No More Ranty Pants

UKH. I wish I hadn't ranted away like that in the last post of nearly an hour ago. I was sitting in an internet cafe and running out of time, with nothing specific to report. So I ended up ranting every trivial little thing to cross my mind.

What would you rather have...? A partridge in a pear tree, or a parrot in an elm? I'd go for the parrot...

Oh my face feels like it is covered in soap. Why does it do that?

And my possibly perforated eardrum feels like it's leaking pus into my outer ear canal. I'm getting an emergency doctor's appointment tomorrow morning.

I love this psychedelic animation.
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PS 13:13 hrs I have no idea what this chart actually means but LOOK ~~ ANTIDEPRESSANTS ARE BAD!! (To the best of my knowledge, shorter bipolar cycles are paradoxically considered "worse" than long ones.)

Too Hot (And Too Cold Outside)

BLOODY HELL I AM SWEATING like a pig-fucking swine {how rude of me!}. Why do other people turn up their heating so high? And BRITISH GAS ~~ SOUTHEAST ASIAN CALL CENTRES... GET YOUR STAFF TO LEARN ENGLISH. The man I spoke to got my address totally wrong, telling me I lived at house number one, when I'm actually number 64,987,436 (if you think I'm giving my real door number on my blog you're very much mistaken).

I'M DEAF I'M DEAF I THINK I HAVE A PERFORATED EAR DRUM. ALL I DID WAS STICK MY LITTLE FINGER IN THERE AND ~~BAM! I think a hobgoblin or a gnome has been sneaking up to me in my sleep and shoving half packets of crunched up Pringles down there.

WELL I CAN'T BE MANIC. Because I slept HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS last night.

FUCKING HELL I HAVE TO GO DOWN THE DR'S SURGERY. (WHY DO THEY CALL IT THAT? WHEN DID THEY LAST PERFORM AN OPERATION DOWN THERE?) AND THAT FAT, PATRONIZING, CONDESCENDING, DEMEANING, JUDGEMENTAL NURSE (well she does look at me funny) WILL TELL ME HOW DIRTY I AM AND READ THAT IGNORAMUS OF A BANNER HEADLINE THAT APEARS EVERY TIME THEY LOG INTO MY NOTES SAYING I'M A COMPLETE PSYCHIATRIC BASKET CASE WITH "SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDERS" ~ plural. Like a whole array of cuckoo clocks along the mantle-piece of my psyche.

Well I've got to go. I'm going to terrorize the temp agency tomorrow and shall report back.

O and Binky is going to get me my free Bus/Tube/Train pass so I can GO ANYWHERE. Because the government say I'm mentally deranged. Bye.

A Scattering of Thoughts after 8 Hours' Sleep ~~WOW!!!

I SLEPT EIGHT HOURS (at last (wow!)) and awoke at the distinctly inconvenient time of 2am. My appetite has disappeared almost completely, which is why I had such problems with a bowl of multigrain tagliatelle with mushroom sauce at binky's yesterday. Half of which I had to take home in a bizarre tupperware contraption after I couldn't manage it.

Also, I don't know whether I'm being paranoid but I can't trust, interpret, analyse, quantify or comprehend to any meaningful extent Binky's mystic smoking cauldron of emotions. (And Binky has Borderline Personality Disorder so she's nothing if not capricious.) ~That's why I'm bemused.

And that fake, bubbly mental health assistant who was on duty there yesterday. I didn't like her attitude at all. Yes she was "friendly" but I sensed something judgemental or condescending behind those watching eyes. I telephoned Binky on this point but she says I'm wrong. But the other worker, who's more Central European (Hungarian), intelligent and reserved who I do like B doesn't seem to care for at all.

BLOODY HELL if I'm meant to be a bit elevated what on earth does this say about our God-forsaken world because, in actuality, I FEEL absolutely and undilutedly affectively NORMAL so if my "normal" is the world's "hypomanic" what does that say abuot the unremittingly drab, grey, crushingly colourless existences of the overwhelming vast majority of the population who never experience persistently elevated, expansive clinically hypomanic moods at all? How can anyone possibly cope with an existence so joyless and meaningless, so spiritually down-at-heel? Yet when you finally feel OK, you're "bipolar"!

OH BUGERLUGS, Beverly's computer's on the blink and wouldn't it be wonderful if you could drop everything and fly your brood plus a few spare roborovskis and a new and improved computer to California? (We can set up a collection for the money. Or just resort to shoplifting: after all we ARE junkies!)

OH GO ON!

OK I've got to go. Anyone with a spare chirpy baby parrot out there PLEASE GET IN TOUCH I want a cute and glebbelly conure to sit on my shoulder. Beverlybabe knows someone with a sun conure and it's extraordinarily cute. Like an un-loving lovebird (but he adores his owner).

 Here's a picture.

OK OK I'm off .

PS Righty-ho I can't remember quite why I felt any need to do this but I checked the DSMIV criteria for a (hypo-)manic episode. To be "hypomanic" I need an elevated/etc mood plus three out of seven symptoms from a list and I score four or five if I'm distractable. I suppose I do kind of keep getting distractable. Why do I need to put this? O yeah it's something to do with justifying my point BLOODY HELL IF THIS IS MENTALLY ILL am I just a complete miseryguts or is there something wrong with the world. Because I feel pretty normal, despite fulfilling these lovely criteria. THE WORLD'S GONE MAD. There, I said it. What am I saying? THE WORLD WENT MAD GENERATIONS AGO..!

Blah blah blah that paragraph is terribly written.

BUGERLUGS ~~ PPS: THE ANIMATED ROBOROVSKI UP TOP IS FOR YOU!!

MUSIC: HARD TRANCE

Doesn't get any good till 1 min 30 in...

PPPS 2:55pm oh bloody hell I really DO feel "normal" ... what is happening to me?????????????

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Climbing Higher

IT'S STILL FREEZING cold and the weather's terrible. As I write this I'm going to try to get some sleep. Because I was up till well past 5am last night and couldn't sleep at all. Then in the mid-morning I might have managed 90 minutes or a bit more.

I tried sleeping round my friend Binky's house, but my mind was in such a constant rant, and I was thinking too many things.

Last night the lights on the street started looking exceptionally beautiful, and I feel a sense of extreme energy and wonderful calm all rounded into one.

I tried writing my feelings in the early hours, but ended up with my mind a good three sentences ahead of my pen, so in the end, I couldn't remember what I was writing at all...(!)

My mood has been elevated, irritable and expansive ~ all three. But I'm really really tired. And I really wanna try and sleep.

Have a cheery weekend everyone .

Working Out What to Work At

I'M IN A FUNNY MOOD TODAY ("today being yesterday, Friday). I got to reading books and listening to music and watching Helen Mirren starring as The Queen (yet again) last night and didn't realize how late it was until I saw the foreign satellite box was showing me a time of 2am. Then I went to bed in hat, coat and scarf (because it's that cold and I can't afford to keep the fanheater belting it out all night)... only to wake again at FIVE A.M. unable to sleep. I thought I needed more methadone so I drank that... and went into a long internal rant of the type I usually only make when I have some serious complaint I want to make (usually to the methadone clinic) or some ranting blog piece I want to post but the computer isn't there and I'm rehearsing what I'm gonna say. Or I'm becoming manic. I carried on ranting in a most irritated fashion inside my head till past eight o'clock and then distracted myself by phoning the DSS ("DWP" as they call themselves now) to find out when my benefits are getting paid. Suddenly, at the sound of a kindly human voice, I was most cheerful and chatty. I'm now getting my money on Tuesdays, not Mondays, which put me in terror of the electricity running out on Emergency, so later that morning Binky lent me a tenner.

When I'm on my own I feel stone cold normal. But whenever the phone rings, or I'm in the company of another person ~ whoever that may be ~ suddenly I'm acting and feeling half-drunk: lively and verbiose. I just wish I could keep this good mood going all the time. [And I'm trying to keep careful track of my moods: hence these notes.]

I got to musing about my True Job Prospects (and not the illusiory ones; I mean, if I truly had my pick of professions I'd go for Head of State (obviously ~ and not for a mere four years like a poxy American president ~ it would have to be a lifelong position to suit me... if not hereditary). And if I put my talents to full use, I'd be a bestselling writer. Plus a magazine editor and publisher. And a maker of fine fragrance. And a jewellery designer with lines on sale via Bulgari (for the real stuff) and the home shopping channel (for cubic zirconia). My other ambitions are to design a bestselling board-game and a computer game. To appear in a French film. To release a hit single and make an album. And to become a great poet with my works appearing on teeshirts, mugs, fridge-magnets etc (far better way of making money out of poetry than books! Who buys poetry books nowadays?) And to make bestselling poetry CDs with the poetry performed against a backdrop of whooshing ambience with chirping birds, whalesong etc in the background. These are just a handful of my ambitions. And they are real ambitions. You can think what you like, but with half a chance I will go for them all ~ and I'm fully intending to contrive that chance myself.

But failing that: working for someone else. How the hell am I meant to explain on whatever form I have to fill in (and surely it's NOT the initial application form; that would be just too brutal) that I'm supposed to be a schizophrenic manic-depressive? Who the hell's going to want to employ me then? That's why I need this chat with the temp agency. I'm going to walk in somewhere and give the unvarnished truth (no drug references though, and no medical details except the names of the conditions, of which I have to inform potential employers, in order to qualify for protection under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. So I was thinking about this, and musing on what the hell would happen if I suddenly became manic enough to believe I can say and do precisely as I please no matter who's watching? Or so depressed I can't be bothered to change clothes or shower for weeks on end? And my life and the prospect of anything better seemed such a morass that I switched off and switched the TV on instead...

Somebody somewhere, please give me some perspective on this. I'm not really mad, (...) right~~? I could go mad again... or I could not. I still hear voices every day, but they're not the ultra-real voices ~ utterly indistinguishable from a real person right next to me telling me things wonderful or irrelevant about myself and the world... I know my voices now are not accoustically real. Example: yesterday the following information beamed at me from the pavement: You are looking wonderful! So I told the pavement, Oh yes I know ~ even if I do say so myself! But I knew this was a psychic dream, not the reality of ordinary people. As long as I can keep the two realities: that of relatively low-grade "symptoms" and that of everyday working people, separate then surely I should be fine enough to work amongst the People myself..?

What should I do? Should I follow my heart, my head or my Dreams? I want to commence writing a novel. But which novel to write? I have ideas for at least four that I could pen tonight. And another ten more ready for next year... I'm only hampered by a wavering sense of morality plus my own inextricable laziness. But ~ ha! ~ come to think of it, I know what I'm writing: VALERIE: THE PRISON EMAILS ~ my "respectable" Australian heroin-addicted narcotics-trafficking housewife and mother's outermost rants.

OK so it's all settled ~~ but before I get a book advance big enough to buy a four-bedroom flat opposite Harrods, should I get a "normal" job too? And can I even do one? The more I think about it, the more terrified I am. I remember office politics. And I remember the stultifying culture of enforced "normality" that prevails in the corporate workplace (two of my old jobs were with large corporations, the type of place that uses its own custom-made software so a weeks' IT-training is required before you can really begin...) Akh. Ukh. I don't know I don't know I don't know. And the British system is NOT kind or understanding to anybody who ever needs to vacillate between work and benefits (which I really wouldn't want to do, but face it there's a chance I might HAVE to...) plus I haven't even considered the fact that I'm still on methadone, still sporadically chipping at the Heroin, still not clean from that drug. I don't drink. At all these days. And I touch no other intoxicating substances apart from heroin and caffeine (the caffeine gets me way more out of it these days anyway)... what am I going to do? And what if I have a cup of tea at work and it makes me suddenly go bipolar?

SOMEBODY GIVE SOME ADVICE, PLEASE!

Music ~~~~~~~ Barber's Adagio for Strings
I love this tune...

William Orbit/Ferry Corsten mix



Longer version of the same (sans video)



Sung version by the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge with transcendently beautiful, mind-expanding cosmic visuals by NASA



Illustrated: Birds of Paradise animation...

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I Wanna Job!

I'M THINKING of going to an employment agency to see what work they can get me. My skills are: touch-typing 70wpm (actual speed, not racing) with audio typing experience, shorthand, excellent telephone skills, full computer literacy (if I don't know a program I can pick it up in no time). Oh and superb English ~ unlike the school-leavers of today, I know how to use an apostrophe. I have excellent editing skills. Oh and I understand and speak German (my written German is atrocious). Plus some French... I actually have all the skills to be a secretary or PA but I'd only do that job for a female boss... So do you think I'd get a good job then? 

Oh and by the way I haven't worked in 16 years and have no references. I don't see why I should keep my background hidden. If I tell my future employer about the chronic fatigue syndrome and bipolar episodes they'll be duty-bound by the Disability Discrimination Act to treat me good!

I desire a minimum £25,000 a year ($40,295) ~ I don't think that's too much to ask. My rent's £200, and when you add on transport (£35.60 weekly for a zones 1-3 travelcard) and the totally unjust council tax, which could easily be about £50 a week, I'd need to be taking home a good £500 to make working worthwhile.

So what do y'all think? Comments please!



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I love this song: I was looking for a job and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now...

THE SMITHS: HEAVEN KNOWS I'M MISERABLE NOW

a truly awful song by an awful group... but the message is spot-on~!!


THIS is WAY BETTER than anything the Smiths could ever have knocked out...
dance music, as a well-known intellectual at my old university once declared "says nothing to me about my life" ... well that may be so, but THIS marvellous track says a million times more than the dreary old Smiths ever could!

QUENCH: DREAMS (SEBASTIAN LEGER)


QUENCH: DREAMS ~ ORIGINAL MIX
this is one fantastic tune!!



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My Icy Living Conditions!

BLOODY HELL IT IS SO COLD! The milk in my fridge literally froze this morning. I kid you not. I'm not in any type of elevated mood. Or other mood. I'm just way way way too chilly. Except the heating in this internet caff's belting it out way too hot and now I'm sweating like a roasting swine! For all of you who missed it yesterday, here's an approximation of my "flying book" dream...

And here's a great whoosher of a tune:

BINARY FINARY 2000

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