sneaking quietly in by the side door

so yesterday i was up at 7:00 amwith m. and m. had breakfast, took 100 mg luvox and 40 mg of geodon and 150 mg of wellbutrin. breakfast was slimfast bread and milk for the fat

the geodon really sedated me so i was back to sleep at 8 when they left.

i got up again at 10 am don't recall anything except my hand tremor was better
at 8 but by 10 it was a little worse, and i had loud ringing in my ears

i tried to keep my mind off guilt about not doing the the things i need to be doing (housework, school strings tied up, doing deferrmet for my student loans.) i tried to occupy myself but couldn't get started, was too depressed to do do housework or shower or go outside at all, except to smoke.
i had a lot of cigarettes and drank way too much soda all day, but i did manage to make myself drink 3 pints of water. over the course of the day because i know that geodon keeps on metabolizing into things longer and it needs water

lunch was edemame and a slimfast. for the tremor i took .5 xanax twice during the day, but waited about 30 minutes each time to see if i would feel better.
1: pm i took 100mg luvox. and i wanted to get myself going but couldn't apply myself to anything - too depressed/overwhelmed/guilty - so i read le petit prince to use my mind

took a 2 hour nap from 2-4pm. i was really glad when m&m came home, (4:30) met them at the front door, and i didn't feel my usual irritation when m was talking a blue streak and M. was playing his guitar, i got what i wanted to say in there, then conversation
about a very very very exciting nature hike he had just gone on with his day camp.

they went to the library and the grocery, and by 7:00 we were all three of us ready to go to bed, so we did. i read over my med list plus dr.s page and skipped the depakote.

when m&m got home i was really really waiting for the doctor to call because it was 4:45 and i didn't want to take it any later because M. and i both thought it would keep me awake too late. i talked to stm. at the office so i expected a call after court

when he did call, he said i sounded great and yes, i did feel really good that i wasn't alone for the rest of the evening. i had talked to M. when he got home about whether i should take another 150 wellbutrin to get myself going and he said he thought it would be fine. i was practically at the medicine cabnet when the doctor called.

so it was a real downer to me that he said no, it's too risky

then when i called him a few minutes later he said i was fiending and i was pretty ticked off that he contradicted how he said he thought i sounded, sight unseen. i was depressed and i had been depressed/anxious except in those moments in time when M. and m. were here all through the day. i didn't have any bottom out hopeless depression, but it was pretty bad, compared to how
i once was when i was healthy

i drank another slimfast and ate brown rice/black beans and a whole pint of water for dinner.

this is my life, today.

jeepers, all those smiling reporters in paper 3d glasses look great
what a cool way to start off the new year - color steroscopic 360 degree panoramas of the red planet

also, get this, sharon has ordered some jewish settlements withdrawn

maybe this whole mars thing is just gonna bring us all together

my shopping marathon only lasted four hours, but it exhausted me and brought the taliban rash back.

in the last year i have gone to a mall fewer times than i have fingers on one hand, so it is not suprising that the manic den of sea sick acid trip consumption glut was a little overwhelming... it was like being in a food processer with dior parfum blahnik stiletto balerina pink on every other blade of mod bling bling monogrammed gadgetry...

i'll pass out in a minute but thought i'd check the news (don't watch tv ever like i should keep track of the giant media conglomerates that pulse with the psyche of the majority of a group of some people hired by neilson) and got a cheery holiday message from my uncle sam:

US moves to high terror alert

Credible evidence of attack to rival 9/11

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday December 22, 2003
The Guardian

...The security alert status has vacillated between yellow and orange since the code was established last year. However, it was the first time US officials had compared the scale of a possible attack to the devastation wrought on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania by al-Qaida.

Mr Ridge warned Americans about the possibility "in the coming days and weeks" of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11".

The choice of language appeared aimed at catching the attention of a public that has been suffering from "alert fatigue".

get that...alert fatigue. saints preserve us.

it's time to be really fucking aimlessly afraid like you have not been afraid since september 2001 - cheers!

s.o.s

i have no internet connection. i royally fucked up windows and wiped everything out. i am writing this on the wordpad, which in and of itself is a good thing - no pesky capitalizations and no having to press enter at odd intervals to prevent my text from being one impossibly long line.

i can't get into my isp at ut for some weird reason, and the its help desk is closed for the holidays. this cannot be tolerated. so, i managed to sign up with earthlink. which, by the way is the greatest internet service provider in the known universe, and when you call to sign up for it please tell them that shannon1411@earthlink.net let you in on the dl, and they will give me a free month - so get crackin'

friendster.
if the word strikes terror into your heart, you are on the same page with those in the know. the most horrifying aspect of the entire phenomenon is that i read this article and realized that my friendster sleepnotwork was at the time of publication selling his friendster network on ebay...i am in that network...

if the word makes you want to run and check your friendster page to see if there are any bulletin board or personal messages or new testimonials for you, then you have the geek disease that causes such pain in hearts of those anythingster savvy.

if you have been invited by one of your friends (or acquaintances or by someone you would need a picture of to remember) and have not answered the invitation, you have joined the ranks of the noble yet mostly culturally isolated above it alls, and i simultaneously admire and pity you.

if you have become a friendster but failed to fully expound on all those little things that define your tastes, leisure preferences, and social habits, you have one foot in the ice and the other in the fire, i would advise you to heed the bible verse which tells us: god would rather you be hot or cold; for what is lukewarm he will spit out.

if you don't know what the hell i am talking about and didn't even care to read the article, count yourself spared but know that you are probably missing out on a lot of your friends' big parties because the hosts just sent out the invites on friendster.

strategy: whilst you count yourself spared, simply and ask a friend, any old friend, to give you a holler when they get a mass invite on the bulletin board. this trick will let you in on the most important - o.k. second most important - aspect of friendster becoming tethered to what will soon be yet another corporate marketing tracking device.

but really, the clever folks at friendster are already making money hand over fist, and they, like blogger, have not started charging anything for their services. the marketing fiends are perched in the wings for what is sure to be a feeding frenzy of the awfulest kind. i'll tell you the basic concept here just so you won't go getting yourself into a habit out of curiosity - it's one of those gateway drugs, i tell you.

someone sends you an email asking you to be their friendster. you think to yourself, "hey, that's nice, something like a friend and a hipster with the not so subtly nuanced reference to the now long past oasis of unlimited free music..." and you click on the link. you are taken to your friend's friendster home page, where you see a lengthy personal profile of your friend along with pictures of all of their friends, who are most likely your friends, too in a lot of instances - but who are all those good looking people you've never met? you click on a particularly interesting photo - and suddenly you are told, "sorry, but this person is not in your personal network. to see who is now in your personal network", yada yada. you look to see who are these thousands (wha!?) of people who are in your personal network, and you click on another tantalizing picture. up comes the profile, and at the top of the page it says something like "you are connected to" say, kelly "by bruce(yourfriend)<->david(ahighschoolbuddy)<->bunny(whoyou'veheardstoriesabout<->skyye(yourfriend'sgirlfriend)<->kelly" and you think - by criminey, they've put six degrees of kevin bacon to brilliant use...and now i can hook up with this kelly girl - she's single and is looking for people to date (men) and in a lot of instances, this is exactly what ensues. you get to see that kelly, aside from being cute, has the same taste in indonesian sea food, a foot fetish, listens to the smiths, loves the movie 'harold and maude', and has read your favorite book, 'skinny legs and all.' now you are asked to make your own detailed profile all about your most favoritest person - yourself. welcome to the cult ah er club. now your profile, including all your favorite bands, books, movies, things to do, etc. is available to those cunning marketing leeches who will compute and analyze and draw graphs and circles and arrows and tap into the ironic world of the zeitgeist of the most sought after group of consumers in the world - people like you. yes, you. if you read a blog, then you are part of that market. shut up and accept it. then go and make the most absurd friendster profile you can cook up in that postmodernclassichepvintageinvertedamericanaloguedigitalicizedibleeding brain of yours. that is, if someone invites you (na-nee-na-nee-na-na).

post script:
i was inspired to write this while sitting at home during what might well be the party of the month, because i have been stricken down with asthma. don't feel sorry for me or anything, really *gasp

post post script: michael just came home from a party at stubb's for the folks at the flower shop and some old employees who were there for the hell of it happen to be friendstered to matt, ex-mother hen of the brood and current owner of aaron's, who is tethered to this earth only by his singular refusal to ever look foolish (he was decorating the governor's mansion one christmas season found and as he tells it, he found himself festooning the balcony of bush's bedroom while junior was still sleeping. he took his time until george woke up, looked at him, then promptly turned around and bent over his work), is having a 12 hour party tomorrow just down the way...maybe i didn't miss the party of the month after all

i feel like i should have a little ticker-tape parade for myself 'cause

hooray!

i'm not depressed anymore (tubas and trombones with majorette high stepping out front!) i believe that i owe this newfound normalcy to the *ding *ding (you guessed it) chemicals in my brain...lord knows i'm augmenting them enough. really, it would be a stupendous feat to remain depressed on the drugs i am taking - stupendous i tell you.

so maybe this lamictal thing is gonna work out. saw dr. s again today, and had a wonderful time chatting about myself and my life for an entire hour - he somehow has not stopped being fascinated with my condition. last week michael finally went in with me to get acquainted with him and to hear from the horse's mouth my prognosis (good) and how that jibes with how sick i've been (disabled). the whole thing went extremely well, but dr. s said something that really surprised me, because no one ever spelled it out before - quote, "there is no doubt in my mind that had shannon not received treatment when she did that she would have ended up as bad off as her father." step back. my dad was reeeeaaaaal bad off. some massive perspective there. makes me feel like i've been tinkering in a greenhouse located inside a rain forest, if you can appreciate the allusion. so. this is a fantastic thing (oh, look june - it's a seven story balloon of a woman with her right fist raised high in the air - just look at the detail on the characterization there - head slightly bowed, her lips pressed together, tears in her smiling eyes - roped steady by no less than twenty eight ropes being carried by the members of the uptown junior high glee club - oh, curt, yes i can just see it rounding the bend in the route along 34th street - golly this wind is high - i sure hope those kids can keep their feet on the ground!)

and i cooked again. and it was frighteningly healthy again...and deadly yummy. harnessing my creative powers and deft kitchen prowess for use in the act of family nourishment is strangely satisfying beyond the realm of taste - i have moved onto a plain of true vegetarian culinary bliss. give me a zucchini and i will return to you slender aromatic firm yet yielding discs of the flavor of summer sauteed in olive oil until slightly carmelized, perfectly complimented with scarce sprinklings of thyme and topped with a flocking of cold feta cheese. then ask me how many calories are in it.

genious you will say. the bounty of the earth truly sings in your pan.

oh stop it, hush i will say...eat...eat...

and i have noticed as the fog has lifted i can clearly see what incredibly shoddy condition the apartment is in. the only thing that i can truthfully say has stayed clean is the kitty litter box. that i am religious about. otherwise there is stuff strewn everywhere, hair and pine needles all over the carpet, crumbs under every conceivable surface in the kitchen, and general scum on any formica or tile surfaces.

competing for grand lintydust prize are:

the blinds in my bedroom - the slots between them are thinner than they should be due to the layer of lintydust on every slat

the ceiling fan in my bedroom - the forward edges have accumulated so much i have to view this as an inadvertent automatic dusting device that removes particles from the air to prevent competition from

my television screen - it will look like hdtv once i've taken a swiffer to it

my lamps - do light bulbs act as lintydust magnets? is there static electricity at play along the surface of the shades?

the clock on my mantle - it has a secret box built into it. if anyone were to lift its lid their trespass would be startlingly obvious. world's cheapest privacy device

tomorrow i will begin my quest for the semblance of cleanliness

also -

i have made the temporary decision to remove the links to the bloggers i know who set me to writing my own. if you want to read them, then you'll have to wade through the austin bloggers ring, which you will find linked at the bottom of the sidebar at this time, and follow the links found on the pages therein and so on.

i realized today by following links that many of the best people i have met since 9/11 through our mutual left-fringe radical agitator and general un-american activities have begun during the past few months to keep blogs. i wonder, is there a common psychology here, and is it what it seems? it appears to me that the thread between us is our dire, urgent need to know that we have a thread - that our disparate lifestyles and ethnicities and residences and personas are connected by our underlying convictions.

more clearly: it is lonely to view the world as we do, with bleeding hearts, and to be in america or even just to have been westernized for the last few years. very, very lonely. we cannot be anything more than observers, worse - tourists, of those with whom we agree outside our own circles and no matter how much we read of our fellow americans' dissenting opinions, we feel naked and vulnerable among the hawks and vultures who are our neighbors, teachers, peers, leaders, and who dole out the daily menus of what we are allowed and what we are forced to consume. we walk by every mirrored glass and glance there waiting to see, waiting to see that transfigured face that horrifies with its natural, slick, easy, sin - that threatens with every passing milestone to overcome the face of youth or to twist it into some resentful resignation of hopeless and dreamless bitterness.

to youth!
(decayenrichrebirth)
to love!
(whichistheonlytruth)

remember
remember

(i just realized i may be the mushiest person i know...hi to all you jaded freaks!)

of course, i see that the most prominent american leftist rags i read have had nothing but the obvious to say in the immediate day following the announcement of s.h.'s capture. not anything insightful or unexpected.

i'm disappointed but not surprised - i mean, of course they have to say things like, this is not something that is as celebrated by the entire 'arab street' as it is in iraq since while the fall of a tyrant and genocidal murderer is satisfying to say the least, his fall into the arms of america is a blow to an oddly accepted symbol of defiance, and that the united states will most probably only bow to international law in a symbolic gesture while exploiting this gain to its fullest. but what really infuriated me was reading the new york times' editorial by william safire, that snake, who bragged about stuffing himself on lambchops at donald rumsfeld's house and on and on about how surely sadaam will not want to disclose his 'ties' to the 9/11 terrorists (i know, i know, safire is a defector from the ranks of that humorless wasteland that is established left pundicy (new word there?) and that he is only laughing his way to the little hell that surely awaits him as he knows that no one educated could possibly buy his blathering drivel and its supremely kiss-ass tone and that this must be his idea of making fun of the lack of irony amongst his ex-compatriates' neverending supply of repetitive opining, and that the uneducated, in his opinion, do not deserve to be let in on the joke but should continue in their ignorance with the blind patriotism and the believing in any imbecile who's a card-carrying neo-con, but -argggh he pisses me off)

so then i turn to the guardian, which has, at the very least, a five or six hour jump on our editorial content, and found, much to my pleasant surprise, news that suddenly bush is taking the advice of someone with half a brain (i.e. some one outside of his staff, probably a red-headed intern) and is making overtures toward france and germany to welcome them in the process of rebuilding iraq...not sure i believe that one after his stubborn refusal to allow any contract bidding as pure punishment for their anti-war stances.

i am glad to see that while the iraqis are understandably for the moment pretty overcome with emotion, the rounds of congratulations amongst world leaders have had cautious tones that indicate that while this is an important milestone, politically, symbollically, and practically, it is yet to be seen how the united states will allow the iraqi people sovereignty over their own country...i don't see how bush could possibly be any closer to allowing true democracy in the country than he was a week ago - that part is much too much about control.

the scary thing is that now that he has the feather in his hat, so to speak, the re-election might not be so far out of reach if he plays this with enough diplomacy (i'm serious now stop laughing). this probably means that the electorate will say moo and baaah much more clearly. we shall see.

a frighteningly realistic review:

Resistance to occupation will grow

Sami Ramadani
Monday December 15, 2003
The Guardian

The joy was deep, but the pain, too, was overwhelming as I remembered
relatives and friends who lost their lives opposing Saddam's tyranny or in
his wars.

I remember my disappeared and dearest school friend, Hazim, whom I hugged
goodbye in 1969 at the canteen of the college of medicine in Baghdad. I
never saw him again. Although only 15, Hazim had the courage to distribute
anti-Ba'athist leaflets at our school in Baghdad within months of the 1963
CIA-backed coup that brought the Ba'athists to power. I remember, too, my
dear friend Ghassan, who died in a hospital in Canada after many years in
exile. He didn't live to see the moment he had waited so long for.

But here it was, at last: Saddam's surrender in ignominy. However, this
delightful moment - enjoyed by all the Iraqis I spoke to as the news of
his capture was breaking - was soured by the fact that it was Iraq's newly
appointed tyrant, Paul Bremer, doing the boasting: "Ladies and
gentlemen... we got him!"

What will the Americans do with their captive? Is Saddam going to face a
trial? Will the truth of his mass murders and crimes come out? Will the
trial shed light on how the US backed him and supplied him with chemical
weapons? Will it reveal how the US encouraged him to launch the war on
Iran, causing the death of a million Iranians and Iraqis? Will the trial
go into the alliances with and support for Saddam by so many of members
and parties now in the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council? The dark
clouds over Iraq haven't lifted yet.

Thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by the US-led unjust and
immoral war, and the death toll continues to rise as innocent people are
being killed in US military raids, bombardments and Sharon-style
collective punishment, and harmed by the depleted uranium shells used by
the US-led forces. So at this moment of joy, other questions keep
intruding: Who is going to try Bremer, Bush, Rumsfeld and Blair? Will Iraq
ever be free?

One thing I do know: Saddam was not leading the resistance from his dirty
little hole. This was acknowledged yesterday by an unlikely source -
Sherif bin Ali, a relative of the last Iraqi king, Faisal II, and a strong
supporter of the US-led invasion. "The truth must be spelt out," he said,
"Saddam has nothing to do with the resistance. His cowardly surrender
confirms what we have known all along... It is time to negotiate with the
resistance. It is time to call on the resistance to declare a truce."

It has suited the US to blame Saddam for the resistance to the occupation
and to use him as a pretext for the continued occupation. But Bin Ali is
merely confirming what the CIA and US Congress sources have recently
confirmed: that there are no less than 15 organisations involved in the
resistance, which enjoys widespread support. A recent CIA report admitted
that, "there are thousands in the resistance - not just a core of
Ba'athists", and concluded that "the resistance is broad, strong and
getting stronger".

Saddam's surrender is likely to embolden the political forces in Iraq
which, until now, feared that a call for the immediate end to the
occupation might help Saddam return to power.

The largely peaceful resistance in Baghdad and the so-called Shia areas of
Iraq will also attract greater attention. In the past two weeks, trade
union leaders in Baghdad and the south have been arrested. The occupation
authorities shamelessly used Saddam's 1987 law barring trade union
activity within state institutions. But such opposition will be difficult
to suppress. This week in Hilla, a so-called Shia city, a militant but
peaceful mass insurrection succeeded in deposing Iskander Jawad Witwit,
the US-appointed governor. The thousands who besieged the governor's
office called for free elections to replace him.

Now that Saddam is no longer a bogeyman to scare the people with, trade
union and other mass opposition is likely to increase, complementing and
coalescing with the armed opposition.

One demand is now uniting nearly all Iraqis, from armed resisters to trade
unionists to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Elections! And it is the one
demand to which the US has refused to agree, because it has accurately
assessed the likely result. That is also why it swiftly moved to stop
elections of city mayors and why, a few weeks ago, it sacked the elected
dean of Baghdad university after his outspoken criticisms of the
occupation authorities.

Saddam's ignominious end is likely to weaken US-led efforts to divide the
Iraqis along sectarian and national lines. In memory of all those who died
resisting Saddam's tyranny, the peaceful and armed resistance is likely to
intensify and attract greater support across the world, including that of
the American people.

Sami Ramadani was a political refugee from Saddam's regime and is a
senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University

i for one am sick. it really is too bad, but it's not as bad as it could be. i don't seem to have a fever. other than that, this is flu-lite. there was a lot i wanted to get done this weekend, including helping my dad get moved in to his new place, which is an assisted living home. i was so ill yesterday though i could hardly move. so ruth is taking charge along with hang and luan to take the furniture and get the linens and so forth. i've yet to finish up business at school. i need to make phone calls, too. sheesh. at least i can talk now, that's something to be grateful about. i guess.

article

ohmahgod
i just realized i haven't posted anything in over a week. it's really too bad, because things have been interesting and things have been looking up. this isn't the post for recap, rather
just let me say one thing here:

whoohooo! ding-dong-the the wicked witch,
the witch oh witch,
the wicked witch,
ding-dong the wicked witch is dead!

so a house landed on sadaam hussain.

here's the reason i'm thanking god he's still alive: no one will doubt it's really him. and maybe that means we'll see peace a day sooner.
the first good news to come out of iraq since....
well....
a very very long time.
very, very good news.
in fact, short of a miracle like elections and america's speedy exit from the area and move along folks there's nothing more to see here, it is the best news i can think of.
pretty huge. here is audio of the baghdad blogger for the guardian.