i have so much homework to do i don't even know how to explain it in human language. and i'm going t have 2 jobs over winter term. and im taking neuro and math bullshit next semester. fuck i think i am going to be busy until june.

...no, i'll be busy in june too.


i just wanna freeze time for a second and take a nap that's really all im after

how is it that all i have left to do before break is go turn in my seminar paper and im STILL stressed out as all fuck

i started thinking about/meeting with the international office/meeting with my advisor/looking up internships/emailing people/calling people for my winter term project like TWO MONTHS ago, and absolutely NOTHING has worked out so far

-i wanted to go to chile, but could not afford it
-i tried applying for some grants and digging up old CD's to cash in to pay for it anyway, but my parents told me they would&could not help me out financially in any way and that all my CD's had already been renewed in september & it was too late to cash them
-then my advisor said he'd email me about this science writing conference, and never did so
-i applied to a bajillion internships, and didn't get any of them
-i found this language class that seemed pretty cool that i could have taken but did not sign up for because the deposit was kinda expensive and my mom told me that i was getting a publishing internship with a friend of hers
-my mom told me she would get me an internship at her friend's publishing office (and then, of course, never even attempted to do so no matter how many times i called and asked her what's up with that)
-then my grandmother said she'd get me an internship with a german bookstore and then never emailed me back ever again
-then my advisor stopped responding to any of my emails

i now have one week before i have to turn in ALL my information to the registrar's office, and i am without a project, a sponsor, a CRN #, nothing. nothing at all.

what the fuck am i going to do now ahhhhhhhhhh everything's shutting down for thanksgiving and no one will talk to meeeeeeeee

this week has been a bitch

but i think i beasted it
...kinda



i have a bunch of seminar reading to do why am i on livejournal ahhhhhh l8erbai

THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK
outside my window
THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK

yet again, livejournal, i ask you:

who does blow on a fucking wednesday?






urban outfitters lookin ass white girls in the student union bathroom, apparently

EXAMS ARE NEXT WEEK BITCHES GO STUDY OR SOME SHIT

THE BIRDIES FROM THE LANGUAGE LAB WANDERED INTO MY SPANISH CLASS TODAY IT WAS SOOOOO FUCKING CUTE

we read our odes in class today which was awesome claro k claro k. my friend kevin wrote his about adderall and i wrote mine about cigarettes. jajaja i love that kid.
people at this school are too fucking cute i can't even take it. i'm not even a very touchy feely person at all but all day long i just want to pinch everybody's cheeks and go "schnuckie schnuckie schnuk!"


SO MANY GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING THIS WEEK IM SO PUMPED
tonight: burlesque show at the 'sco
tomorrow: latino night!
wednesday: ART BRUT
thursday: SAFER SEX NIGHT
friday: big gay dance party in sarp's room/crystal's birthday party
sunday: missoula oblongata!

aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh when am i going to do homework fuck fuck fuck fuck



i am really really excited for winter term. it sucks that i can't afford to go to chile right now but whatever i guess i'll just save up money over the summer and go next year. i applied to a bunch of literary internships in manhattan let's hope i actually get an interview for any of them. woo spending a month in a real city!

and next semester im taking:
-neuro + lab
-statistics + lab
-spanish 203
-either yoga or capoiera

helllll yeah helllll yeah!



happy kumba week btdubs

its safer sex week woo! i already bought my ticket and everything

i went to dwali and erotica reading night last night. it was pretty awesome.

i learned a lot of things about my classmates. the sentences "the books always say nobody wants a mouthful of pubes but I DO" and "BAM i love to make you cum" may or may not have been uttered by gray, the crazy spaniard of la casa.

and now i reaaaaaaaally want to learn to play sitar. i'm at hippie college. that junt will happen.



in spanish class today we read pablo neruda and ate empanadas and our homework is to write an ode about something we love in spanish. yes.


plans for tonight:
-detective fiction class at 2:30
-haul ass to the science center to meet with my advisor at 3:30
-lecture about the argentin revolution en la casa at 4:30
-dinner at Afrikan heritage house at 5:30
-sad divas dance junt at 8
-sunshine scouts comedy improv at 9
-sexy party en la casa at 10
-drunk slumber party in ornella's room at midnightish



my life is perfect





ART BRUT IS COMING NEXT WEEK HELL YEAH HELL YEAH

so it turns out im claustrophobic



huh who knew

didn't fail my anatomy test
wrote a song today kinda



need to write, want to sleep

...want to write, need to sleep? idk one of those two

there are a bunch of pieces that im working on that i want to actually finish for once
and then put them up here. or somewhere.
even if they suck donkey dick
it's just about time i get used to my writing being read by people


im really out of my literary groove
and i need to get back into it
i dont recognize myself if im not writing





conundrum:
most of a person's inspiration comes from personal experience
the most inspiring personal experiences are often kinda heavy and kinda tmi and no one wants to hear you bitch
how do you balance these two?

how do you write about the significant events in your life without being a bloggy wench?







i am going to fail my anatomy test tomorrow. go me.

oberlin is good though. or at least better.

memphis is getting better. it's weird though. i still love it but it just doesn't feel like home anymore.

i think i'm at that point where i have to go out and establish my own home now. i think it's a part of growing up.

it just feels like im on vacation in another town where a couple of my friends live that's very similar to the place i grew up. it's not home.



i miss la casa.
it's really disorienting to go from speaking spanish for several hours of every day to only hearing it when i listen to reggaeton. i don't know how to explain it...

it's like...
imagine what it would feel like to go around all day only using one arm. you suppose that you could get around with just the one, you can perform every basic action that you need to, but there are moments when it feels only appropriate to use the other and you feel like half a person if you're not using both. it's awkward to go around all day using only one arm when there's another perfectly good one right there. but in this new location it's not socially acceptable to use the other arm and nobody understands what's going on when you try to use it.

to me, there are some things that it only makes sense to express in spanish. so there are all these thoughts and feelings and methods of communication that are cut off to me because no one knows spanish.
it's like an entire set of linguistic tools just vanished overnight.




blah blah blah blah overthinking everything im gonna go study for my lab test now

you know that scene at the end of planet of the apes, when the guy finally gets back home and instead of seeing abraham at the lincoln memorial there's just a giant monkey in a suit?

that's the way i feel about memphis right now.
a lot of things are not right here.







i wanna go back to college

so
much
work














i wanna go to santiago right nownownownownownownow!

i never sleep i never sleep i never sleep i never sleep i never sleep i never sleep i never sleep i

so i'm applying to write a blog for oberlin, which means i've been posting some of my writing up here so i can use my lj as an online portfolio. here's some word sketches i wrote at governor's school, arrows denote new pieces:

I want to lay everyone I have ever lost down on concrete and trace them with sidewalk chalk. I want to draw them in front of everywhere I have ever lived. I want to grab their silhouettes and trace the lines all the way back home, to dance on the outside of everything I have ever felt, to roll it around on my tongue.

The children are outside and I like the sound of their scraping feet.

I want to lie in the mud and feel the earth suck me back in. Today I am a tree and I feel my placid limbs stretching out beneath me, entangled in the wet dirt and the wet sky. I grab the air and the air grabs me back, and it shows me the crime scene of my entire being. I am not sure if I am lifted or pulled.

One day I will trace a chalk line to China, and the earth will be glad for the direction.

-------------------------------->

today in the news I read about
a man with wooden warts:
the tree-man of Java,
his picture all knotty and smiling vaguely

I imagine us sometimes together,
sipping coffee,
saying it's not that bad,
really

-------->

There is a switch that has been flipped and I know it because the trees are crystallizing. When you look past the sky you no longer see a universe but only sharpening molecules.

Behind the stars are glorious polygons.

I love those isolated moments when you are furiously examining your hem and become entranced with the pattern. Involuntary enlightenment.

Today I walked alone at night and it was the cracking of my feet and the cockroaches--a horrifying wriggling mound. When reality is surging at you from under a manhole, you can only stand and stare.

I feel them on the telephone and I feel their questions: Where are you?

I am lying on the stage.

I feel their questions and I am doing exactly what you think I'm doing. I put on glow-in-the-dark nail polish today, and I like these orbs.

The night is a gooey sheet and I feel their reproach. I wonder if they have ever seen this treetop. I wonder what I have seen.

The silence is a question of its own and I ask it
What do you know about transcendentalism?

I do not want to know,
I want you to
I want you to feel the answer that I can not tell you

I can never show you these treetops.

------------>

there is a chiming coming from that cathedral that sounds almost genuine, almost like faith. It has a roundness, the voices and the bells melting together in one pot and it is shiny and gold like understanding.

I do not understand that word usually.

The bark is cool on my face and I like sitting on branches because I feel like a secret. Little ant people a thousand branches down do not see me, do not notice.

I would not care either.

This branch is worth the scratches on my arms because I feel invisible, un missed. I bet it's really cool for the squirrels.

The church sounds are wafting by and I am strangely reminded of seven years old. It is a linear universe today--seeing and understanding and everything in one place at once. It is like maybe what sunday mornings are meant to be.

Little ant people are marching through the bushes.

----------->

What happen?
I am down.

Smooth, sinking like gelatinous waves.
I am the smell of a pair of hot jeans you wear too long.

Damp,
slowly ripping.

Pebbles encrusted like diamonds.

so i'm applying to write a blog about Oberlin, which means I'm posting a bunch of my old creative writing I wrote so I can use my lj as an online portfolio. here's something i wrote after i failed my precal midterm:

The water is green. The water is three grams bubblebath solution. The water is a warm existentialist soup into which I dribble.

Numbers are funny because they mean so many things. Not like words do. It's so much context that makes seven a seven, the six before it and the eight after, you can't even compare to the context of language. I bet you if I say green water and green thumb you feel green, but seven years old versus seven dollars in your account? Like puce to emerald.

It's funny because sixty nine is a fine year to be born. You're not quite old yet at the tender age of thirty eight but you've graduated to the big kid's club of understanding Saturday Night Live skits and getting to laugh at denim gauchos. In a few years sixty nine won't be sophisticated; it will just be old.

Today I took a test and on my sheet of paper I saw a number that was like my father's birth year. My eyes are swollen Christmas red and green and I haven't left the bath yet.

Today I came home and I looked at a number; it means failure and not getting into good schools. It means stupid and at 4:05 PM I read the number that means inferior and it's 6:15 and I don't plan on leaving the bath any time soon. My hands are starting to wrinkle but it's not my father's birth year I'm thinking about.

I make a mean Shirley Temple.

Today I read some numbers that say some things about me and I took my pants off and scrubbed the dead bugs out of the bathtub. I grabbed some cherry syrup and some tonic water and a copy of Times Science and now I'm running out of tonic, I've scrubbed myself about four times now and I emanate green tea body wash. It turns out there's a guy who says the laws of nature aren't laws so much, he says gravity is like cosmic jaywalking. The water isn't hot enough.

Outside my father is talking to my mother about the class and the number, about what to do with my future. I am running out of pomegranate juice but I will not leave.

On page two Einstein says it's a miracle that science explains anything and I agree with him. I am thinking about Tyler Durden and being human butt-wipe drinking pomegranate Shirley Temples by the pound. I am human soup, scooping out lukewarm bucketfuls while the hot tap runs. Finally the green water is steaming and underneath my hair is clumpy seaweed colors. In the water my mermaid legs are mysterious yellow but above it they turn nasty humanoid pink. I wonder how hot the water would have to be to literally cook me. My mermaid lips are salty from bath scrub.

When I read about all the little cells and all their little processes it makes me sad that the real deal is nothing like the textbook. It's sad that anatomists can't distinguish ventricles so perfectly shaped in the diagram and I wish our organs were color-by-numbers. I like not to be confused and so when I read about the little divisions I like to think of them like isolated choices, like my kidneys decided that this way is just easiest. Textbooks saying “it goes like this” set me up thinking each cell rigidly establishes its own constitution. I think it's an issue of majority rule, like a social contract.

I like to think of people as human soup with cells doing things and spilling into each other in certain repeated ways because it makes the most sense. Lots of little fluids and enzymes bump into each other like people saying hello at the grocery store and the bumpings are evolution. We're soups spilling into each other and a spill can only go so many ways.

According to NYT Science there is a DIY book for diagnosing your gerbil's depression. I remember Einstein and Tyler Durden and in the boiling bubble soup mermaid laughs at the poor little gerbils and the little owners with nothing better to do.

Mermaid slides along the bathtub bottom, sipping bloody Shirley Temples from her ruby-amethyst goblet. She and Einstein are soup but no number describes the steamy greenness.

got contemplative on the ride to ohio, wrote my internal monologue. posted it on fbook, might as well post it here too:

On the road, watching pavement patterns roll by, thinking about emergence: ants and anthills, highways, connections, veins, in a leaf, capillaries, neural networks, electric circuits, the archetypal delivery systems of the universe.

Subway systems. Sitting on my mom’s lap in Manhattan: trains, stations, maps.

The subway smell, grime, fumes, urine, ethanol, particles colliding, fossil fuels.

Life as a million jumbled chemical reactions, infinite networks interacting.

When driving I like to think of myself as saline osmosing through a vessel, phloem, “flow”-like the flow of water through plant tissue, AP biology junior year. The last time I played pretend like this I was a sugar molecule in the vessels of a leaf, delivering nutrients, high to low concentration, wandering around the highway late on a Wednesday night, diffusing from Memphis to Arkansas, bored, aimless, looking for a place to deposit myself. Diffusing nutrients. Music is playing. Talking. Thinking. Not thinking.

Not thinking about the right things.

Chemical signals. Particles collide. All systems have regulatory checkpoints. Thinking about emergent patterns.

Humans are among a very small set of audio-visual organisms. Ants build complex communities and vastly complicated structures largely without sight and sound. Most of the universe is chemical signaling. Humans live in an eerie world of light and noise. Most ecosystems operate on smells and pheromones. Ants are largely olfactory.

Millions of tiny, dumb, blind creatures build complex societies based on smells. Huge feats of ant architecture formed by millions of bugs individually deciding to move a clod of dirt. No blueprints. A bunch of stupid, deaf creatures pushing dirt around that somehow makes an insect fortress.

Chemical signals. Stop and start points.

Ants don’t see or think much of anything. If a human sees a carcass in the middle of the road generally they’d so something about it. Ants see an inert body in a tunnel and hardly notice. But we can’t have ant carcasses clogging up our tunnel systems, keeling over and rotting wherever they so please. How do brainless sightless organisms handle the death of a comrade?

The ant-death process is a fascinating one: for a while, no one notices, they just make a trail around this motionless body in the ground. Then, after the body decomposes, it begins to release a death-smell. Which the ants recognize, and then they carry the long-dead decomposing body off to a designated death-pile of ant carcasses in the corner of the anthill.

Biologist and entomologist E.O. Wilson once studied the death-signal in ants, taking around 10 different fatty acids identified as decomposition substances in various organisms, dabbing them on dummy ants, and observing.

Of the decomposition substances used, he found that oleic acid was the death-signal in ants; when dabbed on a dummy it would set the ants off carrying the fake off to the ant-cemetery. It was so effective that he could even put it on live ants, and the other ants would haul the live ant off, kicking and screaming, to the death-room. Buried alive. Zombie ant science fact.

Chemical signals. Stop points. Start points. Oleic acid and the smell of death. Music is playing in the car. I am not paying attention. Humans are audio-visual.

Cancer is essentially an error in cell replication systems, a stop point is ignored, uncontrolled cell growth, malignant tumors, the organelles don’t know to stop, the cell metabolism is distracted.

I am not thinking about traffic. The road is like a vessel, like capillaries, delivering nutrients, particles collide.

We don’t see the stop sign, but we see headlights. Vehicles collide. Noise. Glass. Darkness. Music is playing. Humans are audio-visual.

Oleic acid and the death-smell. Blood and rubber. Fumes. Fossil fuels. Where am I. Whose blood is this. Darkness.

Ants are largely olfactory.

http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n8/htdocs/new-frontiers-of-sobriety-984.php?page=1

NEW FRONTIERS OF SOBRIETY

Being Anti-High Feels Anti-Good

BY HAMILTON MORRIS

Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In particle physics we learn that for all matter there can be antimatter of opposite charge. But what about drugs? Is there an anti-weed, an anti-heroin, or an anti-beer? Pharmacologically speaking, the answer is yes. Scientists can identify regions of the brain stimulated by a given drug and then create an anti-drug with the opposite mechanism of action. Substances that do the opposite of common recreational drugs are useful in overdoses but rarely become recreational drugs in their own right for the simple reason that they make you feel totally and completely miserable. I decided to systematically test three of the most powerful anti-highs over the course of one week. Here are my results:

ANTI-WEED: RIMONABANT
DOSE: 60 MG

Pharmaceutical researchers have observed that smoking weed gives people the munchies, so logically it follows that deactivating the receptors in the brain responsible for getting high would give you anti-munchies. They tested a drug with just such an action and found that it was incredibly effective. The drug was approved in Europe and appeared to be one of the best weight-loss drugs in history. Rimonabant is inexpensive, effective, and totally nonaddictive. Unfortunately, in addition to giving users anti-munchies it was found to have a prominent side effect called anti-happiness, aka suicidal depression. In the months following the drug’s clinical trials, there were over 70 patients displaying signs of suicidality, two completed suicides, a host of seizures, precipitated multiple sclerosis, domestic abuse, and a man who strangled his daughter.

When you smoke weed, it stimulates the parts of your brain called cannabinoid receptors. It may seem obvious, but our brain has these receptors for reasons other than getting stoned. Our cannabinoid receptors have an array of crucial regulatory functions in the unstoned brain. We depend on a cocktail of natural weedlike chemicals called endocannabinoids to regulate inflammation, appetite, and emotional stability. When you take rimonabant, not only is it impossible for you to get stoned on weed, it’s also impossible for your body to utilize its natural endocannabinoids. I have heard more than one stoner speculate about a future where the government requires rimonabant implants at birth to prevent the population from “expanding their minds.” Unlikely, but one must wonder what it would feel like to live in such a world!

Since normal drugs are generally taken socially at night, I decide to do my anti-high experiments first thing in the morning and alone. But I’m curious about how my friend Sam would respond to rimonabant so I persuade him to try it with me. Sam has smoked weed all day, every day, for the last five years. When I suggest he take a pill that would make it impossible for him to get high for at least 24 hours, he is not too keen on the idea. But after asking about 50 or 60 times and offering to buy him weed in return, he cautiously accepts my offer.

Both Sam and I take a whopping dose of rimonabant three times higher than the maximum dose used for weight loss. After swallowing the pills, Sam goes out to meet his weed dealer in Manhattan. A half hour later, he texts me to say he’s having an attack of “explosive diarrhea.” I’m also feeling the onset as a subtle but persistent anxiety. Sam comes back to my apartment and shakily loads a pipe. He takes a deep hit, waits, and shakes his head, saying he feels “absolutely nothing.”

We decide to go out and get some food at a Polish diner. Upon walking into the restaurant we realize that our waiter is an incredibly slow guy we’ve had in the past who never refills the small water glasses. Both of us tense up. I order an egg-white omelet and Sam interrupts me to say, “What are you talking about? You want the whole egg. Why would you just want the whites?”

“I usually get egg whites. They’re good. Is there something wrong with that?”

Sam turns to the waiter. “He wants the whole egg.”

I look down and see that my hands are trembling. I remember reading studies that suggest rimonabant lowers the seizure threshold. I don’t mention this to Sam. My omelet arrives and I start to feel nauseated the moment I look at it. It’s made with sickeningly orange American cheese. I might actually vomit. Sam has a healthy appetite. In the past I have seen him eat a whole chicken down to the skeleton, but on rimonabant he picks at his omelet for a few minutes before loudly protesting, “If someone does not get this omelet away from me I’m going to vomit… I’m going to fucking vomit and then I’m going to die!”

We leave the diner and anxiously walk down St. Mark’s. I stop inside a bong store and touch my fingers to the glass like a peasant outside a department store on Christmas. I have never felt so un-high in my life. I must admit that my thinking is unusually clear and I could see a lower dose of rimonabant being helpful when studying for a test—well, it could if it didn’t make me feel like I was about to simultaneously cry, puke, and have a seizure. The fact that this is a widely prescribed drug is unbelievable. The idea of taking this daily is insane. It would be less than a week before I killed someone.

In the late afternoon I try smoking some weed. I take a deep hit, feel a transient sensation of threshold stonededness, and then whatever it was passes in less than five minutes. Sam is not willing to let the rimonabant win, and throughout the day he continuously attempts to get high, taking hit after hit after hit from an aluminum cigarette. Around midnight, I hear him take a deep toke, sigh, and scream, “Damn it!”

ANTI-LSD: RISPERIDONE
DOSE: 4 MG

Psychedelics like LSD were used in many early models of psychosis. Even today, the majority of scientific literature refers to psychedelic drugs as “psychotomimetics,” meaning drugs that mimic psychosis. Much psychedelic research has to be done under the guise of studying schizophrenia or related disorders. There is obviously a difference between schizophrenia and tripping on LSD, but the idea is that if drugs could be developed that did the opposite of LSD, they would be effective treatments for psychotic disorders. Antipsychotic drugs work by blocking the stimulation of dopamine and serotonin receptors, which are responsible for practically every enjoyable drug in the world from methamphetamine to cocaine to LSD. When the serotonin and dopamine receptors are blocked it effectively turns you into a zombie. Maybe you know a girl who takes Seroquel or you took it yourself once. It’s not fun. Just keeping your eyes open is an enormous struggle. If you’re a paranoid schizophrenic, antipsychotics can chemically dull you enough to keep you from acting on violent impulses. They are also useful for aborting a “bad trip,” and unlike Xanax or Valium, which only calm you down but don’t actually stop you from tripping, antipsychotics stop the trip dead in its tracks.

Before getting out of bed I take 4 mg of risperidone, a dose high enough to make a 300-pound homicidal maniac slumber peacefully. I get up and go out to get some vegetable juice. I walk down to the East River and look out across the water. After ten minutes I’m starting to feel sedated. I lie down in the grass. It starts to rain so I get up again; this time my entire body feels leaden. I have to think about picking up each leg as I walk. Pick up leg. I’m getting really wet and I don’t know if I will make it home. Pick up leg. A cop car drives by and slows down as it passes me. I feel painfully awkward because I know that I’m walking in slow motion through the rain without an umbrella, but I can’t move any faster. The cop car speeds off.

Pick up leg. I’m a pharmaceutical masochist. Curiosity—the things you’ve made me do! I’m the least high person on the planet. In the history of humans no one has been less high than me. I take a Ritalin and it does nothing; I might as well have dropped it down the sewer. Pick up leg. A ten-year-old on Grand Street says that I’m “walking like a fag,” to which I respond, “What’s up.” I stumble into my apartment building and crawl up the stairs. I crawl to my door, crawl inside, and pass out on the floor into the deepest, blackest, most deathlike sleep I have ever experienced. I wake up eight hours later feeling like I just had a successful lobotomy.

ANTI-HEROIN: NALTREXONE
DOSE: 200 MG

There are drugs called opioid antagonists, which do the opposite of recreational opioids like heroin. When paramedics treat heroin overdoses, they inject an opioid antagonist called naloxone into the body. On a molecular level, naloxone races into your brain, jumps ahead of the heroin molecules occupying your opioid receptors, and pushes them aside. Once the naloxone molecule is in place, heroin is unable to suppress your breathing and the overdoser rapidly regains consciousness. Naloxone has saved countless lives.

Researchers realized they could use a similar opioid antagonist called naltrexone to stop junkies from feeling the effects of heroin. A device was developed that is surgically implanted under the skin and releases a continuous supply of naltrexone into the body for several months at a time. Although some addicts have benefited from naltrexone implants, the results are usually disastrous. When you give a junkie naltrexone it not only prevents them from feeling heroin, it causes them to go into instantaneous accelerated withdrawal, exponentially worse than natural opiate withdrawal. Some people have killed themselves to escape the pain after getting naltrexone implants; others perform home surgery and cut the implants out of their body.

In the same way that rimonabant blocks endocannabinoids, naltrexone blocks natural opioids called endorphins. Endorphins are pleasure chemicals commonly associated with sex and exercise, but they’re also important regulatory factors in our daily mood and immune function. Even if you’re not a junkie, taking an opioid antagonist has a profound effect on your neurochemistry. For that reason, naltrexone has been shown to be an effective treatment for pedophilia and kleptomania. The natural opioid rush from acting on these compulsions is blocked, so fondling a child or stealing an iPod loses its euphoric rush.

I decide to take a dose of naltrexone four times higher than the daily dose used to treat opioid dependence. After taking the pills, I get on the train to Manhattan. I’m sort of giddy. I can’t quite describe the feeling but it’s not necessarily bad. The best anti-high thus far. I get off at Canal Street and I’m filled with tension amid all the shouting, sweaty, glistening tourists. At the same time I have this strange sensory enhancement that is not totally unpleasant. Vaguely erotic. I can feel each and every hair on my scrotum moving as I walk. Since I went to the bong store on rimonabant, I think it would only be appropriate for me to go to the needle exchange today. I walk inside and I’m immediately depressed and confused by my decision. As I’m filling out forms to get my needles, the woman looks at me and says my name is already in the computer—what? This twilight-zone moment makes me incredibly tense and paranoid. Why am I in the computer at the needle exchange? Why am I at the needle exchange? Why am I on naltrexone? I walk outside holding a paper bag full of needles and bleach and feel like I’m about to cry.

I’m totally absorbed in frantic and confused thoughts. I wish I understood addiction. I have read so many books, known so many addicts, but nothing makes sense to me. I don’t want to say addiction is a disease, because diseases are excuses. Diseases are permission slips for being sick. If I’m addicted to Valium, that’s a conscious choice I make each time I swallow a Valium tablet. But how can I say that? I feel guilty. I’m so confused. Thomas Szasz said, “If the desire to read Ulysses cannot be cured with an anti-Ulysses pill, then neither can the desire to use alcohol, heroin, or any other drug or food be cured by counterdrugs.” But is he right? My trance is broken when someone offers me a flyer for “mad mojitos.”

I get on the train to Union Square and find myself spontaneously breaking into song, then running full speed until I lose my breath. After running, my body is assaulted with sharp aches and pains. Is this what it feels like to be old? I almost step on a sparrow pecking at a muffin crumb and scream at the top of my lungs. Wow, am I on edge! When you meet new people, instead of shaking hands, both parties should scream at the top of their lungs. That would be the custom in a naltrexone alternate universe. As the day wears on, my muscles are starting to freeze up into terrible wooden knots. All my internal organs have been replaced with beef jerky. I have to keep stretching—continuously—to avoid hardening into a solid block of wood. I can’t wait for this sensation to pass. O sobriety, how I long for thee!

CONCLUSION

There are so many anti-highs I have neglected to experience, but some are seriously dangerous. Drugs with the opposite action of ketamine are potent neurotoxins, and drugs that do the opposite of alcohol and benzodiazepines are known to cause seizures. Scientists are still mapping the gelatinous landscape of our brains, and as new drugs are discovered, new anti-drugs will also be found. Who knows what kind of chemical misery the future might hold! Although I must admit, after a week of enduring these anti-highs I feel incredible. The neurochemical floodgates have opened and there is unimaginable rebound euphoria. All night I walk down the street, peaceful and optimistic, ready to high-five strangers. Ready to high-five the moon! Hey moon, what up!

All that is loved is loved by contrast. We love intoxication because we know sobriety; to love sobriety we should know anti-intoxication. We can’t know the high without the low, and after a week of getting low I’m feeling pretty high. I think the only thing we have to fear is the middle.


^something my friend sarah put up on facebook, i thought it was pretty interesting and though i should share it here with my adoring fans

Genital retraction syndrome

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Genital retraction syndrome (GRS), generally considered a culture-specific syndrome, is a condition in which an individual is overcome with the belief that his/her external genitals—or also, in females, breasts—are retracting into the body, shrinking, or in some male cases, may be imminently removed or disappear. A penis panic is a mass hysteria event or panic in which male members of a population suddenly experience this belief.

Penis panics have occurred around the world, most notably in Africa and Asia. Local beliefs in many instances assert that such physical changes are often fatal.

In cases where the fear of the penis being retracted is secondary to other conditions, psychological diagnosis and treatments are under development. It is becoming increasingly clear that these forms of mass hysteria are more common than previously thought.

The phenomenon is often, but not always, associated with occult belief, such as witchcraft. These panics frequently, but not exclusively, occur in places where access to education—particularly in science and human biology—is limited, or otherwise restricted (for example, when government policies restrict such education). Others have been reported under the influence of drug use. (Compare with castration anxiety.)

Contents [hide] 1 Southeast Asia: Koro 2 Africa 2.1 Benin 2.2 Congo-Kinshasa 2.3 Sudan 3 Medical viewpoints 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

[edit] Southeast Asia: Koro

Penis panics in southeast Asia have become known under the term "Koro" (which means "head of the turtle" in Malay). Some psychiatrists ^[1] have referred to Koro as a culture-bound syndrome, but it is phenomenologically related, if not identical, to penis panics in various cultures. For example, typical Koro-like symptoms have been reported in Caucasian subjects both in England and other Western countries (Berrios & Morley, 1984).^[2] Koro most commonly describes the extreme fear that the penis is retracting into the body, including the idea that such retraction will bring about death. It can also refer to beliefs of "genital theft" or some kind of sorcery which has resulted in the loss of the penis. Sometimes the testicles are also believed to be affected.

Koro also tends to reflect a certain xenophobia among some groups,^{[citation needed]} whereby foreigners are often blamed as the ones behind the "attacks".

In Chinese, the term used for the condition is shook yang (suo yang, 縮陽). Outbreaks of Koro in China were reported in 1948, 1955, 1966, 1974, 1984, and 1985, although none have been reported in the 20 or so years since (Tseng 2006).

A condition called "Bang-utot", which carries symptoms of both bangungot and koro, is a repeated theme in William S. Burroughs' book Naked Lunch.

Although Koro goes back to ancient times, beliefs have evolved to better suit modernity. Whereas in the past the causes were usually identified as supernatural, e.g. sorcery, a recent Koro episode in Northern Thailand placed the blame on Vietnamese Communist agents who supposedly put chemicals in the water supply.^[3]

Sufferers may resort to extreme physical measures to prevent the believed retraction of the penis. As well as affecting individuals, Koro-like syndromes can often occur in an outbreak of mass hysteria.

Koro most commonly strikes men, but rare cases are known to involve women and the fear that either their external genitals or nipples are retracting into the body.

Aside from the emotional distress, Koro by itself is not physically harmful, and no actual retraction takes place. Injuries have occurred when stricken men have resorted to apparatus such as needles, hooks, fishing line, and shoe strings, to prevent the disappearance of their penises.

An epidemic struck Singapore in 1967, resulting in thousands of reported cases. Government and medical officials alleviated the outbreak only by a massive campaign to reassure men of the anatomical impossibility of retraction together with a media blackout on the spread of the condition.

Koro has been successfully treated with a course of alprazolam and imipramine (which are psychiatric medications, the former used to treat anxiety disorders).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Africa

The belief has triggered waves of panic in Senegal, Benin, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Sudan and Congo-Kinshasa at various times in the last decade.^[4]

[edit] Benin

On November, 2001, in the commercial capital of Cotonou, Benin, authorities have ordered security forces to curb violence, following the deaths of five people by vigilantes. There have been reports of at least 10 such attacks. Four of those who died were burned, another man was hacked to death. Correspondents say that mobs have attacked individuals accused of using magic to steal men's penises.^[5]

[edit] Congo-Kinshasa

On April, 2008, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, the police arrested 14 suspected victims (of penis snatching) and sorcerers accused of using black magic or witchcraft to steal (make disappear) or shrink men's penises to extort cash for cure, amid a wave of panic. Arrests were made in an effort to avoid bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 alleged penis snatchers were beaten to death by mobs.^[6][7]

[edit] Sudan

In September 2003, the Middle East Media Research Institute reported a hysteria in Khartoum, capital of Sudan.^[8]

Sudanese victims were made to believe by force of suggestion that their penises would melt away after they shook hands, shared a comb, or received a verbal curse. The so-called "penis-melting" has been blamed on Zionists trying to wipe out the Sudanese people by making their men unable to reproduce.^[9]

The hysterical reports were spread throughout Sudan by means of cell phone text-messaging.

Sudanese police investigated the claims and have found no evidence of anything supernatural, and that it is likely a hoax which victims believed through the power of suggestion. Mr. Abul-Gasim Mohamed Ibrahim, Sudan's Minister of Health, issued official statements to calm the public's fears.

Local media also contributed to the idea's spread. The Sudanese columnist Ja'far Abbas (a satirical writer) has warned visitors to avoid shaking hands with "a dark-skinned man". In reference to the electronic comb which was supposed to have caused one man's penis to disappear, Abbas writes, "No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical cyborg that penetrates the skull, [passes] to the lower body and emasculates a man!!"

The phrase "Penis-melting Zionist cyborg combs" has been coined to describe this humorous story. It was originally incorrectly attributed to Wall Street Journal's James Taranto writing in his "Best of the Web Today".^[10] However, the article in question has no such phrase, nor anything similar beyond the aforementioned quote.

[edit] Medical viewpoints

Documented cases have not typically indicated actual instances of penis shrinkage or retraction. Any actual injury or damage that occurs to individuals usually arises from overly zealous attempts at preventing retraction. Medical response generally consists of informing patients that the genitals anatomically cannot retract or shrink in the manner typically feared.

As one academic work states, GRS seems to be similar in many ways to the Western category of panic attack, with sexual elaborations. It seems probable that, in a culture where sexual anxiety is high and stories exist of death by genital retraction, a man in the right frame of mind could panic at the observation that his genitals are shrinking in response to cold or anxiety.

i had a dream that i made eggs last night. tcastle and sanket and leah and the rosemans were in it and they approved of my egg-making. and now i am eating some eggs.

eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs

i kinda wanna go back to bed i am still quite tired




in another news i got to play with some pretty sweet instruments last night god damn i love f-model mandolins