Why I HATE "mental health"

I hate buzzwords and fads, and they exist in every single area of human endeavour. The one I hear repeatedly now is "mental health". But what does it mean? Scratch a little deeper, and it usually refers to a celebrity or public figure "admitting" he or she experienced depression, but always in the deep past, at a safe distance.

Anxiety is big these days - it always has been - but it's just what folks get when things are this bad, hard-wired into our brain evolution. But what about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and - the big, bad boogeyman of "mental health" - PSYCHOSIS?

One day I tried to count the number of times I heard or read terms meaning "crazy", and I stopped after fifteen. It includes nut case, whack job, cracked, batshit crazy, psycho, and on and on (I don't even need to tell you, do I?), with facilities to house these undesirables called the nut house, the booby hatch, the funny farm, the whatever. 

Want to know what Merriam-Webster's dictionary has to say? I've copied and pasted all the synonyms, verbatim. Buckle in.

Insane

as in psychotic

having or showing a very abnormal or sick state of mind 

"only an insane person would intentionally jump off a skyscraper"

Synonyms & Similar Words

psychotic 

lunatic
mad
nuts
crazy
maniacal
maniac
mental
gaga
paranoid
crazed
psycho
paranoidal
deranged
looney
whacky
disturbed
demented
strange
irrational
unhinged
loony
whacko
nutty
unbalanced
cuckoo
wacko
screwy
eccentric
certifiable
wacky
ballistic
batty
bonkers
cracked
bedlam
daft
unreasonable
around the bend

haywire
kooky
foolish
odd
barmy
depressed
daffy
loony tunes
obsessed
crackbrained
bughouse
meshuga
out to lunch
moonstruck
loco
crackpot
unsound
scatty
non compos mentis
brainsick
kookie
hysteric
bats
meshuggah
frantic
looney tunes
distraught
meshugah
hysterical
distracted
schizophrenic
balmy
meshugge
delusional
fruity
off
wud
paranoic
neurotic
delirious
cranky
loopy
fey
sociopathic
schizoid
out of one's mind
off one's rocker
obsessive-compulsive
paranoiac
delusionary
off one's gourd
crackers
queer
disordered
off one's head
oddball

aberrant
tetched
out of one's head
nuclear
touched
dotty
berserk
witless
pixillated
pixilated
amuck
raving
senseless
monomaniacal
frenzied
potty
teched
ape
amok
wigged-out
monomaniac
fixated
bananas

These nasty epithets have INCREASED in the past couple of years, and I sense that public contempt for "crazies" has grown exponentially. At the same time, every day and in every way, we hear the term bandied about: mental health, mental health, mental health. I suspect there is considerable schadenfreude involved, in that people love to watch other people's crises. It's a great spectator sport. And it's almost (but not quite) a badge of honour now for a celebrity to take a little break from their multi-billion-dollar career to "work on their mental health".

But they don't know what they are talking about. 

These people who so delicately refer to "mental health" know nothing at all of the real deal, how it can be life-threatening, and how it can take every fibre of your being to put your life back together after an "episode". The confusion and the lurching moods, the endless trials on medications that seem to make matters worse - but this is only part of the story.

I don't know how many times I've been in psychiatric wards, because I don't remember those horrendous passages in my life very well, nor do I wish to. But there were no cards, no flowers, and most definitely, no visitors. Who would want to go in there? Or did they just assume someone in that state did not want or require visitors? The people around me just pretended it hadn't happened, or told people I was "away".

No doubt if I'd had my tonsils out, it would have been a different story. But it's obvious that something as horrendous as a  tonsillectomy would require sweet gifts and cards and visits, whereas that other thing - well - 

I remember sitting in a women's group in which we were encouraged to "share" some particularly vulnerable experiences in our lives. I made the huge mistake of saying I had recently been in the hospital, and as I talked, I noticed the woman sitting next to me was acting as if she had suddenly developed an all-over body rash. Then she said, "I'm sorry", got up from the chair and moved away from me. She apologized profusely, saying "I'm sorry, I just can't hear stories about the psycho ward." No one objected, and the group went on talking, though the temperature of the room had dipped slightly.

I've heard people blow off "psychos" with such utter contempt that I have been tempted to grab them by the collar and say, "Look into my eyes. You are talking about ME." Not only that, it might be YOUR closest, dearest loved one, or even YOURSELF who may be next to bear that label of utter disgrace and contempt. 

There is no disgrace in a condition which has been part of humanity forever, and which is poorly-understood at best, even by professionals. Why people are now pretending so hard to understand it, or at least pretend to be more compassionate about it, is beyond me. I guess it's better than nothing - but not much. Maybe it's just an updated version of "thoughts and prayers", 

I say fuck the genteel, sanitized label of "mental health", particularly to display how compassionate and enlightened you are, and instead STOP referring to whack jobs and nut bars and try to see human beings as human beings. Is that such a tall order?

AAAAAND, just for reference, here are the ANTONYMS of "insane" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

sane

reasonable

sound

balanced

rational

clear

normal

wise

sensible

lucid

uncrazy

judicious

compos mentis

healthy

well-adjusted

unneurotic

Doesn't quite match up. Does it?

POST-BLOG THOUGHTS. I wrote this post several years ago, and if anything, it's even more true now. I believe you can still order "mental patient costumes" online for Halloween, and in my very own neighborhood, I've seen lawn decorations that said things like "DANGER! ESCAPED MENTAL PATIENT" (or looney or whack job or whatever the epithet of the day is). "The Mentally Ill" (a separate species, apparently) are still the stuff of horror, violence, and dread. The more extreme depictions in pop culture are virtually indistinguishable from that other favorite cultural icon, the zombie.

That means I'd better join the club, or grab a club or something, and start stalking the neighborhood. But I will ONLY pursue people who spew the meaningless term "mental health" left, right and centre - because everyone else is saying it now. It's just the thing to say.

The Troll Doll Channel: GRIM REAPER and COOL SKATER!

These two represent the alpha and omega of trollhood. As Bob Dylan puts it: "I sleep with life and death in the same bed." 

🤡CARNIVAL FROM HELL😲 (badly-damaged film)

This was one of the worst-damaged pieces of film I've ever seen. How I love the sparkling surrealism, the sense of bombs going off every few seconds, with a glimpse of "normalcy" in the background. Kind of reminds me of these times. 

🌞GOOSE ON THE LOOSE: Canada Geese TRAMPLE Goose Barrier!🌞

Geese don't read signs very well. Or maybe they read them TOO well, and just ignore what they say.

Take a gander (or take a goose!)

I don't know why I've had this rather inane nursery rhyme repeating in my head lately. I don't know how it got started. I'm aware that most of these childish things have dark or even sinister origins, buried in antiquity somewhere.

I wondered if this one wasn't just a piece of nonsense, incongruous, like the wacky poems of Edward Lear or even Lewis Carroll. But no. The merest probing into Wikipedia brought up this:

Most historians believe that this rhyme refers to priest holes—hiding places for itinerant Catholic priests during the persecutions under King Henry VIII and later under Oliver Cromwell. Once discovered the priest would be forcibly taken from the house ('thrown down the stairs') and treated badly. Amateur historian Chris Roberts suggests further that the rhyme is linked to the propaganda campaign against the Catholic Church during the reign of Henry VIII.

Other interpretations exist. Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey note in Birds Britannica that the greylag goose has for millennia been associated with fertility, that "goose" still has a sexual meaning in British culture, and that the nursery rhyme preserves these sexual overtones ("In my lady's chamber").

Priest holes! Sexual connotations! It doesn't quite hang together for me, but these things can evolve over time, or exist in layers. The original version didn't even have the throwing-down-the-stairs bit:

Goose-a goose-a gander,
Where shall I wander?
Up stairs and down stairs,
In my lady's chamber;
There you'll find a cup of sack
And a race of ginger.

We won't even ask what a "race of ginger" is. It's just one of these obscure things. Some older versions include these even-sillier lines:

The stairs went crack,
He nearly broke his back.
And all the little ducks went,
'Quack, quack, quack'.

All that strange left-leg stuff ("so I took him by his left leg and threw him down the stairs") didn't seem to add up for me, until I suddenly remembered hearing the expression, "He kicks with his left foot." Just recalling that phrase jarred awake a synapse that hadn't fired since I was six and listening to my Grandmother quietly, politely eviscerate every Catholic in the neighborhood. The left foot is like the left leg or the left hand - sinister, half a bubble off plumb, "not the thing". In other words, to an observant Protestant - Catholic.

You have to ask yourself, however, why anyone would invent a children's rhyme about priest holes and the persecution of Catholics, those nasty old left-foot-kickers. Why would anyone throw in references to geese (ladies of the night) and ladies' chambers (implying high-status quarters not normally open to the goose trade)? There is Mother Goose, of course, just to complicate things. But if you really look at the structure of the rhyme, which absolutely no one does, you see that it can be interpreted entirely another way.

The narrator, the "I" who is reciting the rhyme, is actually addressing it to the goose character - asking it, in essence, "where should I go? It's kind of like "hey, you over there - yes, I mean YOU, Goosey Goosey Gander - what's a-happenin'?" But it's definitely not "Here I am, Goosey Goosey Gander, Esquire, and let me tell you all about my lady's chamber." This is in spite of the fact that every illustration I've ever seen for this thing includes a big, nasty goose, usually throwing a man down the stairs.

In fact, "Goosey Goosey Gander" might just be a collection of nonsense syllables, a blithery-blathery-tra-la-lee sort of thing.

If you take the goose right out of the equation (and that's no fun, because I love these depictions of savage geese throwing terrified men down the stairs), then you have something like this:

Dinder, dander, donder
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs, downstairs,
In my lady's chamber.

When you look at it this way, it can and does have erotic possibilities. Hmmm, let's see, where am I going to wander? (wandering being a sort of aimless idling, or even a poking-around-in-none-of-your-business thing). Maybe up here, maybe down there (whew - now that has some sexual meaning behind it!), or maybe in my lady's chamber, where I certainly do NOT belong. It has a sort of subtext of invaded intimacy.

The old man who wouldn't say his prayers kind of reminds me of the old rhyme about "I met a man who wasn't there". In any case, is it really the goose who does the "throwing down the stairs" bit? Of course not; it's the narrator of the poem. So maybe it's really by that notorious old Catholic-hater, Henry VIII. Who knows, he wrote a lot of songs, such as Greensleeves. Or maybe Anne Boleyn wrote it for something to do in the Tower before she got chopped.

Tell Tale Tit (your tongue shall be slit)

This was one of those accidental finds. For some reason a line from a nursery rhyme popped into my head - no, wait, it was something I read on Facebook about an author who wrote about nursery rhymes! Then I remembered an odd little Mother Goose book I had as a kid, with a bizarre rhyme in it about "chop-a-nose day". I remember my brother and I making terrible fun of it, but no one else believed such a rhyme even existed. Then. . .

This is the grand day of the Internet, that most splendid of times, when information is forever tickling your fingertips. All you have to do is grab. I'm still finding out what "chop-a-nose day" is, and I suspect it's a corruption or mispronunciation of something else. Until then. . . these are excerpts from the Gutenberg version (so it's OK to reproduce them) of a gorgeous little book by Kate Greenaway, who is responsible for these exquisite drawings. They would appear to be from the Edwardian era. 

I have excluded Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and all the others we already know about, leaving only the oddball ones. Many of them refer to social status in some way (not unlike the pop songs I wrote about recently), with beggars and kings appearing in the same verse. The rhythms here are irresistible, and if they haven't already been set to music, music just bursts out of them. One can hear these as skipping rhymes, or hopscotching, or perhaps even clapping. "The cat ran up the plum tree" is obviously meant to be chanted while bouncing a fat baby on your knee.

And how far back do these go? No doubt, like folk songs, they evolved over centuries. Ring Around a Rosy, which I didn't include here, is apparently medieval and was originally a chant to ward off the plague.

Hark! hark! the dogs bark,

The beggars are coming to town;

Some in rags and some in tags,

And some in a silken gown.

Some gave them white bread,

And some gave them brown,

And some gave them a good horse-whip, 

And sent them out of the town.

Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty,

The cat ran up the plum tree,

Give her a plum, and down she’ll come,

Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty.

We’re all jolly boys, and we're coming with a noise,

Our stockings shall be made

Of the finest silk,

And our tails shall trail the ground.

Elsie Marley has grown so fine,

She won’t get up to serve the swine;

But lies in bed till eight or nine,

And surely she does take her time.

There was a little boy and a little girl

Lived in an alley;

Says the little boy to the little girl,

“Shall I, oh, shall I?”

Says the little girl to the little boy,

“What shall we do?” 

Says the little boy to the little girl, 

“I will kiss you!”

 

Tell Tale Tit,

Your tongue shall be slit;

And all the dogs in the town

Shall have a little bit.

A dillar, a dollar,

A ten o’clock scholar;

What makes you come so soon?

You used to come at ten o’clock, 

But now you come at noon!

Rock-a-bye baby,

Thy cradle is green;

Father’s a nobleman,

Mother’s a queen.

And Betty’s a lady,

And wears a gold ring;

And Johnny’s a drummer,

And drums for the king.

See-Saw-Jack in the hedge,

Which is the way to London Bridge?

Little lad, little lad,

Where wast thou born?

Far off in Lancashire,

Under a thorn;

Where they sup sour milk

From a ram’s horn.

As I was going up Pippin Hill,

Pippin Hill was dirty;

There I met a sweet pretty lass,

And she dropped me a curtsey.

My mother, and your mother,

Went over the way;

Said my mother, to your mother,

“It’s chop-a-nose day.”

NEWS FLASH: yes, I did find some information about chop-a-nose day. According to the rhyme below, it's a sort of game you play wherein you pretend to chop off a child's nose.

Come to think of it, though we never called it chop-nose or chop-a-nose, my Dad used to pretend to pull off my nose, then stick his thumb through his fingers and say, "I've got your nose." Very funny.

Margery Mutton-Pie and Johnny Bo-Peep

Margery Mutton-pie and Johnny Bopeep,
They met together in Gracechurch-Street;
In and out, in and out, over the way,
Oh! says Johnny, 'tis chop-nose day.

This rhyme is very similar to My Mother and Your Mother, and I believe you play it the same way:

You play it with a child by reciting the rhyme while gently sliding your hand down his/her face. When you get to the last line, you hold the child's nose between your thumb and forefinger, with your other hand you pretend to "chop off" the nose! 

Below is a link to a long scholarly article about the socio-political significance of nose amputation. It just goes on and on. Not surprisingly, it was a particularly painful and vicious, not to mention humiliating punishment for various infractions, including adultery. It would be hard to hide the horrible wound from the world without going about constantly veiled, or not going about at all. I won't dwell on all this, because I can't, but I do wonder if this harmless child's game is an echo of something really horrendous. Well, we still have Ring Around a Rosy, its origins shrouded in the time of the Black Death, with thousands of bodies stacked up and ready to be burned or buried in mass graves. So could chop-a-nose day be a lot more literal than it first appears?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2689568/

HOLY SHIT, BATMAN!

Kenneth Hagin causes a man to fall out of his chair in a paroxysm of religious ecstasy, just by waving his hand around his head. Must be a miracle. 

Every once in a long time. . .

Below is a nice little unexpected comment on a YouTube video I made several years ago, about Harold Lloyd and my struggles to capture his energy and personality in my novel, The Glass Character. The novel didn`t exactly take off, though I`m comforted to think it`s immortalized in electronic form and won`t be ``pulped`` like my first two published novels. That`s what happens to novels that don`t sell, as they just don`t have shelf space for them. They DID offer to let me buy back some of them at 40 per cent off, which struck me as strange, as they were about to destroy them anyway, so why not just let the author HAVE them, if I paid the postage. But no, that`s not how it works in the publishing world. They lost money on me, so I still had to pony up to rescue my own books from the mush heap. But every once in a very long while, I hear something like this!

Lady Walker
Highlighted reply
5 hours ago
@ferociousgumby Margaret, I got your book at last and read it from cover to cover and I couldn't put it down!!!! It was wonderful it made me feel close to Harold and your own love for him, infused in the narrative shone through. Many fans I'm sure enjoyed this book and I shall read it over and over again. I really love it!!
The only reason that the readership may not have been huge is that love of silent films is a Niche Market. If you had written about a silly pop star or footballer it may have been higher.
All I can say is that you are a great Writer.                                                                                 
@Lady Walker Thank you SO MUCH for this! It`s the most gratifying aspect of publishing a book if one person reads it, loves it and takes the time to tell the author so. Publishing can be a popularity contest, as is everything else these days, but writing it was an act of love, and I am so glad you share that love and appreciate Harold for the brilliant artist and great human being he was.

The Troll Doll Channel: GIANT Dam Trolls!

One of the more gratifying aspects of troll collecting has been sharing them on my YouTube channel. I suppose this gives me an excuse to buy more of them! These two MASSIVE trolls were actually priced well below normal, and I was able to dress them with things I made myself. 

The PHILCO PREDICTA Guy!

My favorite part of the Philco Predicta ad. This is the Philco Predicta guy.

😲WOW, WOW, WOW!! 1965 Philco PREDICTA TV Commercial🙄

The Philco Predicta was quite possibly the ugliest piece of electronic equipment ever made, let alone the ugliest TV set. Yet its "futuristic" design appealed to a lot of people. Instead of being suffocated inside a coffin-like wooden cabinet (and the earliest ones even had DOORS on them, since people were not comfortable having all that exposed glass in their living room), you had this - thing - that swivelled around, with no discernible cabinet to it at all. It just sort of hung there, looking exposed, naked. The base could not have been more utilitarian, minimalism taken to the ugliest extreme. BUT - and this is a big but -  the Philco Predicta yielded one of the most gorgeous TV advertisements ever made. It has everything - men and women standing around in awe, all beautifully dressed (and remember how formally people used to dress on TV?), with euphoric choruses exclaiming, "Wow-wow-wow-WOW!" The Philco Predicta was the future, with the thinnest, flattest screen since. . . all right, it looked like a waffle iron, but no one had anything to compare it to, so it was just great, do you hear me? Just great!

False Prophet

This is the Summer of Bob, but then again, it has been that way for 50 years. This song is actually helping me to walk. My pace has slowed way down due to pain and disability, but I find if I get in the swing of this one, I go at exactly the right pace and don't feel I'm tottering along. The burlesque-house bomp-bompa-bomp helps, too. Meantime, here is the kind of casually brilliant lyric Dylan still turns out at 80.

False Prophet
Bob Dylan

Another day that don't end
Another ship goin' out
Another day of anger, bitterness, and doubt
I know how it happened
I saw it begin
I opened my heart to the world and the world came in

Hello Mary Lou
Hello Miss Pearl
My fleet-footed guides from the underworld
No stars in the sky shine brighter than you
You girls mean business, and I do too

Well I'm the enemy of treason
Enemy of strife
I'm the enemy of the unlived meaningless life
I ain't no false prophet
I just know what I know
I go where only the lonely can go

I'm first among equals
Second to none
The last of the best
You can bury the rest
Bury 'em naked with their silver and gold
Put them six feet under and I pray for their souls

What are you lookin' at?
There's nothing to see
Just a cool breeze that's encircling me
Let's go for a walk in the garden
So far and so wide
We can sit in the shade by the fountain-side

I've search the world over
For the Holy Grail
I sing songs of love
I sing songs of betrayal
Don't care what I drink
I don't care what I eat
I climbed the mountain of swords on my bare feet

You don't know me, darlin'
You never would guess
I'm nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
I ain't no false prophet
I just said what I said
I'm just here to bring vengeance on somebody's head

Put out your hand
There's nothing to hold
Open your mouth
I'll stuff it with gold
Oh, you poor devil, look up if you will
The city of God is there on the hill

Hello stranger
A long goodbye
You ruled the land
But so do I
You lusty old mule
You got a poison brain
I'll marry you to a ball and chain

You know darlin'
The kind of life that I live
When your smile meets my smile
A something's got to give
I ain't no false prophet
No, I'm nobody's bride
Can't remember, when I was born
And I forgot when I died

Cute Lamb Needs Attention

Just something cute to get you through the day. Yes, it has come to this!

MASSIVE Canada Goose colony in Barnet Park!

My wild goose chase and other bird adventures are keeping me sane right now (as sane as is realistically possible, that is). This goose colony which sprawls all over Barnet Park and its gorgeous public beach began in the spring, when we came across half a dozen families with goslings of all different ages. Now they're all juveniles which are not quite ready to fly, and almost indistinguishable from the adults. The only down side of this incredible sight is the MOUNTAINS OF POOP everywhere - really nasty poop, like something from a small dog rather than any kind of bird. Canada geese are the bane of farmers everywhere because they rip up newly-sprouted crops the way they rip up grass in a field. They can be surly and hissy and even aggressive, but most are respectful if YOU respect THEM. Little kids were chasing the geese around, and while the birds were not hurt by it, it hurt their dignity and sense of safety, and I wish their parents had told them to cut it out. Wild geese aren't public property - they're living beings and belong to themselves and to nature. These are massed families, and in spite of looking almost grown-up, the adults are still jealously protecting their young. Better than a lot of human families, I'd say. 

FIFTY SHADES OF EVIL: common traits of cult leaders

Here are the typical traits of the pathological cult leader (from Dangerous Personalities) that you should watch for: 

1. He has a grandiose idea of who he is and what he can achieve.

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, or brilliance. 

3. Demands blind, unquestioned obedience. 

4. Requires excessive admiration from followers and outsiders. 

5. Has a sense of entitlement—expecting to be treated as special at all times. 

6. Is exploitative of others by asking for their money or that of relatives, putting others at financial risk. 

7. Is arrogant and haughty in his behavior or attitude. 

8. Has an exaggerated sense of power (entitlement) that allows him to bend rules and break laws. 

9. Takes sexual advantage of members of his sect or cult. 

10. Sex is a requirement with adults and sub adults as part of a ritual or rite. 

11. Is hypersensitive to how he is seen or perceived by others. 

12. Publicly devalues others as being inferior, incapable, or not worthy. 

13. Makes members confess their sins or faults, publicly subjecting them to ridicule or humiliation while revealing exploitable weaknesses of the penitent. 

14. Has ignored the needs of others, including: biological, physical, emotional, and financial needs. 

15. Is frequently boastful of accomplishments. 

16. Needs to be the center of attention and does things to distract others to ensure that he or she is being noticed, e.g., by arriving late, using exotic clothing, overdramatic speech, or by making theatrical entrances. 

17. Has insisted on always having the best of anything (house, car, jewelry, clothes) even when others are relegated to lesser facilities, amenities, or clothing. 

18. Doesn’t seem to listen well to needs of others; communication is usually one-way, in the form of dictates. 

19. Haughtiness, grandiosity, and the need to be controlling is part of his personality. 

20. Behaves as though people are objects to be used, manipulated or exploited for personal gain. 

21. When criticized he tends to lash out not just with anger but with rage. 

22. Anyone who criticizes or questions him is called an “enemy.” 

23. Refers to non-members or non-believers as “the enemy.” 

24. Acts imperious at times, not wishing to know what others think or desire. 

25. Believes himself to be omnipotent. 

26. Has “magical” answers or solutions to problems. 

27. Is superficially charming. 

28. Habitually puts down others as inferior; only he is superior. 

29. Has a certain coldness or aloofness about him that makes others worry about who this person really is and or whether they really know him. 

30. Is deeply offended when there are perceived signs of boredom, being ignored or of being slighted. 

31. Treats others with contempt and arrogance. 

32. Is constantly assessing people to determine those who are a threat or those who revere him. 

33. The word “I” dominates his conversations. He is oblivious to how often he references himself. 

34. Hates to be embarrassed or fail publicly; when he does he acts out with rage. 

35. Doesn’t seem to feel guilty for anything he has done wrong nor does he apologize for his actions. 

36. Believes he possesses the answers and solutions to world problems. 

37. Believes himself to be a deity or a chosen representative of a deity. 

38. "Rigid," "unbending," or "insensitive" describes how this person thinks. 

39. Tries to control others in what they do, read, view, or think. 

40. Has isolated members of his sect from contact with family or the outside world. 

41. Monitors and/or restricts contact with family or outsiders. 

42. Works the least but demands the most. 

43. Has stated that he is “destined for greatness” or that he will be “martyred.” 

44. Seems to be highly dependent on tribute and adoration and will often fish for compliments. 

45. Uses enforcers or sycophants to ensure compliance from members or believers. 

46. Sees self as “unstoppable” and perhaps has even said so. 

47. Conceals background or family, which would disclose how plain or ordinary he is. 

48. Doesn’t think there is anything wrong with himself and in fact sees himself as perfection or “blessed.” 

49. Has taken away followers' freedom to leave, to travel, to pursue life and liberty. 

50. Has isolated the group physically (moved to a remote area) so as to not be observed

Matchbox Cats

Colorado-based artist Arna Miller uses vintage style packaging, advertising, and illustrations as inspiration for her goofy creations. The serious historical aesthetic and matter-of-fact text is subtly ridiculous, finding humor in imagining animals experiencing human emotions, ambitions, and failures.

In a statement on her website, Miller describes her guiding principles as an artist: “My aim is to create narrative illustrations that depict magical moments…I often use text to tell part of the story, but like to leave most of the narrative up to the viewer. My guiding rule—which I sometimes break—is Possible, but Not Likely. For example, it’s possible for a vole to sit on a cigarette box and float down a river, but it is not likely. On the other hand, dinosaurs didn’t have laptops and headphones, so I would not draw that.”

The matchbox series “Strike Your Fancy,” which Miller made in collaboration with her husband Ravi Zupa, shows cats staying out late and making dicey decisions.

💗🧡💛CATS IN LOVE (animated feline drama)!💚💙💜

I made this gif animation YEARS ago, found it in the file, and transformed it into a YouTube video (which I can DO now! Hurray.) The primitive nature of it does not seem to be a drawback, as some videos I see are six seconds of unintelligible, baffling "action" which may or may not be animated, garnering maybe twenty million views. 

Meghan and Harry: There's no "there" there! Total lack of content for their gazillion-dollar deals

US pressure mounting on Harry and Meghan over work ethic 'Where is the money going?'

PRESSURE in the US is mounting on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, according to a leading royal expert, who warned Spotify and Netflix will soon be "wondering where the money has gone".

By Oli Smith

PUBLISHED: 20:50, Sun, Jul 18, 2021 | UPDATED: 20:50, Sun, Jul 18, 2021

Harry and Meghan criticised for 'lack of content' by Myers.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are under pressure "to produce the goods," according to a leading royal expert. It has nearly been a year since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex signed a with Netflix, thought to be worth up to $150 million. However, the couple has only announced two series for the streaming giant and has yet to release any content.

The couple also signed a huge deal with Spotify worth up to $50 million - and has only produced one podcast so far.

The Mirror's royal editor Russell Myers told Australia's Today programme that bosses from both Spotify and Netflix would soon be "wondering where their hard-earned dollars are going exactly".

Hosts of the programme asked: "Harry and Meghan are still making do financially on their own two feet, we believe.

"But pressure is mounting on them to deliver on this Spotify and Netflix deals. Big money is at stake."

Mr Myers responded: "Well, definitely. Why wouldn't it be?

"They were paid to the tune of $150 million for the Netflix deal they signed. Spotify has given them between $30 to $50 million dollars, we understand.

"And where is the content? We have had one podcast so far, and that hasn't caught the world alight.

"And they have a promised Netflix show which I'm sure will be fantastic because it's all about the Invictus Games.

"But certainly the big bosses at the two streaming giants will be wanting their pound of flesh.

"And if they are not producing the goods, the big bosses will be wondering where their hard-earned dollars are going exactly."

Progress on the couple's streaming deals has been slow, even after the couple hired Oscar-nominated producer Ben Browning to head up Archewell’s video content production.

In April, it was revealed that their first project would be a docuseries about the sporting tournament for wounded veterans, the Invictus Games, that Harry founded.

On Thursday this week, it was announced that Meghan will produce an animated series, Pearl.

The new show, which does not yet have a release date, follows a 12-year-old girl who is inspired by influential women in history.

Earlier this week, the couple earned an Emmy Award nomination for their controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this week.

CREEPY EXPERIMENTAL FILM: 1880s Volta Labs Recordings

The Volta Labs recordings just SOUND like they'd be creepy (in a good way), with the implication of Frankensteinian bolts of electricity and mad scientists with their hair all frizzed up and murder in their eyes. In truth, they were a series of sound recording experiments, mostly with grown men babbling away like babies. Played back, it wouldn't have sounded much better - but this was, after all, the 1880s, and ANY sound recording was impressive, even a bunch of technicians (who sound here as if they've been into the sauce) trying to sound as bizarre as possible. I've paired these weird curiosities with some visual curiosities: gifs I made ages ago and strung together into a kind-of video. The thousands of gifs I've made over the last ten years or so have a new life now, as YouTube videos, and it's even cooler now that I can add sound to them. But not just ANY sound! The sound of men acting like little boys about 140 years ago.  From Wikipedia: "The experimental sound recording studio was housed in a dilapidated old building called the Black Maria. Edison employees W. K. Dickson and Jonathan Campbell coined the name—it reminded them of police Black Marias (police vans, also known as 'paddywagons') of the time because they were also cramped, stuffy and a similar black color. Edison himself called it 'The Doghouse', but that name never took hold."

EXTREMELY PRIMITIVE 1947 TV Broadcast (“Hey, the camera's over HERE!”)

I love early '50s TV more than anything, BUT, there is one thing I love even more: 1940s TV! These excerpts were taken from the post-war period (1947), when everyone was so incredibly awkward that they even faced the wrong way when the cameras were on them. People had that distracted, "what do I do now" look  as they waited for some kind of signal from somebody. Many of the announcers and hosts were dredged from radio, and it shows, as their body language is terrified - the two hosts here clutch their own hands and nervously entwine and fiddle with their fingers, almost white-knuckled, while providing the most stilted narration ever. The Borden's ad is a new high or low in technical accomplishment - the puppet and ad presenter have their BACKS to the camera! They're facing the wrong way! TV was called "radio with pictures" then, and viewers weren't called viewers, nor the audience, nor even "all you folks out there in TV land" - they were TELEVISITORS, a name which, thank God, never caught on. 

😳 WEIRD-ASS OLD TAPE THINGIE (obsolete technology) 😶

I'm on summer vacation, so will continue to post some of the stranger videos I've made for my YouTube channel (which claims most of my creative energy these days). This one features inexplicably weird, obviously deeply obsolete equipment, the function of which is a mystery to me. Probably made sense at the time.

😳BIZARRE old stop-motion cartoon: "BALLOON TO THE MOON!"😳

Stop-motion animation always looks a little creepy, which is part of its charm - but this particular entry is even stranger, as the cartoon itself makes very little sense. I think the original was called Hearts and Flowers, which makes even less sense.

BIZARRE scene from Alice in Wonderland, 1903

This brief snippet from the first film version of Alice in Wonderland (1903) is the famous Cheshire Cat scene, in which the filmmakers made the decision to use a REAL cat who loafs drowsily in an artificial tree, looking bored. He does appear and disappear a few times, but we don't get to see that famous disembodied smile. But this was still considered movie magic in that era, and audiences were likely enraptured by it.