Picture Of The Day

A picture of Hermes with a brain slug on his head. Why? Because it has only been sitting in my Silly Pictures folder since November 27th and for some reason, I looked at it earlier and couldn't stop laughing.:

Video Of The Day

For some unexplained raisin, I laugh hysterically at this:

Quote Of The Day

From "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid":

[Scene: Planet Express: Attic Room. Hermes, Zoidberg, Amy and Farnsworth are lined up on the couch and Bender stands nearby. In front of them, Fry has set up a classroom. He has written "Fry's Dumb School" on a blackboard and there is a cardboard box in front of it.]
Fry: Time to re-educate you dunce-bags. We'll start with US presidents. [He takes a head in a jar out of the box.] This was our first president, George Washington.
[The staff stare blankly. Amy twitches and Farnsworth scratches his head.]
Fry: Let's review. Who was our first president?
Amy: Um.
Bender: A pickle jar?
Washington: Thomas Jefferson?

And then this part as well:

Butler: Presenting the most eligible landowner in all Hertfordshire, Mr. Brainly.
[Enter the smartly-dressed Brain.]
Big Brain: I'm a gigantic brain!

The WTF Of The Day

DJ AM's Estate Files A Wrongful Death Lawsuit

The plane crash caused him to commit suicide? That's it. Brain, I am officially filing legal action against you. I think I will go for "emotional distress".

God, I am so sick of stupid lawsuits! If I ever became president (try not to shudder), the first thing I would do is ban lawyers. The lawsuits I read about every day are absolutely preposterous. Some aren't, but most are just a big case of people not watching what the hell they are doing!

Some of the stupidity I see when I am out is just absolutely mind blowing. When I was on vacation, our hotel had a gym and every morning, my sister and I went and worked out. The gym was small- the few machines they had were in a straight line down in this order: 3 ellipiticals, 2 bikes, and 3 treadmills. One day, this woman comes in with her son, who was maybe 8 at the most. I was on one of the treadmills and I see the kid climb on the one next to me and next thing I know, Mommy Dearest starts the machine up for him. I mean, there wasn't a big huge sign on the wall that said "No one under 18 allowed" or anything to be followed. And you just know, had something happened to that kid, she would have sued. Why are parents so dumb nowadays?

And I am honestly expected to do jury duty on Wednesday? Does the idea of me possibly being a part- albeit small, but still a part- determining someone's fate not instill major fear?

Oh, how fitting- "Fuddy Duddy Judge" just came on.

Quote Of The Day

From Futurama episode "The Why Of Fry". It's a lot funnier when you actually can see it. I couldn't find a clip of it, though:

Fry: What really killed the dinosaurs?
Giant Brain: MEE!

More Scariness!

On my rampant quest to force feed books down my throat, I took another trip up to the library on Thursday and checked out 7 more books. Two down, five more to go. The first one I read was Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin, which was a bit drawn out, but otherwise pretty good. I attempted to read Something Blue but Darcy is so intolerable, I decided to put it aside for now. So next on my list was The Cobra Event by Richard Preston and while not quite at the level of scariness as The Hot Zone and also a work of fiction unlike the other 2 books, but damn- it still was pretty horrifying. That Cobra virus was pretty fucking scary.

I have stated it previously I am not particularly scared of death. However, what could possibly scare me is the matter that causes my death. Chemical and nuclear warfare and meltdowns and all that are pretty damn scary, but they still do not scare me even half as much as biological warfare. And to make it even scarier is not being blasted with smallpox or ebola. Its being blasted with something that is engineered and not even named yet. I briefly considered going for biotechnology back in 2005- which is why I had to suffer through Programming in BASIC; it was a pre-req for a required BT course- but boy, I am glad I never went through with that.

I was sitting the other day writing some stuff down- I guess in a way trying to put down into words if the day ever comes when I decide to tell someone outloud my secret- and I realized that no matter how much convincing I do- no matter how much I remind myself of all the things I will not be able to do, no matter how much research I have done on complications and other problems, no matter how much money could go out for this- it is never enough to change my mind. There really is no way out of this nightmare, except 1, the most obvious, it actually happens for me; 2. death; 3. severe amnesia. Oh, but my brain will find someone way to make sure, even if I suffered severe brain damage, to keep torturing me with it. Virtually every single aspect of my life and memory could be wiped clean and it would probably still be standing there, laughing its head off and screaming tough luck, babe! You can't EVER get rid of me! And for some reason, I can picture it having a voice and a laugh like the talking fan in the Futurama episode "Mother's Day".

When I was younger I had an excellent memory. I could recall down to what I wore and what I ate on even the simplest days. I have a horrible memory now. I think it was all those psychiatric drugs. I will ask someone something and not even five minutes later I will ask them the same question with absolutely no recollection of ever asking them before. But bad things in my life are never forgotten. Oh no. They live on in my memory.

I have mentioned before that I have social anxiety. Bad, crippling social anxiety. Most people with social problems like this are at least comfortable around family and friends and I am more so than around strangers, but I still have a high degree of discomfort around them. When I have actually worked, when someone is friendly with me, I usually feel a little bit more at ease and can actually be quite pleasant to talk with. There is the possibility of a job offer coming my way that is a call center job. I unfortunately am just not horrible face to face with people, but absolutely atrocious over the phone. I want to think that this job would be a good experience and might help me, but I just have a nagging feeling that it will not. I could be quite capable of doing a very good job with a position like this, but in the end the social anxiety will be there to destroy it somehow. I am desparate for a job and the pay is pretty good and I cannot afford to be fussy with the economy, but the idea of doing the job makes me sick to my stomach.

Kiss My Ass, Nipple Nazis

I have mentioned this before and for some unknown reason today, it has been eating at me.

Radical breast feeders. What the fuck is the deal with them? I just cannot fathom the attitudes of them. I cannot believe that not only are there bitches out there who want hospitals to stop giving out formula, but there are ones who want formula to be done away with all together and made prescription only and then only available to people who absolutely cannot breastfeed.

What is the definition of one who absolutely cannot breastfeed anyway? A woman who has had a masectomy? I suppose in the eyes of these dumbasses, a woman on medication is not an exception to breastfeeding. Yeah, because we should force women whose lives are pretty much sustained from their medication to go off of it because a group of nazi breast feeders want to tell us all what to do with our bodies and children. I guess the woman whose life is made semi-normal by being on lithium or some type of antipsychotic should be taken off of it. Whatever.

Gee, I wonder how many of these women are pro-choice.

So my message to La Leche League and any other breast-feeding "it should be the only way" promoting group of assholes....I don't care if you want to promote breast feeding, but knock off the fucking nazi and "I'm so superior because I breastfeed" behavior and let us women decide how we want to take care of our children. If I choose to not breastfeed my child (which I will not), that is my decision and I would appreciate you keeping your nose out of my fucking business. Come up to me while I am bottle feeding a baby and bitch me out and I will knock you so hard on your ass, you won't know what hit you. Show me all the evidence you want of how much healthier breast feeding is and I will take the evidence and shove it up your ass. I don't believe any of it anyway.

And don't give me the crap that we are given breasts and nipples for a reason because, as I do recall, men have breasts (technically) and nipples as well. People are given brains, but that doesn't mean they always use them.

Random Thoughts

Heavens. Sarah is supposedly already planning to run in 2012. God save us all. Obama, if this does not give you ammunition to do a hell of a good job, I don't know what would. The good news is, though, by 2012, no one can say that Obama has no "executive experience".

The other good news, of course, is just because she enters the race doesn't mean she will actually make candidate. Hopefully some potential candidate will come along and squash her like a bug. Which probably wouldn't take much. One could sit down in a chair, lean back, and snore their head off and would still be better than her. Shit, you could put a zombie up on stage to debate her that just stands there and moans "BRAINS!" and it would still be better and make infinitely more sense than her. But then again.... zombies just make everything better.

I really wish ALL movies and shows would be required to have closed-caption. Between years of blowing the little hairs in my ears to bits with blasting music and eustachian tube trouble, my hearing is not great. It kind of sucks, actually. And one day last week, I had some British movie on- I think it was called Go Now or something- and it was not closed captioned and I could barely understand anything anyone was saying. But I think a lot of it had to do with the British accents, which normally I can understand with no problem, but in this movie, everyone's seemed exceptionally harsh. They all sounded like they were talking with mouths full of shit.

If I do not get a Geno's cheesesteak soon, I am going to scratch someone's eyeballs out.

Since I have no health insurance, I obviously have no dental insurance. Thankfully, though, one of my local community colleges has a dental clinic and I can get my teeth cleaned for next to nothing. It's pretty frickin sweet. Unfortunately, though, due to area (a lot of people with low incomes and people that shouldn't, um, be here) and now probably due to so many people losing health insurance, the clinic is booked up. I can't get an appointment until March 5th, which isn't far away really, but I have to find a job so I will probably run into some conflict.

I may have mentioned this before, but back in high school, I was a band geek. And I complained about band a lot, so why did I stay in it? I don't know. It wasn't marching band I hated in particular. Oh, no. I loved going to competitions and parades and all that jiggery pokery. No. Rather, it was the people I couldn't stand. The members, the teachers, instructors, assistants, etc....all were 100% certified grade-A asshole. My band teacher had a personal vendetta for me from day one. I have no idea what his problem was with me because I never was a trouble maker in school. Far from it. I barely made a peep in class. My teachers- well, most of them anyway- were hounding me to speak up in class because they certainly knew I had the brains to not make an ass out of myself. Maybe that was the problem- I was such NOT a trouble maker, they assumed I must have had something up my sleeve and would rebel.

Goddamn, I am bored.

Infections, Prayers, And A Dive Into OCD

iWork '09 Trojan Virus Infects at Least 20,000 Machines?

OMG, a Mac infection? It's actually possible? But....but I thought Macs were invincible!

Kidding aside, I know Macs can be affected. They're just lucky enough to have a relatively small amount of infections (exact number unknown- some sites list a few, others list around 40, and I have seen sites list Mac infections as high as a thousand) as compared to the- hold on, let me consult my last virus scan done Friday night oh, I don't know, 1,257,460 virus strains and unwanted programs. And since no virus scan is a hundred percent detectable, there could be a ton more. Also, add in the factor that Avira free does not detect spyware and the number soars even higher. A-Squared free has 2,600,785 malware signatures.

Ugh, one of these days I will be able to actually purchase Avira.

I watched that Lifetime movie Prayers For Bobby earlier and....god, that poor kid. And knowing it was based on a true story made it even more depressing. When the part came on when he jumps off the bridge, I was sobbing. Now I don't often cry at movies, but movies where suicide occurs I usually do. Because, real or not, I know and understand how that person feels and it is a horrible feeling to want to die. Jumping off a bridge is personally not a method I would ever consider using if it ever came down to it, but there have been plenty of times I have considered driving to a bridge and jumping off. That documentary, The Bridge, was also very sad. I just couldn't imagine jumping off of a bridge. Do you feel the impact of hitting the water or ground? Or does the falling alone at such a high velocity kill you? I would think that coming down at such a high speed would move your organs around, but I don't know. Physics is not one of my strong points.

I often say that if I were to ever get what I wanted that by the time I would get it, there would be some kind of treatment/cure for it and after this week, somehow I have a feeling that that could very well be possible. Good for others, certainly, but not for me, although I may think differently if it were to actually happen. I hate my brain. I really do. It's one thing if a random body part like the pancreas or immune system goes awry, but when the one thing that you have some kind of control over goes awry, it's horrible. And with my problem, it seems like the processes to control the mind have been destroyed. Like the brakes in the car were cut. I got into a fight with some douchebag with a psych degree over this before. He insists that thoughts, no matter how obsessive, can be controlled. I disagree. Maybe with some kind of outside help, but I definitely do not think one's own thoughts can be controlled entirely on their own.

Obsessive thoughts are like this- have you ever been in a pool and tried to push a beachball under the water? When you let go, it comes flying back up. And the further down you push it, the more force it will come back up with. That is exactly what it is like to try to supress obsessive thoughts. Or as most standard psych books use as an example- the Pink Elephant Experiment. Picture pink elephants. Now do not think of pink elephants. Bet you're thinking of them still, aren't you?

Aside from the lack of self-esteem and social phobia, I would say obsessive compulsive disorder is the next most mind crippling disorder I have. I believe having depression stems from the above three (as well as genetics). It's just so damn intrusive and it never lets up. With depression, I have good days and then I have days where I do not even want to get out of bed. With OCD, though, it just stays the same and worsens when that time of the month comes. I'm not kidding when I said I wish I could pull my brain out. There really are days where it is so bad, I just want to rip it out of my skull or jam an ice pick up my nose. And it's difficult to treat. Prozac was the only drug that helped it somewhat. The odd thing was the higher dosage I went, the worst it got. The only dosage that seemed to stabilize it a little bit was 20 mg and then that crapped out on me.

And what I think is remarkable proof of OCD has been produced. My sister's psychiatric nursing book states the following as evidence:

Functional neuroimaging techniques have shown abnormal metabolic rates in the basal ganglia and orbitalfrontal cortex of individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder (MacKenzie, 1994)

Some individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder exhibit nonspecific electroencephalogram (EEG) changes. Some researchers have hypothesized that obsessive-compulsive disorder may represent a nonconvulsive epileptiform disorder (e.g., abnormal discharges in selective brain regions) or an abnormality in left-frontal brain functions (Kaplan & Sadock, 1989)

And then there is also the whole serotonin theory as well.

Brain scans have shown signs of it, like this:

Scan 1
Scan 2
Article

Dammit, maybe I should have had that brain scan done in 2006.

Wikipedia has more information. And yeah, I know Wiki can't be trusted all the time, but the sources seem pretty legitimate to me, so I am half-tempted to believe them. The part that makes me really curious is the streptococcal link. The link is a bit confusing, but when I was a kid, I had strep throat constantly. My tonsils were chronically swollen. If I went to the doctor just for a check-up, no pain or anything, but they would be swollen.

Now if I can just find a worthwhile, not half-assed treatment. Therapy didn't work, drugs didn't work, exercise only keeps me from losing my mind completely....psycho-surgery? HA! Am I fucking joking? That will be like pulling a completely impacted wisdom tooth! Why offer me a chance to be normal when they can keep on pumping me cock full of drugs?

Supposed proof of evolution, according to my dentist- my mom had 4 wisdom teeth, my sister had 2, and I have 1. The bastard hasn't bothered me yet and it better stay that way. And for some reason, I can never remember where it is. I'm pretty sure it's on the left side; I just can't remember if it is on the top or bottom, though.

Alright, I need to go to bed.