Good Night, Good Night

Sleep well. Dream good dreams. Wake up and live them.

Packing for Denver

I'll be leaving for Denver straight from work tomorrow.

Now, the big question: how the hell to fit everything I need in carry-on luggage.

The drawback to working out in hotels: you need yet another extra pair of shoes and clothes.

Suck it up.

The Fighting Life: Ah

Sweet fuck, I've missed going to my MA school.

Accountants, attorneys, paralegals, project managers, architects by day -



Kick-ass Amazons by night.

Oh, how I have missed them.

For those in the Chicago area, my martial arts school is offering me the month of February free if somebody signs up and says I referred them. And, seeing's as how my MA school charges me a sweet pretty penny, I could totally use the windfall.

So, if you've been wanting to kick some ass, take a chance and come in for a trial class. Don't worry, it's January, so there's *tons* of newbies. Keep in mind that everybody there was a newbie once, and a lot of them were also 50lbs heavier.

Everybody's a frickin' sweetheart, and Sifu Katalin rocks the house.

Can't Get Enough of These Things

You can just never have too many of these things. I break into uncontrollable glee every damn time.

I Just Can't Pass This One Up

It's MSN, after all:

Ten Things Your Teenage Girl Won't Tell You.

Notice this wasn't number one, but should have been:

1) "Hot damn, dad, sex is great! I want to have it all the time! There are so many hot guys in the world!(And that chick is French class isn't bad either!)"

Ah, to be a teenager again.

Not that I'm much better at 25.

Because Everybody Always Gets Very Passionate About My Depression Posts

When I was in Denver last week (flying out there again tomorrow night), I tore an article out of my complimentary hotel USA Today - you know you're a freakshow blogger when you do something like this.

Apparently:

Lives were threatened and Americans treated like "guinea pigs" because Eli Lilly & Co. officials lied 15 years ago in denying there was any evidence the anti-depressant Prozac could cause suicidal behavior, a Harvard psychiatrist has charged...

Teicher, who considers Prozac valuable, said many of the problems with suicidal behavior were in patients given high doses, and that's how the drug was used for the first few years in the USA. "American people were guinea pigs for a few years. If we had known the truth, we would have used it more wisely from the start," Teicher said.

Isn't that just the shit?

What I worry about with the huge rush for more and better happy drugs is shit like this happening: the same sort of "oops, actually, it's worse for you to be on the drug than off it" thing that happens with a lot of weight loss drugs.

I've got buddies on Zoloft and family members on Prozac, and you know, though I'm all for drugs as a last resort (and for diagnosed conditions, though the "diagnoses" list is starting to look about as long as the "hysterical symptoms" list at the beginning of the last century), I freak at the idea that popping a pill is the first thing we're being taught to reach for. Somebody's getting really fucking rich while we search for "normalcy."

So. Pause a minute and decompress before going for the bottle, OK?

Same goes for pretty much all solutions found in a bottle.

If She Didn't Turn Into a Vegetable, It Wouldn't Be Winning Shit

Million Dollar Baby's taking home a bunch of awards.

Makes me wonder, if Swank didn't turn into a dependent vegetable at the end, would the movie have made such a splash?

You know, I'm thinking... not.

What's Happening

Amanda's got some really thought-provoking stuff up about how the uproar about public schools and what's being taught in them (history, sex ed, creationism) could act as a long-term dismantling of the public school system: making mucho bucks for the privateers. Check it out.

And yea, I'm still irritated with the hullabaloo about the Tsunami. Sure, it's great, the whole world throwing money and people out there; the media frenzy is amazing (everyone's so glad to stop talking about Iraq and whether or not Ashlee Simpson really knows how to sing).

And here's why I'm still really irritated:

Guess what happened today?

About 600 people in South Africa died of AIDS.

That's about 219,000 dead people in South Africa every year. Dead for a stupid, preventable reason. Not a natural disaster. One we can do something about through AIDS research, education, prevention, and giving money to local sustainable community project in SA.

Where's the money? Where's the public outcry? Where are the hordes of relief workers? Nelson Mandela's son just died of AIDS. Wake up, people.

In this country, the highest rate of HIV infection is among black women. Where's that on the news? How come Cheney and Edwards had absolutely no idea this was so during their debates?

Yea. It bugs me. We play "who's giving the most money" on Christmas, and tell people to blow off the other 364 days a year.