Shrinking in the Night

I WAS GRIPPED by an attack of terrifying illness last night. Basically I hadn't been drinking and I wasn't high ~ well, I was no higher than usual ~ and yes I had taken heroin a couple of hours before... But suddenly I came over all nauseous and dizzy and when I closed my eyes my body was shinking, so I took to biting my thumb nail and yet my thumb was huge and I felt completely unreal. So I went to look in the bathroom mirror and I was pale and fabulous. I looked so much better than normal ~ so maybe I was hallucinating~? Then I had to take a bucket to bed just in case I puked.

I lay in bed, trying to enjoy feeling ill (well I did used to enjoy being sick as a kid, ya know ~ so I could skip school and everything), but it was an uphill battle. I'm just too old to revel in sickness. And yet Anna Grace calls me a complete hypochondriac!

Because I hadn't slept on Monday and wasn't inclined to sleep last night, I woke up incredibly late. After about one thirty. It was most inconvenient. And I kept thinking about that vulgar name I had thought up for my club night and I felt really guilty and contrite for being so vulgar and crass. But can I say in mitigation that the names were the product of an extended brainstorming session and obviously most of what you brainstorm will fall flat. I think the best one I came up with was Hillary Pillory, but I probably couldn't use that, because people would think I was taking about ecstasy pills...

Here's what I said to Beverly on the subject:


I just read that again and thought you were talking about an old friend named Sandra. Who was coming visiting! Man I can be so slow at times!

I mean, I read it the first time and fully understood, I read it a second and I'm up a gum tree! What is wrong with me?!

This is my 2nd attempt at commenting because I left half a sentence out and the old comment was just crap. Ha!

Can you think up a good name for my nightclub? I posted up a rude one on my blog and probably everybody will hate me because of it. Maybe "Slutbox" would be better... what am I saying I hate names of bands etc with sordid sexual references you know like Courtney Love's "Hole" it's just so trashy and amoral and tasteless. I need to think up something fabulous and was joking about "Gnome Brigade" and "Itchy Swine" but what CAN I call it???

It's always been an ambition of mine to have my own club night. Also I want to release a record, appear in a French film (it must be a speaking part)... and do loads of other things nobody would really believe of me...

I wonder what it was that happened to me last night? I felt kind of mentally and physically ill at the same time. And why do these things happen to me? I mean, it's happened to me a few times this year: my physical, mental and energy bodies become misaligned and distorted in space... what is that? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

When this happens and you're half asleep it's called hypnogogia ~ but it happens to me when I'm wide awake. Is that why the doctors call me schizo?

Oh by the way, don't worry about my shrinking. My clothes still fit, so I can't be that much smaller than before...

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THIS IS A SPECIAL VIDEO FOR ANNA GRACE
who is having doggie troubles, because she thinks her Porkshire has cancer and is dying and I can't think up a single nice or friendly or reassuring thing to say to her

The short film tells the story of Hachkō, the most faithful dog of all time, whose owner died and yet he turned up at the railway station every evening for ten years, waiting waiting waiting for him to come back... and eventually they meet up in Japanese paradise or the Buddha Fields to remain together for all time...

Binky Telling Me I'm a Cuckoo Clock ~ Plus: "A Bitch Called Sandy"...

BINKY keeps telling me I'm "really mad" and I keep telling her I'm not. I mean, I'm not paranoid, not depressed, not anxious even and so what if I feel high nearly all the time? I'd taken heroin in the night and hadn't slept so when I went round Binky's at 7:45 this morning, I was a bit hyper. I was trying to think up names for my fabulous clubnight and she kept getting offended by my wonderful ideas like "Slut Vagina". [I would never give my club such a vulgar name; it just seemed like a good idea at the time...] And when I took to recording random snatches of conversation. So for a while I was thinking of naming my star-spangled party "Are you on that toilet for long? Because I really need to go." ~~ I think that would be a brilliant name! The other top two favourites were "Gnome Brigade", "Dillory Pillory" and "Itchy Swines".

So what does Binky mean when she says I'm mad? She seems to think I ought to know, but I don't. Everyone in her house is insane anyhow, because it's a psychiatric half-way house. And yet when I loudly said I'd been hearing voices in the night again ~~ and I mean all of two voices saying no more than two words each ~ nobody was willing to take on board the fact that yes, I might hear the odd voice now and then ~ but no, I most certainly am not clinically crazy. Especially compared to the rest of the nutters I know.

Grizzeller, the one guy in Binky's house full of nutty girls is in such consistently slow motion that if, for example, you wanted to visit the house at 9am and knew he'd be the only one in, you'd have to phone in advance at eight to give him enough time to shamble along the hallway and get the front door open. Now that is bonkers. I am not!

When I was talking to my very young and beautiful GP, Dr Lovelace about the inconveniences of psychotic breaks and happened to opine that "hearing voices is supposed to be a sign of madness," she quite inaccurately corrected me saying, "well, hearing voices is a sign of schizophrenia". Well yes, of course it can be that, but it can also be a sign of bipolarity, a sign of psychism (clairaudience) and a sign of nothing at all! I'm really surprised Dr Lovelace doesn't realize that 15% of bipolar 1 patients hallucinate. Hallucinations are not, per se, signs of schizophrenia. In this country we have a national Hearing Voices Network brimful with people experiencing daily extra-sensory perceptions and the majority of them claim not to be mad, and do not experience the symptoms of psychosis (paranoia, incoherent thought, great difficulty engaging with life).

The British Mental Health Foundation obviously know their stuff. Binky insists all her voices are absolutely accoustically real. Well many of mine aren't. When I really was mad they did sound exactly like invisible people speaking next to me, but nowadays they're more like random words precipitating from an idea-saturated atmosphere into my consciousness:

It is also common for people to hear voices as if they are thoughts entering their mind from somewhere outside themselves. This is not the same as a suddenly inspired idea, which people usually recognise as coming from themselves. These thoughts are not their own and would seem to come from outside their own consciousness, like telepathy.

This isn't precisely my experience, but it's similar.

When I tell Binky I may be "just a bit hypomanic" she says, "you've been hypomanic for two weeks now". And when I point out that hypomania is just very mild mania, she says, "then hypomania is mild madness". You see?! Every move I make I'm already snookered. That girl has been in the mental health system for far too long and she knows too much.

Then she takes issue with me for wondering aloud what is wrong with other nutters and why they act the way they do. Well that's just me being me, I'm afraid ~ always fascinated by what makes others tick...

Hey! I'm not doing Christmas alone with an Iceland sweet chili chicken pizza this year because I've been invited to Binky's for Xmas Lunch with all her cuckoo-clock friends. How brilliant is that?! We're even allowed vodka, which has been banned for the rest of the year after Binky got me to buy two half bottles, drank the lot and then ended up lying in bed throwing a near-delirious pity-party of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was really not pretty.

Speaking of alcohol, I idiotically went and wasted 95p on a can last night which I mixed with my Polish fruits of the forest drink. I had one single sip and now it's sitting in a giant mug untouched and untouchable and I don't know what to do with it now. I'm very much into the waste not, want not philosophy and cannot in all good conscience pour it down the drain. Like I've said many times ~ although yes, I did used to drink enough alcohol not to be consuming any nonalcoholic drink at all and to be getting daily blackouts. But on the other hand I never had that "once I start drinking I won't stop until I'm passed out cold" thang going on, like most alkies seemingly do. I was your archetypal "top-up drinker" ~ drinking to keep a moderate level of intoxication going through every waking hour. Not to plunge myself into oblivion. Even with the drugs, most of the time, I wasn't using gear in pursuit of unconsciousness, but as an escape from pain. Now that I'm no longer in constant psychological pain I feel far less need of the gear. See it's all deep, psychological and mysterious.

At yesterday's anti-drugs group we had a cheeky chappie with what are nowadays termed "mental health" troubles but what always used to be called "emotional problems" ~ from what he said, his primary problems appeared to be anxiety and depression. This might very well be the "vanilla" version of mental illness, but let me tell you, anxiety/depression is just about the most unpleasant psychiatric affliction going. It's much more unpleasant than manic-depressive psychosis and of course the doctors take anxiety far less seriously than psychotic illness, which makes no sense, as severe anxiety is far and away more intolerable than any psychosis I've ever experienced. The doctors never, ever take it seriously, and they will not prescribe anything for it, except drugs along the lines of Prozac ~ which always made me many times more agitated than I'd been before. Anxiety doesn't generally agitate me. When it was severe, I was frozen in terror. As the psychologists say, it's "fight, flight or play dead" ~ which is very true as I always played dead. Though I've never seen a person with an anxiety disorder fighting. If anxiety really did make you fight, the mental hospitals would be full of people with panic disorders under Section for fighting instead of "flighting", or playing dead like me!

Anyway this guy with the terrible affliction happened to mention to me something about confronting the issues that have caused or fuelled my past depressions. What issues is he talking about? Do I even have any? Binky says yes I do; I said, "do you mean my massively unstable self-esteem?" and she said yes. But post-psychotic trauma aside, I'm not sure I have the type of issues that a skilfull counsellor could tease out of me so that in the future I'm going to magically not be depressed. I'm not sure my depression is like that. If it were mostly issue-based then how come the first sign, and usually the most prominent symptom is massively increased time spent asleep? Can a thorny tangle of emotional hang-ups really make you sleep more? And how come half the time I actually feel better than usual? So my mood is now elevated ~ and what has become of my issues now? Are they actually making me feel happy? Or is another set of personal hang-ups doing that? Or is it just that when I'm on the hypomanic side simply more in touch with my own fabulosity and that's what makes me feel fabulous all the time? Because that's what I think is going on...

Righty-ho it's ten past six and I have to go to Iceland to get a sweet chili chicken pizza. Writing about it has made me wanna munch it! With cheese-flavour coleslaw as a side-order. I luuuurve cheese coleslaw! I barely slept last night and must catch up before I fall asleep at the screen...

What's happening with Sandy, this humungous great tropical storm they said might flood or flatten New York? Is it really that bad? And why, if it only made landfall around midnight London time. With the time difference currently a mere four hours, that means New York was OK until eight at night their time, so why close down the subway and the stock exchange all day yesterday? Also, with New York being so low-lying, I don't understand why they hadn't long ago built seal-up-able subway and road tunnels to prevent any storm-surge getting into them... I woke up yesterday morning feeling so incredibly repentant for having been too excited about the idea of a giant hurricane hitting a major metropolis and not having my thoughts with the householders and the businesses who will suffer because of it. I can sometimes be incredibly shallow and I really felt guilty for having not taken Hurricane Sandy seriously. Also I wrote a comment to my fellow-blogger, Syd saying "so you live in South Carolina? Isn't that the land of hurricanes?" ~ no sooner had I said that than that Sandy appeared and I was terrified that Syd would get blown away because of what I'd said.

So all isn't right in the world. I keep thinking of all those people in New York, New Jersey and so on who will be dealing with massive flooding and power cuts. I mean, it's disconcerting enough when the power goes down for just a couple of hours and it's candles time and no television but what happens when a whole metropolis goes down for days at a time?

I used to be in touch with a recovering addict named B Melons Lemonade, who was right in New Orleans and actively addicted to heroin when Hurricane Katrina hit, destroying not just the infrastructure of the city we all think about, but its drug supply network. B Melons was so traumatized by events that she went down with a pretty nasty case of PTSD which is by all accounts one of the nastiest mental illnesses going...

I pray that New York and everywhere else in the path of this so-called "Frankenstorm" will be OK... 

Night-night everyone, wherever you are ~ and BE SAFE!...

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What it's Like to Go Crazy: Dr Kraepelin Writes...

IF YOU'RE WONDERING why I say I think I need counselling for the trauma of having lost my senses some 18 months ago, here are some lovely quotes from one of the classic psychiatric texts of all time, Emil Kraepelin's Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia that put it all in a nutshell...

The very last paragraph quoted here describes me with unfortunate accuracy in the throes of hyperacute manic psychosis.

Their linguistic utterances alternate between inarticulate sounds, praying, abusing, entreating, stammering, disconnected talk, in which clang-associations, senseless rhyming, diversion by external impressions, persistence of individual phrases, are recognised.

That's exactly what happened to me!

HERE'S DR KRAEPELIN:~~~~~~~

From the slighter forms of mania here described, imperceptible transitions gradually lead to the morbid state of actual acute mania. The beginning of the illness is always fairly sudden; at most headaches, weariness, lack of pleasure in work or a great busyness, irritabihty, sleeplessness, precede by some days or weeks the outbreak of the more violent manifestations, when a definite state of depression has not, as is very frequent, formed the prelude. The patients rapidly become restless, disconnected in their talk, and perpetrate all sorts of curious actions. They run out of the house in a shirt, go to church in a petticoat, spend the night in a field of corn, give away their property, disturb the service in church by screaming and singing, kneel and pray on the street, fire a pistol in a waiting-room, put soap and soda in the food, try to force their way into the palace, throw objects out at the window. A female patient jumped into the carriage of a prince for a joke.


Mood is unrestrained, merry, exultant, occasionally vision- ary or pompous, but always subject to frequent variation, easily changing to irritability and irascibiltiy or even to lamentation and weeping. Such, fluctuations of mood are very clearly seen in the following letter of a manic patient : —

" When I think of my rude behaviour towards you at the last visit, I do not know how I am to atone for it. I ask you for pardon from my heart ; as far as it hes in my power, such a thing will never occur again. As I now understand, I should have given you an answer and I did not do so. O God, how discourteous !"

Mood is mostly exalted in mania, and in lively excite- ment it lias the peculiar colouring of unrestrained merriment. The patients are pleased, " over merry " or " quietly happy," visionary, " more than satisfied," " cheerful in this beautiful world"; they feel well, ready for all possible sport and banter, "penetrated with great merriment," they laugh, sing and jest. They are "enraptured with everything," " the happiest woman " ; happiness has come upon them ; " now the days of roses are coming." The group of patients in manic excitement (Fig. 3) reproduces the expression of this mood in varied colouring from quiet cheerfulness and proud self-consciousness to unrestrained cheerfulness. Sexual excitability is increased and leads to hasty engage- ments, marriages by the newspaper, improper love-adven- tures, conspicuous behaviour, fondness for dress, on the other hand to jealousy and matrimonial discord. Several of my patients displayed in excitement homosexual tendencies.

Extraordinary Distractibility of Attention certainly plays an essential part in defective perception. The patients gradually lose the capacity for the choice and arrangement of impressions ; each striking sense-stimulus obtrudes itself on them with a certain force, so that they usually attend to it at once. Accordingly, if their attention can for the most part be quickly attracted by the exhibition of objects or by the calling out of words, yet it digresses again with uncommon case to any fresh stimulus. The picture of their surroundings and of events remains, therefore, for them more disconnected and more incomplete than it would be, if it suffered merely from encroachment on the process of perception.

The Flight of Ideas often becomes very distinctly noticeable to the patient's own perceptions. They complain that they cannot concentrate or gather their thoughts to- gether. The thoughts come of themselves, obtrude them- selves, impose upon the patients. "I can't grasp all the thoughts which obtrude themselves," said a patient. "It it is so stormy in my head," declared another, "everything goes pell-mell." " My thoughts are all tattered," "I am not master over my thoughts," " One thought chases the other ; they .just vanish like that," — these are further utter- ances, which give us a glimpse into these processes.

In depressed patients also flight of ideas occurs not alto- gether infrequently, though certainly without being very recognizable in the scanty speech of the taciturn patients ; sometimes it appears distinctly in copious written utterances.


He hears the voice of Jesus, speaks with God and the poor souls, is called by God dear son. There are voices in his ears ; the creaking of the floor, the sound of the bells take on the form of words. The patient has telepathic connection with an aristocratic fiancée, feels the electric current in the walls, feels himself hypnotized ; transference of thought takes place.


They have already died a thousand times, always come again, can practise magic, can help people by prayer, can make themselves invisible. A patient had " the feeling as if he would get money from somewhere " ; another declared that

he was the most distinguished private detective ; a third called himself the " sanitary physician of all the natural sciences and natural medical science " ; a fourth said that he would be the most famous man in Europe ; a fifth stated that he had found a female 193 cm [6 feet 363⁄64 inches] in height and would get for her 40,000 marks. Female patients boast that they are related to the royal house, are fourfold queens, earthly somnambulists, have a beautiful voice, are going to place the imperial crown on their husband. A female patient declared that she was the Sleeping Beauty, had pricked her- self with the spindle, and was now waiting for the Prince. The patients often narrate all sorts of journeys and adven- tures, secret experiences ; they have encountered men who made assaults ; they were received in the capital with honour. Many patients complain of persecutions, they have been ill- used having been struck with the fist 130 to 150 times ; they are fired at, whipped with rods.

Occasionally the delusions of the patients call to mind those of the paralytic. They possess millions, diamond cups, get a golden crown, have created mountains, built whole cities. A patient wrote that he would offer his fiancee a life such as no princess in the world had. " In Munich I shall build for myself Castle Miramare, in Feldafing the Castle of King Max formerly planned, make Munich the most beautiful city in the world ; I have already designed three hundred magnificent buildings, the most beautiful in the world. I shall construct railways and gain millions by that."


Delirious Mania.

A Delirious State fills up the picture in a further group of cases, whicli is not very large. This state is accompanied by a dreamy and profound clouding of consciousness, and extraordinary and confused hallucinations and delusions. The attack usually begins very suddenly ; only sleeplessness, restlessness or anxious moodiness may already be con- spicuous one or two days, more rarely a few weeks, before- hand. Consciousness rapidly becomes clouded ; the patients become stupefied, confused, bewildered, and completely lose orientation for time and place. Everything appears to them changed ; they think that they are in heaven, in Herod's palace, in the " Christchild Hospital." Mistakes are made about the people in their surroundings ; their fellow-patients are near relatives ; the physician is a Royal Highness, an ecclesiastic, a black devil, A female patient, who in numer-. ous similar attacks always fancied that she was surrounded by historical celebrities, Louis XIV, Caesar, Elizabeth, called that her " historical delusion ".

At the same time numerous hallucinations appear. Some- thing is burning ; birds are flying about in the air ; angels appear ; spirits throw snakes in the face of the patient ; shadows come and go on the walls. The patient sees heaven open, full of camels and elephants, the King, his guardian- angel, the Holy Ghost ; the devil has assumed the form of the Virgin Mary. The ringing of bells is heard, shooting, the rushing of water, a confused noise ; Lucifer is speaking ; the voice of God announces to him the day of judgment, re- demption from all sins. The patient carries on dialogues with absent people, receives revelations ; his thoughts are borne from one voice to another. The coffee smells of dead bodies, his hands as if rotten ; in the house there is a smell of burning ; the food tastes of goat-flesh or of human flesh, the water of sulphur. His head is very giddy, full of fever-heat. The patients think that they are lifted and thrown into an abyss ; they swim with the king in the ocean ; everything is falling to pieces round them.


The patients do not trouble themselves at -all about their surroundings ; they do not listen, they give no information, obey no requests, are resistive, strike out. Their linguistic utterances alternate between inarticulate sounds, praying, abusing, entreating, stammering, disconnected talk, in which clang-associations, senseless rhyming, diversion by external impressions, persistence of individual phrases, are recognised. Other patients only display a slight restlessness, whisper flights of ideas to themselves, when addressed look up astonished and without comprehension, obey simple requests, give irrelevant answers, smile, weep, cling to people, suddenly begin to sing a song or scream. A female patient called out abruptly, " I am justice ; do not touch me ; I am omniscient ; away from me ! " Waxy flexibility, echolalia, or echopraxis can be demonstrated frequently.


All in all, a decidedly inconvenient affliction...




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If you want to see what mania really looks like, only real film of an actual episode will do and this is the only genuine-looking clip I have ever found... I think in doctorly terms, if she stayed that excited all day, she would be termed "moderately manic". BTW just because she knows the camera's there doesn't mean she must be putting on an act. Watch closely her eyes, her emotional lability, distractability and disinhibition... it's not easy to fake any of that and I don't think I've EVER seen bipolar mania convincingly portrayed on television or film. Most actors get the elevated mood and grandiosity right but display nowhere near the correct degree of hyperkinesis, pressured speech, cognitive disorganization or generalized excitement... THEY'RE NEVER MANIC ENOUGH!...

MANIC EPISODE #1: TRISCH GOES NUTS
Only one clip was ever posted up; some years ago now the brilliant Trisch Li was found dead in her garage having gassed herself to death... terribly sad... but bipolar disorder has the highest suicide rate of any psychiatric illness with one patient in five eventually succeeding in taking their own life...




ANYWAY, HERE'S SOME MUSIC... Lovely trance!

This is not bad:



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Monte Carlo Cool

I HAVE JUST ENDURED yet another session of crapping on about drugs in a group. It's so exhausting having to be respectful of other people's sobriety when really all I wanted to say and ~ ha! ~ I did say it was ~ WHAT'S SO WRONG WITH TAKING HEROIN ANYWAY? The only thing wrong with it, as far as I can see is that it's too expensive and illegal.

So when I was put the inevitable question: So why do you want to stop? And do you actually want to stop? I said Well I wanna stop because I'm so BORED of being a junkie and besides it's socially unacceptable and now I'm old I wanna be respectable and not just a great inflated raving hypocrite who still uses on the sly (like Valerie, Australia and the world's Greatest Housewife Heroin Dealer).

Also I intend to become the Andy Warhol of my generation (and I'm not put off by being "old": old, after all, is the new young). I wanna do something new with my life and I don't want to do it on drugs. By Andy Warhol,

I mean the Andy Warhol of children's books. Something like that. Also I want to become a great painter because new canvasses can go for millions these days. Also I plan on becoming a shameless social climber. Well I want to meet interesting people: great artists, fashion designers, photographers, writers, polar explorers and the like. I'd like to meet a real live titled aristocrat ~ just for the novelty value. I've never knowingly met a true upper class person in all my entire life. The crème de la crème of international society shall flock to my fabulous club nights. They will be like a more glamorous Monte Carlo version of Studio 54 (I won't live in London when I'm rich ~ the taxes are too high). I'm also planning to go into business setting things up and finding things for people with too much money and not enough time. Example: if Elizabeth Taylor were alive and wanted to dispose of her Bulgari emeralds on the quiet, I'd broker the deal for her. (Why do you think I want to mix with the rich and the fabulous? To make money off them, of course!) I'd specialize in houses, yachts, planes, art and jewellery. All the stuff I really love! I might also set up an introduction agency for billionaires who want to find heiresses who aren't gold diggers. That would be a good one. I'd make my introduction fee a cool quarter million euros ($322,450.28)... Would that be too much? Or not enough? I don't want to sell myself short...

Anyway back to the drugs. Boring, huh. No more drugs for me. I haven't used for two whole days! Or three actually... maybe... whatever... I can't remember.

There's not much else to post except my elevated mood is falling! How terrible is that. I hate feeling human and fallible and normal. I actually deigned to pick up my writing last night and the last page I wrote was amazing. I wrote it when I thought I was in a hurry or couldn't concentrate and it just goes to show that genuis is unreliable. Because usually when I write something I think is marvellous it turns out to be crap!

Here's some hardcore trance music. Do you know I've just found out the music I really like is called "hard trance" ~ how pathetic is that? To love something dearly your whole life through (from 1998 onwards) and not even know the name of it? As per usual the first track is crap but about 4 mins in it starts getting good (that's the "Dreams" track I posted up before). And I really like the one after it that sounds like aliens in the forest sawing away at a Giant Redwood-sized magic mushroom....



Illustrated: Monte Carlo; Andy Warhol; Elizabeth Taylor's Bulgari emeralds that I want to sell...
BTW: the whole lot went for $24,799,000 (£15,871,360/€19,095,230) ~ which I suppose is a reasonable price but I'm sure I could have got more... but hey if I took just a 5% cut of that, I'd have $1,239,950 (£793,568/€954,761.50) ~ not bad for a day's work...

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Crispy when Wet

I DON'T QUITE know what the title means, but it is indeed what they like to call a "crisp" day here in London. In other words it's BLOODY FREEZING COLD with SUB-SIBERIAN TEMPERATURES. At least it feels that way. My electric fan heater has been belting it out 20 to the dozen. I don't care how much I'm wasting by using one of those things. At least I pay for electricity as I go (mostly on emergency) instead of getting stung by great overestimated British Gas bills every quarter!

I'm just going to have to drop the tiresome bipolar language. I'm not "hypomanic" I'm deliriously happy and isn't it great. I mean yes I'm a bit loud and disinhibited at times but no "racing throughts" or confusion or hallucinations. And I'm only as "grandiose" as I'm Meant To Be. O yeah and I'm losing a single hour of sleep, on average, under my usual minimum (ie I'm on 7 hours: usually I sleep 8-10) and yet that, annoyingly enough, scores me one point on some Mania Rating Scale I once googled up ~ when I scored a good 42 out of 50 (ish ~ I can't remember the bloody numbers now) you know when I went cuckoo last year.

I'm so shocked, offended and ashamed at bearing that nuttly label "schizophrenic" ~ even my GP talks about my "schizophrenia" and I cannot be bothered to tell her I actually suffer from what Emil Kraepelin called Manic-Depressive Insanity (well I do according to his book of the same name). Anyway: I'm so traumatized at having gone stark raving bonkers last year I'm starting to feel I need a brief spate of counselling sessions to get over it! How dreadful is that? The memory of the "disease" is worse than the actual thing!

I am reading the Andy Warhol Diaries. What a blast! He and I are cut from the same cloth: I'm obsessed by all that is fabulous and shallow too. Well I am 85% of the time. The other 15 I'm transcendently profound. Well I like to think so.

Ho hum I have to go. Not much else to say except if I don't get out of here soon I'll miss Downton Abbey!

This is how I know I have "manic-depressive insanity" because here's Andy Warhol in the terrifying grip of delirious psychotic mania just like mine ~ except his is far more florid. Watch closely:~~~~~~~~




Ey! I just did the Mania Scale again and I score 11! O! or maybe a 12. I love this kind of crap: reminds me of the type of nonsense you find in the women's magazines in dental surgeries etc...

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Marvellous Ecstasy Reminiscence... What a Wonderful Time We Had...

SUNNY SIDE UP is the club I used to go to on Sunday afternoons at the SW1 Club or the Chunnel Club. It tied with Trade club and Frantic as the most hardcore dance club in London, with most space cadets attending because they'd been on the go all weekend and couldn't come down. So when you got in at 2 or 3pm the crowd were stuck to the ceiling! Other, more sensible people, like me, used to prefer clubbing on Sundays because you could have a great time without losing sleep. Highly convenient.

The inconvenient thing about Trade was that it was a "gay club" (albeit with a very mixed/straight crowd ~ you certainly didn't have to be gay to go there) but I could never find anyone to go with, so I never went. Sunnyside Up was straight. To be honest there's nothing really sexual about any club except a full-on sex club. Or the terrible beer-monster meat-market nightclubs that I'd never bother with anyhow...

The clubs I went to were far more drugsual than sexual, though a nightclub was far more than a venue to get off your tits on Ecstasy. The biggest factors in a Great Night were who was DJing and who was there. The vast majority of the time I used to turn up to clubs on my own (as many, many others did) because when I went to a party the same faces were always there time after time and meeting up first at pubs where nobody really wanted to drink alcohol anyway (drink and E don't really mix) was just a big waste of time. I made so many friends clubbing that I was totally friended out. A person can only have about four or five best friends but I was totally deluged by Fabulous People.

The one single drug that I cannot sincerely say was rubbish, not worth it, a big waste of time etc was Ecstasy, because E was so special. The first time I took remember feeling a great expanding glitter-ball of energy explode from the middle of the dance floor and thinking "this music is so 3D" and that was my first rush. And then I broke out in the most incredible euphoria I'd ever experienced ~ far, far higher and more transcendent than anything you'd ever feel off drink or pot. Ecstasy is the nearest thing to chemical love I have ever experienced. An incredibly deep and intense feeling of empathy and connectedness to all people. Dancing on ecstasy was the first time I ever danced without even knowing it. The whole experience was just like an extended happy dream, but the amazing thing was that you shared this dream with all your friends and all other Chemical Dreamers in the room.

If I ever took E again, I think I'd want to take it with my Mum. (If I asked her, I think there's a chance she'd say yes.) Maybe we could break down years of estrangement and pain with the one drug I've ever found that reliably breaks down inhibitions and barriers and "opens the heart"... We aren't physically estranged. But there's emotional estrangement and I've tried and tried to break through it, writing letters etc., but nothing so far has worked...

But as for drugs, I don't need them any more. All week I've felt good, the same kind of good people snort coke to feel but without the irritability, the jitters, or the cost. Example: the other night I was just lolling around the lounge, as you do, when I felt this incredible rush of star-spangled excitement building up and breaking out and flowing around my heart in rainbows of loveliness. And this was on NO DRUGS AT ALL!! How fantastic is that?

FRANTIC HARDHOUSE ACADEMY 2004
Way after my time but VG nonetheless...



SUNNYSIDE UP: TONY DE VIT/MC K



HARD TRANCE 1998
this is a hell of a lot better than the Tony de Vit mix above...
the best tune is the one coming in around 8 mins 50
yeah!



♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫

I Don't Miss Drinking

I GAVE UP DRINKING about a month ago and I don't miss it at all. Of course I've had the odd can here or there to test my resolve... or, more to the point, see whether I still liked it, because I wouldn't give up alcohol for the sake of it. If you really like it, keep on doing it! is my motto.

So Gledwood doesn't like booze. How weird is that?

Here's the details I told BeverlyBabe:

 

 

 

bugerlugs63 said...

I'm so glad your day wasn't wasted Bev. I wished I could've stayed in bed today . . . But I had no choice. I keep starting to write a post and giving up as I'm not doing much good at the minute. Apart from bringing the kids up, I just keep using and I'm fed up of myself for it . . . But obviously not fed up enough. I hope something changes soon . . .
Anyway, It's good that you didn't have to spend today hungover, and ex-hubby looks happy. Take care, much love sent to you x x x

October 21, 2012 3:55 PM

Oh cripes! That's the wrong comment... here's me:~~~~~~~

Gledwood said...

I was fantasizing sexually about you last night when I suddenly had this big urge to ask detailed questions about your drinking habits eg do you drink every day? Would you call yourself a drinker, a drunk or an alcoholic? Are you one of those people who once you start cannot stop until you pass out? Have you ever been arrested for being drunk? Have you ever assaulted anyone or caused massive damage to property?

I used to call myself an aklie but never was one of those people who started but couldn't stop. I'd have the equivalent of a quadrouple vodka then drink fairly sedately from then on. Biggest I drunk on a daily basis averaged out at just over one full bottle of spirits and I could barely remember anything I'd done ~ real nice blackouts!

Love and Hot Chili Kisses

XXXXXXX

October 26, 2012 4:52 AM

Gledwood said...

O yeah I 4got 2 say the questions were meant to be an idea for a post. Ya know when you've got nothing else to say just crap on about your drinking!!

Seriously though I have deep need of these answers.

Cheers!

October 26, 2012 5:08 AM

[Ignore the racy "references"; Beverly and I have an ongoing flirtation.]

I really hope Bev writes me some top grade alcohol-porn. You know, beaded bubbles 
winking at the brim and all that...

Terror at the Front Door!

THE MOST HORRIFIC banging and crashing occurred at our front door last night, with much ringing of entry phones and yelling. Usually I ignore anyone at the door, in case they're from TV Licensing (I do have a TV Licence ~ but the paranoia remains!)  Anyway after a good five minutes of this rumpus I eventually got up only to be confronted by a shadowy wild beast breaking into my house. It had cracked the front glass and already two snaggling claws were reaching through to the lock!

So I opened the door and said What's all this? And it was just the crackhead upstairs who had forgotten his key.

Bloody idiot!

Illustrated: various terrifying wild beasts ~ none anywhere near as scary as my Real Life Nightcaller!!!

Madonna Reads from the Bible

THESE VERSES ARE FROM REVELATION. The first reading is from Revelation 2, the letter from Jesus Christ to the Seven Churches. The reference to the Beast rising from the sea with the blasphemous name upon his head comes from Revelation 13. She then goes on to read from Revelation 21, about the new heaven and the new earth (bring it on!)

The New Heaven and the New Earth
1	And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2	And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3	And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4	And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
5	¶ And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
6	And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
7	He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

Strange that Madonna should be reading such scriptures, don't you think?

"The Beast Within", was originally a remix of her scandalous single "Justify My Love"... notorious for its near-pornographic video...

(But no pornography here:~~~~~~~)

MADONNA: THE BEAST WITHIN

Blizzle Drizzle let's go Mizzle...

CAN I JUST START OFF with a big Weather Complaint. I'm not one to moan, but let's be truthful here ~ I don't mind weather, as long as it's not hot, cold, wet or windy but London is like the top of a drizzling great bloody mountain today. The air is so fetid it's almost itchy. Utterly disgusting. I had to eat pectin-covered chocolate drops to recover.

And while I'm at it WORKMEN: WHY MUST THEY INSIST ON ALWAYS LEAVING THE FUCKING FRONT DOOR OPEN~?? Even though they HAVE KEYS and DO NOT SPEND MOST OF THE TIME COMING IN AND OUT. Bloody idiots. Yes they're in the house right now. The discarded telly was a sign of yet another vacated room which always seems to be inhabited by paranoid schizophrenics or Americans.

BTW I nearly drozzled up my telly completely yesterday by DARING TO PRESS THE DVD BUTTON. For twenty minutes some inner machinery went on whirring and clanking as the screen flickered threateningly. All appeared to calm down. Except every twenty minutes the knackered old thing still throws a fit. Sounds like an old lady is doing the washing up somewhere deep inside its great televisual bowels......

HEY ~ guess what! ~ I found the rudest word in the universe: the German expression MUCKERFUCK. It means "coffee substitute". I'm adding the letter R to make it look dirtier to the monoglot English. The official spelling is MUCKEFUCK ~ kinda sounds mucky enough, don't you agree?

Anyway here's a really neat Madonna song: Hanky Panky

Anyone who says "neat" has to go ~ Madonna



Fever ~ Girlie Show Live
...it's always nice to see the Japanese having a good time...



ε(̮̮̃•̃)з ๏̯͡๏ =_=| ๏̯͡⊙ (◣ _◢) (◕_◕) ($_$) ♥‿♥ O_o ¬.¬ -.- (•̪○) (○̮̮̃•̃)○̮̮̮̮̃̃•̃̃)ε(̮̮̃•̃)з ๏̯͡๏ =_=| ๏̯͡⊙ (◣ _◢) (◕_◕) ($_$) ♥‿♥ O_o ¬.¬ -.- (•̪○) (○̮̮̃•̃)○̮̮̮̮̃̃•̃̃)ε(̮̮̃•̃)з ๏̯͡๏ =_=| ๏̯͡⊙ (◣ _◢) (◕_◕) ($_$) ♥‿♥ O_o ¬.¬ -.- (•̪○) (○̮̮̃•̃)○̮̮̮̮̃̃•̃̃)

Places That Belong To You: Barbra Streisand

THIS is an old post, previously unpublished, recently unearthed from sometime back in June...

PLACES THAT BELONG TO YOU

This is the love theme to the film Prince of Tides, the best movie Babs ever directed and one of the best she starred in (about Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte) the brother of a bipolar poet trying to piece her life together after a serious suicide attempt, he comes to New York hating the city but falls in love with his sister's psychiatrist, played by Streisand). The theme tune is played over and over in the film, but this sung version is never heard. Barbra felt that putting her voice all over it would be too intrusive...

It's a very sad story about lovers who cannot stay together. (Though having seen the film at least three times, I fail to understand why...)

OK I just read the Wikipedia digest of the plot and found out Tom Wingo was MARRIED. No bloody wonder. You see ~ unless something is double-underlined in red someone like me is sure to miss it...

Here's the song:




(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)(☺ © ♨)

New Television Laughter Mockery

BINKY, my mentally challenged schizoaffective borderline personality friend, was laughing and laughing her head off when I told her all excitedly doing an "I'm going to piss my pants any moment!" voice about my gigantic new television. How big is it? she said. Twenty-one inches! Then she nearly pissed herself laughing so I said so how big is your telly then? And guess what it is FIFTY TWO INCHES. No wonder the screen looks blurry up close. And how come if it's HD it doesn't do the Freeview HD channels? That's a bloody rip-off. And it is capable of crisp visual production because when you change channels the bit that says "BBC1 ~ not in HD you fool!" is really nice and you can't see any dots in or around the perfectly smooth lettering.

But my TV has a really crisp picture all the time and I will not be laughed at!! It's the best kind of telly you can get, with a perfectly flat GLASS screen (so you can stub cigarettes out on Moira Stewart's face without danger of a permanent mark obscuring one's enjoyment of Downton Abbey at 9pm on Sunday night. But unlike a modern telly, which is like a picture in a frame, it has a GINORMOUS cathode ray back, meaning measured back to front it's deeper than it is wide. Anyway I love my telly. And I've got to go. Oh we laughed and laughed this morning/this afternoon/whenever. Then she said to me "say something really loud in a Scottish accent when you go out" this was to meet the drug dealer for her but I'm not using any (seriously). So I did the only

Scottish voice I am capable of, which sounds like a nest full of baby eagles with Jimmy Krankie squarks being molested by a psychiatrically disturbed jackal. Very excitable indeed.

Here is Jimmy Krankie's Susan Boyle impression.

O yeah and I forgot to end the story. A very flustered Australian member of staff (in the halfway nuthouse where Binky lives) was down by the front door saying what's wrong what's wrong. Thinking a giant argument had broken out. Ukh.

And anyway ~ back in the 80s 21" used to be as big as tellies ever got!



Jimmy Krankie back in the 80s at the library...



Illustrated: A manic smiley because I'm still in an elevated mood; Not Pinky but a Chinese girl in a pink dress displaying a 52" telly; back in the day ~ Moira Stewart along with a guy with really terrible bus driver's glasses like I used to wear; the venerable Downton Abbey... featuring Dame Maggie Smith and if you're American by the way, you have to watch it on PBS ~ how patronizing and demeaning for such a classic show! Far as I know, PBS is a channel for programmes that are too foreign, worthy and irrelevant to everyday American life to be shown on the proper networks!, which in my opinion, Downton Abbey most certainly is not!!! It features Shirley McLaine as the Countess's mother for one thing... And maybe they should bring in Warren Beattey as an ageing, libidinous gardener to knock off Lady Mary...?

Hey, and then they could bring in an episdoe featuring an edwardian clap clinic! (not because I think Warren Beattey has the clap but his character would do... o yes and syphillis... did you know tertiary syphillis of the brain used to make a person die deliriously happy, according to an old psychology text i once read...

By the way, why don't manufacturers of computes make up new keys featuring question and exclamation marks with commas underneath? Because they are certainly needed...

Great Big Free New TV!

THIS AFTERNOON, when I finally woke up after four, I found a huge old TV set outside our house. So I got my methadone then dragged it into our house, plugged it in and... the flickery screen was covered in random red and green lines and the top of the picture wasn't there. But it warmed up to display a full screen of snow. So I plugged in the satellite box and ~ presto! ~ a beautiful 21" widescreen picture appeared (in letterbox format. I can't see the point of shelling out for a 16:9 telly if you can get that anyway on an old 4:3 set). The visual quality is far better than Pinky's ginormous 40"+ HD telly, when standard definition pictures look like they're being viewed through a fine mesh, as if the pixels don't line up properly.

And to think I was going to waste £150 ($238.96) on an HD TV/DVD combo. Which would have had to been FULL HD ~ 720 pixels are not enough ~ hey so now I can spend all that money on drugs!!!

Just kidding. Like I said yesterday I'm intending to buy a blue camera. Is 5x optical zoom enough? The best I could find for under £50 ($79.71) was 14 megapixel with 5x optical zoom; 7.2x digital zoom. For 10x zoom you needed to pay nearly £100 ($159.31). Do all digital cameras do macro close up mode? I really need that function because when I had a camera phone I was always photographing tree bark and moss. I would really like to get a close-up of a furry great bumble bee.

O yes and I was a bit manic all day yesterday. Pinky seemed to think I was completely nutty. Which is a bit like the pus calling the maggot white (differently politically incorrect way of mentioning a pot calling a kettle black because that's o so racist!) We were watching Donny Darko when I realized Real Housewives of New York were on the screen. It was because she had switched the film off because I was talking too much.

My elevated exuberant hyperactive mood lulled deceptively in the evening. Then I went to bed and had this constant feeling like I was rushing on Ecstasy. Which was really nice, just not very convenient. Finally I went to sleep after 6am and woke at midday and didn't want to get up so I drowsed all afternoon feeling most louche. And when I got up, my mood was still elevated. I find myself chuckling over nothing.

O and my legs ache. Because I was pacing pacing pacing full of a million ideas for great literary creations which I duly noted all over several sheets. Only to wake up and find my ideas weren't quite as distinguished as I'd thought...

Hey hum. I have to go because I'm going to be timed out but ~~~~~

FREE GIANT TV!!!!! WOW!!!!!

It's Daewoo, by the way? Don't they usually make cars?

£26 Shopping Spree

WOW, this morning I went wild in the pound shop courtesy of my friend Pinky's debit card (she was with me debiting it; I didn't steal it!) I bought 3 random DVDs, a CD radio play of Little Britain, four greetings cards and about fifty rollerballs and gel ink pens in various varieties then we went to some sportswear shop where she told me I desperately need new jogging bottoms as the old red ones with permanent fag ash stains and burn holes make me look "worse than a homeless schizophrenic" (I am paraphrasing her words) so £9.99 ($16.02) got me new ones with white lines down the legs but they aren't Adidas. And I also paid £5 ($8.02) for a red teeshirt which is very unlike me. Ordinarily I am totally averse to buying any item of clothing costing over £3 ($4.81). And then we went into Argos, the shop that sells everything where I fell in love with a £45 ($72.17) 14 megapixel stills 5x optical zoom 720 pixel video all in one camera by Fuji in blue but that has to wait.

Wow, I haven't gone on a shopping spree in ages, even if it is only a £26 ($41.61) miniature one. And yes it probably had something to do with me not sleeping well at all last night ~ waking up countless times every hour ~ then being hyper and loud all morning. For some reason I ran round Pinky's house asking everyone whether they watched Downton Abbey. But they're all mental there anyhow so nobody cared. Then I wanted to take a snapshot of the chief care coordinator of Pinky's sheltered housing and she kept saying no and why am I so obsessed with Tamara the chief care cooridinator... oh blah blah. O well I have to run. I have an appointment with Destiny!

Take care everyone. Good day sunshine!... yeah!!!


Illustrated: a blue Fujifilm 14 megapixel camera a bit like the one I want...

PS: I don't know why the Downton obsession, except that Lady Sybil (illustrated below with the chauffeur she married) died last night giving birth to their first child and it was terribly sad...

Eyes on the Future...

I'M FEELING BETTER today. Less depressed. I woke up at 7 in the morning and couldn't sleep again. That means I was out for the count for only 9 hours ~ a vast improvement from the last few days where I was slumbering a good 12 hours solid each and every night. Hypersomnia, to me, is a sure sign of depression or an impending low mood.

I wish I hadn't gone on about last year's mental breakdown yet again. I have written countless posts about it and often, when I start posting on paper rather than directly online, I end up talking about my weird and wonderful experiences yet again. (But most of it I have not posted.) Obviously I have unresolved issues around this. BIG issues. I need closure, but don't know how I can ever get it. Being "bipolar" there is, of course, a big chance that I could launch into an extreme mania yet again. When I had that big breakdown in the winter of 2010/11 I had no notice at all that I was going mad. After a "lost weekend" in December my moods were cycling up and down for six weeks. Then on the Sunday I was hearing voices and depressed enough not to want to go home, so I ended up wandering the streets in the rain. The next day I felt noticably high. I remember being in the post office and laughing out loud at some fancy shopping bags they had in ultra-glowing colours featuring yellow smileys. On Tuesday I was extremely irritable and paranoid. By Wednesday I was in full-blown psychotic mania. It happened that fast and I've lost confidence in my own mind.

When I have been depressed I never thought of myself as "mentally ill", but in mania I know I am "ill". This has nothing to do with "delusions" or hallucinations (you cannot know you're delusional anyhow!). The big problem I had in extreme mania was that my thoughts were racing more than a hundred times faster than usual and I went into complete and utter confusion. I kept losing my glasses, losing my keys, my phone and I couldn't find any money. My life was complete chaos and I knew it.

So trying to deal with the after-effects was really painful. If I had to pick a serious illness to suffer from, I would choose the kind of mental problems I have over something physical like cancer every time. And schizoaffective disorder is the psychiatric equivalent of cancer. Like one doctor said to a schizophrenia-survivor I saw lecturing on her condition online, schizophrenia is worse than cancer. At least cancer has a cure. You can medicate schizophrenia, but in 80% of cases, it never goes away...

By the way it's the doctors who say I have schizophrenia. I and everyone who knows me thinks of  me as "bipolar" because sustained extreme moods are my most obvious symptoms. Like I have said before, schizophrenia is invisible to those who suffer from it. I have never walked around thinking "I feel really schizophrenic today". But on many occasions I have found myself stranded in shops, too depressed to make up my mind what to get, and thinking: "O no, I've got manic depression". Then I realize I really am a manic-depressive, and I feel even worse!

Schizoaffective disorder, by the way, means a crossover state where a person meets the full diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia and a severe mood disorder simultaneously. The main symptoms I get that are supposedly characteristic of schizophrenia rather than bipolar disorder are what my friend Pinky calls "social phobia" (I haven't socialized with anyone but her in weeks) and what I would call extreme laziness but the doctors call "negative symptoms" (don't want to do anything, lack of get-up-and-go).

This is why I'm powering on with these children's stories that are burning brightly in my head, demanding to be told... I wrote nothing yesterday because I just could not motivate myself to press forward. Yet today I'm brimming with the ideas I should have had yesterday. The fact that I'm such a hard taskmaster to myself, insisting that even when this book is finished I should have no rest and launch immediately into the next one just stresses me out. Children's books by unknown authors, I have heard, rarely get advances of more than £2000 each (about $3000). So to make a living writing, as I want to, I'd have to produce about one a month... From this point on, if I'm seriously into writing, I'll never have any rest. I have too many ideas for too many more books ever to stop ~ and like I've said before, I cannot go lost and stray, cast aimlessly adrift in life like I used to be.

I'm the only person I know who wants more from life than I have now. The only one with a dream or with any goals. And I will never ever give up on that dream ~ until I die.

Well I'm about to be timed out so I have to go. Back on the subject of mental health yet AGAIN. I can't wait till THAT is a thing of the past as well.

Have a great day everyone, and see you tomorrow...



ELEANOR LONGDEN: LEARNING FROM MY VOICES
She started hearing a voice making a running commentary on her actions in the first year of university, had a schizophrenic breakdown, but eventually went back to score the highest mark in BSc Psychology the University of Leeds had ever awarded.

She was at one point told by her psychiatrist, "You're better off with cancer because cancer is easier to cure than schizophrenia."




CONVERGENCE FIRESTORM
sPENCER fREELAND AND pHIL rEYNOLDS USED TO BE THE IN-HOUSE djS AT A CLUBNIGHT CT NAMED fRANTIC i USED TO GO TO....
Like most DJ mixes, it starts out terrible and only gets good 14 minutes in...
... and the tune at 37 minutes is the one I like best...


    ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂ℓ¢ ∂