http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Milky-abilia: the archaeological dig
Everybody knew that Milky the Clown was in the dairy business. I suppose it could have been worse, but what do we really know about these Twin Pines guys (posing here with His Milks himself)? The girl is sweet enough, and her pleated skirt reads, "Mary Lou". Pierre (with a giant TP on his turtleneck, presumably for Twin Pines) is wielding what looks like an enormous loaf of French bread (but at least he's not wearing a beret). The friendly milkman is just that - the friendly milkman, the same kind of milkman I knew as a child with his glass bottles clinking away. Except that when I was a kid, the milk was delivered by horse and wagon.
Amazingly, these little hand-held games can still be had on eBay. It's sort of like a maze where you have to get little balls in the holes. They were given out as prizes on Milky's Party Time, in which they had a feature called Stars of the Future (baton-twirling, juggling, etc.) This was as forerunner of America's Got Talent.
Closeup view.
Milky on a (milk) glass. Looks plastic, but they didn't really have plastic glasses back then. Cheers!
Milky's Fan Club official button. I never was a member, not much of a joiner.
Yes, you're seeing this right. It's a Milky the Clown ashtray. The little beggars had already seen Fred and Wilma Flintstone sucking on Winstons, so what harm could it do?
Then again, maybe it's a hoax, like my Scully and Mulder fridge magnet in the shape of a flower.
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
Friday, April 12, 2013
SMACKDOWN: Battle of the Creepy Clowns!
OK, I KNOW I post too many gifs. I'm of an older generation that still thinks they're Magic, and besides, I've learned how to make my own from YouTube snippets. And I'm bored and it's Friday and so what. If you don't like these, and you probably don't, don't look at them. Though my view count is at an all-time low, I am not the kind of social media prostitute that froths up business by wagging her ass. There, I've said. it.
This is Krinkles the Klown shilling for some cereal. Maybe he had aspirations beyond prancing around in a polka-dotted suit and wearing a doghouse on his head. He is plenty creepy and his makeup is classic clown, but the problem is, besides breaking through a big piece of paper, he doesn't DO much.
Milky, now. He was the bane of my childhood and star of his own show, Milky's Party Time. Like Krinkles, he was flogging a corporation, Twin Pines Dairy. Only one rare clip survives, showing him pulling a large object like a tumor out of Little Nancy's face. Then he seems to shove it back into her face again, which I like. The clip is from some benefit for "crippled children", which is why poor Nancy must stand there on crutches for twenty minutes or so instead of sitting down comfortably. Milky looks like some ghastly vision of Pagliaccio, ready to slay his rival with a butcher knife. His costume has always reminded me, most disturbingly, of the KKK.
Like I said, Krinkles mainly just sits there and talks. He talks about how the cereal makes him "krinkle". I wonder if he is some strange forerunner of Krusty on The Simpsons. And there's that damned ruffle again.
I just noticed this (after 50 years): what's that on his head? A funnel with a sort of handle on it, I guess.
This is where it gets WAY weird, the thing with the sausages. He keeps rummaging around in his pants for some reason. When you look at some of the body language (i. e. his face getting closer and closer to the sausage, which is provocatively curved), you can see this is something that would not be considered appropriate today. And boy, is Nancy getting tired! It must hurt under her arms. And let's hope Milky's breath isn't too bad. Circus performers are notorious for their booze-and-tobacco fumes.
Ah, the taste test! How many takes did it require? He may have chewed his way through a few boxes of that stuff. But wait! Can you really SEE the spoon? Is he (like Milky) a genius at sleight-of-hand and thus able to ram the spoon into his clowny white face with no cereal on it? If so, unlike Milky, he wouldn't have to put anything in his mouth at all.
Would you want this clown pulling sausages out of your child's ear? You can sit down now, Nancy.
POST-POST: In my haste to present these macabre magicians in all their frightening glory, I forgot the most important thing.
WHO WON??
Which clown was the vilest, the scariest, the most sinister? Who pulled the most incomprehensible pranks on poor unsuspecting children?
I didn't even need to count your votes.
I give you. . . The Victor.
I have put together this merry montage to express my personal feelings about Milky. Now for a few candid shots. . .
Milky enjoys the finer things.
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
Big Bang, little fizzle
I have completely lost the text to this. What a horrible feeling. It just. . . went away. What I was GOING to say is that this reminds me of some bizarre experiment on The Big Bang Theory. We have contests at our house about the theme song: how fast you can sing it, word-perfect. So, sigh, here are the words:
Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started - wait -
The earth began to cool, the autotrophes began to drool
Neanderthals developed tools, we built a wall
(We built the pyramids!)
Math, science, history
Unravelling the mystery
That all started with a big bang
BANG!!!
I get stuck on "developed" (invented?) and "unravelling" (examining?). Who cares anyway? There's no prize.
It's Friday and I lost my text and hardly anyone reads this shit anyway, so why don't I just quit?
P. S. this only gets interesting around 1:27. Before that it's all setup.
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
Thursday, April 11, 2013
It's Physics Time!
Remember that kids' game Mouse Trap? The one you wanted so badly you thought you would die of unfulfilled yearning, but never got for Christmas because it was too expensive and "besides, you'd just get tired of it anyway"? And then you went over to your friend's house on Christmas day (the friend who had an Easy Bake Oven which YOU never had, and a Chatty Cathy doll which YOU never had, and Mattell's Creepy Crawlers which YOU never had) and she HAD Mouse Trap and you PLAYED Mouse Trap and it really was - it was - it was a piece of shit! The whatchamacallit always got stuck and wouldn't go all the way through, I mean the trap never went down on top of the mouse, and besides the whatchamacallit was really crummy, it only took 2 seconds and was nothing like the ad on TV.
This is much nicer, even if I think it's running at the wrong speed. Let us, right now this minute, praise Physics, noble Physics, for giving us these few seconds of entertainment/enlightenment, even if we don't know who Goldberg is. (Newton is that centaur on Hercules who always says everything twice: "Herc! Come rescue Helena! Herc! Come rescue Helena!")
EWWWWWWWW!
Halle Berry's pregnancy: it's a surprise to me, too!
Halle Berry
Splash News
The actress, 46, revealed that she was expecting her second child last week and confessed that it was "the biggest surprise" of her life.
The baby will be the first for
Speaking to CNN, she said: "I feel fantastic. This has been the biggest surprise of my life to tell you the truth.
"I thought I was kind of past the point where this could be a reality for me. So it's been a big surprise and the most wonderful."
OK THEN. It seems to me that we have what is often called a "disconnect", a "remove", if not a downright conflict between what is being spouted on eTalk Daily and Entertainment Tonight, and the reality that most women face.
Everyone knows that Halle Berry is supernaturally beautiful, and there is no doubt she'll have a scar-less caesarian because she's too posh to push (and won't get any stretch marks, either). But this "biggest surprise of my life" (i. e. like the Virgin Mary, she just can't imagine how this ever happened!) smacks of the kind of insincerity, deception and downright lying that abounds in Hollywood.
This would be nothing but an annoyance and a great topic for discussion around the water cooler (even though water coolers haven't existed since 1959 - nor little pointed Dixie cups, either) were it not for the fact that Halle's lie/exaggeration/stretching of the truth might be downright dangerous for a lot of women.
When I went to research this subject, I encountered a World War III of conflicting views, most of them presented as "medical fact``. In some articles, any obstacle to conception after 40 (or 45, or 50, or - ) was shot down with all sorts of arabesques, twists and turns of logic. Statistics on in vitro fertilization and miscarriage and all those conceptual things seemed wildly inflated to support the writer`s point of view,
Then I'd discover another site (with a completely different set of statistics) warning women in mid-life not to get their hopes up, or at least to proceed with extreme caution.
The truth of it is, women who conceive in their 40s are most likely "going through menopause", one of the murkiest medical terms ever invented. What DOES it mean? That you've had your first hot flash? What if you are one of those rare but fortunate women who doesn't have any "symptoms" at all (as if menopause were a disease, which is sort of like calling male ejaculation a disease)? Are you "going through it" if nobody knows about it (even you), if you're still fertile and having periods, if you're -
And what exactly constitutes being "in menopause" or "menopausal"? It means having gone one full year without a menstrual period. Thus the whole process is only understood backwards, so that if you have a period again after three, six, nine or eleven months, you must push the clock back to zero and start again.
It means things are definitely winding down, if not completely stopped, and to plunk a ripe egg into that particular body kind of goes against nature, not that we care about nature any more.
Never mind going against nature: the truth is, conceiving naturally in your mid-40s is a pretty far-fetched possibility. According to one source (the magic 8-ball I keep in my office), there's a less-than-1% chance.
Right. Among the articles I found cautioning women who believe Halle Berry just woke up one day and found a baby in the pumpkin patch, this one made the most sense to me, though it certainly doesn't cover everything.
The majority of Canadian men and women are so uninformed about their own fertility they could wind up childless, according to a new poll from the University of British Columbia.
More than 90 per cent of respondents in the National Fertility Awareness survey incorrectly believed or were uncertain whether in vitro fertilization could help a woman have a baby with her own eggs right until she hits menopause.
In reality, less than two per cent of IVF procedures are successful for women in their mid-late 40s using their own eggs.
“The concerning part is more people are ending up childless by default, because when they delay and they get to the point where they start to pursue treatment, treatment can’t compensate for age-related declines,” Daniluk said.
“We don’t want you to get blindsided.”
Only 51 per cent of women and 66 per cent of men surveyed understood that a woman’s eggs are as old as she is, and just 41 per cent of men and 43 per cent of women realized that a man’s age is also an important factor in a couple’s chances of becoming pregnant.
“There’s starting to become some evidence that men who are fathering children into their late 40s and 50s and 60s, that those kids have higher incidents of learning disabilities, autism, potential schizophrenia, some forms of cancer,” Daniluk said.
Another major misconception was that overall health and fitness levels are better indicators of fertility than age. Wrong again, Daniluk said.
The mistaken beliefs probably have a lot to do with Hollywood, she added, where healthy-looking stars are frequently seen sporting baby bumps well into their 40s. Daniluk said what the public doesn’t realize is that many of them are likely using the eggs of a much younger woman.
Whatever the cause, this misinformation appears to be having real-world impacts on families’ choices; according to Statistics Canada, the average age of women giving birth to their first child has risen from 25-29 in 1991 all the way to 30-34 today.
And though in vitro fertilization can be an effective tool for older women who froze their eggs at a younger age or are willing to use donor eggs, many people are also unaware of how costly it can be – which, even in Canada, ranges from around $8,000 to $12,000.
‘Many women believed that it was under $5,000,” Daniluk said. “There are an awful lot of people who can’t afford reproductive technologies like IVF. It’s only those who are economically advantaged who can even pursue those treatments.”
More than 90 per cent of respondents in the National Fertility Awareness survey incorrectly believed or were uncertain whether in vitro fertilization could help a woman have a baby with her own eggs right until she hits menopause.
In reality, less than two per cent of IVF procedures are successful for women in their mid-late 40s using their own eggs.
“We don’t want you to get blindsided.”
Only 51 per cent of women and 66 per cent of men surveyed understood that a woman’s eggs are as old as she is, and just 41 per cent of men and 43 per cent of women realized that a man’s age is also an important factor in a couple’s chances of becoming pregnant.
“There’s starting to become some evidence that men who are fathering children into their late 40s and 50s and 60s, that those kids have higher incidents of learning disabilities, autism, potential schizophrenia, some forms of cancer,” Daniluk said.
Another major misconception was that overall health and fitness levels are better indicators of fertility than age. Wrong again, Daniluk said.
The mistaken beliefs probably have a lot to do with Hollywood, she added, where healthy-looking stars are frequently seen sporting baby bumps well into their 40s. Daniluk said what the public doesn’t realize is that many of them are likely using the eggs of a much younger woman.
Whatever the cause, this misinformation appears to be having real-world impacts on families’ choices; according to Statistics Canada, the average age of women giving birth to their first child has risen from 25-29 in 1991 all the way to 30-34 today.
And though in vitro fertilization can be an effective tool for older women who froze their eggs at a younger age or are willing to use donor eggs, many people are also unaware of how costly it can be – which, even in Canada, ranges from around $8,000 to $12,000.
‘Many women believed that it was under $5,000,” Daniluk said. “There are an awful lot of people who can’t afford reproductive technologies like IVF. It’s only those who are economically advantaged who can even pursue those treatments.”
There are lots of other issues: Down Syndrome leaps into my mind (though perhaps with early screening, these potentially-disabled babies are now routinely being aborted). The fact that when Mom attends her daughter's graduation, she could be a senior citizen collecting a pension. Even when the kid is in kindergarten, she might be well into her 50s, the age of a lot of grandmothers (i. e., me).
When you think about it, humans were originally designed to reproduce when they were, oh, maybe thirteen years old. I`m not recommending turning back the clock that far: but advancing the age of childbirth by 35 years does seem just a little extreme.
No one looks into the future, no one plans. No one even thinks they are mortal any more. A middle-aged man is almost expected to go on fathering children, especially after he has shed his dreary, middle-aged starter wife and proceeded to the 25-year-old Trophy. Yet now we learn - big surprise - that MEN may have something to do with disease and disability in children! What a concept!
Why didn't we know about this before? Because no one bothered to look. The whole idea was too preposterous even to entertain. If a couple couldn't have kids, the wife was "barren", stigmatized, and relegated to the status of a kind of married old maid.
Oh the myths, the myths, most of them propagated by all these gorgeous stars who come on talk shows with their bellies proceding them. Since when did it become chic to have children? When I had my kids in the '70s, it was during the first wave of feminism. You were fully expected to plunk them down in a day care centre at the age of two weeks, go to your (routine, low-paying, generally unfulfilling) job and never see them again until they graduated and left home.
I even remember a magazine article, published on Mother's Day, which had a huge nasty-looking headline in red lettering that said MOTHER'S DAY IS OVER!. The piece could not have been more vindictive and negative about motherhood and basically claimed it sucked a woman dry and spit out the bones. There was not one positive statement in this article, yet no one questioned it. There were no letters complaining about it. Motherhood destroyed women and was completely thankless and designed to annihilate a woman`s soul. End of story.
I was so emotionally vulnerable then that the article actually made me feel guilty. Apparently, in loving my kids as extravagantly as I did and delighting in all their stages, I was breaking some kind of invisible law. First thing in the morning, I heard the thundering of feet on stairs and wailing kids as everyone trooped off to their jobs. Most of the time I was the only adult left in the apartment building all day. (As for going around with my bare or barely-covered belly sticking out like a prize ham, I would not have dreamed of it. Maternity tops were flowered tents with puffy little sleeves, tied in the back with a bow.)
Now we have done a royal flip-flop. We`re all more influenced by celebrities than we realize, so on one level or another, we think (monkeylike) we can do as they do and have the same results. Never mind that we don`t rake in a few million dollars a picture and thus can afford fifteen in vitro treatments, using someone else`s pristine young donor eggs. Never mind that we don't screen the results, as these stars invariably do, weeding out Down Syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities (just think: how many stars do you know with Down babies?)
In my exhaustive (or exhausting - God, I`m glad to be out of all this) research for this post, I discovered some pretty amazing myths about conception, such as: "a woman can`t conceive unless she has an orgasm during intercourse". Whew. In a way, that`s good. Maybe her husband will take a little more time to get his wife there, whether she conceives or not. And that can only be a good thing.
But just wait until the little devil comes along and screams to be fed every half-hour. Her days of having orgasms might just be over.
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Oscar Levant: and so, good night
Go gentle (unfinished)
If I should see you on a flickering screen
And hear you set your instrument on fire,
I want to reach into your silver time
And show you all my cockeyed, strange desire.
To love a man who’s gone into the mere
Who leaked away in 1972
It’s stranger than
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Best photo of Oscar Levant EVER
Taken by Richard Avedon, shortly before Levant's death at 65. It's all there in the face. The craggy survivor: stepped-on, grimly resolute, sweet-eyed as a child, and yet with the tinge of desperation. People didn't give up on him. I don't know personally if I could have stood being around him, but then you never know: depends on whether there was a piano in the room.
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
Little sexpot (or: the smooch and snuggle)
It’s not that she wasn’t
grateful. When you don’t get to go anywhere on a Saturday night because
everyone thinks you’re a loser and full of shit, you should be grateful for any
kind of social contact at all.
Or so her siblings
thought. Her sister Noreen was thirteen years older than she was, and obviously
Mum and Dad were going to trust her with her little sister's wellbeing. Besides, it was good
for her to “get out”, much better than hiding in her room crying like she always
did.
Her older brother Don had lots of friends too, and their wives came along, but
that didn’t stop the “goings-on” that were considered to be all part of the
fun. She noticed the minute she stepped into the babble and funk of these
parties that she was the mascot, younger than anyone else by ten years or more. Was she game? A target? Who knew, but what she did know was that she was supposed to be grateful.
There was an obnoxious creep called Shivas, but after a while she figured out that it wasn’t his real
name, that it came from his habit of making a certain drink called a Shivas
Special. Chivas Regal and one ice cube. Another was Tang crystals dissolved in
vodka.
They were all quite
interested in seeing how the mascot would react to having her glass filled and
refilled. After all, she was allowed wine at home. Lots of it. Her parents
didn’t frown on her drinking and even seemed to think it was “good for her”.
Her brother and sister waved the banner of booze at every opportunity,
insisting it was an unalloyed good, even when they woke the next day vomiting
and ashen.
The party deteriorated
over time, got louder, with people bumping together and the smell of pot
wafting under door-cracks. Once she felt a hand, someone’s hand, didn’t know
whose. Then her brother’s best friend started smiling at her. She looked the
other way. Like the Ugly Duckling, she just didn’t believe it at first.
But then he sort of
beckoned with his eyes. Come upstairs with me. Upstairs?? His wife was
over in the corner flirting with her brother like they always did. Did she
dare to do this, could she sneak up with him and –
This is how it always
happened.
It happened because her
brother’s friend was a really good kisser. He knew the spots to touch. Her body
responded like flame, though she felt overpowering shame at her reaction. She
knew she wasn’t supposed to feel this way, to feel anything at all. But she also knew she had caused this, somehow. He managed to convey without words that he had always found her attractive and
not mousy or fat.
All she knew about sex
she had learned from books, the books stashed in her father’s bureau drawer
under his underwear and pajamas. When her parents were away at choir practice,
she took them out. They were very clinical and
did not deal with passion or pleasure, as if those sensations did not
belong in the field of sex.
But she knew about
erections, because he was pressing his against her body with force. Her heart
beginning to race, she wondered if she would be raped. She wondered if she
should fight back, break away. But the truth is, she loved the attention.
“Hey, you two!” a voice
came up the stairs. “Get down here, will you? Quit messing around.” It was a
woman’s voice, and at first she wondered if it was the man’s wife. When she came downstairs, stumbling a little,
she saw it was her brother’s girl friend, her makeup badly askew. The woman
grabbed her around the waist and squeezed: “Little Lolita,” she crooned. “Little
sexpot.”
The booze continued to
flow. Her sister held court in an astonishing display of vanity and narcissism,
“looking after” her little sister by ignoring her and handing her over to the
good graces of Shivas and his endless noxious drinks. People made less and less
sense. She felt more hands on her and didn’t know who they were.
She remembered trying to
tell her sister about what was happening to her at these parties, what was
being done to her. Done to her by married men with their wives in the next room
(or even the same room). Her older sister rolled her eyes a bit and
said, “I don’t know why you’re so upset! You don’t seem to have any friends
your own age. This way you can have a social outlet with the grownups.”
When she told her a
little bit about the seductions, she shook her head.
“Are they having sex with
you?” For one second, concern seemed to flicker in her eyes.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. You’re
exaggerating. I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little smooch
and a snuggle. Look, we’re trying to
include you and I really think you should be more grateful.”
Much later, she read
about something called Walpurgis Night, a sort of witch’s Sabbath with hideous
swarms of demonic figures that swept through communities leaving blackened wreckage in
their wake. But this was supposed to be an advantage for her, a social outlet!
How many 14-year-olds wouldn’t
give their right arm to be included in a group of adults with full-blown adult
privileges?
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She would go home after midnight , stagger into the bathroom and throw up all the
Chivas Regal. The next morning, pale as a spook, she would throw up again, with
her mother hearing her but saying nothing.
Her mother knew. She knew
everything. Wanted to be rid of this social liability, to hand her over. Keep
her happy. Later that day the family received a bouquet. She knew it was from
her brother’s friend, the one who had pinned and groped her. It couldn’t be anyone
else.
”Had a great time last night," the sloppily-written tag read. "See you next week."
It was not signed.
Incredibly, her parents did not ask who had sent it, but put the pink roses in
a vase on the table.
Twenty years later, the family was absolutely horrified to learn that Little Sister had joined AA. It was a total disgrace to the family, who had never had problems like that and never would. It was obviously an act of hostility on her part. They could never understand why she wasn't more grateful for all they had done for her. When she began to see a therapist, it was even worse, for that implied that the family was crazy. Then they decided that SHE was the one who was crazy, and the matter was closed.
Post-script. Some years later my sister's lover, the one who liked to send me roses and take me to the movies, lost his job and all his money and (finally) his wife, and
shot himself in the head. I suppose these things never end well. For me, they
never end at all.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
"Just a nut case with a gun": the tragedy of Matthew Warren
Something has been rumbling underground - you can't say it's in the air, because it doesn't live there, but down under, in the murky land of social stigma.
Every so often it dives to the surface. When that happens, society is ill-equipped to deal with it or even talk about it at all.
I came across this tidbit of news on Facebook (which I almost never look at):
LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Popular evangelical Pastor Rick Warren asked members of his Southern California church for prayers as he and his family coped with the apparent suicide of his 27-year-old son.
The church said on Saturday that Matthew Warren took his own life at his Mission Viejo home.
Matthew Warren struggled with mental illness, deep depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life, Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement, after his body was found Friday night.
"Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life," the church said.
Allison O'Neal, a supervising deputy coroner for Orange County, declined to release the cause and manner of death pending an autopsy of the young man.
Rick Warren, the author of the multimillion-selling book "The Purpose Driven Life," said in an email to church staff that he and his wife had enjoyed a fun Friday evening with their son. But their son then returned home to take his life in "a momentary wave of despair."
Over the years, Matthew Warren had been treated by America's best doctors, had received counselling and medication and been the recipient of numerous prayers from others, his father said.
"I'll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said 'Dad, I know I'm going to heaven. Why can't I just die and end this pain?'" Warren recalled.
Despite that, he said, his son lived for another decade, during which he often reached out to help others.
"You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man," Warren wrote. "He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He'd then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them."
This article brings up so much stuff for me, so many "issues" (as those chunks of living gore are so euphemistically called) that I don't know where to start. What jumps into my head first is the irony: this pastor who wrote a wildfire bestseller on how to live a meaningful life had a son so driven by despair that he simply could not go on with his own life and had to end it.
Another thing is the rather elaborate, detailed explanation of Matthew Warren's exhaustive (and no doubt exhausting) medical treatments over the years, how he had tried everything,and how in the end "even prayer" (the panacea for fundamentalists) didn't work.
Why does this cause that squirmy twinge in the pit of my stomach?
Compounding the shock and horror of this unimagineable tragedy is a sad public pressure to "explain". If he had died of a heart attack or an accident, I don't think there would have been any need for all these elaborate verbal back-flips. He was sick, yes - but he couldn't help it! He tried everything, even prayer! So it could not have been his "fault", it could not have been personal weakness or a spiritual taint.
I see "mental illness" (a term I loathe - I'll explain that later) as an issue that's slowly coming out of the closet, but unfortunately it only seems to show itself when someone commits a horrendous and very public suicide or shoots up a shopping mall or a primary school.
"Suffering from mental illness" - that's the tag. So it really isn't ALL his fault - well, maybe not - or maybe he went off his medication (a very bad decision on his part). In spite of all this faux compassion, the taint of judgement hangs around like a faint but noxious odor.
Never are we presented with an example of someone "living with", not "suffering from". Our society is big on suffering, but it was only recently we changed our vocabulary from "cancer victim" (almost universal 20 years ago) to "cancer survivor". And it took a lot of effort on the part of activists to wake people up.
Public attitudes towards mental illness are much more distorted and resistant to change. People's perceptions are tainted by a combination of pity and fear. Or terror. Only recently, Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, declared that before anyone was sold a gun in the U. S., they should have a thorough background check (so far, so good). Two groups should be eliminated immediately without question: convicted criminals and "the mentally ill".
I love that "the" part, a little three-letter wedge driven between those with this illness and the rest of humanity. But what scares the shit out of me is - no, several things do, actually. To automatically lump in the "mentally ill" with criminals makes me want to chew tinfoil because it hurts me less. They're all corralled in the same pen, it seems: wild-eyed, inherently violent, unable to control themselves, and deserving of a sort of wary contempt.
When something sticks out like a sore thumb, like a rusty nail, that's all we see. If I were bipolar and had not had an episode of any kind for 20 years, I could not (theoretically) buy a rifle for duck-hunting because I am "mentally ill" and therefore a bad risk for handling firearms, presumably for the rest of my life.
OK, I hate firearms on principle and would never think of buying one for any reasons, but is it fair that a person with a treatable medical condition should have the same kind of "background check" as a convicted criminal? How exactly do they DO this background check? What sort of private medical records would need to be invaded? Does anyone even think of the sense of personal violation this could create?
Oh, but if it saves even ONE child it's worth it, people say, using the kind of cockeyed logic that seems to rule this twisted culture.
Why not apply that rule to all the Charlton Heston-esque yahoos who keep a gun in every room of the house? Why not take THEIR guns away, in case somebody gets totally hammered one night and "loses control" (maybe deciding his ex-wife or her boy friend have inhabited the earth for long enough)? Isn't it worth it to confiscate all these potentially-deadly weapons, even if it only saves ONE child?
We might do background checks on criminals and perceived nut cases, but what about assholes, sons-of-bitches and nasty little men with a grudge? If we took even one step in that direction, they'd be waving signs claiming someone was violating their civil rights.
I once talked to a psychiatrist at a cocktail party who shocked me by saying, "The vast majority of my patients lead stable, productive lives if they are willing to participate in their own treatment."
The vast majority.
This is a silent, buried majority, obviously. I guess they're too busy going about their lives to jump up and down and scream about these things. When the sons of bestselling preachers who seem to have all the answers to life's dilemmas shoot themselves in the head, we notice. When a congresswoman is mowed down and permanently disabled, we mutter, "Mental illness".
Better maybe than cracked or whacked or all the other lovely synonyms we've come up with. But what does it mean to be "mentally ill"?
How can one be "ill" and "well" at the same time?
You can't. You're stuck in "ill". You're sick for life. You "suffer from", you don't "live with".
In other words, you're a victim.
As for the "mentally" part: I don't need to tell you that in a culture that worships the idea that we have total control over our lives (see Pastor Warren), being "mentally" out of the groove in any way at all is a sign of weakness, of passivity, of giving up. "Mentally" means "of the mind", and if it's "of the mind", it is voluntary, under our control, like bad habits or unwise decisions.
When the stigma is so buried in the nomenclature that no one even notices it, we have a problem. I see it as something more like diabetes. It can vary in severity, perhaps waxing and waning throughout life, but the one constant is that it needs to be monitored. But if it IS monitored, the person no longer "suffers from diabetes", but has learned to live with it, can live a long life, a productive life, with diabetes existing in the person's peripheral vision, not constantly staring them in the face.
Why isn't the culture even aware that an alternate vision of this disequilibrium (as I like to call it) exists? Because we like drama. We don't like shootings, but when there IS a shooting, we must quickly point a finger of blame at a subject that will make us all say, "Ohhhhhhhhhh." (One of "those".) There is even a degree of comfort in telling each other, "He suffered from mental illness." "Ohhhhhhhhhh." That explains it, doesn't it? Isn't that the way "those people" are? The solution, the thing that will "fix" it: let's get that legislation in place as quickly as possible so that NOBODY with "mental illness" can ever buy a gun.
If it violates their privacy and their civil rights, if it marginalizes them and makes them feel like gum on the bottom of somebody's shoe, hey, isn't it worth it if it saves just ONE child?
POST-POST: Since writing this piece, I've had a ton of other thoughts, but it's a mistake to try to fit them all into one piece.The church said on Saturday that Matthew Warren took his own life at his Mission Viejo home.
Matthew Warren struggled with mental illness, deep depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life, Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement, after his body was found Friday night.
"Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life," the church said.
Allison O'Neal, a supervising deputy coroner for Orange County, declined to release the cause and manner of death pending an autopsy of the young man.
Rick Warren, the author of the multimillion-selling book "The Purpose Driven Life," said in an email to church staff that he and his wife had enjoyed a fun Friday evening with their son. But their son then returned home to take his life in "a momentary wave of despair."
Over the years, Matthew Warren had been treated by America's best doctors, had received counselling and medication and been the recipient of numerous prayers from others, his father said.
"I'll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said 'Dad, I know I'm going to heaven. Why can't I just die and end this pain?'" Warren recalled.
Despite that, he said, his son lived for another decade, during which he often reached out to help others.
"You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man," Warren wrote. "He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He'd then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them."
This article brings up so much stuff for me, so many "issues" (as those chunks of living gore are so euphemistically called) that I don't know where to start. What jumps into my head first is the irony: this pastor who wrote a wildfire bestseller on how to live a meaningful life had a son so driven by despair that he simply could not go on with his own life and had to end it.
Another thing is the rather elaborate, detailed explanation of Matthew Warren's exhaustive (and no doubt exhausting) medical treatments over the years, how he had tried everything,and how in the end "even prayer" (the panacea for fundamentalists) didn't work.
Why does this cause that squirmy twinge in the pit of my stomach?
Compounding the shock and horror of this unimagineable tragedy is a sad public pressure to "explain". If he had died of a heart attack or an accident, I don't think there would have been any need for all these elaborate verbal back-flips. He was sick, yes - but he couldn't help it! He tried everything, even prayer! So it could not have been his "fault", it could not have been personal weakness or a spiritual taint.
I see "mental illness" (a term I loathe - I'll explain that later) as an issue that's slowly coming out of the closet, but unfortunately it only seems to show itself when someone commits a horrendous and very public suicide or shoots up a shopping mall or a primary school.
"Suffering from mental illness" - that's the tag. So it really isn't ALL his fault - well, maybe not - or maybe he went off his medication (a very bad decision on his part). In spite of all this faux compassion, the taint of judgement hangs around like a faint but noxious odor.
Never are we presented with an example of someone "living with", not "suffering from". Our society is big on suffering, but it was only recently we changed our vocabulary from "cancer victim" (almost universal 20 years ago) to "cancer survivor". And it took a lot of effort on the part of activists to wake people up.
Public attitudes towards mental illness are much more distorted and resistant to change. People's perceptions are tainted by a combination of pity and fear. Or terror. Only recently, Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, declared that before anyone was sold a gun in the U. S., they should have a thorough background check (so far, so good). Two groups should be eliminated immediately without question: convicted criminals and "the mentally ill".
I love that "the" part, a little three-letter wedge driven between those with this illness and the rest of humanity. But what scares the shit out of me is - no, several things do, actually. To automatically lump in the "mentally ill" with criminals makes me want to chew tinfoil because it hurts me less. They're all corralled in the same pen, it seems: wild-eyed, inherently violent, unable to control themselves, and deserving of a sort of wary contempt.
When something sticks out like a sore thumb, like a rusty nail, that's all we see. If I were bipolar and had not had an episode of any kind for 20 years, I could not (theoretically) buy a rifle for duck-hunting because I am "mentally ill" and therefore a bad risk for handling firearms, presumably for the rest of my life.
OK, I hate firearms on principle and would never think of buying one for any reasons, but is it fair that a person with a treatable medical condition should have the same kind of "background check" as a convicted criminal? How exactly do they DO this background check? What sort of private medical records would need to be invaded? Does anyone even think of the sense of personal violation this could create?
Oh, but if it saves even ONE child it's worth it, people say, using the kind of cockeyed logic that seems to rule this twisted culture.
Why not apply that rule to all the Charlton Heston-esque yahoos who keep a gun in every room of the house? Why not take THEIR guns away, in case somebody gets totally hammered one night and "loses control" (maybe deciding his ex-wife or her boy friend have inhabited the earth for long enough)? Isn't it worth it to confiscate all these potentially-deadly weapons, even if it only saves ONE child?
We might do background checks on criminals and perceived nut cases, but what about assholes, sons-of-bitches and nasty little men with a grudge? If we took even one step in that direction, they'd be waving signs claiming someone was violating their civil rights.
I once talked to a psychiatrist at a cocktail party who shocked me by saying, "The vast majority of my patients lead stable, productive lives if they are willing to participate in their own treatment."
The vast majority.
This is a silent, buried majority, obviously. I guess they're too busy going about their lives to jump up and down and scream about these things. When the sons of bestselling preachers who seem to have all the answers to life's dilemmas shoot themselves in the head, we notice. When a congresswoman is mowed down and permanently disabled, we mutter, "Mental illness".
Better maybe than cracked or whacked or all the other lovely synonyms we've come up with. But what does it mean to be "mentally ill"?
How can one be "ill" and "well" at the same time?
You can't. You're stuck in "ill". You're sick for life. You "suffer from", you don't "live with".
In other words, you're a victim.
As for the "mentally" part: I don't need to tell you that in a culture that worships the idea that we have total control over our lives (see Pastor Warren), being "mentally" out of the groove in any way at all is a sign of weakness, of passivity, of giving up. "Mentally" means "of the mind", and if it's "of the mind", it is voluntary, under our control, like bad habits or unwise decisions.
When the stigma is so buried in the nomenclature that no one even notices it, we have a problem. I see it as something more like diabetes. It can vary in severity, perhaps waxing and waning throughout life, but the one constant is that it needs to be monitored. But if it IS monitored, the person no longer "suffers from diabetes", but has learned to live with it, can live a long life, a productive life, with diabetes existing in the person's peripheral vision, not constantly staring them in the face.
Why isn't the culture even aware that an alternate vision of this disequilibrium (as I like to call it) exists? Because we like drama. We don't like shootings, but when there IS a shooting, we must quickly point a finger of blame at a subject that will make us all say, "Ohhhhhhhhhh." (One of "those".) There is even a degree of comfort in telling each other, "He suffered from mental illness." "Ohhhhhhhhhh." That explains it, doesn't it? Isn't that the way "those people" are? The solution, the thing that will "fix" it: let's get that legislation in place as quickly as possible so that NOBODY with "mental illness" can ever buy a gun.
If it violates their privacy and their civil rights, if it marginalizes them and makes them feel like gum on the bottom of somebody's shoe, hey, isn't it worth it if it saves just ONE child?
What hit me just now - while tacking away at my antique keyboard - is WHY the stigma is so damaging. When you're stigmatized, that is, if you have a stigmatizing condition, you may be driven to pretend you don't have it, or to deny it even to yourself. This leaves you much more vulnerable to your illness (if in fact you're feeling ill: I DO believe in the mentally well, and will insist on believing it for the rest of my life!). If you feel stigmatized, you might not want to take "those pills" that you're invariably supposed to take. The pills remind you of the stigma. That leads to another stigma, of course: "Oh, she went off her medication." The most insidious form of stigma, or denial perhaps, is feeling so well that you are sure the illness has gone away forever. Society LOVES this attitude because it implies "triumphing", "vanquishing" and all those bullshit terms that mean absolutely nothing ("victory" being the worst, with its warlike/Christian fundamentalist taint). Living with something that lasts a lifetime makes a great many people profoundly uncomfortable.
GALLERY. Maybe this is yet another form of stigma, or one of those clunky, heavy-handed attempts to "banish" it that only serve to underline it. But when I was compiling images for this post (all of them taken by me in my back yard with my 1923 Brownie box camera), I kept coming across celebrities grinning away. Then I realized: oops, this is the category of "celebrities with mental illness"! This is either supposed to make sufferers feel better (if, in fact, they are suffering), or to make us all less uncomfortable about nut cases, since SOME nut cases seem to become famous! Famous is the ultimate goal in our society, better even than being rich, so if you're famous AND mentally ill, whoo boy, it must be OK to be mentally ill, or at least not horrible!
I liked this shot of Dick Cavett grinning away. He has been open about his bouts of depression and (I think) bipolar, though I think he was only manic once (which is, believe it or not, relatively common). I like it because he's 70-something, still has good cheekbones and that Nebraskan resonant voice, and looks happy.
I couldn't really find a good shot of Carrie Fisher, because she seems to have erased herself with plastic surgery and no longer looks like herself. But she has surely had her innings with bipolar (I refuse to tack "disorder" on it - why do I need to?), and come out the other side more than once. She's a veteran, and besides I like this hair style.
I did a whole post on Stephen Fry ages ago, a poem actually. He is monumental: it's that Easter Island face of his. Like some of his confreres, he has been open about his experiences with depression. The only thing that bothers me about all this is: when a celebrity comes out like this, they are forever "branded". "Oh, didn't he have shock treatments a couple of years ago?" If you don't give a fuck, however, I heartily approve.
Patty Duke had a hard go of it from the start, but has come through it all. I like the warmth in her face and the LACK of self-erasure (rare in Hollywood and making her a target of unkind remarks). I purposely featured only older people here because they have the stuff, obviously. Brittney Spears: come back in 20 years.
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
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