I've written (a rough version of) a (very short) intellectual book!

THE BAILIFFS ARE OFF MY BACK. I hope. I had to go through an Eastern-European potato-rationing queuing system to see a kindly black lady at the council with artistic fingernails.. She told me that because an arrangement to repay my council tax arrears had been made by the council, complete with instalment plan (starting next week) the bailiffs had been called out in error and just a click of her mouse would (supposedly) send them e-packing (I hope!)

Oh and I've finished my intellectual children's book. It's not that long. (About as long as a Famous Five book, if you know those (Americans don't seem to have heard of Enid Blyton, which is weird. Or maybe not. She's about as British as cricket and rain.)

According to Wikipedia, Enid Blyton's 800+ books have sold over 600,000,000 copies. So I hope a bit of her luck rubs off on me!

So now I'm due to hack through this intellectual "MS" of mine (as us intellectual writers call it) and turn it into something printable. Considering my novel is for the under-12s, do you think I'll have to take out the lurid 10-page sex scenes? O I'm just kidding. Really they're 12 pages long ha har!.

Do you know my friend Liz, who is always going in and out of prison, so she must have something decent to write about, (OK, fair dinkum, she does work there) but anyway she sent her intellectual novel to 25+ literary agents, before ending up self-publishing. How very inconvenient!

Did you know an advance for a children's book can be as small as £2000 ($3213.24) so I'm going to have to save up loads of these books and submit them all at once... (Do you think?) Ukh, I don't know anything about the publishing business. Is it true the book business is supposed to be on its last legs? If so, how come EL James has managed to flog 70,000,000+ books in the last year or so? She was said to have sold 45,000,000,000 copies in just three months this summer! Is that really true? (They do say publishers' biggest fictions are their own sales figures!)

OK well I have to stop thinking about this stuff and just hope I ever manage to get in print at all! I wonder if anyone will wanna read my stupid tales? You know I have so many "literary ideas", at the present rate it would take over TEN YEARS to pen them all! I'm serious!

Anyway I've gotta go. Take care everybody. PS I'm hopefully getting my computer fixed. Soon!

Illustrated:  the field of children's books is crowded out by "celebrity" authors. From top: Sarah, Duchess of York; footballer Frank Lampard; my fellow blogger Liz's book; Madonna with a book she wrote and got a million-pound advance for (wonder if anyone actually read it)...

Sunny Weather

IT'S BEEN BLAZING SUMMER for weeks here in good old London Town. My mood matches the weather ~ again. I seem to spend half the time getting very easily wound up and angry. But then I'm awake most of the night through, too excited and full of ideas to sleep. Yes, unfortunately most of the ideas seem to need £100,000s if not £1 millions to put into operation (yes ~ glossy magazine publishing, again). When I was younger (and before the advent of digital TV) I lived a segment of my life through such publications: The Face, i-D, Vanity Fair and the (London) Sunday Times magazines being particular favourites. The first two of these were what you'd call "lifestyle magazines". They looked like music mags, but their insides were festooned with articles on all manner of subjects that interested me. The i-D or Face reader didn't aspire to wealth or social status and wasn't a slavish follower of fashion. Rather, they liked to follow new cultural trends from the cutting edge.

The Face went out of print in 2004, by which point I had long stopped reading it. Which is weird. Only a few years before, I knew not just what day but what time it came out (11am-1pm) and my copies were covered in smudgemarks, from having been pored over while the ink was still wet.. i-D was relaunched as a fash mag and I'm not interested in clothes at all. Vanity Fair I do still read, but only when I'm in the mood for journalism about rich establishment figures who hate each other (love that kind of crap!) Judging by the ads you'd think VF was a women's magazine, but most months 75% or more of the articles are by men. I love their visual style. I'd like to do a course in magazine layout... There's more to it than meets the eye! ...

... when I get these ideas I'm so glad I stayed based in London.

But, being still addicted to methadone, and drained of funds I'm really trying to focus on doing what I can do now ~ and that means writing. After all, you only need a few pens and a lot of paper to write a book. I'm writing for kiddies, so the book is going to be mercifully short. I'm still at the planning stage ~ I need to know vaguely where the story's going before I commit pen to paper, as I hate doing major surgery on the text (eg where a character has to be completely excised or the entire flow of the plot altered). I did learn something from my failed attempts at novel-writing, and that is to keep any book you write as simple as possible. Adding one or two important characters can literally double the length, because you have to give their reasoning, reactions etc etc. Obviously I'm hoping for a 10,000,000 copy bestseller (yeah right ~ but this book really IS for kids. No wizards. And I can't imagine grown-ups reading it on the tube). But hey, if I get it right then Disney, Dreamworks and co are going to piss their pants when they read it... and that could make me a buck or two ~ ha ha!

You know it would be nice to have a job that pays the rent and leaves some cash left over to buy the stuff I actually want ~ rather than what's cheapest (as I've done all my life). If I can't earn a proper living writing, then I have decided to go into publishing. I think I'd make a great editor. Or literary agent, for that matter. Often the business deals behind books (not to mention films, records, TV shows etc) are far more interesting to me than the boring stories inside their covers (or the tunes on the discs, as the case may be...) ~~ know what I mean..??

Hey I've just found out the full moon was eight days ago. No wonder I'm feeling good. I seem to get unusually restless just after full moon has passed, and sometimes that kicks me off into a "high" or sorts... A high from the surging tides of my mysterious brain... the kind of high you don't have to pay for!

As I was telling the duty methadone script giver-outer down the clinic the other day, if everybody who was bipolar left the media and entertainment industries, they would collapse. Drugs are particularly rife in those fields. For some reason, creative people seem particularly prone to addiction. And bipolar people are particularly likely to be unusually creative. If I did get an interview for a decent job (or an internship: obviously I'm thinking of starting with that) then I've decided just to be straight with them. Being a recovering drug addict who's clean is nothing at all to be ashamed of. + it does explain the glaring gap in my CV far better than any lie could do. (Lying about having worked off the record somehow for nearly two decades would make it look like I had a singular lack of ambition ("why is he suddenly so interested in a career in publishing now..?" they'd ask themselves...)

Hmmm... it's getting late and the brand new series of Prisoner Cell Block H (titled "Wentworth Prison") is coming on channel 5 in the hour... must rush! Thank y'all for the comments on Friday 23 August's post... must dash.  

Byeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

ps all this talk about working in publishing and  I haven't time to read over my own writing before posting... ukh well I hope it's ok... that's what internet cafés do to ya!

pps bloody madonna can't delete her byeeeeeeeee

Terrible Confusion of Moods... Terrible Confusion of Life, Funeral, Friends, Depression, Drugs and Sleep...

MY MOODS are in terrible confusion... I really do not know what to say... when, about who?.. about me...?...//... why?...//how. I'm a manic-depressive. My moods are prone to be mixed up and extreme... and TO the extreme. I'm sitting here having just given long, long answers to Beverly under my last post. I'm attempting to conduct some formal research into people's experience of mood disorders and how badly these people were impacted, what symptoms they dealt with and to what severity for what length of time, and how they coped. In depression, some people oversleep; some undersleep. Some experience a cycling sleep disturbance in which insomnia and hypersomnia hit at varying, different times.

This past weekend I've been feeling truly terrible. There's been a death in the family ~~ my step-Granny died last week; the funeral's in London; everyone is coming and I said I'd go. Truly: when I think about what's going on, and how many people I'm going to have to deal with... I just cannot handle it.

I asked Binky whether she'd be willing to go with me and she said yes. I also have a friend called Mitt who offered, for the cost of the petrol, to drive me across town and back.

I spoke to a person in my family whose viewpoint I respect earlier today, who asked basically how emotionally I was going to cope. What with my mood having peaked and troughed and cycled up and down in days gone by. And nobody knowing what it's going to be on the Day that is Not About Me at all (and I don't want people thinking about me then either). In truth, the mood swings I get nowadays are nowhere Near as extreme as bipolar moods can go. But, in truth also, I still feel like a basket case.

We had The Conversation earlier on and it was agreed that my meeting my Dad and my Step Mum and Brothers (I have 2) for the first time in eight, ten and twelve years respectively ~~ would be far better done under less stress-laden circumstances.

But Binky, never one to miss the opportunity for an emotional meltdown in her own life, wants to disagree. She says it's really disrespectful not to go when this funeral of a lady who spent her latter years in West Wales but always wanted to be Laid To Rest with her Late Husband in an Outer Suburb of West London is taking place in a location reachable by me. When I could attend if I Really Wanted To. If I could Only Tough It Out... Timewise, whether we went by car or tube, the cemetary would probably be equidistant.

Binky was really peeved and pissed off with me for having switched off my phone on her and anyone else who might have wanted to ring me back. And for having agreed to come across town with me for this funeral. And now I'm chickening out. But I'm terrified, basically, of meeting all my long-lost family-members all at once and them staring into my eyes... mirrors of my soul... I don't know what they're going to see. I'm terrified of what my soul might tell ... maybe, after all, I ought to wear dark glasses... I don't know. Binky is really pissed off with me for nearly adopting a furry great doggie, offered by Mitt offering free of charge. If I took on a crossbred dog she is EXACTLY the cross I would request ~~ a German Shepherd/Akita. And a SHE! A SHE! I ALWAYS wanted a great furry Akita, didn't I always say that? Well Mitt, who's HIV+ among so many other of his problems says I can have this doggie absolutely free ... who was going to go to Battersea (famous London dogs' home).

The way I see it, regarding the doggie is, the best I can do is take her on. And if we don't get on, or if she's too badly behaved, I myself can dump her in doggie prison. Being bushy-furred and Akita and female I know for a fact that her time in Doggie Prison won't last long. It's Staffordshire bull terriers who end up doing Life because they're what I call Badly Behaved (going nuts whenever a person comes to the door, jumping up at people, pulling on the lead... etc)... plus Staffies are so popular these days I expect it's no Understatement to declare that about one dog in three in Britain these days is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier...(!)

Well I don't know what to say. Although Binky disapproves, and although my feelings are severely mixed... it probably Is the Right Thing that I Don't Come to this funeral on Thursday... and it might Also Be The Wrong Thing to take on this doggie that I've always wanted, but hell, if Mitt brings her round on Weds as promised ~~ providing he furnishes me with lead and bowl and a good week's supply of food, I think I WILL take her on. The poor swine needs somebody to love her and I have so much love to give to somebody who is bushy-furred who will not hate me back...

Sorry: I really need to go now. It's dark and I need a cigarette. The DSS have messed up my money so I'm reduced to penury. The electricity on Emergency. My mood hit a pretty extreme low this past weekend. On Saturday I tried taking my medication in the afternoon (as prescribed) in order to, as my near-neonatal GP recently declared, "regulate" my mood. But all it did was to smack me out from about five PM until I awoke at midnight, just in time for MORE meds... straight back to sleep till about 8:30 and less than an hour later drowsing till after two in the afternoon. This means I slept nearly TWENTY HOURS out of TWENTY-FOUR. Ridiculous, I know. But, the mood I was in, it was SURELY BETTER THAN HAVING to ENDURE all THAT TIME AWAKE..!!

I don't know what else to say, except that my moods this past week have been bad. Most of the time I endure rather than enjoy. I wasted ridiculous money in Iceland yesterday, wishing I had not blown the sliver-slim remnant of my cash on Mr Kipling's Rum n Raisin Slices and a box of Thornton's Milk Chocolates (when really I'd far have preferred plain but hey you gotta go for what's there...)... I used drugs today and hyper-reacted. I have to stop the drugs. Without them I feel too terrible for words. Or too manic-depressive. I never know what is going to happen.  Binky is annoyed with me because I told her this morning that I ought to take up the habit of regularly overdosing on my medication like she does. I think she finds the notion of my copying her behaviour unconscionable. Oh I don't know about any of this. My head is in a whirl and a swirl and I don't know what else.

Please take care of yourselves and each other. I wonder WHY it is so incredibly DAMP and CLAMMY and FREEZING COLD and INCREDIBLY CLOSE weather. HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE DAYS.

TAKE CARE, EVERYONE. i HATE winters. HATE having to SURVIVE. HATE EVERYTHING about these days.

I really hope my Family is OK, those who are grieving the most... but I don't know what else to do apart from follow the advice I have been given and if Binky wants to guilt trip me over situations she does not understand... well she can waste her breath as much as she pleases but I've never been one to dance to anybody else's tune and I'm not gonna start doing so now!

i haven't read this back... i hope i haven't said anything TOO Terrible... {o bloody hell: please no!}

Peace, love and respect to you all XxxXxxX

Hey I've just clocked WHY Binky went so nuts at me earlier for switching off my phone: DSM Diagnostic Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder:~~~ "frantic attempts to avoid Abandonment, real or imagined"...



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HAVE A LOVELY MUSICAL EVENING
MADONNA: BLOND AMBITION TOUR ~ LIVE IN JAPAN


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"You're Frozen When Your Heart's Not Open"

I WAS GOING  to name this post The Bipolar Porkshire as there was this furry blonde doggie (a porkshire cross) at the supermarket howling and baying and groaning and moaning and hollering out as loud as possible in doggie language and I kept saying "are you a furry maniac?!" and the doggie bayed back.

I only feel human today because I went and took heroin this morning. Before then I was frozen... as Madonna would say, my heart was not open. Or as I would say, I was drifting downwards towards worthlessness. I've had enough moods of such extremity to be able to say that mood and value (plus personal self-esteem) are inextricably linked. And I've been falling from over-valued to valueless. Sorry to put it that way but it's true.

I hope y'all are feeling better than I do. And I hope you don't need to take an illegal class A drug in order to just feel "normal". Methadone doesn't make me feel "normal". If flat, depressed, hollow, empty, meaningless and worthless count as normal then yes I've been feeling very normal indeed.  

I'm going to attack my druggieworker next week and demand to know if he really feels as terrible as he likes to say, why doesn't he just top himself? I would, if I felt that way. The one single reason why I hang on is my elevated opiate tolerance. If I could only get off the methadone, and hence reset my tolerance to that of an ordinary "opiate-naïve" person I could deliberately overdose and have a good chance of success. I'm not saying I want to kill myself now. But I do wake up in the morning wondering why on earth I should go on. Questioning why I should get out of bed. If it wasn't for next door's workmen drilling right into my wall and a phone call that woke me at 10am I might still be in bed now. There was nothing at all worth getting up for. Even visiting the heroin dealer was more stress than joy. If only I could go to a tree in my garden that grew heroin, ready purified and wrapped up, that would be so much easier. Or get it from Boots the chemist's at 30p a gram, china white. If only the world were more accommodating to the hopeless drug addict.

I think that's the first thing you learn at NA: that the world is not out to help you in your quest to perpetuate your drug addiction, and that as a recovering addict the biggest key to success is to negotiate life on life's terms... ha! If only I could put my money where my mouth is, instead of pumping it straight into my veins... things might be so different... See, I say this, but I don't really mean it. Life without heroin has only ever been worthless ~ or if not, blank, or psychotic, or hypomanic, or hyper-manic. All of the above.

Right I have to go; I'm running out of time. Have a tolerable weekend and Take care, all of you...


MADONNA: FROZEN



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The Help That I Need... And Do I Really Need It ... (And What Is It Anyhow?)...?

AT THE WEEKEND, after I'd got a bit over-exuberant and what she likes to call "really manic" but I would categorize as "a bit hypomanic" (no way was I "really manic" in doctorly terms; I was just a bit elevated in mood; a little hyper) my friend Binky told me I really need more help from the mental health services than I'm currently getting. It's true the first thing she did on my arrival was to insist on laundering my clothes, which I thought were clean but she definitely didn't. Then I had a shower in her heated bathroom, which meant that I spent longer than a couple of seconds in there. And on coming out and changing into grey jogging bottoms and a fuschia pink teeshirt that she insisted was red but it wasn't ~ it was most definitely pink ~ I have to admit, I felt a whole lot cleaner. That is, cleaner as in less dirty. Not altogether clean. I never am and never feel "clean". But maybe that's my inner drug-addict being honest, hey.

One of the Support Workers who works at the Supported Housing where Binks lives listened as I told the story of how I ever came to the attention of the mental health system at all. That was to do with a drought in the UK's heroin supply and a sudden attack of mixed mania and psychosis coinciding with the "first day of the rest of my life"... that is, my first day clean of the terrible weak and adulterated heroin that was going around in those days. And how I never really recovered over the following weeks. Because I was keeping a diary with a four-point mood-scale going upwards and down and was scoring +1.5 and -1.5 on the same day. +1.5 means a very noticably elevated mood and hyperkinesis similar to the effects of speed. -1.5 is a very sour, depressive mood. +2 on this scale means full-blown mania, +3 is psychotic mania, +4 is a quasi-delirious state with disorientation and confusion ~ as bad as mania gets. The very maximum on each end would be a plus or minus five.

In the first flush of psychotic mood disorder I went up to about +3.5 and down below -4. I remember the aerial falling off the top of my TV and it staying that way, with barely any picture, for two days because the television was merely an object upon which to fix as I stared into space. After about six weeks of rolling moods I suddenly went sky high and this is where I hit a +4.99, about as high as you can go.

But these days I'm still scoring plus and minus 1.5s. I was +1.5 on Saturday afternoon. My self and my house are getting ever further into disarray. [I never stay high; it's the change of direction that throws me every time. I never know where I am, where I'm going.] Binky somehow knows that my living space is in dire need of clearing and cleaning, even though she's never set eye on it. She needs a knee replacement and so rarely walks further than the nearest busstop, and when we meet at home it's always her place.

In a moment of empassioned despair I went and telephoned Naomi, the lady who used to run the Dual Diagnosis "Nutter Club" (as I called it). I'm not her patient and she knows I'm only phoning for advice. I would never expect practical help from her: she's far too snowed under by all her other cases... She returned my call this morning saying the best thing I can do, to get more help, is say to my GP that I need a psychiatric referral ~ or more to the point, to enquire as to where the current one has got to. When I turned up feeling depressed about two months ago, she said she was referring me to a psychiatrist. The other option is to ask for help via the methadone clinic; but Naomi underlined for me how prejudiced psychiatrists can be against drug users (that must mean they're prejudiced against most of their patients as most people with ongoing mental health issues these days are drug-takers, if not full-blown drug-addicts like me...)

She reminded me of stuff I suppose I already knew in my heart: that if you want help for depression, for example, you shouldn't downplay the "suicidal ideation" nearly all depressives get. I just don't like talking about stuff like that; unless I really feel bad in the moment I mention it, I nearly always feel separated from my own feelings and myself when I do so, so there's a good chance I'd have to hold myself back from laughing. I can't take myself seriously the way I'm "supposed to". I just can't. Well I'll try... but I wonder what I think this doctor can do..? I don't want any more meds or drugs. The one thing I think might help is counselling... I mean, I hate to admit this, as counselling has always been the knee-jerk response of health professionals of all persuasions... but who knows; maybe it would help...? It's true I still feel traumatized by the mere fact that I went totally fruitloops barking bonkers in early 2011. I certainly do not feel I've had any closure on this issue.

Binky says that what I need is the same manner of Supported Housing she lives in. And that I need a social worker and a thing called a CPA which means a Care Plan Approach ~ a written contract-type billing of what treatment I can expect and call upon when and from whom, especially in emergency. Because as far as I'm aware I have nothing like this. No community nurse I can get in touch with. All I know about handling emergency situations is that I'm meant to present myself to the nearest mental hospital's emergency department. Where they seem deliberately to keep everyone waiting for hours, as if the long waiting time is going to put anybody off when actually all it does is severely annoy some already annoyed people and help further to unravel others who have already passed their wits' ends.

So really, No. No true help is available anywhere. Maybe I would do better in a Dual Diagnosis Service (geared towards mentally deranged drug addicts) rather than the one I go to, which seems to be geared to the needs of people whose main issue is the drugs. Giving up the drugs never seemed to help my mental states in the past, which is why I'm somewhat doubtful that just giving up heroin is really going to do much good to my mind. It'll probably do my body far more favours. The two street drugs most associated with mental ill health and addiction are cocaine and speed in all their forms, neither of which I've touched in I don't remember how long. In many cases, cannabis is probably worse for a person's mental health than anything else, including crack. Which is a big reason why I loathe the stuff with such passion.

All that spliff-toking has ever done to me over the past few times, scattered as they were over many years, was to bring on paranoid psychotic symptoms without any redeeming features (such as elevated mood). The last time I smoked cannabis was a complete accident that happened because I'd been collecting cigarette butts from a nearby bus-stop and found what I'd taken for a nice fat rollie and not really noticed the herbal flavour until my mind was already enrobed by amnesiac paranoia. Then there's alcohol and "alcohol is a depressant so that's what's probably making you depressed" as many people told me... So how come I've felt equally bad, and sometimes more so without the drink..?  I don't think heroin helps me... Naomi did say this morning that she thought I'd probably been self-medicating bipolar disorder for years with heroin; and yes it did used to seem to stabilize my moods. Which it doesn't do any more. So apart from its inefficacy, I want rid of that stuff because as a member of my family once pointed out, it has killed my creativity. And it certainly has. In the early days of addiction, heroin might make a person feel more creative. But I don't think they usually are any more creative, in terms of the number of things created and their quality...

Naomi asked what my exact label was and when I told her "schizoaffective" she said she feels I'm far more towards the bipolar side of that diagnosis than the schizo one. Which puts her in accord with everyone else I know. Neither I nor any of my friends think of me as "schizophrenic". In fact the only person ever to use that expression has been my GP, who doesn't seem to perceive any meaningful difference between schizophrenic and schizoaffective. Well from what I've seen in others there's a wide gulf separating the two. Schizophrenia is an ongoing psychosis characterized by disorders of thought. Schizoaffective bipolar disorder, which I'm supposed to have, is an extreme disorder of moods with some schizophrenic features. There's a second type of schizoaffective disorder, which Binky's supposed to suffer from, which involves severe depression on top of schizophrenia. The doctors seem to have successfully medicated most of her depression away but schizophrenic features persist. If you get her talking on the right subjects, she can sound completely delusional...

Binky also says some weird things that are basically her shit. Eg that if I read too much about my own alleged condition the doctors will alledge that what I'm telling them is the result of my researches, not my experience. Well this cannot be true as I wasn't well enough to pick up any knowledge about what schizoaffective disorder actually was until I'd recovered enough from last year's episode to be clear-headed enough to actually take any information in. And between that time and this I haven't seen any psychiatrists at all. Also some of my most extreme experiences are barely touched upon by any modern texts ~ I only saw them described in Victorian textbooks I was able to access online. Plus the way I'd describe my experience and the way it tends to be expressed by others are very different. Example: I have experienced my thoughts exploding into starbursts. I've never heard anyone describe it that way. Other people talk of "racing thoughts", but that symptom never happens to me until the mania is so severe I'd be having difficulty communicating. Binky talks of racing thoughts she says she experiences in the night but I cannot relate to whatever it is she means. A person who comes home in the early hours of the morning only to find they've lost their keys might characterize their thoughts as "racing" ~ but that's nothing at all like the racing thoughts of mania, which are literally in such extreme fast-forward you can barely catch hold of a single one without it exploding into scores of others skedaddling in all directions with the utmost rapidity. So it's almost impossible to say what you're thinking about at all ~ the subject has changed so many times, the original point totally lost. You can't even remember where you've been, let alone how you got there...

Ho-hummm you see I have got on this subject YET AGAIN. And WHY? Because there is no closure. All I want is some validation and maybe some explanation... of what on earth it is that has been happening to me.

As for this "help" that I supposedly need... what help? When? How? And WHY??    


Illustrated: (1) digging one's own grave (which is what you do when you tell anything to a psychiatrist...) (2) fuschia pink (3) hyperactivity (4) Vanilla Ice with Madonna

HERE'S SOME MADONNA
Watch the very beginning... why do you think she wants to start her concerts with readings from Revelation..?



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Feelin' ukkh

I WENT to bed early last night and woke up far earlier than desired. I must have got about ten hours' sleep but had barely slept at all the night before. So I woke up feeling crap. Then had to go to my friend Binky's, where I didn't really want to be. So I got out of there and went home and to bed, but I could not sleep. So now I'm here and I'm feeling ukkk...

I read a thing about moods and emotions, but I'm still not sure which is entirely which while it's being experienced. It's certainly possible to have an "elevated mood" but negative emotions... strangely the reverse does not tend to be true ~ ever heard of a person with clinical depression yet bright, positive thoughts? Doesn't happen: see how crap life is? Even when you feel good you can feel bad, but when you feel bad you cannot feel good. So all I have to say about that is: ukkkk, ukkk, ukkk...

On a more positive note, I looked up how much my magazine could charge in ad rates. If I got a circulation of 100,000 I think the average would be about £10,000 ($15,983) per page. So if we sold a hundred pages we'd take in a million pounds. Not bad, huh? Now all I have to do is set the thing up and persuade the world's top photographers and writers to contribute. See? Easy peasy!


Illustrated: I wanna publish Madonna's diaries too...

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 ¬.¬ -.- (•̪○) (○̮̮̃•̃)○̮̮̮̮̃̃•̃̃)

House of the Mad, House of the Dead

I SLEPT FOR A MARATHON amount of time last night. 15 or 16 hours in one block. I ended up moaning at the doctor about all my "problems" yesterday morning. Because if I didn't, I had this feeling she would believe I was totally OK when I don't feel OK at all. Of course when I left the surgery my mood went shooting up for an hour or so. Then went low. Then high and low, wrapped around each-other like bindweed up a rusty old railing. I wasn't "manic". Just in an elevated mood. In fact kind of I felt like I'd been drinking, when I definitely had not. I also kept getting this tearful kind of feeling, yet felt happy at the same time. I have long given up trying to analyse stuff that doesn't merit the energy but there it is.

I've just done a 90-minute stint down the mental institution. I can barely face that place, the atmosphere is so sour. The atmosphere in the grounds is intensely green, fresh and restful, like most mental hospitals. It's only back in the wards that sheer barely-controlled chaos reigns. Last night Pinky phoned me from the secure unit, where she was only dumped because they had no other beds. Screaming and yelling in the background. That's a big reason why I didn't wanna go into a ward last year when I really was crazy. Because the mania fluctuated a lot, giving me relatively lucid periods, when I was well aware that if I did go in, I would be by far the most mental person on the ward. There were times when I literally could not keep myself quiet and yelled every syllable (and it was just broken-off syllables, not words) that swirled round my brains. Mental nurses are usually so tired and jaded they would probably affect to consider such behaviour attention-grabbing. Even though I only usually did it when I was totally alone and my mind at its most unfocused. Having somebody there at least gave some direction to my scattered, racing, totally disjointed consciousness.

If you're wondering why I keep on mentioning this it's because I want closure. There never is any closure. I don't understand what happend. Or why. What it means, where it's going. Or for what reason...

And that was the very worst thing: I lost my reason in the most literal way, in that I was unable to think anything through. If I tried to, I would get lost in a multiplicity of related ideas, that exploded into starsbursts, all glittering with countless new concepts until I was lost in a whirl of dazzling irrelevance. It was like tripping on a psychedelic drug that affected the intellect rather than the senses. Though I was hallucinating as well, I tended either to hear voices, usually from the ceiling, that said irrelevant things. Or isolated visuals would appear, like furniture that materialized from nowhere only to fade into space again, just as rapidly.

One time I decided I "wanted to watch television" where there was no television. So I just stared at a blank wall, and right on cue vivid abstract patterns and cartoon figures burst forth.

See: you don't need drugs to be tripping!

I can't remember how I got on to this train of thought, except that I have just been on that mental unit (that is VISITING) and the whole place was doing my head in, until they decided yesterday without warning to ship all the most disturbed patients to different parts of the building. Which caused weeping and screaming and all kinds of chaos, by all accounts. Two people in there have burns from setting themselves on fire.

It's very depressing when I think about it. So I avoid doing so. I have just finished Christopher Ciccone's Life With My Sister Madonna and am now reading Dostoyevsky's House of the Dead, about life in a pre-Communist era Siberian labour camp. That's the only benefit I get from feeling a bit depressed: my concentration span actually increases noticably!



Illustrated: this is exactly the type of thing you may well see when tripping on LSD (nothing at all like visuals from a manic episode, which tend to consist of voices, funny noises, words in capital letters shooting out of the walls and actual hallucinated objects (and some say they see people), if they do happen at all...

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...



♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Madonna's Best Songs

HERE ARE 7 OF THE BEST MADONNA SONGS... she's done so much great stuff, I bet you've forgotten most of them!

YOU'LL SEE (1995)

HUNG UP (2005)


BEDTIME STORY (1995)


WHO'S THAT GIRL (1987)


LIVE TO TELL (1986)
  OH FATHER (1989)   THE POWER OF GOODBYE (1998)   MADONNA'S MESSAGE TO YOUTUBE (2008) ☺

Why "everyone is bipolar" today

IT'S BECAUSE OF ANTIDEPRESSANTS: THIS article explains more...







*******

AND NOW for some music.

This Bedtime Story remix, including the specially made video, was played on giant screens at her concerts, while her Madgesty smoked a fag in the back room. Or did whatever she does in the intermissions... I think the mixing's by Orbital.

Interminable Undulations...

I DON'T know what to say. I don't feel as crap as this time last week... but that doesn't necessarily "mean" anything. I long ago noticed that my mood (whether high or low, or both) inevitably follows a

wavy line; that is, if you imagine a piece of paper with a line through the middle, denoting "normal" mood, as well as fluctuating each side of normal ("high and low") it has been known to stay high, above the line of normality, and to still follow the wobbly line, or, more commonly, to remain low, always below "normal" but still endlessly wobbling on and on. Does that "mean" anything...? Probably not. But does that happen to anyone else? If so, please tell me.

I told one of my doctors about this donkeys years ago... then the shrink at the drugs clinic, who I used to see every week, some years ago, noticed it herself and proposed LITHIUM..!! The last thing I wanna take! All it's good for (so I hear) is for breaking open and sprinkling on your chips (and British chips are like really fat French fries)... with vinegar. As for other mood stabilizers, my GP prescribed carbamazepine (Tegretol) about 18 years ago... I never did know why. I took it, then gave up on it. Then took it again, as a one-off, when I couldn't sleep and it brought me out in a terrible rash. My skin looked like wax. Never again.

I'm only popping the quetiapine (Seroquel) 300mgs out of desperation. If I ever feel like I want "out", I need only pop 150mg during the day, and daytime slumber is assured. And in case you're viewing that as borderline drug-abuse, it's actually prescribed as 150mg twice a day. I only take 300mg at night for convenience. Because ordinarily I don't like being knocked out during the day. I don't know what else I wanted to say. Nothing really. I'm OK. I'm OK. OK. Don't worry about me...


THIS TUNE HAS BEEN GOING ROUND IN MY HEAD...

DON MCLEAN: THE GRAVE





WANT SOMETHING LESS MORBID?

 MADONNA:~~

"...I'M GONNA RELAX
IN THE ARMS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS..."

MADONNA: BEDTIME STORY




***************************************************************

Music and Me

HERE'S the theme tune I was telling you about yesterday. Aparently it was written specially for the film but it sounds to me like a classic piece...
The piano theme that I like so much doesn't come in till 1 minute 20:~~~~~~~

MUSIC FROM THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL




Yesterday I spent ages searching out a best version of Like a Prayer, because the music was going round and round my head. Here we have it:

MADONNA: LIKE A PRAYER LIVE (STICKY AND SWEET)



My favourite singers are Sinéad O'Connor and Barbra Streisand. I think the female voice is far superior to its male counterpart. I even read in the paper that men don't pay attention to women because the female voice is pitched to be interpreted by the male brain as music. Never heard so much cow-shite in my life, but who knows, maybe they have a point?

SINÉAD O'CONNOR: THIS IS A REBEL SONG

Don't be swayed by the title, as she points out, this is actually a love song:
And doesn't she look so much better with hair~??!




BARBRA STREISAND: EVERGREEN

From 1976 A Star is Born, featuring Kris Kristofferson:



Here is Elton John performing one of his old hits with the defunct boyband Blue. Usually I hate boybands ~ all that phoney heart-grabbing "I just want to get in your knickers" insincerity. Ukkh. But this is a good tune...

 BLUE FT. ELTON JOHN: SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD




AND JUST SO'S THE DAY CAN BE COMPLETE, HERE'S A FUNNY PHOTO FOR Y'ALL

Roborovski Hamsters, the Family Conference

WISHING A FURRY WEEKEND TO YOU ALL!

The Pocket Gude to Aden

IT IS SUPPOSED to be colder today.  My house somehow felt hotter. The temperature this week has hovered around 80F, about 27C. That's the max UK temp, according to my dogged research. (Well I did check all of 2 websites and one had no weather information at all!)

I have been eating oven chips and a salad consisting of cucumber, spring onion, baby tomatoes and avocado all chopped and mixed with spinach, rocket and watercress leaves. I do not like lettuce and I barely put any dressing on any salad.

I went and took heroin yesterday. What a waste. Too weak for words. I blame the stress of my drunk friend Greg Arious. Well I have to blame somebody. OK I'll blame myself: I was weak. I've gotta go drug-free next week anyhow: I have another appointment at the methadone clinic to which I want to turn up clean. With my script "titrating" downwards, I have to abstain anyhow. Any using "on top" will only mess up my detox.

I found a hardback travel guide to Aden (modern day People's Republic of South Yemen) published in 1961. Packed with pages of ancient ads for Frigidaire: "The most exciting look in refrigerators to-day ~ that's Frigidaire's new Sheer Look"... Yardley: "Men who travel far make sure they are as well-groomed en route as they are when at home. They are not content, for instance, merely to include the best of shaving soaps or creams in their luggage. They pack Yardley After Shaving Lotion or 'Tender Skin' Lotion for Specially Sensitive Skins. Their bland, tonic touch braces and tones the skin: soothes every smart left by nicks and scrapes: leaves the fac looking and feeling its finest." (How wordy!) Oh yeah and Vauxhall cars: "Roll up! Roll up! Value is Vauxhall's theme for '61! Try the very latest Victors ~ see what the new rear window does for easy parking. Motor in the grand manner behind Vauxhall's stupendous new 113 horse power 'six' ~ power plant for '61 Velox and Cresta. Mitchell Cotts & Co. (Aden) Ltd. Cotts House, Crater, Aden. Telephone No. 2891 Cable MITTCOTTS ADEN. Your Vauxhall Dealer.

Even the editor admits: "It cannot be denied that the climate in the Colony is, for half of the year, unpleasant." That means summer humidity at 80% with a "temperature which rarely rises above 100F". Sounds marvellous.

There were only two radio stations and no television in Aden in 1961. "Those who are used to having ready-made entertainment "on tap", so to speak in the form of television, radio, a choice of cinemas showing the latest flims, theatre or music-hall and dance-halls will find Aden distinctly lacking in these amenities. T.V., in particular, has not reached Aden and there seems little immediate prospect of it doing so ~ in spite of the optimism displayed by a Little Aden resident whose house is decorated with distinctive aerials"!

I was going to send Welcome to Aden: A Services Guidebook published by Africa Publishing Company 1961 to the charity shop but haven't the heart. It makes very entertaining reading.



HERE IS SOME OF THE WORST MUSIC, THAT I DO LIKE, THAT WILL GO ROUND AND ROUND MY HEAD:~~~

BEE GEES: STAYING ALIVE



MADONNA: LIVE TO TELL



BRITNEY SPEARS: EVERYTIME

X-ray Day

I HAVE JUST COME BACK from the breast clinic. I walked all the way so I am exhausted. I had two x-rays taken of each side. They squeezed my nipples quite violently into a class contraption and then the woman ran away to hide behind a screen. I wasn't allowed in the women's waiting room, where I hoped I would pass as a lesbian. It didn't work. So I waited in a room with a couch and a screen until a nurse turned up informing me that a doctor had looked over my results and no ultrasound was necessary. Does this mean they know I'm so riddled with cancer I'll drop dead before another appointment is possible??~! I'm just kidding. Surely, surely this is a good sign..? But what on earth does it mean? And why wouldn't they tell me? I didn't even think of asking till I was halfway down the corridor and the nurse was gone. I doubted she knew much about my case anyway. I'm going to have to wait till my consultant appointment in June ...

I was really upset yesterday because I went to the laundrette and that stressed me out and tired me out. I felt so decrepit I nearly cried.

I could have slept at 6pm, but stayed up late. Next thing I knew it was past 1:30. I got into bed exhausted and didn't sleep for at least an hour. Then I woke up, freezing cold and dying for a cigarette at 6. Eventually I went back to sleep and got up at 10 . I was getting confusing racing thoughts all day and I think it was them that kept me awake.

Oh what a mundane day! I wrote out a really long post yesterday about how upset I was to be schizo. But that's going to take days to type in.

The Calorie-controlled diet is going well. I'm still at approximately 1500 Cals per day. Ironically I don't need to eat very much less than usual to achieve this, so I don't think this alone is going to make me thin. Exercise comes next. Now that might make a difference...? Problem is, I've never done any type of formal exercise programme in my life. The only sport I like is swimming. So I was thinking of forcing myself into three sessions of that per week. I was going to take it up last year, but laziness, shyness and body issues got in the way. I felt far too fat to wobble my near-naked portly frame in front of hoardes of strangers!

As far as I know, I've never gone over 220 lbs, 15 stone, 100kg. Currently I am around 14 stone, 200 lbs, 90kg. I haven't weighed myself since the diet began. That's partly because I judge myself not on what the scales say, but on how lithe I feel. My target weight is 11 stone, 154lbs, 70kg. I don't want to go below 10 stone, 140 lbs, 63kg.

I really wanted to see the chirpies in the birdery, but the old man seemed to have shut up shop and gone home. Wikipedia describes lovebirds as miniature parrots and that's why I want them . What better bargain can you get than mini parrots at less than £30 ($50) each?!??

Soon as I get a council flat (that means permanent public housing) I'm getting roborovskis, a massive furry American akita or lovebirds or all three!!

And last but not least: best pop performances of all time:

MICHAEL JACKSON: BILLIE JEAN, MOTOWN 25, 1983





MADONNA: "DANGEROUS LIAISONS" VOGUE, 1990 MTV AWARDS

 

Interestingly enough, both are lipsynched..!