How Bout a Little Manic w/Yer Depression?

Jeeze, CAS, why not broadcast your own personal neuroses to the world? There's a good use for bandwidth...

Ah, well. Forge ahead. I'm coming out of that oh-so-pleasant mood of the past couple/few weeks and inching toward the barrel of monkeys that is its flipside. Just like day and night, hot and cold, movies and videogames, ya' can't have one without the other. "Y'know," say people who apparently believe they were put on this Earth for the express purpose of telling other people how to live, "there are drugs that will even you out. Why don't you...?" "Yeah," sez me, "too bad there ain't any drugs on the market that'll stop you from being a self-righteous busybody who can't keep her nose outta' other people's business!" Don't worry, I'm sure someone somewhere will think of a psycobabble diagnosis for that, too, and then just watch the pharmaceutical industry jump on it with both feet!

See, apparently, there aren't enough REAL diseases, conditions, and other forms of human misery out there to make these people a good enough living. So they gotta' make shit up and convince a public filled with Baby Boomers (who, let's remember, began their lives with "Better Living Through Chemistry" and went on to Timothy Leary and the Summer of Love, followed by the Swingin' 70s and Reaganomics, so they got no problem at all thinking a pill can solve their problems) that they can't sleep without Ambien, can't fuck without Viagra, and can't function in the workplace without Prozac. Or whatever's the latest personality adjustment in a bottle. These folks go hand-in-hand with the plastic surgery industry, which as far as I'm concerned should be just as illegal as con games and credit cards. Oh, right, that whole credit card / credit bureau scam is still going on, isn't it?

Let's be honest. It's not that there aren't enough real problems for people to invest their time and money into solving. It's that, y'see, being real problems and all, they're like HARD to solve. Like, really hard, man. You can't fake solving something like malaria or starving children. Not like you can fake the shyness pill. "Here, Becky, take this pill and you'll be fine." "But, um, I'm still unemployed and up to my ears in debt, and my husband's still over in Iraq..." "But now you won't CARE! So you can just get on with your life." "Gee, thanx, that sounds great!" "It is. Grab some of those nose-job brochures on your way out."

And hey, I gotta' tell you. I'm not sure I'd want to live without my manic side. My in-between self is BORING as hell, she's the one who just goes to work and comes home, cooks dinner, maybe cleans my room or something. Sure, depressive me is a pain in the neck. She complains, eats too much, and sits around watching too much TV. But without her, who would I blame for being 40 pounds overweight? Besides, she's the price I pay for manic me -- the idea generator, the midnight-road-trip party animal, the up-all-night-with-a-project psycho artist who wrote Racing History for chrissakes. I need her. I love her. She's a blast. I can't wait till she gets here...

And besides, I got this radical idea that if you're truly unhappy with your life, you probably oughta' change it somehow. 'Cuz if we've built a society where growing numbers of the citizenry must voluntarily drug themselves into submission simply to function without going postal, committing suicide, or ortherwise falling apart, well... Blame it on my too-early exposure to Nostrodamus and all that crap, but gee, I'd say you're looking at the beginning of the end there ain't ya? Hey, today's movie recommendation (I got one for all occasions) is something called "Equilibrium," which you may believe is an action-skiffy-flick, but like "The Matrix" all the flash and dash is there to keep dumb people awake while the smart people get to play with some very interesting ideas. Rent it.

Maybe next time we'll talk about George Orwell and the War on Terrorism.

--CAS

PS: Love and kisses to all my buds. Thanx for the emails!