MY AVATAR REVIEW:

I was thoroughly disappointed. The best parts were the jokes my wife and I made at the movie's expense about the masturbatory practices of pterodactyls, and the unrelated massive racial bomb she dropped after the movie. Funny because it was soooo wrong.

Killed by its own hype. It was okay. Not epic. The whole electron-sharing ecology was cool. The badguys were ridiculous. I called every plot "twist" an hour before they happened. It was predictable and not worth the money of a movie ticket. Course, nothing is with today's prices, 'cept maybe a houseboat.

Oh, and if you're wondering how a ten-foot tall alien can be with a human with legs that don't work--it's because they put him and his avatar under their special tree and transfer his life to the avatar body at the end. Right after she shoots the badguy with arrows and then saves him from suffocating when he falls out of his chamber. And right before they drive the humans off the planet.

Oh, yeah, there are going to be spoilers in this review. =)

Speaking of my wife, her (better) review is on our writing blog HERE.

Mechs do not have knives. Period. Period.

Period.

Oh, and I heard a reporter going on and on about this: the political...shhh, it's a secret...undertones of the movie.

Reporters don't count, because they are all flakes, flaky, irritating, ignorant, intellectually void flakes flaky flakes flake-ty flakes. But if you are a real person, and you think you see socio-political "undertones" in the movie, please go stick your head in the toilet and breathe deeply until your well deserved drowning cleans up the gene pool. Undertones are subtle somethings under the surface. Blatantly pointing to a message is not an undertone. It's making a statement. Loudly.

And Sigourney Weaver's avatar was just F'ing creepy.

My avatar for blogspot is Richard Simmons.

I HELPED A FREAKING LEXUS, AND TWO WEEKS OF SUNDAY NIGHT DEPRESSION

Okay, I had to post something to get my "limping crap" post off the top for when we get visitors to the writing blog because of my dearest wife's guest post on another blog, since this blog is linked in the sidebar of our writing blog. Right? Right.

First off, I hate luxury cars. Remember that, it'll be important later. Hate them. If you drive a Mercedes, Jag, Lexus, Beamer, Rolls, higher end Audi, etc., please stop making stupid faces when no one lets you over. Check your manual. No one letting you yield is in there--especially a black/silver two-tone 89 Suburban. I will beat you every time, and you will be much smaller and crinklier from the exchange. Trust me. I have good insurance, and your company can get a new, unsmashed-by-Suburbanis-Prime CEO.

The lone exception to this is the lower end Audi with the Quattro (don't know if that's how it's spelled, don't care), and the Lexus LS400. The LS400 is about as solid and reliable a car as you can purchase in this current age where EVERY car maker is putting out junk, with the exception of a few models here and there.

Okay, so we'll come back to that.

All of the people at work and the store and everywhere else are so fakey-nice it's not cool. Even the nastiest customers I have are being all nice and chipper. And this anomaly of optimism is driving me nuts. Why? Because I am already miserable from the Sunday night depression of January 3rd. Sunday night depression, for those who don't know, is that depression you get Sunday evening because you have to go back to work. Blech.

Now, most of us have time off over the next few weeks. Some of our customers have shut their plants down from tomorrow until January 4th. So they have weeks off. I have Thursday and Friday of the next two weeks off. Two 4-day weekends in a row. Then nothing-NOTHING!-until May. MAY!!!

Some optimist may try to point out that we should enjoy those two weekends, but they can bite me. We all know how fast vacation time goes. Phht. Gone. Like our paychecks.

So stop pretending you're not getting it already. It's only realistic to form that Sunday night depression now. Here, try this. Go get a cough drop. Suck on it. By the time it's gone, those two weekends will be gone, and it will be 6 pm Sunday, Jan. 3rd. You wonder why the end of the year has the highest suicide rate? That's why. Thinking about 7 am Monday morning.

I absolutely infuriated a coworker that was pulling that "I'm going to pretend to annoy you so it will cheer you up and get you to smile" bullcrap. And he wouldn't leave my office. Guess what? After I gave him the above enlightenment, he left my office.

Dude sucked at it, too. I do that annoy-til-you-smile thing. Ask my wife. But it works for me, because I do it WELL.

Moving on. At the grocery store tonight, there was a Lexus. I parked really close to it. Cause I could care less if he scrapes up my Suburban. Were I driving Lydia's new Ford, I would have cared. I wasn't, so I didn't.

As I'm walking out with my two gallons of milk and loaf of bread, there is this guy ahead of me with two of the most adorable little girls. As they're crossing the lane, some idiot zips around the corner and starts speeding down the center aisle. He almost hit them, then has the audacity to yell and honk at them!

Honked and had words with a dad and his little girls. Nope. That one drew my ire.

So I had words with the guy. When you've been the object of my angry baritone's barrage, words have indeed been had. Dude shut his mouth and sped away.

Where does dad walk his girls after thanking me? GAH! NO! The freaking Lexus!!!

I made sure he had enough room to get in, even helping the little one open the door and slide in. As he's leaving, I apologized, and he said, "Don't worry about it. I don't care if it's got a few dings. I did the same thing to a Mercedes the other day."

Then he drove off in his LS400. Not cool. I didn't know it was an LS400 at first! And, and he cannot--cannot, I say!--find a report with me! I drive a Suburban--Suburbanis Prime, in fact! I hope only the worst--er, less than best--for him. And his adorable little girls.

Like, the next time they try to make a snowman this winter, the snow is too brittle cause it's that snow that falls when it's really cold and doesn't stick well. Yeah. Some evil mild disappointment like that.

Stupid...I helped...a...

GAH! A FREAKING LEXUS!!!

I need to rupture my tympanic membrane with an awl and pour some Lysol straight into my brain, 'cause something in there needs cleaned.

IN LIEU OF CONTENT, (LITERAL) TOILET HUMOR

I have all these long, profound things to put up, including guest posts. Instead, I will be lazy and share this: this morning, I had to take a dump so bad it was making me limp.

ARACHNIDS ARE STUPID BECAUSE THEY PICK THE CHEERLEADER OVER THE BUSHBABY

Just a rant today. I'm still going to post things that are craziness 'splainin related, but apparently people want angry commentary.

My dearest wife Lydia (I'm using her blogger name for the sake of the blog) posted on this very same topic on our writer blog. Apparently, watching Spiderman 3 on FX while doing laundry at your mom's house after the customary Sunday night dinner (rest of the family comes--even Caleb, when he and Jackie are up from Nashville. Every Sunday. No kidding. Your mom is so jealous), okay, um. Okay, forgot the original point halfway through that grammatically incorrect paranthetical statement.

Anyway, we both came away with the same thing: Spiderman is stupid. Mary Jane? The chick that keeps running after the rich Goblin kid Harry, and then the spacestranaut guy in the first movie? The Broadway singer, who is struggling to find her "dream" on Broadway. You will always be second to her "dream", dummy. Broadway wannabe's are like that.

Oh, and she keeps stealing the black girls' moves. Stupid cheerleader.

So, she played Marie Antoinette in that other movie. About Marie Antoinette. That nobody saw. So that doesn't count.

And you had that upside-down kiss where she had that pink shirt on in the rain. Yeah, your "Spidey" sense must have been going a mile a minute. But a few things, there, young man. She's not really as busty as you think. Her body is just kind of...freakish. She has small endowments that look large because there is a temporal vortex where her ribcage should be. Young Spidermen may dig that, but to us married guys who have wives that ARE nicely endowed, she's gross.

Secondly, that was two freaking movies ago! You're still hanging on! Two movies ago. Still not together permanently. You do the math.This girl is not the MJ from the comics.

You know who you SHOULD go after? Ursula. The cute little landlord's daughter across the hall. Okay, yeah, cute is a subjective term. I mean, you'd probably never be able to have kids with her, not because she's so skinny her 2-inch pelvic bone would crush your baby's heads to death, but because those pointy daggers she calls hipbones would emasculate you. (Look real close. Just above the pants. See them? Yep. Daggers.)

But in any event, she was so sweet. She brought you cake, every time you were sad. Cake. She didn't run to Harry. She made you cake. And brought you milk. And she had no idea you were Spiderman (MJ knew--and she still ran to Harry!!!). Imagine what she'd bake you if she knew. Like, baklavas and crap. Tirimisu, maybe. And her bony fingers would give you shoulder massages.

And she wore pigtails, which is cute. And you know what they say about quiet girls... (hehe. Lydia was quiet).

And her eyes were striking. Mesmerizing, even. See:

YEP, ELECTRICAL'S WIRED PROPERLY--ONLY IT'S BEEN RUN THROUGH THE PLUMBING

The problem with a blog about bipolar, written by someone with bipolar? The mood swings result in sporadic posting. I've been cranky recently. Okay, moving on.

This will be one of my less "ranty" posts, but it will be my most important one. I generally don't write anything boring, anyway. But this will be more along the lines of the original intention of this blog: explaining the disease in terms people can more easily relate to. So let's quickly take a look at the physiology of Bipolar Disorder.

I'll be getting into the types of bipolar soon, so this won't compare the differences. Just the nature. Many people know bipolar is depression, but you get hyper. Yes.

But also no.

You do get periods of clinical depression. This is more than just being sad. You get a wide range of physical problems as well, that are real. Not just some figment of a depressed person's imagination. And it's certainly not something used just to get attention. The last thing someone sucked into the whirlpool of depression wants is to be the center of attention.

These physical problems include appetite swings (eat too much, then too little or nothing), inability to sleep, inability to wake up, inability to get out of bed because your body won't produce energy, aches and pains--most people know about these. But many do not know that things like IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) accompany depression. And then there is the lovely emotional aspect that is common knowledge.

Bipolar includes that, but also the hyper side--inability to sleep for days, little or no appetite, too many endorphins in your brain that make you feel aggressive, invincible, or that you can fly, or you're going to solve the world's problems, or invincible and aggressive, on and on.

There is also something I've seen referred to as "hyper-sexuality". Remember all those hormones you had as a teenager? You just wanted to get after anything and flirt and makeout and...more? Yeah. All those come back. For some, it leads to infidelity, promiscuity...basically, your body makes you a whore or gigolo. You have to fight constant arousal the same way you do aggression or depression. As the mania itself is treated, this aspect itself is also handled. I just want to iterate that I, fortunately, have not gotten it to the point it's been a problem. Helps my wife is a Deigo Vixen--and a stereotypical one at that. :)

(PAY ATTENTION, THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART):

Anyway, people with bipolar get the better parts of anxiety, ADHD, schizophrenia, depression, etc. But also...epilepsy?

People say bipolar is a chemical imbalance. This is true. But it's also a neurological illness. People with bipolar can be sensitive to light or sound. They can also lose cognitive ability and simple problem-solving. When I was really manic, I could not solve 2+2. I'm not kidding.

There was a man interviewed on BBC that had an episode in a grocery store because he couldn't decide between tomato soup and chicken noodle soup. And it caused him crippling anxiety attacks. By crippling I mean, curled on the floor or in the corner, unable to move--I've had it. Not fun.

I also had instances where the words I said scrolled in front of my face. In yellow. Like I had an invisible newsticker relaying my thoughts back to me. And I couldn't process crowds. Literally could not process them--they looked like moving, 2-D glass pictures, like I was watching people through a glass museum case. When someone would talk to me and actually register, it would be like they had stepped through the glass curtain and were outlined in a gold light.

Hopefully I wrote that in a way people would understand.

THIS IS THE IMPORTANT, IMPORTANT PART:

I always try to compare bipolar to epilepsy so people can understand it. So they can understand that someone with bipolar doesn't want to fail their family or lash out or sit in the corner and cry or drink heavily or any of that anymore than someone with epilepsy wants to have seizures.

I now believe, after doing research, that bipolar is closer in a physiological sense to epilepsy than I knew. My main reasoning is medication. Most bipolar meds, if you look them up in a pharmaceutical textbook, will say the reason they work is unknown. They think it is an antagonist at this receptor or that part of the brain. But they're not sure.

A (relatively) new form of meds is the atypical antipsychotic. These are generally mood stabilizers that are taken directly from other forms of medicine. Many of these, most notably Depakote and Lamictil (lamotrigine), are anti-seizure or other medications used for treatment of epilepsy.

Curious, no?

I'll get into medication later, as well as expounding on some of the subjects in here. The differences between clinical depression and bipolar, some of the mood swings, etc. I'll also describe actual feelings of panic attacks or manic episodes or depression, and post experiences others with depression or bipolar have submitted.

All in due time. But here's your intro. I think it will be one of, if not the most important post I will put up. I hope it is helpful in explaining bipolar in a nutshell.

Was any of it helpful?

Oh, and you can stop waiting for me to tie in the title with one of my awesome illustrations. I needed something catchy, and the electrical thing kind of fit. I actually will have an electrical illustration later. Maybe.

I HAVE A VERY BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS APPOINTMENT

Today is my first psych appointment in 3 months. The meds haven't been working well, and...well, my options are to say nothing and keep going dead inside and depressed, drop the med altogether, or start over on a new med, not knowing what it will do. I've had some very bad reactions, behaviorally, to some dosages of certain medications.

What is really frustrating me is that this combination--an "atypical" antipsychotic, lithium, and a sedative/mood stabilizer--worked so well at times I was actually hopeful I could get better. I want it to work so well, I'm not ready to give up on it.

But it's not working anymore. And that's not cool, because lithium is the one drug that has the highest chance of making someone "normal", without hardly any symptoms of the disease. If it works for that person.

I will get into the medications more in subsequent posts, but for now, I have a very bad feeling about this appointment. I haven't been able to afford the sedative they prescribed for 6 months now. So I'm not sleeping very well (2-4 every 3 days, for some periods), and I'm cranky because of that. On top of my usual manic aggression.

The combination of the lithium and lamotrigine was working so well, I was sleeping normally, without need of something to knock me out. I felt good. Not giddy or hyper or manic. Things that should have made me happy did. Things that should have irritated me did. I felt...normal.

And then it stopped working, and all of that optimism came out from underneath me, like a rug jerked by a gorilla trying to practice his tablecloth-pulling skills. Only I'm the china dishes. And he didn't leave me on the table. Sent me flying across the room, actually.

So do I get back on the table and hope the lithium gorilla eventually gets it right?

I just have a very bad feeling about this appointment. If I tell the doctors everything I've been thinking these past three months, I know red flags will go up. And I'm not going back into the hospital. Period. My wife won't be there to deter me from letting the 5 cops there to "escort" me out that I will not be going with them. Emphatically.

Just have a very bad feeling.

BLACK FRIDAY, AND NARY A SINGLE GRANDMA ATTACK. ALSO, IT ENDED WITH GINGER SNAPS PT. 2/2

For a recap of part one, scroll down and read part one. I'm not rehashing all that.

This is a continuation (obviously), written the same night.

Then we go to Kohl's, see some kids I knew before they were born--er, knew their parents--feel old because one is buying a house, and go to say hi to my little girl (my wife) before carrying on our day.

Lydia was running a register, and since the registers are roped off , we had to yell across at her.

"Hey, hottie, how much are you on the Doorbuster sale?" I have a pretty loud baritone, so a lot of people looked.

Her big blue eyes were shining, but she pretended to ignore us and keep ringing out, so Caleb, who is nearly as big as me, starts doing this dance that looks like Woody in Toy Story flipping around like an organ grinder's monkey, yelling, "I'm going to keep doing this until she talks to us," then starts pointing and says, "I know her! She knows me! I know her!"

So she finally talked with us real quick.

Off to Home Depot. Got my wrench set. Got my flashlights. I don't need flashlights. I have probably 20. But I have a serious flashlight problem, and they had a really nice 8 pack of LED's for 9 bucks. So now I have 28 flashlights. Of those, five are the headlamps. I only have 1 head. Little Joe will play in the dark with me, all the lights shut off in the apartment except for the headlamps, so that's another head. I still have not found the remaining three heads that would warrant me having 5 headlamps.

Two things about Home Depot totally rung true about Black Friday. The first was that we saw an Amish horse and buggy turning left on a busy street, with an orange Home Depot Homer bucket hanging off of it. Secondly, they had 60 Rayovac Max AA batteries for $9.99. That is an awesome price.

What was not awesome was the fact that a woman had parked her cart in front of the display and was throwing trays containing dozens of these 60-pack batteries into the cart. She refused to move when people asked politely. She looked like she was trying to shovel coal into the train engine fast enough to get the flux capacitor to a high enough speed to get Marty home.

Let's do the math. Dozens of 60-pack batteries, and she was just pushing two trays at a time into her cart. The woman had to have left that store with 674,000,000 batteries. Does anyone need that many batteries? If Connor McCleod of the clan Mcleod put light ropes on his sword so it lit up, and had it on all day long, he would still never us up all of the batteries this woman bought. And he can't die.

For the sake of my promise to not use vulgarity on here, I will refrain from actually saying what personal appliance(s) I told her she must be using all of those batteries in. If you think of something offensive, that's on you. I didn't say anything like what you're thinking.

From there we went to Gamestop, where they had a buy-two-get-one-free sale on the used games. Through some absolute trickery and confusion of numbers that I am at a loss to explain, I ended up with 46 dollars worth of used games, and I paid 8 bucks. Caleb ended up with 42 dollars worth of used games, and paid 26 bucks.

Then we went back to my place and played an XBOX 360 game that I already had. So that worked out well.

As we're stumbling down the apartment steps, we were both being loud, not remembering that even though we had four stores, it was still only 7 am.

I don't remember picking Lydia up from work, or then going to my mom's to get Little Joe. I remember turning out all the lights and playing with the flashlights with Little Joe.

I do not remember shopping, but I do remember I had to leave for Wal-Mart--AGAIN!!!--at about 10pm because we were down to one roll of toilet paper. And apparently I had the energy to decide to do our weekly grocery shopping, as well.

While I was there, I had to get Ginger Snaps. And here's why: the little bonde farmgirl, her boyfriend, and their friends were all from the same High School I went to (before they kind of half-kicked me out following my freshmen year), since we used to live in that country town. They were asking me if I knew teachers, and I knew some, but there were some they didn't know because they had retired.

One of those teachers, Mr. Borgis, would always slide Ginger Snaps across the table to me during home room. I hated them, but I'd eat one a day. I could stomach one, because he was funny and we used to rip on each other. He'd always say, "You ever eat these? They're great in milk."

I thought of that when I was buying milk.

So now here it is, 2:23 am. Hazy-Grayish Saturday (I never called it that before, but I'm starting now. Everything is hazy-gray), still not sleeping. Eating Ginger snaps.

They're still just as bad, even if you dunk them in milk.

Addendum: I'm returning the digital camcorder I bought at Target. It was just a front to buy Play-Doh anyway. And we still have more than 3/4 of the box of Ginger Snaps. Because they're still nasty.