Smoking Everywhere

The title of this post is a brand name. For e-cigarettes. Yes. Electronic cigarettes. They deliver a smokeless, nicotine-laced vapor when you take a drag, and the end lights up like a real cigarette. You can exhale the vapor like smoke, but it dissipates quickly and leaves no odor, and of course there are no nasty additives or tar, because it's NOT SMOKE. But it feels and looks like smoke when you inhale it. It works with replaceable cartridges, and you can choose the level of nicotine--high, medium, low, or zero. They also come in some wack flavors; in addition to "tobacco", you can choose apple, cherry, strawberry, chocolate, coffee, vanilla, or mint. (No menthol, but maybe the mint comes close.) And you can use them anywhere--smoking bans do not apply, because, as noted, there is no smoke.

I freaking LOVE technology. I've been waiting for something like this for years--wait, no I  haven't. I never even dreamed such a thing could be possible. It's like a miracle. I am overcome. 

Will someone please talk me out of buying one of these?

More flowers from my garden

OH MAH GAWD

He likes teh kittehz, too!

Two fetishes and a vice

Smoking is sexy. Priests are sexy. Drinking is fun. Smoking, drinking priest? YOWZA.

I'm definitely buying this calendar next year.

Thanks, Tara!

Is he stupid? Or delusional? Or both?

I haven't been posting about McCain's current streak of distastrous campaign moves, mostly because they are well-documented elsewhere. Maybe I'll get around to making fun of them eventually.

Surely his biggest mistake, though, was badgering Obama into taking an international tour. Did he expect Obama, a natural statesman with impeccable manners and a devastating television presence, to somehow lose his composure on the world stage, to make idiotic blunders or expose a shocking ignorance of current global events? Because that's not what happened.

I refer you to Wonkette's list of the trip's Great Moments so far, which includes this one:

He struts around without body armor, a foot taller than everybody else — in painful contrast to Ol’ Walnuts looking like a Kevlar burrito wearing an old lady’s sun hat.

Watership Clown

Brilliant! Poor Fiver.

Thanks, Gray!

Fish pedicures

That's right, fish pedicures. Revolting, but sort of cool. I'd get one.

What is that cologne you're wearing?

I often wish I were still young enough to go clubbing. Then I hear about something like this: guys slathering themselves in Preparation H before they go out dancing, in order to decrease water retention directly below the skin and make themselves look more muscular.

I love the guy (who shall remain anonymous here--if you want to know his full name, click the link) who says “If you want to get laid, you have to know how to dance....And if you want girls to dance with you, you have to look ripped.” Does this not make him sound like a totally repressed and overcompensating homosexual? And a total asshat? It makes me want to be young and gorgeous just so I could snub him and then dance with some schlubby guy.

But here's the best part: this is now on this guy's permanent record. FOREVER. So everyone will know what a douche he is. FOREVER. Yay internets!

(Can you imagine someday when he has kids? "Daddy, did you really put hemorrhoid cream all over your chest to get ladies to have sex with you? Is that how you met Mommy?")

Overexposed garden statuary

As promised, albeit a day late. You may all heave a collective sigh of relief and go back to whatever it was you were doing.

Poppies

Here's a picture from my garden. You'd think the whole yard looked this good, wouldn't you?

Maybe tomorrow I'll post a picture of my gnomes.

It's not even Lent, goddammit!

I've been thinking about quitting drinking for several months now. But good heavens, drinking is such a huge part of my identity!

Katie: Atheist, twin, knitter, drunkard

But I did quit. A week ago I gave up alcohol, cigarettes (yes, I was smoking again, shut up), Valium, Vicodin, tramadol, Xanax, Ambien, and caffeine. Ha! I'm lucky I didn't do a Heath Ledger. I never took all of those at once, though. At least not that I recall. Then again, if I had taken all of those at once, who's to say I'd recall it?

The painkillers were for my back, which I screwed up a couple of weeks ago. I'd forgotten how a week of narcotics--all by themselves!--can make you go totally insane. Throw in random amounts of all the other stuff and, well, bring on the straitjacket. After a particularly nasty incident in which I behaved like a harpy from the seventh circle of hell, I decided I'd rather have a sore back than be psychotic.

So, yeah. I quit everything all at once. Cold turkey. Yay for me.

(I did have a cup of coffee a few days ago. My dad makes the best coffee I've ever had, and that's saying something. We live in Seattle, after all.)

I have two cats

Good lord, people drive me nuts. This poor guy is knocked flat on the floor with depression, and he's asking for advice on MetaFilter, and I swear, like HALF the answers are "Get a kitten."

I wonder if that’s what happens with crazy cat people? They just keep feeling depressed and think, “Maybe if I get ANOTHER kitten…”

A note on the previous post

Blogging about depression, especially when you're smack in the middle of it, is always risky. I try to be pretty peppy when I blog (unless I'm in an indignant lather about something), so describing my current (lamentable) mental state might seem a bit grim.

Also, I don't want it to come across as whiny or as a plea for sympathy. I'm always reading blogs by depressed people who are SO annoying and self-serving and exhibitionistic, like, "Oh, look over here and be moved by my torment and feel sorry for me but admire my courage".

Finally, I'm a pretty private person (hahaha I know you'd never know it) and it might be too revealing. But part of the illness is extreme apathy and a sort of paralysis when it comes to getting help, and I tend to exacerbate that by keeping it a secret from everyone when I'm depressed. So I thought this time I'd just tell everyone and get it out in the open and therefore HAVE to do something about it.

Perhaps something I blogged elsewhere while I was reading Peter Kramer's "Against Depression" (I was not depressed at the time) would be appropriate here:

I don't know how much more misery I can take.

And I don't mean mine.

I mean that everywhere I look, someone I care about is desperately unhappy.

And it's not because the world is a shitty place. I mean, it IS, hahaha, but that doesn't make people unhappy. Think of all the (annoying) people you know who are as happy as if they had good sense, even while this same shitty world falls to pieces around them...

No. I believe we are hardwired to be happy, no matter how fucked-up our circumstances. I don't believe that unhappy people are just more observant and aware of reality, that they somehow perceive the world with a clarity the rest of us lack. I recognize the correlation between depression and creativity, but I don't believe suffering is a prerequisite for the artist's ability to produce works of incredible beauty, profundity and insight.

I believe that depression robs people of their capacity to feel joy and pleasure and love.

And I believe that this disease, depression, is reaching epidemic proportions and that the world is not paying any fucking attention.

Well. Maybe it's not all that fitting. But I still believe it. As Dr. Kramer argues in his superlative book, depression is not the same thing as sadness, or sorrow, or moodiness. And it's not glamorous, either, despite the mystique it enjoys in certain circles. It's an illness. Nothing more, nothing less.

(Oh, and note to friends and family: Don't be alarmed. Thinking about dying is not the same thing as being suicidal.)

What have I become?

Question: How do you know if you're depressed?
Answer: NIN's "Hurt" sounds like an ANTHEM. And you're not a teenager.

Which is completely ridiculous. And that's the point. It's a great song, a perfectly emo 1990s gem. But when you find yourself actually identifying with it, and you're 40...well. You can try to fool yourself by thinking "Well, it's really Johnny Cash's cover I can relate to," but ultimately it's the same thing.

The problem is that depression doesn't hit me like a sledgehammer. If it did, it would be easy to recognize it. But it's sneaky, stealthy, and pernicious, and it creeps up, over weeks or months, until one day I finally realize I'm not just moody or grumpy. And I think, "Oh, this again." (That's actually an improvement. In my younger days, I would think, "Oh, it's ME again.")

So after a disastrous couple of weeks, I go to see my psychiatrist yesterday, and I tell her how fucked up my life is, how fucked up I am, how fucked up everything is. And how I'm a total train wreck, a disaster, a menace to myself and everyone around me. (This is not typical. Usually I go see the psychiatrist to chat about how well things are going, I get my prescriptions refilled, and that's that.)

And at the end of the session, when I am wondering aloud if I am, in fact, just a nutcase, she says, "Everything you've told me is in line with a depressive epsiode. Let's list the symptoms: fatigue, anhedonia, trouble concentrating, irritability, memory problems, feeling sad, thinking about death, intense guilt, anxiety, hopelessness, helplessness, sleeping changes, appetite changes..."

And I'm, like, "Oh. DUH."

Wuthering Heights

I could never decide if I preferred the Kate Bush or the Pat Benatar version of this song. This one trumps them both.

New Favorite Blog

I love Dr. Peter Kramer. And now I can get a regular dose of him at his blog, In Practice. Yay!