. We will be able to operate in their AOs without the concern for IEDs and snipers that have hamstrung our operations to this point. And without a need for body armor, food or water we will not have a negative impact on the battlespace”.

Ayatollah Sistani was expected to issue a statement decrying the deployment of Zombie soldiers to Iraq in the next several days…

mikey

Bubba, you dishonor your gift, Grasshoppah…

The bus driver was worrking that day
With the well-known fever from hay
It was Rex he ran over
But he was thinking of Clover
There’s always a few shades of Gray

mikey

Anne Laurie, I’m lightheaded to see you reference me in a thread, I have a platonic, non-threatening *thing* for you. I’m sure I’m not the only one. To recap:

And, as Flawedplan so brilliantly explains, our particular talking-primate culture has arranged it so that it’s usually women who are responsible for monitoring the small-talk conversation streams to find out what new group members are happiest discussing, and to shape the ensuing conversational pairings so that each member feels they’ve achieved maximum benefit for minimum effort. Of course, for all their hard work, women are summarily dismissed by the (mostly male) Deep Thinkers as trivial, brainless little networkers who have no interests beyond gossip, babies, pets, weather, interior decoration, the local worship community, and the price of bread. The Deep Thinkers, of course, prefer to discuss History, Sports, Science, the Arts, Philosophy, and Economics – which have nothing to do with trivial women-talk crap, after all!

But here’s where we cultural feminists turn that on its head, we pointedly advance, raise the caliber, entertain, play with and improve the social milieu. We seize the vibe. Make the good times roll. It’s not that I believe women are essentially superior to men, it’s more like, okay, I’ve been socialized into this role, so I’m going to reclaim it, subvert it, and make it mine. Relational virtues are an unqualified good, they’re not just for women, so let’s get them front and center and do some teaching, in fun, creative and deliberate ways. It’s Patti Smith and Bonnie Raitt but I used to know so many women like this, before the recent goals and ideology of feminism put us to sleep.

One more thing I’m thinking about, upthread talking to Brad, he mentioned lack of subtlety in men, I linked to the homepage of Nick Drake because he was arguably the most nuanced man we all have in common and his social ineptitude destroyed his life. His sensitivity wasn’t enough to help him negotiate the scene, and no one showed him how.

Why does the inclination and ability to do many things at once (local count: 2 browser windows 5 tabs on one, 4 on the other, 2 text editor windows with roughly 25 code libraries and other docs from 3 different projects open, 3 IRC tabs, 2 shell windows 3 tabs each, etc 3 books going simultaneously in the bathroom and 5 more on the nightstand) have to be a “condition” that requires drugs to “fix”?

Its like the whole “Restless Leg Syndrome” I see the drug companies advertising for lately. As if feeling restless is something that requires treatment, as opposed to, say, an indication to get up off yer ass and move around.

I’ve gone on about how much I like Kingsley Amis before, but maybe this is apropos.

From The Old Devils there’s a party scene in which a woman called Dorothy is a blowhard:

Standard Dorothy procedure said that when she got into that sort of stride and someone had to sacrifice herself for the sake of the others, then whoever happened to be the hostess stepped forward. The punishment seemed to even out pretty well except that on neutral ground, like Dorothy’s own establishment, Sophie got landed oftener than her turn. The others would agree rather sheepishly among themselves that she somehow sounded as if she minded it less.

Chops to you for saying that. I restrained myself, but folks need to get hip to Big Pharma’s plans for all of us. Worth investigating.

Why does the inclination and ability to do many things at once have to be a “condition� that requires drugs to “fix�?

It doesn’t unless it screws up your life somehow.

Something to consider is that many of us have no problem self-medicating when we want to fuck ourselves up, but attempting un-fucking is supposed to reveal some dreaded weakness.

Cross-posted that comment for Kingubu.

The difference between just being a bit of a spaz (which I am certain I am) and having ADD is like the difference between just being a miserable bastard and having acute clinical depression. They’re really only superfically similar. If you’ve ever experienced clinical depression, you’ll never mistake it for just having a shitty day.

ADD can screw up your life by, say, keeping you from getting paperwork turned into your boss on time, resulting in you being fired from a job. That kind of thing. And yeah – if there’s a medication that can help keep a person from getting so distracted that they screw up their life in that way, then it’s a good thing.

That’s a big “if”. I’m diagnosed with 5 enduring mental illnesses, and I did the computerized evaluation for ADHD and met the DSM criteria. But neither the neuropsychologist or a single one of my psychiatrists actually agrees I “have” ADHD, these goddamn disorders look a lot alike, and few people only have one.

That’s a big “if�.

Or a little if. If you can get a prescription for one and it won’t make you go broke you can try it out and see if things get better or worse.

Jillian: And yeah – if there’s a medication that can help keep a person from getting so distracted that they screw up their life in that way, then it’s a good thing.

Totally. And IMO you draw the line in just the right place: is the person that is so inclined/afflicted suffering or not. (I’m sure there are less subjective meas of diagnosis, too).

Where I get all soapboxy is over how it plays out in terms of general perception. How many people get wrongly medicated and told they have a “condition” that must be fixed, when what the really need is to learn the practice of how to have a balanced life from others who share their predilections?

How many delightfully eccentric novelty-seeking info-missiles (read: artists, scientists, innovative thinkers) will live lives of barely-cheerful desperate mediocrity because, as kids, Mom and Dad were told that tranqing them with FocusIn was the “solution” to their “problem”?

I think medication is great for people who have serious problems. What really pisses me off is the way they want to drug up every kid who acts out. They put my son on dexedrine, then adderal, then ritalin, at the tender age of six! because he acted up in class. The drugs didn’t do anything good for him, and actually seemed to make him worse, but that didn’t impress them. I finally had to just say, that’s enough, no more. I wish I’d done it earlier. He was just fucking smart and school bored him to death, as it did his mother before him.

I think a lot of the time, ADD, ADHD, and OCD are all just code for “you should be thinking and behaving exactly like everyone else, and since you don’t, there is something wrong with you.”

Recently, my now 14 year old kid told a doctor he felt depressed – he’s a teenager, of course he’s depressed – and they wanted to put him on the seratonin drugs, nevermind a growing body of evidence that teenagers on these drugs have a marked tendency to kill themselves. The further you stay away from doctors the better off you are.

I think you can tie a lot of it to the American idea that everyone should be shiny happy people all the time. Life is mostly not happy. Mostly it’s boredom interspersed with misery alternating with joy. If your misery and joy sort of balance each other out, then you’re doing pretty well. If you are seriously clinically depressed, as Jillian points out, that’s a different thing entirely. But when you go to a doctor, say “I feel sad and I’m crying all the time but my mom and a guy I should have married both died recently and then a friend of mine hung herself in the garage”, they want to put you on drugs. Shit, you should be crying all the time in a case like that. If you aren’t there’s something wrong with you.

I took Prozac for a while a few years ago. I’d had a number of deaths in my life (see above) and I was pretty down. It did help, but after a while I began to notice that I was cut off from all my feelings, the good ones as well as the bad ones. I couldn’t even cry. I’d literally rather kill myself than feel that way again. It was horrible. I’ll take the pain, if it means I can still write and read and laugh and cry and enjoy sex and get angry when it’s appropriate.

I guess I’m just saying that fads come and go in the medical business as in any other business, and you shouldn’t let them medicate you with stuff that has unintended consequences unless your situation is truly desperate.

What Candy said.

Bio-psychiatry is a crock. Fuck it and the chemical imbalance it rode in on.

And thus, as if to prove the idea that small talk can breach the wall between people leading to more substantive conversation, this post on small talk revolved around minor issues, but eventually developing into an in-depth, personal, humorus, and intriguing discussion of personality disorders and the medication of such….

mikey, I hate talking on the phone too. How sadistically ironic that now I run my own business, and spend most of my damn time, it seems, talking on the phone…..As Kevin Murphy from Best Brains once said, sometimes you wind up occupying your own, custom-built hell.

What Candy said, plus most North Americans have appalling diets. We consume way too much sugar, refined carbohydrates, and transfats in factory-farm produced meats (that are filled with chemicals, hormones, and antibiotics), fast foods, take aways, packaged foods, junk food, fizzy drinks. It’s no wonder so many kids and adults are hyperactive and depressed…look at what they’re eating. Very few doctors are trained in nutrition and do not counsel people on proper food intake.

See:
Diet for a New America (a golden oldie) http://www.foodrevolution.org/dna_endorsements.htm
http://madcowboy.com/ (the truth about the meat and dairy industry from an ex-cattle rancher)
World’s Healthiest Foods http://whfoods.org/index.html
Fast Food Nation: http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/books/schlosser.html

Let’s see… I have 1, 2, 3, 4 … I have 14 open right now.

Bio-psychiatry is a crock. Fuck it and the chemical imbalance it rode in on.

Saved my life.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

Part One: Life

XI

MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails. 5
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

“What I believe is that a lot of what people call mental illness and disease now are kinds of rebellions against what’s around them. What people need to understand when they take a look at others doing self-destructive drinking or not paying attention in their classroom is that there’s a kind of rebellion. That if you really pay attention to these people and get to know what they’re all about, they’re angry, resentful about something going on around them. What a lot of people have done over the ages, and you see this both politically and psychologically, is have their rebellion without wisdom. Their rebellion becomes self-destructive. A lot of what people do, without help, good parenting, good teaching, good counseling, is rebel irrationally, without thought. And then they make life worse for themselves and everybody around them. What I do, clinically—and what I argue for in the book—is try to understand and assume that there’s a reason … for why someone is angry, depressed or bitter. What you are supposed to be doing as a counselor, teacher or parent, is to help folks move into a more constructive kind of rebellion…as opposed to what we do in our culture, our society, and certainly within the mental health business, which is to try to squash rebellion. And worse than that, not even identify it as such. The ultimate invalidation is to look at some kid who is refusing to pay attention or behave well, and not respect that there’s something by way of rebellion and resistance going on there, and then to medicalize it and then to drug it. The thing that most embarrasses me about my business is that I’m utterly convinced that all of this will be obvious to people down the road—especially kids who have gone through it—that there was a kind of rebellion going on and it was squashed by biochemical means. But the thing is, it won’t ultimately work. It won’t. As we know, lots of these teen shooters have been on these psychiatric drugs. Things won’t work the way they want them to work. These drugs are short-term, and they get folks to be a little bit more compliant in the short-term, but in the long-term—like all of the attempts to control people—you produce resentment and resistance and even more anger. And God knows what kind of horrific behavior is going to be happening more and more down the road.�

LiP: Do you have words of optimism and encouragement for people suffering with psychological pain? How might they go about finding this sort of path you’re describing?

What I’ve found from my patients over the last 16 years is that the people who I see who are depressed and anxious are a lot of the most likable people I know. To me, it usually indicates that their soul is still intact. They’re capable of feeling hurt, loss, pain—they haven’t utterly anesthetized themselves like a lot of society. Take a look: one out of four people are on psychiatric drugs.

So, the first thing is, feel good about yourself that you’re human enough to still feel hurt, anxiety and pain.

The second thing is, forgive yourself for probably doing a hell of a lot of stupid things w/ that—self-destructive things, unkind, selfish things to yourself and others.

The third thing is that once you understand that there are good reasons for why you’re feeling the way you are, you want to move into finding a way to transform your life. That can be a real, satisfying, lifelong project.

Partially, what you start to understand is that you need to develop, in your life, a community of people who are like you, a community of people who really dig you. People who, when you see them and they see you, are really excited.

http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/feattalvi_141_p.html

Abby: Let’s see… I have 1, 2, 3, 4 … I have 14 open right now.

You should really try to finish off the first 10 or so before they get all warm and flat. Look out for cigarette butts; I think I ashed in that one.

Tangentialism is the soul of wit…

Medication can make a huge difference in a person’s mental health. In my case it probably saved my life and it definitely saved me from a fate worse than death.

I agree with Candy that there are far too many people being fed pills because they aren’t “happy” enough or they are behaving like normal children/teenagers and not the good upstanding future citizens we want them to be. We as a society don’t really talk about mental health issues much. We certainly don’t discuss openly the ethics of the medication.

My meds have bad side effects. I hate them. I hate the restrictions they put on me. The only thing worse than being on them is being off them. And I have had to realize that the medication is only part of the solution. I have had to fight to minimize my illness and adapt as much as possible to this world. I certainly have had to endure the near constant Hollywood portrayal of people like me as serial killers or (if I am lucky) a nice person who, tragically, has to be locked up for his or her own safety.

I think our quick fix world looks at the pills and thinks, “hey, here’s the miracle.” But the miracle is the people who, despite the odds, and in some cases despite the meds, live their lives as independently as possible.

Ack! Get the multivitamins! I’VE GOT BODY THETANS GODDAMMIT, AND THEY ALL LOOK LIKE BROOKE SHIELDS!!!

I knew without even mousing over the above comment’s ID that it was teh l4m3. I need to get out more.

Also, Rogue brewery is The Decemberists of beer. Discuss.

“Making such an observation is small talk, and you’d probably get a good laugh and quite possibly an interesting conversation about evolution, prehistory, cultural anthropology or whatever going.”

Really, that is small talk? For me the phrase more brings to mind the wonders of the ipod, the latest Friends episode, or the dreadful lines at the airport. If cultural anthropolgy is your idea of small talk, I am going to spend more time with people named Tigrismus, and less with those who go by pnut or Tator Tot. Mon Dieu, I have been doing my puppeteering outside the wrong parties!

His Grace, I agree absolutely that in some cases, the drugs are completely necessary and life-saving. And it’s a blessed thing when someone finds a doctor who can get the cocktail right.

I dated a guy who was severely bipolar. Sadly, in his case, they just couldn’t seem to get the drugs right. He went to a doctor while he was in a depressive phase and was given Prozac. Prozac was The Big New Thing at the time, and being billed as the cure for all sadness. Well, Prozac tripped him over into a horrendous manic phase, complete with hallucinations and one nasty violent episode. Removed from the Prozac, he soon plummeted into despair and attempted suicide. The last I saw him, he was a dedicted self-medicator, and actually, of all the drugs ever applied to his problem, weed seemed to be the only one that was beneficial. I haven’t seen him in years, and recently heard that he was married and doing okay. I wish him the best, but 15 years ago would never have bet on his survival. If someone could have found the chemical combination that would have fixed him enough to get through his daily life, it would have been marvellous.

So many quacks in the psychiatric field. One told me that if my kid was having trouble sleeping, I should give him Benedryl. He actually told me that if two didn’t knock him out, to give him three! This guy is considered a leader in his field.

I just don’t know.

“Doesn’t everybody do this? ”

Jillian, a friend of mine told me once that she counted the numbers of words in people’s sentences and then did something mathematical with them, divided by three I think. She also had to dry all her laundry 3 times. She read somewhere that this was OCDish and it ran in families, and lo and behold her sister did it too. When they mentioned it to their parents, their parents told them, “don’t be silly, everybody does that!”

Internet conversationalists are highly self selecting and do not reflect the normal distribution of society at all. But I enjoy the hey, other weirdos just like me! feeling when these conversations come up. I’m willing to bet the proportion of INTPs (or nearly that) in here is about 8 times higher than in real life.

I’ll leave this amazingly civil discussion with a request, if you have a second vote for the blog Furious Seasons in the best patient medical weblog. Phil Dawdy’s a strong, literate and focussed voice, and as a working journalist has chops and credibility. It would be a start, seeing a credible mental patient win this competition.

Two days ago he was leading, but today he’s way down in the polls, if everyone who reads this votes it could make the difference. Thanks.

The second thing is, forgive yourself for probably doing a hell of a lot of stupid things w/ that—self-destructive things, unkind, selfish things to yourself and others.

The third thing is that once you understand that there are good reasons for why you’re feeling the way you are, you want to move into finding a way to transform your life. That can be a real, satisfying, lifelong project.

Or, it can be a mindbending hell. See, it turns out theres a couple ways to go insane. One off thems easy, you’re born insane. But the harder way, the broken-edge-of-a-bottle way is to start out sane, and have them put you in an insane place, make you do horrible, insane things, and then one day, for no good reason at all, dump you back here, unarmed and stupid…

mikey

Voted! 🙂

Mikey, I can’t pretend to know exactly what you’ve been through. I’ve endured and witnessed some pretty extreme things in my life, particularly during my heavy drug phase, but I’ve never been in a war, or even seen anyone shot, much less been forced to participate.

It’s horrifying to think how many young men and women are going to be coming back from our luckless foreign adventure in truly terrible shape. No magic pill exists for them, I’m afraid.

You should really hang out your own blog-shingle at some point soon, mikey.

There are lots of people (and will be many more) coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who need to know what you know. Or, at least, need to know that there are others who know first-hand the sense of isolation and disconnection (and all the other terrible shit that I can only dimly imagine) that comes from trying to merge back into “polite society” after war.

I dunno, I’m not in that position and it seems shitty and shallow to just volunteer you for something you might not be interested in doing, but it seems to me that your experiences, super-sized liberal conscience, and articulate, bullshit-free prose might make you especially suited to leading a community for returning vets.

kingubu, we seem to be en rapport tonite…. 🙂

Mikey does have a lovely blog, with some very good posts lately. I think he should write an autobiography. I’m stone serious about that.

I must have had too much wine. I’m using smileys as freely as a certain pie lover who shall remain nameless.

Mikey, this is what happened to you.

I’m saying this is what happens.

No one is born insane.

And last month I did a search on you in preparation for the Koufax awards, you should see what I saw, your healing in progress.

‘Night all.

Um, okay, so that’s why the “mikey” is all lit up, linky-like…

Yep, I’m a moran.

No one is born insane.

Except, Dick Cheney. And he sleeps like a baby.

I’d kinda classify this whole thread as “small talk” to some degree. Movies, beer, even phamaceuticals can be placed in the category of “small talk.” It doesn’t always have to be about the weather.

And at the risk of being thought of as a total freak: I don’t like beer, I don’t take any medication (legal or illegal), I don’t listen to popular music of any kind, I don’t watch tv at all, and I don’t care for David Lynch. That would make me a total LOOOZER by pretty much any definition. Despite that, I can have a reasonable conversation about any of the above topics that could truly impress you knowing what you now all know. Or not.

I kinda like the idea of pharmaceuticals as small talk.

I don’t think I’ve been to one of those kind of parties since college…

Uh, I’d add something to the conversation, but I’m not very good at smalltalk…

Anyone hear This American Life today? The second act, featuring the West Coast super named Dave and the snowman who could bench-press four hundred pounds? I haven’t laughed so hard since we invaded Iraq.

I’m late to the party, but Arrogant Bastard is teh awesome. I was in Portland last summer and had the Shakespeare stout on tap; I drank so much I left the car, stumbled back to the hotel, then walked back in the morning after getting bitched out. And it was SO worth it; I had absolutely no regrets. The North Coast Russian imperial is great. I have had their Belgium ale too, references Thelonoius Monk and worth the price of admission. I am from Chicago, and we a little brewery near us called Three Floyds that is among the best in America. The Alpha King is a hop lovers dream, the Dark Lord (a Russian Imperial stout) kicks ass. They have a milk based stout, which is better than it sounds, that pays tribute to A Clockwork Orange (Unfortunately, you have to go to Merrillville IN to get it). Also, Founder’s in Grand Rapids MI makes excellent beer. They have triple IPA that clocks in at 13.5 ABV and massive hops. Dogfish Head makes some pretty good beer, and I can pick it up every once in awhile around here, but I haven’t been able to find Arrogant Bastard around Chicago. I was able to find it in a town of 800, 250 miles north of Anchorage in the middle of nowhere, but not in a town of 11 million in the middle of the country. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Tangentialism is my bitch. I have this cool firefox extension called “Aging Tabs” that I’ve set to go from Spring Green to Dark Dead Leaf Brown over time. It’s the ROXXOR!

bless you all, my lovely little Sadly No-ites.Have a wonderful Saturday night and sleep well.

I made a bolognese sauce, had it with some good imported spaghetti, and some delicious California red wine made by David Coffaro.

The two old dogs are snoring away, curled up in the places they’ve claimed for their own. Spouse is typing away at the computer in the other room. Offspring called; he’s eating Chinese food in Cheviot Hills (is there Chinese food in Cheviot Hills?).

The wing is whistling through the canyons and it feels very cozy inside. I have a good biography of Julia Child to read that I got for Christmas.

How’s that for small talk?

Something to consider is that many of us have no problem self-medicating when we want to fuck ourselves up, but attempting un-fucking is supposed to reveal some dreaded weakness.

Thank you, Righteous Bubba!

Matt T: When I have to concentrate – when I have to take care of business…- I can get it done. If I’m engaged in reading something, it takes physical violence to disengage me from the book. Otherwise, my world is a rolling stream of bright, shiny things, and I can’t get shit accomplished unless I have a definate goal thrust upon me from an outside source… I did the whole therapy thing and the whole mood-balancing medication thing, and both of them worked so well that I was soon able to move on to the whole new-outlook-on-life thing. I highly recommend such to any and all, with the caveat that it may not work as quickly as it did with me, but it does help… Thing is, and I’m not trying to trivialize those who truly suffer from ADD, I’m sorta digging the stochastic approach to existence I’ve got going on.

If it works for you — read: If you’re happy more than you’re miserable, your friends & loved ones haven’t given up on you, you’re not under arrest or otherwise institutionalized — party on! There is a specific ADD problem called “hyperfocus”, which is where those of us who normally get distracted by every shiny passing object or impulse can also lock onto a book or a project so obsessively that we can actually endanger our survival (walking into traffic while reading, for instance). It’s like normal people have focus knobs that read from 1 to 10, while our focus is more like an on/off switch… or maybe a knob that goes from 0 to 11.

Thing is, the polyvariant brain-chemistry issue that we shorthand as “ADD” is more like, say, diabetes than a simple yes-or-no, fix-or-die medical problem like cancer or hepatitis. We know that there are a bunch of serotonin-related medical problems — ADD, OCD, dyslexia, depression, bipolar disorder, Tourettes syndrome, substance abuse, plus Crohns disease and colitis — that keep showing up in different individuals from particular families. We know that people with familial histories of these problems tend to marry each other, and that their offspring are at a higher risk for developing these syndromes than the offspring of ‘outcross’ relationships. We know that many individuals who have one of these problems will also, or eventually, have another one or two or six as well — but we don’t know how much of that is part of our genetic heritage and how much of it is learned/social behavior. (Try spending 20 years being told “With your abilities, you SHOULD be doing so much better” — when you know that you’ve been struggling in vain to “just pay more attention” — and see if you don’t get depressed, or start drinking, or develop peculiar fixations on those parts of your daily life you can control.)

Sure, Big Pharma is Eee-vile, and the drug companies spend most of their research dollars looking for me-too variations on the latest lifestyle drugs. BUT… most of us can also cite at least one or two relatives for whom insulin, or blood thinners, or antibiotics have literally meant the difference between life and death. One of the big reasons we’ve seen the recent “explosion” in ADD diagnoses, for kids as well as adults, is that doctors today can offer solutions (however imperfect) that are a lot less risky and less mind-stunning than phenobarbital or the early tranquilizers. It’s still a very personalized roulette routine, especially for kids, who don’t have the same physical reserves and whose individual body/brain chemistries keep changing as they mature. Yeah, there are teachers and school systems who would love to drug every smart, creative kid into numb obedience… but there are also plenty of smart, creative kids who are living in hell because their parents “don’t believe in quick pharma-fixes”.

If I’d had access to Ritalin in grade school, I might not have developed the school phobias that kept me from finishing college. And there are lots of jobs that I haven’t been able to get for lack of a B.A. — I can attest that being objectively verbal and literate just isn’t good enough these days. Yet I’m one of the lucky ones… I have a good life, a long-term partner, friends & relatives that I love, hobbies that make me happy. I’ve been able to stay employed enough to support myself, I haven’t spawned a batch of kids I couldn’t raise (thank you again, Big Pharma!), I didn’t lose years of my life getting thrown out of bars, I don’t have a trail of arrest records summarized under the heading “Reckless Stupidity”, I’ve never been institutionalized or had to leave town one step ahead of the law, my creditors, or an angry mob. This means I’ve lived a better and longer life than many of my ancestors and relatives. (And, to go off on a political tangent — yeah, I think it can be argued that the Oval Office Resident probably has ADD, and certainly has wasted a lot of his life & other people’s lives & money compensating for what seems to be a family history of brain-chemistry problems.)

Again, as with diabetes — for some people, just knowing they have to watch their diets and exercise regularly is enough. For others, additional chemical intervention is required. And, yes, there are diagnosed diabetics who take insulin until they can lose enough weight, change their lifestyles enough, that they can bring their blood sugar numbers back into the normal range. There are also people with long-term blood-sugar issues who eventually have to choose between insulin pills/shots and losing their eyesight, kidneys, or feet. But very few people are so purist as to insist that taking insulin is a “crutch for weak-minded people”, or that all diabetics could give up insulin “if only they tried harder”. There’s just so much lingering prejudice — superstition, really — about the difference between the few pounds of grey goo inside our skulls and our “being” or “Will” or “soul” or whatever you want to call it. But there’s so much information we have now that we didn’t have even five or ten years ago… my best general advice would be to keep your mind and your options open to new possibilities.

Ah Candy- I feel so sad about what you went through. I am a nurse that used to work in childrens psychiatric and I know of which you speak. There were too many times to count that I felt either extremely uneasy or downright angry about the approach we have to “acting out” in children. In my case, I worked in a lockdown facility that had many kids who were severely abused, and so had psychiatric disorders stemming from that, but I found a disturbing number that were actually institutionalized from acting out in a forty plus member classroom too much. What I found was that they were typically very intelligent, and extremely bored with having to go along with a lesson plan that was geared to a much lower level than they were currently at. As was said before- they end up medicated, and in some cases drooling, but alas, controllable. It’s a crying shame.

I have to admit, the treatment of mental illness is one of the few things in life that I am genuinely optimistic and hopeful about – I’m expecting to see huge advances made in this field over the next fifty to one hundred years. We’re finally learning enough about brain phsyiology and chemsitry to have a good grasp on what we know and what we don’t know, and that’s really the first step toward progress in any field. We know less about the brain now than we knew about the circulation of blood two hundred years ago – but we finally know that. Advances in the neurosciences are probably going to be slow and painfully won, but they stand the chance of really changing the world for the better. I’m hopeful that this will happen.

The saddest thing about abused children who act out is that there is evidence to indicate child abuse causes permanent brain damage. Not in the sense most people think of – not from being bashed in the head. But the experience of highly stressful situations as a a child will cause a spike in cortisol levels in the brain, and cortisol spikes can cause damage to a region of the brain that regulates cortisol production (the hippocampus). So if you subject a child to the stressor of abuse, you’re not only harming them at that moment, you’re also setting them up for a lifetime of increased levels of stress hormones – something that will make them irritable, nervous, fearful, depressed, unable to handle stressful situations well, and so forth. These kids who are acting out don’t really have much of a choice in the matter – the part of their brain that is supposed to help keep them in check when tough things happen is probably permanently screwed up.

And this has serious consequences for the rest of their lives, too, and helps explain why cycles of abuse and poverty continue. College is the key to getting a good job anymore – but think back on your own time in college to how stressful it could be. With a permanently upregulated cortisol level, those stresses can become impossible to manage and lead to dropping out. Feeling a constant level of anxiety and irritation is perhaps the perfect setup for developing a drug or alcohol dependency. And this then becomes the perfect setup for passing this on to the next generation.

It also makes you think about the living standards that we as a nation tolerate for children in poverty. Even if it weren’t completely immoral and unfitting a nation that thinks of itself as civilized, it’s just plain stupidity on our part. The damage done by spending your early years in an environment where you don’t know if there will be heat, electricity or food when you get home every day can prevent a child from ever being able to make the transition to successful society, no matter how much we might try to help them out later on in high school.

The damage done by spending your early years in an environment where you don’t know if there will be heat, electricity or food when you get home every day can prevent a child from ever being able to make the transition to successful society, no matter how much we might try to help them out later on in high school.
================================
But it is enough to keep them down on the farm.

Properly nourished and educated poor people get uppity.

Or to keep them working in our fast food restaurants, our retail stores, as low paid nursing assistants, prison guards, cleaning staff, gardeners, waiters – anything where the stressors are immediate (how to deal with this customer in front of me) and not long term (how to make the right choices to build a successful career).

But don’t tell anybody that…they’ll think you are trying to say our economy is predicated upon the existence of a permanent underclass to take our low paying positions, and the next thing you know you’ll find yourself wondering if maybe that Marx guy possibly wasn’t wrong about everything. 😉

Marx wasn’t wrong about everything and part of how we’re in the sorry state we’re in now is because the nominally liberal party in this country has treated him like an embarrassing drunk uncle because they didn’t want to get grouped in with the Stalinists and Maoists during the Red Scare.

Of course, these days, even those who should know better don’t know that Liberal and Leftist aren’t the same thing, never mind that New Deal Liberalism was (by design) the savior of American capitalism by restraining capitalism’s natural excesses and cherry-picking just enough of Socialism’s good ideas to keep the rabble from storming the Bastille.

“There’s Lobaria pulmonaria just frickin’ dripping off the trees here up in the deep woods”

I have to say that’s just weird. I enjoy reading this blog because the sensiblity of it reminds me of one of my dear college friends, who was a total LUNGWORT FREAK. He would actually say things like, “once you discover worts you can never go back to ferns.”

I always wished I had more hyperfocus/hypervigilance. Alas… My boyfriend thinks I’m lucky to be so good at multitasking, but I am constantly shifting. He can’t shift at all. He’s always “stuck in gear”. He think I’m the one with the right kind of ADD. I think he is. I’ve never thought of it as a disability as much as a style. I’m off on my own tangent again.

This is the longest comment thread in history!

Abby: This is the longest comment thread in history!

And now its even longer!

(h/t They May Be Giants)

Mornin! OK, “my best general advice would be to keep your mind and your options open to new possibilities.” Agreed, but that’s the problem, when we talk about “treatment” for mental distress your possibilities include psychopharm and the insulting error-corrective therapeutics of cognitive behavioral therapy. If you are low income and diagnosed with a mental illness good luck finding an alternative to Psychopharm and CBT.

“Something to consider is that many of us have no problem self-medicating when we want to fuck ourselves up, but attempting un-fucking is supposed to reveal some dreaded weakness.”

Understand that biopsychiatry is also stigmatizing, by assuming you are genetically defective. Biopsychiatry says pay no mind to your life experience, poverty, abuse, and trauma, oh, and you probably shouldn’t have kids.

A short review of 2 contrasting books might at least suggest the legitimacy of the critical perspective.

Lincoln’s Melancholy v. Against Depression:

If we declare depression to be nothing but a disease, as Peter Kramer demands in Against Depression, then billions of dollars will continue to pour into biotech research and treatment and we will continue to ignore the societal and cultural causes of depression. If instead, we see strengths in those with depressive temperaments, as does Joshua Wolf Shenk in Lincoln’s Melancholy, then we become uneasy about handing over our despair to profit-hungry biotech corporations.

It may surprise those Americans who believe that modernity is synonymous with progress that in 1860 the U.S. public and press had compassion—and even respect—for Abraham Lincoln’s depression. According to Shenk, Lincoln’s depression may have actually helped him politically more than it hurt him, as it gained him sympathy and drew people toward him. Shenk discovered that Lincoln’s depression “seemed not a matter of shame but an intriguing aspect of his character, and indeed an aspect of his grand nature.�

Public compassion for Lincoln’s depression in 1860 stands in clear contrast to 1972 when George McGovern’s vice presidential running mate Thomas Eagleton was shoved off the ticket because of his history of depression. Today it continues to be unlikely that anyone with Lincoln’s temperament would receive a presidential nomination. One wonders whether the medicalization of depression—which the psychiatric establishment claimed would eliminate the stigma of “character defect�—instead created the stigma of “biochemical defect.�

The aim of Shenk, a writer with a penchant for both history and psychology, is not to pull the rug out from under the psycho-pharmaceutical industrial, but rather to (1) show that Lincoln would today be diagnosed with depression; (2) describe the strategies that Lincoln used “to heal and help himself;� and (3) explain how Lincoln’s depression was a meaningful part of his character that contributed positively to his work. Lincoln’s Melancholy accomplishes those goals— which does in fact pull the rug out from under the psycho-pharmaceutical industrial complex.

Shenk’s evidence that today Lincoln would be diagnosed with clinical depression is quite convincing: Lincoln’s friends’ “suicide watch� over him; two major breakdowns replete with many of the official symptoms of depression; dark Lincoln quotes such as “I am now the most miserable man living�; and observations by friends and acquaintances, including William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner from 1844 to 1861, who said, “Gloom and sadness were his predominant state.�

Then how did Lincoln, without antidepressants or electroconvulsive treatment, not only live a meaningful and productive life, but become for many the most admired president in U.S. history? Lincoln hung in there with commonsense selfhelp therapies such as humor and poetry and, ultimately, Lincoln’s depression, rather than being an unfortunate disease, actually “fueled his greatness.�

Shenk concludes: “From a place of trouble, he looked for meaning. He looked at imperfection and sought redemption.� Though Lincoln shared with other politicians the trait of ambition, he also wanted his life to have genuine meaning, which he found first in attempting to stop the spread of slavery and then, when the political climate changed, in his Emancipation Proclamation.

“In Lincoln’s time, people understood the obvious point that [current] research bears out: every cognitive style has assets and defects,� Shenk notes, “This seems surprising today because, by some quirk of culture, some cognitive styles are held to be superior and others inferior.� The research does in fact support Shenk’s contention that while depressives such as Lincoln are often more gloomy, they are also more capable of discerning painful truths than are nondepressives. Lincoln’s superior grasp of reality, Shenk contends, was vital to his political wisdom. I also agree with Shenk’s conclusion that depressives, because of their own suffering, often have great compassion for the suffering of others.

Shenk’s attributing the current American intolerance of some cognitive styles to a “quirk of culture� is generous to psychiatry. In the early 20th century, much of American psychiatry embraced the eugenics movement. Eugenics declared those cognitive styles and temperaments that are monkey wrenches for industrial society to be diseases that should be weeded out from the gene pool. In the early 1930s the Nazis were actually concerned that American psychiatry might be ahead of them in the race to eliminate mental defectives. After the word eugenics became associated with the Nazis, American psychiatry dropped the word, but not the goal of identifying biochemical and genetic markers for defective cognitive styles and temperaments. Nowadays, psychiatrists who seek these biochemical and genetic markers are called biopsychiatrists.

In opposition to Shenk’s doubleedged view of depression, bio-psychiatrist Peter Kramer sees nothing good about it and he begins Against Depression by stating, “I have written a polemic, an insistent argument for the proposition that depression is a disease, one we would do well to oppose wholeheartedly.� Kramer gained fame in 1993 for his Listening to Prozac, which was for Prozac manufacturer Eli Lilly what “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend� was for De Beers.

Against Depression argues that to view depression as fuel for greatness—or anything other than a disease to be eradicated—is romantic hogwash. While Kramer’s view of depression has already achieved pharmaceutical industry backing and corporate media acceptance, he tells us there remains a need for his book: “But I think we do not own it, not in the sense that we own the belief that cancer is a disease…. We associate depression with a heroic artistic stance, one we think humankind might be worse off without.�

Kramer offers several rationales for why depression should be seen as a disease to be opposed with as much gusto as is cancer. He reports that science has discovered “biological markers�—the sine qua non of disease—for depression. Kramer tells us that brain scanning techniques focusing on the size of the hippocampus and amygdala can differentiate the depressed from the nondepressed. However, on October 18, 2005, five months after Kramer’s Against Depression was published, the New York Times (“Can Brain Scans See Depression?�) concluded: “After almost 30 years, researchers have not developed any standardized tool for diagnosing or treating psychiatric disorders based on imaging studies.�

Kramer also attempts to revive the chemical imbalance theory of depression, specifically the serotonin-deficit theory, an idea that much of mainstream medicine now rejects. He tells us, “Deplete serotonin, and depression is unmasked.� But researchers have depleted serotonin and it did not cause depression in nondepressed subjects nor did it worsen the depressive symptoms of those already depressed. By 1998 the American Medical Association Essential Guide to Depression was telling us that there is no clear link between levels of serotonin and depression, “as some depressed people have too much serotonin.�

Genetics is also a major component of Kramer’s argument: “By the mid-1990s, scientists had identified genes that might lead to both conditions, neuroticism and depression.� A hero of Against Depression is behavioral geneticist Kenneth Kendler, whose work Kramer adduces to document depression’s genetic roots. Kramer tells us that Kendler has been a close colleague ever since both had done their Yale psychiatry residency together and that “Ken was the genius of our residency group.� However, two months after the publication of Against Depression, Kendler reviewed the evidence for “gene action in psychiatric disorders� in the American Journal of Psychiatry in July 2005 where he concluded: “Although we may wish it to be true, we do not have and are not likely to ever discover ‘genes for’ psychiatric illness.�

Kramer also tells us that depression must be a disease because of how devastating it is. He is certainly correct that depression can result not only in suicide, but can also ruin careers, destroy families, and jeopardize physical health. However, such non-diseases as war and poverty also have a devastating impact; and there is a long list of noncontroversial illnesses, including the common cold, that do not have such a devastating impact. Making “devastating impact� one criteria for classifying a phenomenon as a disease akin to cancer is but another of Kramer’s many stumbles.

Today in the U.S., Native Americans have the highest suicide rate among all ethnic groups and suicide is the second leading cause of death among Native American adolescents. Prior to the subjugation of Native Americans, suicide was a rare event, restricted to the sick or elderly who felt they could no longer contribute. In a similar vein, during the years of intensive removal of German Jews to concentration camps, their rate of suicide is estimated to have been at least 50 times higher than the rate for non-Jewish Germans who were not forced into concentration camps. Does anyone seriously believe that the epidemic of depression and suicide among modern-era Native Americans or Hitler-era Jews is genetically caused?

Depressed people for whom the drugs and other treatments of modern psychiatry have been nonproductive or counterproductive—no small population—will certainly be interested in how Lincoln dealt with his depression. Although Shenk accepts without critical analysis some of biopsychiatry’s beliefs about depression, he deserves credit for helping to revive the democratic idea that all temperaments have assets and defects.

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jan2007/levinepr0107.html

I’m becoming more leftist and less liberal all the time. Working in the retirement investments business will do that to a person. Well, it will do that to a person who thinks and feels and has ever lived in poverty.

The whole 401K thing is going to turn out to be the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the working people. People who make a lot of money can afford to salt away a big percentage of their pay into investments. Those of us who live paycheck to paycheck are really lucky to be able to put 3% away. We’re going to have a whole bunch of people who are never going to be able to afford to retire, unless they don’t mind sleeping in a refrigerator box and living on cat food. I myself am not going to be able to retire until I’m 115, barring winning the lottery. Andn if they get their way and privatize social security, well…

Basically, most of us are just serfs, tilling the soil of our corporate overlords. And most Americans are too damned blind to see it.

Understand that biopsychiatry is also stigmatizing, by assuming you are genetically defective.

This is like saying you’re stigmatized by taking NyQuil.

When I took my drugs they were wonderfully successful and fixed a problem. Then I stopped taking them as that problem was resolved and remains so. That’s medicine.

It’s a very broad brush you’re painting with, and in including temporary solutions, such as mine, with conditions that may indeed be permanent (as a result of genetics or some other factor) you are adding stigma to treatment that might help someone through a tight spot.

Plus, some people just *are* “genetically defective” – although I’d probably put it in politer terms than that. That in no way says anything about their overall worth as a human being. A person born with type I diabetes is unquestionably “genetically defective”, and every bit as deserving of as full a life as is humanly possible. A person with Down Syndrome is also “genetically defective”, but should be allowed as much of the full range of human life as they are personally capable of experiencing. It’s not a crime to be genetically defective; it’s the goal of medicine to palliate that experience as much as possible. It’s the goal of what I think of as civilization, too.

What makes the issue of mental illness so hard to grapple with is our painfully limited understanding of the brain and how it works. We really just don’t know much about the most common forms of mental illness, like anxiety, depression, and ADD. We simply cannot at this point in time know whether they are environmentally caused, genetically caused, or genetically predisposed and triggered by environmental circumstances. They could be all three at different times. Personally, I suspect that “depression” is probably a half dozen *different* ailments – some inherent, like schizophrenia, some environementally caused – but all presenting more or less the same profile.

We know that there are genetically based mental illnesses. Autism is one – but I remember that when I was a kid, autism was believed to be caused by severe child abuse, and so parents who had a child diagnosed with autism fell under the worst cloud of suspicion imaginable. Now we know that it really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how a parent raises a child. Schizophrenia is another.

There are illnesses that certainly *seem* to be completely environmentally based – things like PTSD. What we don’t really know is whether or not there is a genetic predisposition that makes a person more likely to develop PTSD or not. And there’s no easy way to answer that right now, either.

When it comes to issues of mental health, we are unfortunately still living in the dark ages – no offense to any practitioners out there. It’s just the case that we know comparatively little about the brain and how it works, and until we can fill those gaps in, we’re still attempting to treat mental illness based on the equivalent of the medieval “Four Humours” theory of medicine. Heck, if you read the prescribing insert that comes with Prozac, you’ll see terms like “assumed” and “appears to” a bunch – despite the frequency with which its prescribed, there’s still debate over exactly why it’s an effective depression treatment. Doctors aren’t evil for not knowing – they’re just ignorant. But that’s okay – right now, we all are. It won’t be that way forever…if all goes well, our grandchildren will look back on our age as a time of senseless suffering.

Please, please! We must not let this discussion of pharmaceuticals descend into partisanship!

Don’t worry, Ann – I’ve been taking Partisol® regularly for the last six weeks. In tablet form.

Despite the headache, dry eyes, nausea, anxiety, night sweats, and occasional erections lasting longer than four hours, I find it’s done a wonderful job of reducing my partisan tendencies. It’s a wonderful medication, brought to us by the caring folks at Glaxo Smith Kline. Everyone should try it! It would make the world a more wonderful place.

Bingo. When you’re ready to produce the patient education and physician outreach DVDs give me a call…

mikey

it’s done a wonderful job of reducing my partisan tendencies.

Does Partisol® work on cats? Perhaps it would reduce Metty’s partisan tendencies to believe that she is queen of the feline universe, and to whack the other cats whenever they forget the cowering-and-obeying business.

Mehitabel the Abyssinian adds: Cats can do small talk too! Would you like to hear about the stick insect I caught last night? Better still, I can show you what’s left of it.

That’s why cats are such great conversationalists — always with the visual aids.

Since when did Sadly, No! start linking to Ezra Klein? Have you decided to sink to Atrios’s level now?

Partisol® is not approved for use on cats, bunnies, elephants, or anchor babies.

So, no luck there.

As to Jillian’s comments…
There is still the received opinion in the wider culture, that depression and schizophrenia are all about neurotransmitter imbalance. Too little serotonin and you get depression; antidepressants raise the serotonin levels until you feel better again. Meanwhile the other drugs adjust dopamine activity until the voices go away.

This narrative became a little wobbly for a while when people discovered that there are many kinds of serotonin receptor, forming quite distinct pathways, but this eventually fed into the selling point of Prozac and the other SSRIs — they increase specific kinds of serotonin activity, so they must be better.

Meanwhile, the narrow neurofizz world is coming to accept that this whole narrative doesn’t work; and as Jillian said, comparisons are often drawn with medieval Four-Humour theory. Words like “new paradigm” and “epicycles” also get mentioned a lot.

So antidepressants work for many people, but alas we have no real idea why; and when they don’t work for someone, again we have no idea why not. Overall, the SSRIs are no improvement on the older tricyclic drugs (better for some people, worse for others), except that they brought in a lot more money for the pharmaceuticals. Same for schizophrenia and dopamine.

The comment under my name that appears at January 7, 2007 at 21:10 is someone impersonating me. It should be deleted immediately.

There are people who might make fun of me if it appeared people were posting under my name.

Anne Laurie,
I dig, and as I said, I’ve never considered my overall scatterbrainedness and overall disinclination to quit looking for neat stuff as even in the same ballpark as ADD. I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that’s quite plenty think you. However, and as many folks have noted, it’s unsettling how often what can best be described as precociousness in children and eccentricity in adults is often unfairly lumped as some sort of mental illness. I sometimes think that we as a culture may champion the idea of the individualist, but everything we’ve been taught has told us to fear them that shake the boat.

As a kid, I asked a lot of questions every chance I got ’cause I wanted to know as much as possible. I drove preachers and teachers crazy, partly because that’s just annoying and partly because I had no concept of what a “difficult topic of discussion” was. More than one person in the know told my Momma that I needed some sort of settle-down medication. She never went for it, luckily, mainly because an older cousin actually had ADD and we knew what that was all about. It’s just easier to shut folks up, I suppose.

Pharmaceuticals are awfully overperscribed in this country, I do think, and Big Pharma does come off as less than trustworthy, but I wonder how much of that is because we as a culture allow it. It’s easy to just shut out life’s problems than nut up and deal with them, and it can all come in a little blue pill. It’s easy for the powerful and wealthy to take advatange of the hurting for a few extra dollars. We do it way too much, and I wonder if this particular discussion is just another filter of that overall bad light that shines from sea to sea.

Medication, as well as therapy, should seen and used as a tool to get you from the bad to the good. Neither should be a crutch. Just like religion or education or, hell, booze and weed. Tools to manipulate your reality, not doors to close yourself off from that reality. It’s easier to hide that use those tools, though, it seems.

Sorry. Been reading Richard Rorty lately.

Actually, Ann, none of us care. Check it out, and move forward.

‘Mehitabel IS Queen of the Feline Universe, and I am her Devoted Courtier’–Ganesh Bengal Cat

Whoever made the point about family tendencies toward ‘clusters’ of various neurological and/or mental disorders (Anne Laurie?) is right on the money. Many medical researchers also feel that autoimmune disorders work this way, as well. IOW, your sister may have lupus, you may have MS, and your aunt may have rheumatoid arthritis. A genetic component could account for the higher rates of autoimmune diseases among women, too. And, like the brain disorders, a lot of people have more than one autoimmune problem.

I’m on the fence about Big Pharma (Disclosure: I worked for one for years when I could still work) and over/under medication of what seems like the entire population of the US, or at least the insured population, but mostly because of my personal experience.

I was diagnosed with any number of mental illnesses and treated with various psychoactive drugs for a great deal of my adult life. They did indeed make me feel better–for a while. This may have seriously delayed diagnosis of the actual, underlying disease process of my Multiple Sclerosis.

I’m not saying I wasn’t clinically depressed, or that I don’t have any of the fascinating and seemingly mutually exclusive personality disorders which have been attributed to me; just that it would have been nice if someone had, oh, I don’t know, wondered if perhaps, there were an actual physical reason why sometimes I literally couldn’t get out of bed, or use a pen or a fork without injuring myself, or why sometimes I was an athletic star and talented dancer and sometimes I fell down.

There is a specific ADD problem called “hyperfocus�, which is where those of us who normally get distracted by every shiny passing object or impulse can also lock onto a book or a project so obsessively that we can actually endanger our survival (walking into traffic while reading, for instance). It’s like normal people have focus knobs that read from 1 to 10, while our focus is more like an on/off switch… or maybe a knob that goes from 0 to 11.

Hee hee. In my theatre days, I actually had a co-star tell me that sometimes he was actually frightened of me (we were playing in Private Lives) during fight scenes because of what he referred to as ‘that terrifying focus.’ I have also read through fire alarms, building evacuations due to bomb threats, and people hammering on my door. It’s a wonder I didn’t pick up an ADD diagnosis to go along with all the others. It’s about the only thing no one ever thought I had.

PS I can do small talk. I just look on it as a performance, and as such, find it very tiring, so I avoid it when I can. Thus, among my acquaintance, you will find people who consider me ‘charming,’ and others who consider me ‘surly’ or ‘arrogant.’ I imagine it depends on the time of day that they encounter me, and how much energy my disease is allowing me to expend. 😉

Fuck this. My hope is for a non-violent revolution of the mental health system. A complete consumer-driven overhaul. I don’t have time or interest in debating the use of psychopharm for cosmetic purposes to fine tune and tweak personality. Have at it, but leave me out of your aeitological ignorance as to the underpinnings, social history and political implications of those of us living with severe and persistent mental illness.

The saddest thing about abused children who act out is that there is evidence to indicate child abuse causes permanent brain damage… the experience of highly stressful situations as a a child will cause a spike in cortisol levels in the brain, and cortisol spikes can cause damage to a region of the brain that regulates cortisol production (the hippocampus). So if you subject a child to the stressor of abuse, you’re not only harming them at that moment, you’re also setting them up for a lifetime of increased levels of stress hormones – something that will make them irritable, nervous, fearful, depressed, unable to handle stressful situations well, and so forth. These kids who are acting out don’t really have much of a choice in the matter – the part of their brain that is supposed to help keep them in check when tough things happen is probably permanently screwed up.

Or, as a wise doctor once told me, children who grow up in “war zones” frequently suffer from PTSD (which also seems to damage one’s cortisol regulation system). And part of making these individual tragedies a form of social control is that if every day of your life has been lived on a knife-edge of potential disaster, you are unlikely to realize that this isn’t how EVERYBODY lives, and feels, every day. Which (a) makes you nervous around nice, normal, middle-class people because you keep waiting for the shouting and hitting to start; and (b) enables the controlling class to stigmatize you & all your peers as hopelessly limited sub-humans ruled by your immediate urges and incapable of learning any better…

Fortunately, even people born to families with a history of neurologically-based malfunctioning who grow up in economically substandard, clinically abusive environments CAN learn to salvage a better life for themselves. Sometimes salvaging happiness, or a form of ‘normality’, will require at least short-term medication; it will always require a certain amount of conscious re-training and a lot of hard work. And, yeah, for some of us, part of the salvage operation is realizing that we need to stay out of the gene pool — both as a short-term fix, because being pregnant and raising a child are stressful and may overburden our less-than-robust coping strategies, including our economic coping strategies; and as a long-term realization that our genetic “gifts” (creativity, fluency, etc) are not so rare among the general population that they outweigh our genetic “flaws” (and few people who’ve lived through an episode of clinical depression, for instance, are liable to consider a genetic tendency towards depression as just another chromosonal card, like a tendency towards freckles or being a supertaster). It’s not politically correct, but as someone who feels *extremely* fortunate that she had the choice not to have kids, sometimes three generations of ‘craziness’ really IS enough!

It’s a wonder I didn’t pick up an ADD diagnosis to go along with all the others. It’s about the only thing no one ever thought I had.

Gentlewoman, one of the working theories about the cluster of non-neurotypical “brain disorders” we currently label as ADD, OCD, depression, bi-polar, autism, schizophrenia, and so forth is that “Attention Deficit Disorder” is the current catch-all term for a bunch of different syndromes where an individual’s deviation-from-the-norm isn’t severe enough to merit a more serious diagnosis. As others have said, we’re still at the Four Humors stage of medical diagnosis about brain chemistry, normal and otherwise. (Of course, the same is probably true of the term “cancer”, which researchers are beginning to think about as a symptomatic expression of many different diseases.) Working with the medical equivalents of duct tape and staples, we’ve established that people who exhibit x symptoms usually have y cluster-of-issues, and may hopefully respond to z form of medication, dietary changes, or behavioral treatment. Those of us with ADD are mostly content to be happy that we don’t have the kind of big, serious, “real” mental illnesses that get people involuntarily incarcerated — and that we can generally live a normal-ish life without balancing our “sanity” against our physical health. As Jillian says, I have every hope that in 20 years, much less 100, people will consider our current standards of mental-health treatment as little better than trepanning and exorcism… but that doesn’t keep me from being happy that trepanning and/or exorcism works on my particular demons!

Oh, and you’ve probably already run across the epidemiological factoid that serious immune-system illnesses like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and MS are more common among the population that also has a tendency towards the non-neurotypical brain disorders, right? Just another one of those links that we don’t know what to do about — yet!

You are plainly unethical if you leave up a comment by an imposter like that. Take it down, now.

Hahahahah.
Methinks Ann needs her scripts refilled.

Man, who is this althouse woman? Am I missing something? Is she joking? Is she a joke, like AA? I mean, she can’t really be all spun up over that, can she? Does she need more to do?

mikey

Holy crap….that last one really is the legaleagle blogger AA (not to be confused with aa…..) – she’s got a post up on her blog right now about this whole situation.

She also apparently thinks she’s the only person in the whole world named “Ann Althouse”. After all, it’s entirely possible that S,N! has several readers who happen to be named “Ann Althouse” – it is a big planet, after all, and there are only so many names to go around.

I suggest that, in Ann’s honor, we all speak in her voice for the remainder of this thread.
I Ann Althouse, being of sound mind and body, do hereby declare that I am in love with Ward Churchill. He makes me so swishy.

You are plainly unethical if you leave up a comment by an imposter like that.

If you have evidence that they have a clear pattern of monitoring and removing posts by impostor, perhaps it would be unethical to leave yours. As you don’t, because they rarely remove posts unless they are threatening etc, and as you (or someone claiming to be you) already made it clear it isn’t you(as if there were ever any question, seeing that the poster used his own URL as he always does), what’s the ethical issue? It was an obvious attempt at humor through satirical caricature, and the more you complain about how unethical it is to mock you in a largely unmoderated public forum(one that exists specifically for such mocking), the more humorous it becomes.

“by impostors” oopsie.

would it be completely partisan of me to speculate that this just might turn out to be epic?

While you’re at it, please remove all those comments from the imposters who regularly pop up to claim “I am Spartikas!”

No one can parody A. Althouse better than the genuine article.

For some unfathomable reason, I am suddenly reminded me of the A. Elk A. Elk sketch by Monty Python

See, Lesley, I was thinking “Life of Brian”…..

No, I’m Ann Althouse, and so’s my wife!

that is my identity, it is mine, and belongs to me, and I own it, and what it is too.

Im in yr base impersonating yr d00dz!

I demand that you stop making me look like a complete dumbass.

Oh, ok, for old times sake.

I have had enough of these motherfucking ann althouses on this motherfucking blog!!

mikey

If I stop behaving like a dumbass, will they stop making fun of me?

This is unfair. A blog devoted to snark and mocking childish right wing pundits should have higher standards than this. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you folk here have no respect for me and my work.
I mean Ann and her work.

If I stop behaving like a dumbass, will they stop making fun of me?

They must, for I am important, and there is television to be blogged.

Well, as one of Althouse’s commenters put it, “There was once a liberal left. It no longer exists. It’s been driven underground by stinky oinkers.”

I think this is, obviously, very true, and I encourage every stinky oinker here to cease and desist with their liberal left underground-driving program activities.

I am *not* stinky! I took a shower this morning. And I’m wearing perfume, too. So there!

You knew what I was and yet you believed me anyway…

so

We must find and kill this commenter. Our islamoleftifemihomonazifascist
plot with the mole men must not be discovered.

You probably thought I was pretty busy this afternoon, but I’m never too busy to impersonate a woman, and ann’s pretty hot. Wait ’til youu see the dress I’m gonna wear after the superbowl, bay bee…

jg

Look! Here’s a picture of me with a devil in it!

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////devil
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

We insist that you wretched colonials stop harrassing this poor woman.

We are a queen, so you must listen to Us.

Excellent.

Ever since kindergarten, when I was queen of the jungle gym, I’ve been pining away for a place filled with 5 year-olds with look-at-me-mommy angst, ready to lob boogers at the first adult who pooh poohed our fun.

I think I have found my niche at “Sadly, No!”.

And such a pretty little niche it is, too.

So, when do we impersonate, and lob boogers at Glenn Reynolds? Just you wait.

I have this AWESOME Glenn and Helen podcast at the ready — you’ll just plotz.

Cheers,
Victoria

I’m impersonating the impostor. Let the postmodernism begin!

Jeez, when it rains it purs. Ann Altmouse is having a similar problem.

I am Ann Althouse.

That can’t really be a picture of her because it’s slanted to the right, whereas she eschews partisan bias, God bless her.

And the “stinky oinkers” dude also wrote, “If it’s “leftists” doing it, though, just thank heavens that they haven’t turned the country into Pol Pot’s Cambodia yet, and keep voting against them, or else they will do it. And then you won’t have any name at all. Just a number on a list of the disappeared.” Mocking Ann Althouse is merely step one of The Left’s dastardly plot! Thank heavens the Bush administration has asserted its right to listen to these dastards’ phone calls without a warrant and imprison them indefinitely without a trial or I’d be worried.

I dunno what all the fuss is about, but people think it’s a perversion when I get all dressed up in this sweet silky Ann Althouse.

The mocking shall continue until morale improves!

If I were alive, I’d start a sweeping revolution by going about the blogosphere impersonating Ann Althouse and exposing her for the maroon she is.

Teh left would scream Che Lives! as they relentlessly mocked the wingnuts until we had a Marxist Utopia.

It would be so much easier and more entertaining than all the guns and stuff.

This idea will only work if implemented by a secret, dedicated cadre, Comrade.

The stinky oinkers line comes from the one and only Kirby Olson. Regular readers of Bérubé’s blog will remember his getting banned by the proprietor back in October.

Shhh…….. watch for the red flag. May 1st, my place….. The mockery shall rise to an ocean’s mighty roar, and all teh stupid shall be washed away.

Che, what the hell are you doing here? I had your ass whacked in Bolivia back in ’67!

I’ve never seen a bog so full of right-deviationists before in my life!

My theory of American political center is *ahem*. My theory is that the American political center is veddy small at one end, much larger in the middle, then veddy small again at the other end.

This is my theory.

Which is mine.

*ahem*

Fidel, you worked for the CIA?

Come on, Che, you know the game. Sometimes you let the devil do God’s work. Learned that one from the Jesuits.

No hard feelings, eh? It was just business.

Wow, this thread took a strange turn…

Several, in fact….

mikey

You were always jealous that I was muy caliente, Fidel.

Ah, well, only the good die young, as they say. See you in a few, amigo.

Well, mikey, let’s raise a glass to the new revolution….

Mockery Lives!

I always have a hard time figuring out which hand to raise the glass in.

It’s a travesty to mock a dying communist dictator who may be on life support.

Someone alert Jeb Bush and let’s tail Terri Schiavo’s husband so he doesn’t skee daddle to Cuba and pull the plug.

It’s probably Richard, Thers or Terry C doing the namestealing.

If you want a blog to mock, Brad, mock Atrios’s lame blog. I swear the people who post over there make you all look positively smart.

Oh, tha hellz. I am not reading 227 comments about small talk. Just. Not. Gonna. Do. It.

Not even when a surprising number of them are from Che Guevara, Marq?

Traitorous fools, the ultra-cloaked commenter is none other than the man who did not exist. Until the day before yesterday.

The “Marq” who commented at 4:48 is a fake. I’m the real Marq, and I read every single comment.

Stop namestealing, Jillian, you fucking freak. Sheesh.

My theory of the Republican Right, ahem, is that it is a veddy small cheeto at one end, a veddy large number of wet churning cheetos in the middle, and a veddy medium number of crusty cheeturds at the other end.

I suppose you all think this is very funny.

See, this is why I stopped doing drugs.

When reality offers up a thread like this, who can tell the difference?

My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
My angel’s in the centrefold
Angel’s in the centrefold

I wrote this post and I can unwrite it too.

I’m having trouble pulling on this thread. It’s just not unraveling.

Weird. I guess I’ll have to just trust Altmouse and go from there.

Look at me, Anne, I’m in your bag of corn doodles! Whee!

I’m a huge fan of Althouse, been reading her since she started writing her blog almost ten years ago. (Full disclosure: I’m also a law professor at UW in Madison) I watch the goings-on and have to scratch my head. The people who hate her the most are all in their twenties and early thirties. There’s this awful suck-up named Brad R–his “writing” is sweaty with panting obsequious ambition–who keeps distorting everything Althouse writes–the only way this no-talent can get her. And I ask myself: why is it the young guys who go after Althouse? Must be because she writes the way young guys should be writing: angry, independent, not afraid of offending powerful people. They on the other hand write like aging careerists: timid, ingratiating, careful not to offend people who are powerful. They hate her because they want to write like her but can’t. Maybe if they’d let themselves go and write truthfully, they’d get Glenn Reynolds to notice them too.

Come out and play in the real world? 🙂

I can’t possibly read all the comments in this thread, so I’ll just content myself with saying, She-Hulk never did anything for me. The Kirby rendered Crystal from the 1960s, though… hubba hubba. And the Colan Black Widow… mmmm MWA. Black Canary and Zatanna are pretty hot, too… I think it’s the fishnets. But She-Hulk is just scary.

I’m going to assume, though, that if a fanboy likes She-Hulk, then the thought of a threesome with She-Hulk and Thundra will be just that much more massively muscular mammary goodness.

Anonymous, preceding me, seems to have left an italics code open, or something. Anyway, I didn’t italicize my post above, or this one, if it ends up that way. Thanks.

Mulholland Drive! Let’s talk about that on Saturday. Would love to hear what you think about that. XO

There’s something distinctly partisan about Sprezzatura, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Hmm…

Could be worse, Ann Althouse could have marched into someone’s place of business and physically threatened a certain hilarious gay librarian.

She takes herself way too seriously.

About the superhero ladies, though, when I was in high school I had a supercrush on Shadowcat. She had a pretty damn cool power and hung out with superheroes that played in bands and stuff.

As for beer, my comment earlier stands. Rogue brewery is good stuff and freaking everywhere. I prefer Dead Guy to Arrogant Bastard because the label on the bottle glows in the dark.

atrios is teh r0xx0r.

but he never pays any attention to me.

PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!

Yes Chuckles I will destroy you, you nefarious, elite leftist!!! YOUR TIGER-CRANE IS NO MATCH FOR MY BOW-TIE STYLE!

Oh, yes, and Mt. Shasta Brewing Company’s pale ale is da bomb diggity.

Imagine having dinner with Ann, Tucker and Chuckles. AG would empty her bank account to be at that table.

And Spez, if A.A. could actually write, your comments might mean something. The fact that she cannot and has the lowest self esteem possible especially for a lawyer makes her all the more trite and sad. If you don’t believe me watch her video from CNN on election night. She has to take a video close-up of her name! Come on. Annie has flights of fancy about her writing, her self esteem and whether anyone truly cares about her. UW made a mistake when they hired you and her.

Um, AG, you may want to read this. I’m not actually a law professsor at UW.

Anyway, as I was saying: Althouse is brave, brilliant, and wittier than Gavin will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep.

BAAAAA, MUTHERFUCKER!!! BAAAA!!!!

Sprezzomezzo is bringing it!

I’ll get you all. In the end.

Chuckles,

We’re probably of different generations. The generation that near-immediately followed mine in superhero geekdom almost universally lusted after Ms. Pryde, and since Whedon brought her back a few years ago as a grown up, I can appreciate their appreciation for her. When she was a twerp with a fucking dragon whom Wolverine referred to as ‘punkin’, though, I couldn’t stand her. Of course, I wasn’t buying the X-books by then, either, and wouldn’t be until Mr. Buffy came along decades down the line.

For your generation, most of the big imaginary lust objects were drawn by either John Byrne or Art Adams, and since your generation, the boykids are all slobbering after manga-chicks. In my generation, we liked our sex objects by Kirby, Colan, Kane, and Wood (I probably should have mentioned Wally Wood’s splendiferous Karen Page, although all the shine came off that apple when David Mazzuchelli and Frank Miller reimagined her as an anorexic junkie ho in BORN AGAIN).

Oh, and my other major lust objects in the 70s were any characters drawn by Dave Cockrum for SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES. His female Legionnaires were simply sizzlin’ pieces of eye candy, and his Lana Lang still makes Kristin Kruek look dowdy.

Er… any female characters drawn by Dave Cockrum. Sorry. I really didn’t get into his Bouncing Boy or his Timber Wolf much.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Sprezzatura said,

I’m a huge fan of Althouse, been reading her since she started writing her blog almost ten years ago. (Full disclosure: I’m also a law professor at UW in Madison

COBAG!!!

That Althouse should show up to complain in a thread about small talk is delicious.

I’m Lon Chaney Sr., and I approve this message.

I am a Revolution Health employee and am enthused that there are folks who are immediately latching on to the big idea that we’re trying to put together. We are definitely looking for feedback and realize (as you mention) that much of the power is propor WBR LeoP

you reak what you sow! if they dig lightly and i mean lightly theyll probably find that same physician prescribed his fav-RITE drug also with the physician name on the bottle. that alone should give the judge all the reason to prosecute. WBR LeoP

Very nice site!