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October 02, 2004
My god how much more useful could Astonished Head possibly be!!!
Within the past 24 hours, according to my Search String elves, folks have come here looking for:
- Chemicals used in the manufacturing of glow in the dark condoms (someone's got a bit of radioactive wiener concern there, I think)
- A drawing of the moon god of Ur's ziggurat (which is, by the way, very posh)
- Statistics relating to Germany's demand for peanut butter (who knows?)
- A different kind of wood (apparently my kind isn't good enough)
Astonished Head: meeting your demand for random bits of crap since 2002.
Damn fruitflies. The house is full of goddamn fruitflies.
I mean, there's a reason they do genetic work with these fuckers. They'll breed on you. A fruit fly generation is eleven days. You can go from Joe Average Fruit Fly to Mutant Fruit Fly With Legs On His Damn Head in no time. The time from the fruit fly Moses to the fruit fly space shuttle is less than four years. You dig that? Fruit fly Moses came down off the mountaintop in March of 2000 with his multifaceted eyeballs all aglow and bearing the law of the Fruit Fly God. By now they've long since watched the fruit fly space shuttle blow up over fruit fly Texas all tragic-like, and moved on, and developed fusion power, and landed on Mars, and colonized the whole damn universe with their evil fruit fly civilization.
Or they would have. If they had, you now, brains, and opposable thumbs and science and frozen orange juice.
But still: they mourned the loss of a lone fruit fly pilot who got mashed by giants during his flyover mission on the Second Floor.
Or, they will.
Once I mash that sucker.
Mash!
Damn insects.
I'll get 'em. Fruit Fly God or not, I'll get 'em.
October 03, 2004
How do you know... when it has fled? When the healthy mind has disintegrated enough, so that appearances may be kept up when absolutely necessary, but only just... not even a veneer... more like a mask of thinnest delicate glass, painted with lifelike tones and fixed into place by means of a cunning hinge of brass wire, so that movement presents itself when appropriate? The... slightest tap, and the whole thing shatters into invisible razor splinters that work their way into the feet long after the first, second, and third sweepings of the floor.
Dissecting the psyche is fine for some... a passtime, an expensive hobby... the basis of a career. It is fashionable to be neurotic, and the mechanical pills that are the first resort of the modern worried well lend to most a superior functioning of the type that is rewarded by society. The difference in the hipness of remedies! "I'm on Zoloft" sounds so much more slick and modern than "I've had electroconvulsive therapy," doesn't it? Truly, what an age. What an age.
But there is no finer dope, I think, than the seeping fluids of the natural mind... from whence come requiems, sonnets, and bastard rhyme. Or is there? I certainly don't know, because I seem to be stuck with a Victorian brain: fragile, sensitive, subject to ill-humors and the fainting twitches. I have a most unfashionable brain.
I seek to cram artificial pleasure into an anhedonic skull. Results are predictable: loss of self-satisfaction, absence of trust, misanthropy, addiction and sterility. And fruit flies. Can't forget them: breeding in the sink drains which remain uncleaned for too long due to general malaise and amotivational tendencies.
There! Did you see that, there, just then? I mean, fruit flies. That's the sort of thing that's right up there with precious bodily fluids and other fractured nonsense.
No matter, no mind, read about it all in the papers soon enough, or, not even, because the papers are passé, are they not? Read the pixels, instead: MAN FREES CIRCUS ELEPHANTS, SHOOTS ACROBATS, CLOWN, SELF. It'll be a five-minute splash of life!
October 05, 2004
Apparently, I'm under contract to post something today.
So there you go.
October 06, 2004
Sorry, gadflies and germs--posting will probably be light this week. I'm under the weather... it's either an ear infection, or someone popped one of those Ceti Alpha 5 worm-things into my head to control my brain and make me kill Captain Kirk.
And I've still got work to do. So, energy resources being limited, there are long lines at the thought pumps and blogging will just have to wait until supplies free up.
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UPDATE:
I fully support drilling in the neuronal reserves just behind my eyesockets to reduce my dependence on foreign thought sources that may fall under the control of extremist fanatics.
Also, I will commit $15 billion to develop commercially viable hydrogen-powered philosophies.
The propeller beanie will help, as well.
October 13, 2004
May I just say that I am extremely grateful for my bicuculline-sensitive GABA receptors, my Calcium ionophores, and pretty much the entire allosteric modulation process.
October 14, 2004
Apparently, I was over 10% more cynical that I should have been when I wrote the following:
I'm still banking on a voter turnout of well under 40%, in this, The Most Important Election Ever.
Although voter turnout of eligible voters has been steadily declining from a high of just over 63% in 1960, it was still over 50% in 2000. We'll see if there's a bump up this year, given how the Fate Of All That Is Good hangs in the balance and so forth.
Originally, I sought out the statistics in response to Stephan Green's fit of fearful disgust regarding a bit of Drudge. Thinking that voter turnout in Presidential election years was much lower than it actually was, I was going to suggest people have already lost "faith that elections work."
50% isn't great. But it isn't as bad as I thought, either.
Unfortunately, my brain is still soft and a bit shagged out for various reasons that I'm not prepared to go into, just now. So that's the entirety of my effort for today: I was wrong.
October 15, 2004
 Well, shoot. I've gone all jowlish and drunk again. That means no free fruit for you today. And some education spending, with maybe a drive off a bridge later if I'm feeling better.
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By the way--on days when there's nothing fresh, why not stop by our extensive Subject Archives O' Doom, just a short scroll down on the left. Also available: our chronological Monthly Archives.
I've been doing this for almost three years. So unless you're one of those stalker types who's been through every single entry, there's always something to read that's momentarily diverting.
October 18, 2004
 And so (which is one of those beginning gear-grinders that you're supposed to edit out, like "I suppose that" or "Have you every wondered about" or "The other day I stuck my best Giesser Chef knife into the dog, and I've got no idea why"), I've run into that conundrum peculiar to the online diarist: how much is too much? What does my audience, such as it is, come here for? I know many that used to come here for my most trenchant political dribblings have wandered away as my output has declined in both quality and quantity, a decline spurred on by my ever-increasing misanthropism, which is in turn backed up with a healthy dose of anxiety and incipient agoraphobia. It's so much easier to loathe people when your mental wiring prevents you from leaving the house, isn't it? Ah, yes.
In any event--look, more gear-teeth ground into wordy metal filings!--a certain amount of my... integrity, for lack of a better word, has recently dissolved into a haze of melting clonazepam wafers, duloxetine hydrochloride, escitalopram oxalate, and lamotrigine. What fun! I, creator of the Miserable Ovoid Creature, have become one myself, and am not-quite-gleefully tweaking my neurochemistry with a number of Officially Sanctioned chemical agents. Not much different than what I spent my twenties doing, only now I'm seeking more targetted results, and there's medical supervision, and better packaging. Oh, look! The little man on the Lexapro package is happy! Of course he is. He's happy because he has properly rearranged his little brain until he can cope with life enough to build a successful career as the logo on the Lexapro box. Good for him. Good show!
Feh. Time to go watch Farscape.
That is all.
Shoo!
October 19, 2004
THIS IS MY ONE THOUSANDTH POST. I'm really very excited. Look! I blinked. That is how excited I am. The orangutan on my desk is not nearly as overflowing with anticipation as I, the opposably-thumbed author of this, the one thousandth post, am, right now, at this moment.
I must say that clonazepam wafers are much more fun than their non-melting benzo brother, alprazolam. The "wafers" are actually light little pill-shaped gizmos that feel like a bit of packing material, but when you put them on your tongue--bloorp!--they vanish into a small slick of quickly dissolving thin paste that leaves a slight numb spot.
Then my blessed GABA(A) receptors do their stuff and I don't so much float off into space as stay exactly where I am, with very little inclination to, say, flee the building as quickly as possible for reasons that are entirely unspecified but which are of exterme urgency.
And that, as is said, is not a bad thing.
Ah! Precious organ, three pound lump o'dendrites! Do enjoy your new chemical foodstuffs. 'Cause you'll be on this diet for awhile.
October 20, 2004
 That's right, ladies and gentlemen, for a limited time YOU TOO can impress your friends and confound your enemies with the Astonished Head Protestor Kit! Comes with unisex alternative-style clothing, a selection of clever signage (you supply your own stick), and an assortment of hip protest accessories including anti-establishment buttons, temporary tattoos, and "radical" facial hair (facial hair not shown). Only $29.95!
Or, if you want, you can just paint your entire body blue like a Pict and run naked down the National Mall screaming Buuush! Oiiiilll! Hitler!!! Lies!!! Just as effective at a tenth of the cost.
Then again, the fruitbats in my ever-more-thinly-haired belfry are particularly restive today, which leads to peculiar warbling and the strange sense that I really ought to be, you know, doing something, but I can't, having shackled myself to certain medications which may or may not be causing an already-tweaked adrenaline and cortisol matrix to redouble its efforts and send me shouting out onto what passes for the lawn.
Waiter! There is a mustache, in my soup!
Eh. I've had worse. But not many. This is right up there with the Naked Poet Under A Blanket On The Couch During A Party act I pulled when I was 23, without the party, the blanket, or the nakedness. Such acts really do require an audience, you know. Not much point in being naked and afflicted all by your lonesome.
Now: naked and afflicted on the lawn, that's something else. That happened a couple of weekends ago; fortunately, it was dark out and no one noticed. Or unfortunately, depending on your mindset.
So I shall wobble not particularly bravely forth, ever curious as to the precise depths I will plumb during this period of broken-headedness, lo! I shall wait with eager anticipation and twitching fingers, and a crate of benzodiazepenes, which are, I have found, extremely handy to have around in times such as these.
I mean, if it's a choice between quivering on the couch under a blanket and tearing up the street in my boxers shooting out streetlights, I think the couch is a much better option. Very rarely do the police get involved when you're just sitting on the couch.
Unless, of course, you've done something wicked earlier in the day and are recuperating on the couch, and they've tracked you down, but I've found that's really more about the prior wickedness than the couch-sitting per se.
October 21, 2004
Something Theo told me once is on my mind today. He said that, if given to a person with a healthy brain chemistry, many modern targeted neurotransmitter drugs will cause textbook cases of other psychiatric conditions. They’re temporary, of course, fading as the brain reasserts its metabolic right to maintain its own neurotransmitter levels. But observations have been interesting. Zytokol, the “schizophrenic miracle drug,” of the last century, produces not schizophrenic psychosis in a healthy brain, but something called “Limbic God Syndrome.”
Patients still hear voices, but the voices are implicitly trusted, their messages soothing and pleasant. The patient experiences ecstatic, ‘rushing’ sensations throughout the chest and body trunk, often resulting in deep, regular breathing. This breathing, in turn, often produces hyperventilation, making the patient’s fingers and lips buzz. When Zytokol inevitably hit the streets, they called it Goddy, God, or “G”.
The amazing thing about God was that you could take it for almost as long as you wanted. Start with ten to fourteen hours. At hour seven you could take another, fall asleep, and your dreams would be full of the most intricately detailed revelatory visions you could ever hope to have, wave upon wave of “Yes, Lord, I understand” experiences. You wake up with the name of God on your lips and another four or five hours to go before you need another one. Breakfast becomes a holy rite. Cooking it becomes inspired service to the Almighty. Awareness of the interconnectivity of all life increases. Some have reported acute interest in skilled mathematical play. It is, in fact, rumored that Fetter’s Theory was worked out under the influence of Zytokol.
Unfortunately, like all drugs, Zytokol exacted a price. The body could only generate so much of a given neurotransmitter, and when the brain’s supply began to decrease it resulted in strange food cravings: burnt molasses, raw potato, massive quantities of hard sausage. Eventually the brain gave out, and after about four weeks achieved a semi-catatonic state, somnambulant, which lasted anywhere from a few days to months at a time. Usually, crushing depression and nihilism followed.
It didn’t take long for someone to figure out that a diet rich in certain fatty acids and amino-building block supplements could avert some of that. Dr. Craig Matthews built a retreat in Northern Colorado, well stocked with such supplements and equipped with enough padded rooms for 1,500 people to ride out the downtime. He build a lab for manufacturing Zytokol, and eventually killed 150,000 people when in his increasingly sticky-fingered befuddlement he produced an ‘invert’ batch. Created as the result of a half-degree-Celsius error at a crucial point in the manufacturing process, some of the molecules involved were exactly backwards. Just wrong enough to bind themselves to an assortment of neural receptors that they had no business binding themselves to.
Thousands died by beating their heads into walls or asphalt. Others took as many people with them as possible. There were mass slaughters in restaurants, schools and bars. It was estimated that, over the course of two weeks, 7,000 “inverted” G-heads had killed 143,000 people around the globe. That’s about 20 people per inverted person.
It still happens from time to time, as chemists of lesser and lesser talent take over Dr. Matthew’s old business, which survives despite God’s reputation for turning some percentage of its users into mass murderers. The good doctor himself put a meat thermometer through his eye during a live interview on the evening news shortly before his trial was to begin. His diary explained that he had brought the thermometer along with him because he was being compelled to show everyone how hot his brain was inside. This was Dr. Matthew’s interpretation of Deuteronomy 4:24: “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” Dubious exegesis; fantastic television.
I tell you all this to encourage you—if you are not some future incarnation of myself—to fully believe this simple truth: people shouldn’t take medications that aren’t prescribed for them.
--Parker Clark
You know, it's all fun and games until they come knocking at your door with big big boots and a meathook and you have to scramble out the second floor window hoping you can get to the shotgun in the shed before they come around back and snatch your esophagus out of your thoat and beat you with it while you writhe around on the grass making gurgling noises that are supposed to sound like "But I didn't know that it was verboten to speak so ill of Emperor Bush's haircut" and the neighbors look on dispassionately with their burnt hot dogs and their charcoal-grilled steaks.
Oh, I am so crushed by the weight of the fascist state in which we live.
The tremendous depth of error that the privileged naïfs must labor under, they with the impression that the rest of the world would reflect the American trend of prosperity if only America itself was not such a Big Bad Nazi Fascist Uber-Freddy with the long nuclear finger knives and the hey hey hey it oppresses me.
Frankly, chaps, most of the rest of the world is only barely contained by our garrisons and those bits that aren't are quite busily killing themselves, spreading disease, or figuring out a way to kill some more of us. Good god, man, it's a mess out there! I mean, have you seen Africa lately? Those portions that aren't starving or fighting are succumbing to a disease that a Nobel-prize winning "scientist" claims is a biological weapon created by white people to kill black people. Truly, she has "conferred the greatest benefit on mankind," in accordance with old Alfred's wishes. Meanwhile, we can't send drought- and disease-resistant, high-yield, life-saving seedstock over to Africa because, you know, we're evil American capitalists.
In the meantime, freaks claiming to represent more than a billion Muslims are seeking the best way to turn you and me into piles of ash or hamburger, and those they claim to represent are still trying to decide whether that's OK with them or not, while our entertainers are happy to help the process along and gain some record sales.
And all of this is, of course, our fault, because we're such big fat McDonald's mainlining imperialist buffoons.
Good god, it's enough to make me want to saddle up with my pre-ban assault weapon and go shoot me some poor people.
'Cause that's what we do here, you know.
Poor folks is good eatin'!
But I'll settle for a Big Mac, because that will piss off the French.
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LATER...
OK, so, when a barely coherent rant coalesces into a pill-fueled expedition to actually go and find a McDonald's with which to stuff the face... resist.
Trust me.
October 22, 2004
 Crap. Just when I think I might be able to produce something that might be somewhat relevant and meaningful to the larger world Out There, my concentration flees, a thoughtful kerchief tossed into the tree branches by anxious winds. My ladder isn't high enough, so I have to sit on the grass looking up at it fluttering out of reach, and eventually it gets torn free by a good gust and sails off over the fence, probably to end up in the creek, getting all muddied and useless.
These pharmaceuticals better do whatever chemical dance they're supposed to do on my head pretty damn quick, here. Looking back through my archives I've found stuff that was--if I do say so myself--insightful, cogent, and worthwhile. But over the past year, the quality and quantity of my output has declined in direct proportion to the steady disintegration of my mood and the elevation of my manic anxiety.
This is not so much a lament of Oh how I have failed you, dear Reader! as much as it is a howl of What the hell has happened to my brain?! Folks who are not subject to chemical depression and anxiety--the sort that is detached from the circumstances of life, existing as a thing unto itsef--often have difficulty understanding that sentiment. Everyone gets depressed or anxious at some point in their lives, and the tendency to say "Just snap out of it!" is understandable, grounded as it is in a particular personal experience.
But the sort of moods that are more dependent upon an excess or defficiency of this or that neurotransmitter are more of an affliction than a passing funk, resembling in their action Galen's humours. I am full to the brim with earthy black bile, shot through with streaks of hot-tempered choler and peppered with panicked blood.
With the first hint of the calming perspective offered by SSRIs, mood stabilizers and benzodiazepenes, I can look back through my life and see this pattern repeating over and over again: unable to get off the couch in Philadelphia, barely able to sign my name to rent checks that someone else had to fill out for me; the burst of mania that drove me to quit my job and sent me to a ridgetop on the Appalachian trail with two gallons of water and a bag of nuts. Endless self-medication: wine, vodka, pot, acid, X, each medicine eventually failing to achieve the desired calming or numbing results, leaving me with fewer and fewer options. The pattern is there, and always has been, but it's difficult to see from within.
Now, like millions upon millions of other Americans, I have a diagnosis from the DSM-IV, approved by the American Psychiatric Association, and a course of drug therapy that auspiciously began with a collection of samples that the psychiatrist happened to have in his desk drawer. It's new! he said, to which I replied, Then it doesn't have much of a track record, does it? And it didn't, so a week later I was worse off than I was before I stepped into his office, and now I have another pill, and we'll see what that one does.
But that's how it works: the Patient Information sheets that come with the pills all say, "Although the exact mechanism of the action of [insert chemical name here] in humans is unknown, it is believed to be related to... " And then you get the pharmaceutical company's best guesses, with maybe some tales about rats or monkeys and a long list of side effects with varying degrees of goriness which you probably won't get but if you do, don't say we didn't warn you.
And so, no, I don't have anything substantive to say about the elections, or Iraq, or anything else that's important beyond the confines of my own bony head, because right now it's not working quite right, and my job is to get it working properly, not so I can regale you with the Clever Spew that I will then be able to produce, but so I can get on with my damn life and do the things I feel like I need to be doing with it.
Of course, that doesn't preclude outpourings of manic nonsense, so if you're into that sort of thing, hang about.
Time for another wafer.
Mmmm... melty.
October 24, 2004
"Any fool can have an opinion; to know what one needs to know to have an opinion is wisdom; which is another way of saying that wisdom means knowing what questions to ask about knowledge."
--Neil Postman,
Building a Bridge to the 18th Century
October 26, 2004
 Apparently the fragility of the contents of my cranium is matched only by my acute frustration that unlike, say, the master Phil Dick, I am unable to harness my wacked-out neurons and produce marketable product. Of course, the redoubtable Mr. Dick popped many red pills, stayed up for days at a time, and died of a burst head at the age of 54. No matter! I, whose Head remains Astonished, will no doubt triumph in some fiscally rewarding fashion. Or not. That depends, I suppose, on the output of my products.
Of which I have, at the moment, but one, that being the sheer unencumbered force of my personhood. Pardon me for a moment while I do a little soft shoe to demonstrate said force.
There. This is theater of the mind, people. Think Sammy Davis without the googly glass eye. And white. Without a career, or famous friends.
In fact, forget all that and move on... to this!
SSRIs Explained That's right ladies and gentlemen and indeterminates, now you too can participate in the massive clinical trial that is modern psychiatry!
Just nip on down to your neighborhood licensed Psychiatrist's Chamber and ask for one of the new, modern wonder-pills that will turn you into Tony Robbins if you'd only give them a try. Chances are he'll have a drawerful of free samples and can send you home with a big bag of assorted pills. Try one for a week or two, and if it doesn't work, try another! Your neurons just love new experiences, especially when they affect serotonergic neurotransmission.
There's a standard Cartoon Moment which usually follows being struck upside the head, wherein the smitten animated character shakes his head rapidly from side to side with a sort of gbl-gbl-gbl-gbl noise, and his frying-pan or boulder-flattened head is returned to its proper shape. That's pretty much me all the time now.
Glb-gbl-gbl! Oh yes. Only, the repeated shaking just seems to stretch my head out into ever more fantatic balloon animal shapes, and not the weird six-dicked monstrosity that the clown at your sixth birthday party tried to tell you was a giraffe but which you just knew was for Naughty Purposes, no. We're talking big sky-smears of stained glass that fill the entire room, here. Not at all suitable for board meetings, or showing up at the office, or having intelligible conversations with the checkout lady at 11:30 PM whilst purchasing a Cadbury Fruit & Nut Bar, a dozen cans of Reddi-Wip, and some cordovan shoe polish. Oh no.
See, you think you've read it all, but I give it to you now: Mental Disintegration, blogged live! Check back to see how far it goes, watch amazed as the Astonished Head implodes before your very eyeballs.
Mmm... eyeballs.
October 27, 2004
 This morning, I dreamed that I wandered through some semi-industrial area of Queens, seeking the auto-body shop that had kept my white Geo Storm in storage since sometime in the early '90s. When I got there, the auto-body shop had been replaced by some sort of Discovery Channel-worthy custom hot-rod shop (or nearly so--my dreamself thought some of the workmanship was a bit shoddy). I asked the bearded and beer-gutted proprietor if he remembered the white Geo Storm he had stored for me all those years ago, and there was this sort of "Whoops!" moment when he told me that they had gotten rid of it while back, seeing as how I couldn't be located and all. But, he said, they'd be willing to give me another car of equivalent value, and he was sure they could scare somthing up.
So, I spent the rest of the dream trying to establish whether a '91 Geo Storm with under 30,000 miles on it was equivalent to some whacked-out racing modified Ford Pinto with no interior upholstery, or a Monte Carlo with 200,000 miles on it, or some other "car-guy's car."
All of which is in direct contradiction with reality. I sold the Storm in 1994 to a friend of my then-girlfriend for $3000, and took the money, along with the then-girlfriend, to Mexico. The purchaser totalled the Storm shortly thereafter.
I dream--you decide.
If there's a more certain way to drive down traffic, I haven't found it. Just start keeping an online dream journal and detailing your medicated anxieties, and readers will flock from you like locusts before a sandstorm.
Speaking of which: throughout all of this, my God-sense--that peculiar numinous sensation I get on windy days and other portentous occasions--has completely fled. Ain't that a bitch?
So, in the mercilessly dramatic throes of sourceless chest-clutching anxiety (which, if you've never experienced it, is akin to being freaked out one morning for no apparent reason whatsoever while making toast, and then staying that way for the rest of the day), I am going to slip on the swell new Planet Bike Gemini bike gloves that arrived moments ago and go for a ride.
The leaves here are just on the other side of peaking, and we've discovered a nice route that takes us along the valley floor and then up near the ridge, so we can view the farm-like vistas and painterly autumn hues as we work our hearts and legs.
It's pretty much the only thing I've been able to do for about two weeks straight now, which, while good for my body, isn't exactly fully funtional behavior.
I wish I knew what to do with my suspicion that the problem here lies not with me, but with the current definition of "functional."
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ON THE OTHER HAND...
I feel perfectly functional after riding 17 miles through a fall-cloaked valley in the late afternoon sunlight, then eating a slab of fine roast beef with fresh tomato and onion wrapped in a tortilla while listening to a slew of Bach's concerti for harpsichord at high volume.
Can't beat that with an anxiolytic.
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