James Bond, the Queen, Cleopatra, Fukushima, and a Dash of Hypomania

I'M AMAZED that Her Majesty consented to appear for real ~ yes it really is her ~ in this James Bond clip that was part of the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

You know it was an ambition of mine for years to actually go and see the Olympics in person. Especially gymnastics or diving.

But they bodged the ticket allocations so badly that most people who wanted to go never even got the chance. Because I don't even have a credit card I would never have been in the running. Which is quite ridiculous...

Cleopatra is playing [I scribbled this down last night]. A very good film but very longwinded at over four hours ~ cut down, the audio commentary informs me, from over six. How anybody endured this in the cinema is anyone's guess. But at least in those days you could have a fag on the whole time.

Elizabeth Taylor got the princely sum of a million dollars and Richard Burton a half million in this $42 million spectacular, which is still, in inflation-adjusted terms the most expensive film ever made.

The commentary says you need to multiply by four or five to get today's prices. But 1960s Sterling requires about fifteen times multiplication to be even halfway close.

Did you know when Elizabeth went through her final divorce, from construction worker Larry Fortensky in 1996, her total assets were valued at over $400 million, with over $200 million in the bank!

She made more money from perfume than all her movies combined. The multiple hundred millions stemmed from her marriages, art investments, her $100 million jewellery collection plus numerous business interests.

Cleopatra, by the way, had barely a drop of Egyptian blood in her veins ~ the woman was GREEK. She was fluent in seven languages and, as the film says, would, if she had been a man, have been considered an intellectual.

Talking about nuclear [yesterday] by the way (and I don't know what possessed me to put up and watch the attack section of The Day After) the site of the word's most recent nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan, Fukushima 福島 means, irony of ironies, "Good Luck Island"~!

WAS I hypomanic yesterday? I could well have been. I notice the post I wrote swerved back and forth ~ especially into Chinese characters. It's true I was unusually chirpy, which is the most typical sign of the condition. Before flying into the foulest of bad moods when the computer repeatedly refused to function fast enough. (Extreme impatience is another hypomanic characteristic. The faster you go, the slower the rest of the world seems. Add this to irritability and you get hyper-impatience.)

I ended up staying up very late last night (not sleeping is a hallmark of the condition), until the medication zonked me in the early hours. Then I slept a good eight hours (sleeping six hours or less is more typical of hypomania). Only rising at 1:30pm ~ a most disrespectable time. And my body was acheing all over, another sign that I had been hyper. Plus I felt this diffuse sense of anxiety, which can also be associated with hypomania. All this is only "important" in that I like to have some sense of where I am going with my mood. It gives at least some feeling of control over the uncontrollable.

Last time I saw my GP for a quetiapine (Seroquel) refill, she suggested changing it to olanzapine (Zyprexa) but mentioned the new drug is notorious for weight gain. Which I really don't want. I associate gaining weight with running out of control, something I really don't like to do. I never got addicted to heroin in a quest for oblivion, as you might expect. No, paradoxically, the stuff made me feel far more in control than ever before and THAT among other things was its chief attraction to me.

So I'm most certainly NOT hypomanic any more... Who knows where we go from here...?


FILM SPECIAL:
JAMES BOND ESCORTS THE QUEEN TO THE OLYMPIC GAMES...




SPECIALLY FOR YOU, BEV, HERE ARE SOME MYSTICAL SYMBOLS...
❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬

MADONNA: GIRL GONE WILD (2012)
I thought, aged 54, she'd outgrown all this raunchy imagery... apparently not...





❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ❤ ღ★ ☆ ✰♩ ♪ ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡

The Sparkling Shower, Burton-Taylor and Sweeping Statement Bipolar Reprimand

I AM VERY GRADUALLY cleaning my house to professional standard. I bleach the toilet bowl every day so it smells like a swimming pool down there. My sinks sparkle with a surreal gleam. I cleaned the shower cubicle inside and out and it's ~ mmmm! ~ so zesty lemon-fresh.

I have a new neighbour down the hall. I've yet to set eyes on him but already I have him pegged as a dodgy bastard as there are constant comings and goings till past 6am. Intuition tells me "crackhead" ~ just like the last inhabitant of that room, who had BO so bad the left-behind clothes thta filled the dustbins weren't just hummin' they were honkin' with human odour...

I just met a half-Chinese crackhead by the payphones, who hit me for money (as per always). If I'd have said, "isn't Chinese a poetic language as 天氣 (simplified: 天气; Japanese 天気) ("the weather") literally means "the mood of heaven" ~ he'd have gone: "DUHHH?!"

Well I've just come back from a meeting with my Support Worker Donny, who is way more professional than Deshane, the old one (who diagnosed me with OCD and had the cheek to tell my psychiatrist he thought I had "COD" ~ not realizing, presumably that those initials stand for "Cash On Delivery" ~~ ukk, ridiculous.

Donny photocopied some exceedingly verbiose sheets I had to fill in about my medical conditions. I was hypomanic when I wrote my descriptions, so they got it with both barrels, straight between the eyes.

Like just about every mental health/drug/support worker before him, he asked whether I was hypomanic when I am plainly NORMAL. What I said was "last time I took antidepressants they made me really hyper and high" and he tried to sneak the question past me by enquiring "are you on antidepressants now?"

If I ever did take antidepressants again without a bulletproof mood stabilizer I reckon I'd be on a one-way trip to the psyche unit in Cloud Cuckoo land.

I'm glad some people liked my last post on Bipolar Misconceptions because to me, writing about Bugerlugs and Anna Grace felt creepy and weird. But only, of course, after I'd invested two hours in penning the piece and hitting publish and walking away after the internet café had closed... Anyway, I have a "no embarrassment" policy with my blog, which is why nothing ever gets taken down, no matter how lurid or sad.

By the Way: CLICK HERE for Bugerlugs' Camping In Wales photographs... aren't they amazing..!

I never detailed most of the misconceptions re Bipolar in my swiftly-written thesis. They range from brain-dead sweeping statements like "if you don't have problems with sex and shopping you're not bipolar" ~ which doesn't take into account the 43% of patients who do NOT experience "signature hypersexuality" and that in extreme mania a person might just be too ill to go out, remember they're bound for the shops and generally get it together to go on a massive spending spree. The statement also takes for granted that all patients have access to credit cards, which might be true for the New York urban élite the "mild bipolar" article was written about (and to have enhanced powers of concentration during hypomania your condition must be very mild).

The most ridiculous statement I have ever read is that Bipolar 2 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder are indistinguishable. Considering that I had what was then known as "free-floating anxiety" with depression years before I ever showed definite signs of bipolarity, I have to disagree. Anxiety usually paralyses you with fear; mania animates you. Anxiety makes it hard to sleep but mania can make sleep impossible for days on end. Also most manic people feel "high" even if irritable or dysphoric at the same time. Depression with anxiety is probably the commonest condition in all psychiatry; bipolar disorder, despite its current trendiness, is relatively rare (affecting about one person in a hundred).

Well it's such a sweaty day, the mood of heaven is switching from sultry heat to random rain. The kind of rain you get when humidity is so high the saturated air just lets go... The world is buzzing loudly around me as we speak; I cannot believe it's Tuesday already. I picked up Pinky a pair of UK size  eight trainers (that means sneakers in size 10.5 to you Americans) or deck shoes size 42 in continental Europe). They were discarded by a bin ~ presumably by the sort of chav who think's it's classy to wear everything boxfresh new and unblemished.

I'm about to go home and watch the Burton-Taylor epic Cleopatra on "Director's Commentary" (didn't even know there was a director's commentary until I chanced upon the fact on the side of the casing).

By the way, I'd often wondered how Richard Burton, on a "mere" half million dollars a movie ever managed to buy Elizabeth Taylor a 69.42 carat diamond costing over $1 million, plus the most spectacular Bulgari necklace - bracelet - earrings - ring emerald-and-diamond suite, which begged the question: ~ Unless he had no living expenses, never paid taxes and saved up for years, how on earth could he afford it all?

That's because the multimillionairess divorcée widow Elizabeth Taylor picked out and paid for the poshest pieces herself!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Illustrated: my shower looks just like this, except there's payphone inside it; Elizabeth Taylor sporting a decent set of emeralds...


THE DAY AFTER: NUCLEAR ATTACK
Don't know why I chose this but...
This ABC made-for-TV movie was one of the highest-rated broadcasts of all time, attaracting 38.55 million viewers...
I like the bit with the skeletons... there is just something about nuclear explosions... exhilarating and horrifying at the same time...



ELTON JOHN: SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD
Official video
The tune came on Pick TV (the only channel Pinky seems ever to watch)... reminding me how much I love this tune...



MADONNA: NEW YORK FRAGRANCE LAUNCH
Don't know why I'm posting this, except Youtube offered it, so here it is...



♥♥♥♥♥♥♥