BOTOX AND DEPRESSION

BOTOX AND DEPRESSION

A while back scientists "discovered" Botox as a treatment for Migraine's. Now Botox is being touted as a treatment for depression. Since I have suffered both migraine's and depression, I think it's time I said bye bye to my laugh lines!

PSYCHIC CONNECTION: BI-POLAR & PMS

Psychic Connection: Bi-Polar & PMS

One Sunday as I walked down Larchmont to the Farmers Market, two men walking in the opposite direction passed by me. Just after passing by, one of the men doubled back and approached me. He was of east indian descent and wore a turban and a business suit. "Your face is so beautiful" he exclaimed, "you have three points of happiness, here, here and here" he said gesturing toward my forehead. Our eyes locked and he gazed directly into mine. "There are two men in your life" he said "One younger who is more trouble than he is worth and the other your age and will bring you much happiness". For a moment I knew he was right and then just as I was falling...I snapped out it. He was so compelling that I almost didn't realize the street psychic scam. One more minute and he would have had me be giving him money to tell me more. He was that good, but not quite.

I will always remember a friend who used a fake psychic rap that went "I know about those dreams you've been having". And almost anyone he said it too would say "Oh my god, how did you know that?". One woman was so frightened that she became convinced he was actually demonic.

Another time, just for a lark, I told a group at a party that I could read palms. One by one I sat with each person, I held their palm in mine, sat quietly, looked at them intently and free associated some generalities about a fictional future. I read five palms before guilt overcame me and I confessed that I was just pretending. The problem was, everyone was so captivated that they refused to believe my disclaimer. I felt bad that my mojo was so strong that I could not undo what I had done.

Which brings me to my point (a little long on the intro, i know, i know):

Point 1: Until recently, a mental disorder first known as manic-depressive and later renamed bi-polar" was a rare but serious (and devastating) disease effecting 1-2% of the population (some estimated up to 6%). Alternating episodes of mania and depression were equally destructive. Lithium was the solution, leveling out the intensity of the cycles and allowing sufferers to lead a normal (albeit sleepy) life.

Point 2: I have struggled with mood swings my entire life, mostly characterized by temperamental outbursts and an occasional crying jag. My mother said I was "born without patience". I have been known to be artistic, painting and writing, etc. But none of this interfered with my life enough to be labeled "bi-polar". Maybe thin-skinned, maybe opinionated, maybe passionate, but not manic-depressive.

Point 3: After yet another breakup in a life-long series of failed romances, I decided that enough was enough. I went to my general practitioner and said "my PMS effects almost three weeks out of every month, I only have about 4 or 5 good days a month, my friends find me intolerable and my boyfriend says he can't take my moods anymore". She frowned at that last part, thinking perhaps that maybe I should just get another boyfriend (not a bad point), but after asking a few other questions suggested trying a low dosage of prozac for what might be PMDD instead of PMS. I agreed.

Point 4: After consultation with a psychiatrist, I tried prozac at various dosages, then switched to zoloft and then to cymbalta. Each worked initially and then seemed to be less and less effective. On these various anti-depressants I did feel better, calmer and even more insightful. Those close to me saw a new me, a me with a little more light in my heart and a lot less uncontrolled anger.

Point 5: One day, one of these outbursts was the straw that broke the camels back (wrong time, wrong place, wrong people) and I found that my job was in jeopardy. It was a serious wake up call and I marched back to my shrink to say "help!". She said "the anti-depressants seem to follow the same pattern with you, I think it is time to try a mood stabilizer". A have never felt such magical words--mood stabilizer...it sounded like actually the magic bullet I sought...literally "just what the doctor ordered".

Point 6: I started my new medication, Lamictal, that day. And then, just doing my due diligence, I hit the text books. There it was, Lamictal (initially developed to treat epilepsy) had been re-purposed to treat (drum-roll please): bi-polar disorder. The doc had used a more palatable term for me "just try this little mood stabilizer my dear". Had she said "you are bi-polar" I would have told HER she was crazy. On the other hand...my moods...stabilized (darn it). In other words, wouldn't you know, it worked.

Point 7: That week I came across a two page color ad in an LA Times insert for a website called "IsItReallyDepression.com?". NOTE: This is where the "psychic connection" comes in (pay attention!). The ad said something like: do you talk too fast? does your mind race? is your shopping out of control? If you said yes to some of these questions you might be bi-polar!!!" Just like the victims of my "psychic friends", I couldn't help noticing that 90% of woman might say yes to those questions. And much more disturbing: they were targeting the market of woman taking anti-depressants and channeling that market toward a class of drugs that, in the past, would have only been prescribed for 1-2% of the population!

Point 8: Here it is again the "1-2 punch" in the drug industry. 1) Reinvent an illness (call it a mood stabilizer instead of bi-polar, or stretch the definition of bi-polar to include almost everybody); and 2) repurpose a drug to sell it to another audience.

fin

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON STRESS

This is Your Brain on Stress - Can Your Brain Chemistry Make You Smarter?

The question I am fascinated by lately: do antidepressants work by promoting neurogenesis? From everything I have read, I was confident I understood how anti-depressents worked—they just got the brain to produce and absorb more of the chemical serotonin and “voila”. Or as Lehrer describes the theory “sadness is simply a shortage of chemical happiness”.

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of “neurogenesis” before. I also held the following beliefs: first, I remember learning that we don’t grow new brain cells (but that we do have zillions more than we’d ever need); second, I thought it was kind of obvious that drinking and drugs “killed” brain cells; third, you don’t have to read medical journals to figure that stress isn’t good for you.

However, I never put any of these concepts/questions/ assumptions into a context. That is, until I read Jonah Lehrer’s article “The Reinvention of the Self”. The article, although nine dense pages, blew me away. Until reading this article I was not familiar with the work of Professor Elizabeth Gould.

In this article I learned that my first (incorrect) assumption above was the dominant medical paradigm (so I don’t feel so dumb for thinking that). That “brain cells—unlike every other cell in our body—don’t divide. They don’t die, and they are never reborn.” was what was taught in medical schools.

If I hadn’t read this article I probably would have continued to believe that. When I read about neurogenesis (the process of creating new brain cells) I thought I had found a physiological answer to the question I posed in "Pushing the Envelope"…is depression really carving a deep channel in my brain that gets deeper and deeper with each bout OR is that just metaphor? But the answer held a twist.

Her research focuses on the effect of stress on the brain, which was not exactly in line with what I’m curious about, however…there it was: a hypothesis which would explain one of the blank spots in depression research. On Prozac, brains grow more cells. Under the influence of untreated depression, brains actually shrink.

I found some incredible pictures of this effect on another web site, Psycheducation.org. It is true afterall, a picture does say a thousand words!

DYING IS FINE, BUT DEATH OH BABY

When my grandmother moved into assisted living, she had to get rid of a lot of her belongings. One of the more precious of these was her constant companion, her television. My father tells me that she cried when they took it away.

That poignant story stays with me as a guide for living my life. As I notice my attachments, I try to let go, all along knowing that with or without attachment I can’t avoid the inevitable aging, and loss and finally death. But perhaps, perhaps, I can find acceptance and peace as I go through these stages.

I grasp desperately at hopeful research. I hang on every word that offers hope of maintaining a youthful brain as I age. Even if the jury is still out, and we don’t know for sure whether each bout of depression causes a “trench” in our brains to grow ever deeper… I still operate on that assumption. Along the same lines, out of a nagging fear that I will become stuck in my ways (even if I have medicinally escaped being stuck in depression).

My mother sent me an article that inspired hope, the lead went like this “A 21-year study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003 found that performing one such activity-playing Risk or Scrabble, for example-just once a week is associated with a 7 percent reduced risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's. Performing more activities more frequently may cut risk as much as 63 percent”. Scrabble anyone?

I have my own way of attacking the problem. I CHANGE MY PATTERNS. I am determined to not get stuck in a rut, to become set in my ways, etc. etc. I get up on the other side of the bed, I try (unsuccessfully) to write with my left hand. I change the route I drive to work.

I strive to fill my brain up with as much information as it can hold. It seems like more just self-indulgence, more of an obligation. Kind of a "why am I here anyway” type of deal (is that a vestige of my religious impulse?). So I turn off the TV, and read a book, I tune the radio to NPR and listen intently in my car. I study topics that interest me and write about them to see if what goes in can indeed come back out.

TANGENT: Many moons ago, as I paged through a fabulous book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television", my brother-in-law walked by and quipped "Good book, 2 and 4 are true, but 1 and 3, I don't think so". Ever gullible, I looked up and said "really"? One look at Mr. Sarcasm answered that question. Ha ha.

But back to brain development. Another troubling thought: maybe this gradual inflexibility of the mind is analogous to the same in the body.

There is a point in the development of an embryo where the cells are undifferentiated but at some significant juncture, they begin to specialize. They then lose some of their magic properties. Suddenly the embryo can only be female, suddenly one cell can only become a brain cell and another can only become an arm or a foot, etc.

This concept, which was just another fact to memorize back when I was studying embryology, is now a hot topic in medical research and, for that matter, in politics. Enter the stem cell!

TANGENT: Speaking of embryology… My favorite expression from my embryology studies, which I quipped an untold number of times over the years, was “Ontology Recapitulates Phylogeny”. The expression refers to a debatable phenomenon, that the developing human embryo sort of reenacts the stages of evolution. Thus early on in its development, the human embryo actually has gills (like frogs and fish) and then later that same embryo resembles nothing else if not a pig! Anyway, true or not, I used that expression as a badge of my educated status (aren’t I smart!).

I must have said that dozens of times until one day…I actually heard what I was saying. I started to really ponder its meaning. What on earth does “Ontology” (the study of existence, often in the context of the existence of god) have to do with Phylogeny (the study of evolutionary relatedness)???.

And the answer was….I had been using the wrong word all these years. The correct word was Ontogeny not Ontology. Much to my relief, the internet was full of anecdotes and explanations of others with the same confusion (814 hits to the misquote).

But back to these cells…could it be that the timers that turn off everything else, will turn off my ability to learn? In fact, haven’t they already turned much of it off? Basically, even though new exciting research points to the fact that our brains really do continue to develop (even “grow” new brain cells, etc.)…I probably will never learn Calculus. Even stronger, I probably can’t learn Calculus.

It is fun, even enlivening, to argue about this…especially because if you find evidence that you can learn “X” then it seems like you are close to proving that you aren’t going to die. Yes my brain is still flexible, yes, yes, I am developing, I’m not aging, I’m not going to die. Whooo hoooo! Oh please don’t pop my bubble.

TANGENT: I wrote about this topic from another angle (in These Are the Good Old Days"

But still….in the end, even if I beat the odds, have a better quality of life, write a novel, run a marathon, paint a masterpiece….at 70, play scrabble every day, won’t I still cry when they take away my television set? Of course I will.

LOVE SONG TO J. ELI LILLY

Love Song to J. Eli Lilly - Brain Chemistry Meets the Alphabet

LBJ took the IRT down to 4th street USA When he got there, what did he see? The youth of America on LSD. LBJ, IRT, USA, LSD LSD, LBJ, FBI, CIA Initials, Hair Soundtrack

I thought I was suffering from PMS and then they said no, the DSM said it was probably PMDD and they gave me an SSRI. Luckily I don't have OCD or PTSS, but if I did the same pill would do the trick! I think I'm developing a new illness...acronym-itis!

Initially developed to combat depression, the mysteries of the SSRI's are still being uncovered. But something went wrong, less than a decade into production, the media, the facts, or both, had transformed Eli Lily's cash cow from a "depression miracle cure" to a "columbine-esque-suicide-causing" wild card.

Obviously action was required. To solve the problem, Lily had to do two things: 1) create a new illness that the same product could treat ("PMDD" (which sounded an awful lot like PMS but now required drug therapy)) and 2) rename the product (Prozac became Sarafam).

Thus on July 6, 2000 Eli Lilly announced the FDA approval of Sarafem(fluoxetine hydrochloride) for the treatment of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).

After initial marketing success with PMDD, Lily found more "diseases" that responded to SSRI treatment: OCD, Anxiety, Post-Tramatic Stress, Panic Attacks, etc. etc. etc.

That is when the fun began. We need a name for the 1-2 punch of "invent an illness" "rename a drug".

Coming soon: the "new" mood stabilizers

PIECES OF EIGHT

PIECES OF EIGHT

Last night I went to sleep "beside myself" over an argument. I was raging against an injustice. It was something I could not accept. What has the power to inspire moral indignation like inequity? “Let it go” I told myself as I tried to get to sleep. “Let it go, let it go, why or why can’t I let it go?” It’s putting it mildly that I have a tendency to obsess about things on occasion and this was such an occasion.

The problem? This was an injustice I did not have the power to correct.

I tried logic “now, now, the world is full of injustices, just look at our political leaders”. I coaxed a smirk out of myself on that one; but then I returned to my situation and I went right back to my ranting.

In that mood, I fell asleep and drifted into a dream. In the dream I was given custody of a beautiful pet parrot. I set up his cage, but something told me I could trust the parrot and trust myself. The parrot needed to be let out to fly free and I knew that it was a crazy risk, but I also knew somehow, that he would be back, so I opened and cage and the parrot flew out through a window into the sky. He flew and flew and then circled back. I talked to the Parrot, and said “come on now, time to come back” and he understood me and came right back. I felt that the love and care of this parrot was my grave responsibility and I understood that with the long life span of a parrot, this was a lifetime responsibility.

Luckily I wasn’t in a Monty Python episode, and when I looked up "parrots" on the web, I found the birds used as a symbol of the soul in India, and stumbled across this poem:

'The parrot, who is yearning to see you, is in my prison by the decree of the heavens. "She sends you greetings of peace and wants justice, and desires a remedy and the path of right guidance.

Apparently a parrot has come to me to steer me on the right path. Sounds good. Whether the parrot helps me transcend being dragged down into the muck of moral indignation remains to be seen. TANGENT: But spirit animals, aside, I remember a wonderful fictional parrot from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude” (and also made an appearance in Love in the Time of Cholera). This parrot had lived more than a century and still spoke “pirate” at the most inopportune times. My memory is fuzzy on these points, but that parrot touched something in me because by virtue of his long life span he connected us to times long past. He was, in essence, living history, an animate continuity.

Speaking of Moral Indignation, just saw Good Night and Good Luck, a movie which "the unemployed critic" on Amazon calls "essentially...a victory lap for liberal ideals". This movie somehow managed to leave me both bored and awe-inspired at the same time. What a pleasure to watch the intellect triumph over fear tactics. I think I REALLY needed to see that, a nice quiet shot in the arm. Good job George!

A friend of mine sent me this parody of a pharmaceutical. If all else fails, I can take one of these:

TANGENT: The Triumph of the Parrot: Parrot helps catch robbers Parrot dating service Parrot jumps ship What the parrot said to the vicar

MODERN LOVE

Okay, I’ll break down and plug another blog. It’s MoCo Loco, a zine about modern design. I could spend all day there, in fact…I MAY spend all day there. I’ll give you a couple of drilldowns, but you have to check it out yourself. On their site I found these really cool cardboard tables; really funny canopy bed; and the most bitchin’ wave chaise. Seriously, I am a kid in a candy store. They have plastic pipe furniture, wedge sofas, this fantastical “twist” table. Sigh. I’ll stop soon, but first let me just insert one teaser-picture: It’s really just a blog, so I found the site hard to navigate, but once I started browsing I couldn’t stop. It is way more fun that the stores on La Brea because you can absorb so much in such a short time. These are prototypes, designs, dreams, realities…plastic blobs, an “unconformist bookcase”. There is even an “extendable table that uses two wing-type extensions that 'lift' symmetrically creating room to comfortably seat six people”. On these pages MUST be the new Nelsons, Parsons, van de Roes. TANGENT: Speaking of modern furniture have a I mentioned my chair (knock-off Barcelona), my coffee table (original “Boom”), my red lockers (vintage IKEA) or my artwork lately?

And speaking of Modern Furniture... TANGENT: Here's a quote from one of my favorite movies, Fight Club: ‘You're young. You have an easy, well-paid desk job. You have a condo, Swedish furniture, artistic coffee tables and a fridge full of condiments. Yet you feel emotionally and spiritually empty. …Then you meet Tyler Durden, a man that shows you that not only can you live without material needs but that self-destruction, the collapse of society and making dynamite from soap might not be such a bad idea either.”

To read my full essay on Fight Club: http://www.cuteghosties.com/Reviews/default.htm

WORK MEETINGS, A DECLARATION OF HAPPINESS?

Happiness runs in a circular motion, thought is just a little boat upon the sea, everybody is a part of everything anyway, you can have it all if you let yourself be. Donovan, 1969

I set out today to write about individualism and the inherent conflicts posed by the need to work in groups to achieve common goals. Working cooperatively, is not my forte. That is a fancy way to say "I hate meetings!".

"What's the point? What's the point?", I moan. "My time is worth money!" Still I have yet to see a corporation who functions without these monstrosities we call meetings.

I dislike working cooperatively, identifying as an outsider. Obviously this is ironic because the self-image I have as rebel and iconoclast is a clearly defined type in our society. There are probably 100's of thousands of me's in colleges all over the country as I speak.

In any case, this whole blog may turn out to be a tangent, because once I started thinking about individualism my thoughts migrated to a different (but related) theme, the pursuit of happiness. Probably because Individualism and the pursuit of happiness are so distinctly American. And I couldn't blog about either one without putting them in an historical context, lest I engage in a truly foolish enterprise.

The only method that I can identify to TRY to see outside of my cultural influences (protestant work-ethic, individualism, privilege and (mediocre) education, my expectation of happiness, etc.), is to put things in the context of history (all of this just to try to understand why I feel I have a Right to be happy at work).

However ambitious I may be, I can not, in the scope of this blog, start back with Socrates (tempting as that might be), so I'll zoom forward to 1776. When the Declaration of Independence was penned, the potential for happiness was already a given. To call the pursuit of happiness "an inalienable Right" is such strong language. It was so fundamental they had to say it was endowed by God!!! The Divine Right of Kings had gone out of vogue many centuries earlier. But apparently the divine right of happiness was alive and well (and I am NOT going to get into the whole "except women and slaves" thing I swear!).

TANGENT: Speaking of our founders, just returned from a tour of the White House and was struck by the fact that the White House was burned down by the British LESS than 200 years ago (1814). This is only four of my lifetimes ago, in other words, not very long ago at all. I wonder how many hundreds of years from now that September 11th could be called the "Middle-East Invasion" and be only a blip on a history chart and maybe even be viewed as analogous to the British Invasion. In other words, 9-11 wasn't the first time political violence got extremely out of hand and it certainly won't be the last. There is nothing more primitive or more satisfying than destroying a symbol of ones enemies (witness the rival college sports teams ritual destruction of each others mascots). Even the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (how many times was that burned down and re-built?) and preserved, so that we may go and stand before it and pray?

But back to Happiness...a scientist named Gilbert did a little research on the subject and that research was written up in Harvard's Gazette in an article called "Scientists pursue happiness--Results not too cheerful". Hahaha.

Gilbert noted that the same fundamental things make us all happy since "We share the same brain architecture". He also found that even in the face of things that really should make us unhappy, that we will rearrange (our) view of the world so it doesn't hurt as much."

Recently Darrin McMahon has published his "Happiness : A History".

"Before the contemporary onslaught of therapeutic treatments and self-help guidance, the very idea of happiness in this life was virtually unknown", says Publishers Weekly (via Amazon).

An Amazon reviewer enjoyed McMahon's last chapter were he concludes that (according to our reviewer) "We are a culture that feels happiness is our right, and the search for it extends to recent advances in pharmacology". She almost seems unaware of the irony of her comment when she adds: "I do have to tell you, Happiness: A History, can be pretty depressing."

Maybe the reviewer needs a little pharmacology?

THE TWO TOUCANS

The Two Toucans - Autism and Brain Chemistry They will risk starvation and attack by dangerous predators, under the harshest conditions on earth, all to find true love.

Product Description – March of the Penguins Never underestimate the human proclivity to anthropomorphize (to attribute human characteristics and qualities to non-human beings, i.e. animals). I finally saw March of the Penguins (better late than never) a few days ago. And wow was it hard not to project human emotions on the behavior of those animals. Even the product description (above) refers to the animals overcoming all obstacles to find "true love". The movie itself shows no such thing. Apparently penguins mate annually, pair-bonding only to raise their chick from egg to self-suffiency (about a 1 year process). In other words, each year, they have a different mate, adding up to as many as 30 different mates in a lifetime--far from true love I'd say. I’m reaching for a new word here—one that describes the behavior in the "lower" animals, the wrinkle of a dogs brow that we associate with frowning, scowling, or being deep in thought. But in the dog, it doesn’t mean he's angry...or thinking. A pre-emotive autonomic response? Hmmm, I shouldn't say it... which came first? the penguin or the egg?

TANGENT: Speaking of animals thinking...I've been reading "Thinking In Pictures-My Life with Autism" by Temple Grandin, a book which somehow manages to link the theme of autism in humans with the theme of thinking and language acquisition in animals. Grandin maintains that animals think, but using a different mode of thinking, something similar to the way an autistic person thinks. She calls it "thinking in pictures".

Now here's where it comes into play for me. When I was young I played happily by myself and did not seem to require other friends. My mother called it "self-entertaining". My kindergarten teacher (this was the late '60's) thought I might be retarded because I never spoke. My mother has a "funny" story about that, because I talked all the time at home. The story goes that she asked me why I wasn't talking in school and I said "because you told me never to talk to strangers". Maybe, or maybe I wasn't socially developing at the same pace as other little 5 year olds.

My sister, like me actually was "delayed" in speaking, apparently whispering complete sentences before anyone had heard her say a word. Again the "funny" stories; that I talked enough for both of us, that I wouldn't let her get a word in edge wise; that she was just practicing until she had it just right, etc. And as she grew up, she was said to have a "photographic" memory, visualizing entire pages and just "re-reading" the answer without necessarily understanding it. We were all amazed. As she got older she also displayed a talent for mathematics and computer sciences.

All of this and the system still called us both "normal" and maybe we were (are).

Years later, when we were both adults, my nephew was diagnosed with high-functioning autism (which some think is the same as asbergers) at a young age. Since he showed none of the negative hollywoodized version of autism (the only one I ever knew about before), I couldn’t help thinking he was somehow misdiagnosed.

Whenever I see him, what I see is a boy focused on something that interests him, and not at all interested in what ever may be going on around him. I so strongly identify with that feeling, that I imagined that he and I were two of kind, only I had somehow escaped the diagnosis. That was…until I saw the toucans:

As my sister tells me, the picture on the right was a color by number picture that he colored in a year ago. Then, a year later he drew from memory the picture on the left. The fascinating part, to me, is not the amazing memory, but rather that he has NOT drawn a toucan. He has drawn areas of color, and noted them (accurately) above, just as the color by number printout had (i.e. 1) dark blue, 2) yellow, etc.).

It was actually these drawings that prompted me to write the essay below "The Opposite of Gestalt". My nephew saw the parts but I don't think they added up to the sum of their parts. It said so much about how different his brain worked from mine. Again, not because he remembered something a year later in such incredible detail, but because of what it said about our brains.

HOW SICK IS YOUR RIDE?

I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Who reads banner ads on web sites? Someone must or there would be no ad revenue. I probably do, even with my internal auto-filter turned on, I see them, I scan them, I habitually disregard them. But today…there was one that created such cognitive dissonance that it jarred me to actually ponder it.

The ad was for a car, and the banner line read “How Sick (sic) is Your Ride?” then it showed an animation of the car with “sick” new features like a rear spoiler, sun roof, alloy wheels, etc.

This is a mono-blog about getting old. A friend of mine and I were discussing slang and other adolescent features; about how fast it moved along, about how quickly we had no idea what “kids these days” were talking about—and how, by the time we do know what it means, it is already over. TANGENT: A website featuring the death clock has my death set at January 24, 2054. It then politely begins to count down the seconds l have left to live 1,513,309,307—6..5..4..3.. Ouch. I can’t sleep. Which leads me to another TANGENT: Every once in awhile I come up with some marvelously clever idea that I am convinced is original only to find out that everyone but me has heard it a hundred times. One such idea, was the death pool, like a baby pool. I started one such pool when the Bush-Cheney ticket had just been nominated. It was the Cheney Death Pool. I was having a good laugh right up until the point that the President of my company called me in to discuss the ethics of my idea (something to the effect of "if you ever do something like $*%#@!) again"). Opting for continued employment, I cancelled my pool.

TANGENT: This is exactly what made the Vampires of Ann Rice so fascinating. She addressed the paradoxical predicament facing those when faced with the prospect of eternal life. We may wish we could live forever, but actually doing it wouldn’t be so easy.

Which reminds me of one more TANGENT: Apparently Ann Rice was a big soft porn...err...romance writer who set her novels in the once beautiful New Orleans. Despite a broad historical and philosophical context, and 1400 pages, she couldn't land a hit...until that is, she changed the main character from human to vampire ...and then: bam!

MISSING LINKS AND PUNKED EEKS

Thomas Kuhn coined the term “Paradigm Shift” in 1962 in his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. The term had a very specific set of criteria. “...when enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis… During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm.” Wikipedia

I remember learning in college that most of the time it took all of the members of the current regime to die before a new paradigm really took hold. This idea has stayed with me when I grow impatient with a current belief (not the strongest ray of hope, thinking it will change, but I just won’t live to see it).

Over twenty-five years later, the power has gone out of the word, having been both over and misused.

Question: Doesn’t the whole human tendency to fear the unknown, to stamp down a wild outrageous idea, to censor the media, to ban a book, etc. contradict the meme notion? (see recent article Pushing the Envelope for more on fear and banned books).

TANGENT: On a recent stay at family friends home, I read his son’s book Jakarta from the Inside Out. I loved this book because it is the kind of book I always wanted to write. It tells the truth therefore it is hilarious—and it is banned in Jakarta (even though their constitution doesn’t permit it). Amazon says they only have three left in stock (and when I buy one, that will be two). It’s worth a read even if you aren’t planning a trip to Jakarta just now. Help me prove my point “banning an idea makes it stronger”.

TANGENT: In a recent travel writing class my professor pointed out the folly in my logic. Apparently writing negative comments about a location doesn’t sell magazine ads. Knocked out half of my travel stories as magazine sales prospects. Darn.

Why ban a book and spread an idea at the same time? I mean, we humans are the messengers of both. Sort of reminds me of punctuated equilibrium (slang-breviated as punk eek). The way I understand it, if there were missing links, gaps in the evolutionary path, there was still a burden on science to explain this, or face the ravages of creationism. The theory held that “new and favorable mutations are diluted by the sheer bulk of the population through which they must spread....”

So maybe that would explain it. After all, all viruses are not successful, so why would all memes be? And maybe the challenge makes only the strong survive. Without the weeding out, we’d be overrun with bad ideas.

THE MEME IS THE MESSAGE

Once upon a time I asked my brother-in-law what the word for the kind of email that gets sent around--the kind that no one knows who started it or who wrote it, usually funny as hell, often apocryphal, not necessarily jokes, etc.. --he paused and answered “Meme”. I laughed.

Meme was not the word I was looking for, but it started me thinking. I really, really didn’t want to write a Blog about Meme’s (really), but…how long could I leave such a hot topic unblogged? Maybe, according to the selfish meme (sic) theory, I didn’t ever have a chance. This is what I came up with:

A gene is a unit of heredity encoded in DNA and passed on through reproduction, but also can be passed between un-related individuals via viruses (paraphrased from Wikipedia).

A meme is a unit of a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution encoded in a behavior “imitation” and can be passed between unrelated individuals via a virus—language.

TANGENT: “Language is a Virus” wasn’t the complete quote, it was “Language is a virus sent from outer space”, but it’s a lot more apropos without that last bit. It was good old William S. Burroughs who apparently said that (it’s all over the internet without a source) and the original performance artist Laurie Anderson who spread it, with a song title of the same (on the soundtrack for Home of the Brave).

To continue:

"Genes that do x are more likely to be passed on" (Susan Blackmore discussing Richard Dawkins)

"Successful meme are the ones that get copied and spread, while unsuccessful ones do not". ( ibid) TANGENT: Since Richard Sermon, a German evolutionary biologist was the first to use the concept of “meme” in 1902; and Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen didn’t coin the word "gene" until 1909; meme’s precede gene’s in cultural evolution (if only by seven years). source: Wikipedia definition of Meme

The idea of the gene is a meme, but a meme is not a gene, it is like a gene, which means it is a metaphor, which means it is a feature of language, and language is a virus, which is memetic, therefore a meme IS a gene. What?

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE: ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND THE NATURE OF THE SELF How quickly does an examination of anti-depressants turn into a conversation about the nature of the self? How quickly does the idea of drug induced contentment (or dare I say happiness) turn into a discussion of governmental mind control? How soon after asking the question “what exactly is the difference between using alcohol or using cocaine or marijuana?”, does the conversation become a polemic on why the government spends billions of dollars fighting the war on drugs? Once you get there, you are only a hair away from joining the conspiracy theorists. The problem with letting the little problem become either philosophical or political is that you risk losing credibility. Feel free to talk about how serotonin levels change in a group of subjects taking an SSRI, but ask which is the real you-- “the depressed, angry cynic” of before or the “cheerful, open, calm” person after—and you are in for trouble. In trouble because--it makes people uncomfortable. No one wants to be happy if it is “just” because of a drug. “But it isn’t real” I heard time and time again. Why do you use the modifier “just” I would ask. “How do you define real?” etc. etc. I might as well have been the mad hatter.

TANGENT: This is the same basic mistake Galileo made. If he had stopped with some diagrams and theories about the planets revolving around the sun he might not have raised the hackles of the Church. If he had stopped there he wouldn’t have been very different from Copernicus. Instead he “went political” with it making comments to the effect of “the Bible is written in the language of the common person who is not an expert in astronomy.” And that “Scripture teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” (quotes from “The Galileo Project”). Obviously he was crusin’ for a bruisin’ .

A friend of mind (and I have no way of knowing if this originated with him) defined culture as “An unwritten set of rules, which serve no necessary function, but if not followed, one is ostracized from the culture.” He used as examples “eating left handed in the Middle East” and “having anything other than a 'positive attitude' in the US”. The first resonates because we have a bit of distance from the other culture, the second is abrasive because we have no distance from our own culture. Most of us do take for granted that “having a positive attitude” is a desirable thing and from the perspective of a person from another culture (the French let’s say) this can be seen as just a bit odd.

The question for me is how far can you push the envelope before they either ostracize you, jail you, or just plain kill you???

THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS

THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS: AGING, OPENESS AND PERSONALITY

At what age does thinking become “painful”? I don’t remember the experience of pain when learning new things as a child, but it sure is harder now. The metaphor typically used to describe this is that patterns are literally carved in our brains, like channels that grow ever deep, until it is too late to go a different route. “Stuck in our ways” is the expression we use.

An article published in Psychology Today in 2003 stated that according to Berkeley Professors Srivastava and John, “Personality is not set in stone by age 30…but continues to change throughout one's lifetime. Five major personality traits -- conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness and extraversion -- continue to evolve as people age.”

This would appear to be hopeful news, however, note they said “continues to change” not “continues to improve”. Specifically, the change in the trait of openness is for the worse, finding “a gradual decline in openness as subjects aged”.

This metaphor (of channels carved into the brain) surfaces again in discussions about depression. In Listening to Prozac I was frightened into believing that every bout of depression made the channel deeper and that taking an anti-depressant would actually prevent this from happening. It was over a year later that I learned this was a metaphor not based on biology or brain research.

Yet we all know (without reading a psychology article) that older people seem to get set in their ways, more resistant to change, aren’t exactly open to learning about “new-fangled” things.

TANGENT: I find it ever fascinating that there is this human tendency to believe the music they loved as an adolescent was the only good true music and that contemporary music is crap.

TANGENT: Anyone who uses a word to mean “the latest” takes a risk that that word will expire when a new “latest” comes out. Thus phrases like “the new-new thing” which is apparently newer than just plain old “new”. Music history of this century falls into this trap, where “classic rock” was used to mean enduring, at one moment mapping to the music of the 50’s but then switching to the 60’s, the 50’s became “Oldies”, The 70’s were “today’s music” which now are “classics”. Making the 50’s “Nostalgia” and the 60’s & 70’s “classics”, but now the 00’s are “today’s music” and now what? And how did “Adult Contemporary” come to be synonymous with “not rap music”? and “Modern Adult Contemporary” to mean “regular adult contemporary plus “alternative” rock”. What will be the alternative of alternative? New alternative?

TANGENT: This brings me back to Tom Wolffe’s “The Painted Word” discussion of the art world again. Modern (late 1900’s to the 1970’s), Post Modern (presumably after the 70’s), and the art of today “Contemporary”. I don’t think anybody had the nerve to risk “Post-Contemporary”

THE OPPOSITE OF GESTALT

In History of Psych class I was introduced to the idea of gestalt. I immediately loved that word. Now I’m thinking that we need a word for the opposite of Gestalt. Instead of our brains putting a pattern together (even one that isn’t there), maybe sometimes our brains disregard patterns (even when one IS there).

According to Wikipedia, the Gestalt effect refers to “the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.”. The best example of this is our propensity to see faces where there are no faces, on the grill of a car for example (the VW bug for instance). If there is a face to be picked out somewhere, our minds will find it. I forget where I read that “humans are incredible pattern recognition machines”, but I agree with them.

TANGENT: Read an interesting book recently by my pal William Gibson (at least he feels like an old friend) Pattern Recognition. The hilarious thing about this novel is that Gibson has conceived of a character who has a phobia—of brand names!!! Could he have written the whole novel tongue in cheek? Unfortunately this is not a great novel, but it definitely is a great outline of a novel.

TANGENT: Speaking of Gibson, probably best known as the father of the “cyberpunk” genre. Gibson created this genre in his novel “Neuromancer” over twenty years ago. This novel starts with one of my favorite sentences “the sky…was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel”. Kind of makes me think he was living in Los Angeles when he wrote that.

TANGENT: A friend of mine, fond of reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, thought someone was saying “New Romancer” when he heard them talking about “Neuromancer”. Which leads me to my last tangent for tonight:

TANGENT: Mondegreens –There are so many websites that cover Mondegreens because after sex and gambling, music is right up there on internet users hot lists (darn it, that reminds me of one more tangent, but it will have to wait!). A favorite mondegreen of my generation was thinking that the line in Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze was “’scuse me while I kiss this guy” instead of the actual lyric “’scuse me while I kiss the sky”. This example was considered so representative of the mondegreen phenomena that when someone set out to create an archive of misheard lyrics that named it: http://kissthisguy.com/

Apparently, the term "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Harper’s article. As a child, young Sylvia had listened to a folk song that included the lines "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And Lady Mondegreen." As is customary with misheard lyrics, she didn't realize her mistake for years. The song was not about the tragic fate of Lady Mondegreen, but rather, the continuing plight of the good earl: "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And laid him on the green."” (quote from dozens of web anecdotes).

FLYING AND THE SNEEZE REFLEX

Years ago I had a friend who would open his eyes and look at the sun to make himself sneeze. I thought it was just his idiosyncrasy, but every once in a while I'd hear someone else say they sneezed in sunlight.

My brother-in-law was looking for a word for it, and it turns out there already is one (or two): About.com says that "a close association between the eye's optic nerve and nerves causing the sneeze reflex may explain why an estimated 5-25% of people sneeze with sudden exposure to bright sunlight." and goes on to say that this is "known as photic sneeze reflex. The reflex also is called Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioophthalmic Outburst syndrome, known (as) ACHOO."

Of course I had to fact check that last one with the ultimate source reference Cecil, author of the column The Straight Dope. Cecil didn't mention ACHOO, but he did ask his readers to "...Listen to this frightening headline: "The photic sneeze reflex as a risk factor to combat pilots," Military Medicine, Breitenbach et al, 1993.""

Of course there had to be someone investing in research on the impact of sneezing on combat! It isn't as if we need to work on curing cancer or stopping world hunger or anything.

TANGENT: A mystery surrounds the identity of Cecil (shocker!). Judge for yourself.

WHERE DOES YOUR EMAIL GO WHEN YOU DIE?

Career of the Future: Data Retrieval Services for the Bereaved. I always imagined that when I died my descendants would go through my papers, find that long lost pile of love letters tied with a ribbon, maybe find a poem or a story I wrote, and certainly treasure my boxes of photographs. This idea, of leaving ones writings for posterity…well, to not put too fine a point on it…is Dead.

BLOC-ING

It's the little things that keep me up at night. I finally persuaded myself to run a spell check BEFORE posting my blog (crazy I know!) and what is the first spelling error that the Google/Blogger spell check engine finds? BLOG! It suggested I replace it with Bloc. TANGENT: Speaking of things that keep you up at night (and no I'm not talking about Starbucks): It really bugs me when I hear someone say a word and I suddenly don't know if they are right or wrong, for example do you succeed or secede someone in a position? I had to actually say "secede from the union" to jog myself back to reality. or would that be joc?

WHISTLE-BLOGGING - PART II

Google reveals ten links to the phrase and some very interesting articles (better than mine) on the web (it hasn't made it to Wikipedia yet, but I bet it will be there by midnight). TANGENT: By the way, none of those links were to mine, and my blog host-site blogger is owned by Google! The link I loved the most was about the Delaware Supreme Court Justice who basically ruled "don't sue 'em for defamation, blog 'em back". See the article here: http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=114062 The topic is, as on of my friends would say, "deliciously complex". So now I have another TANGENT: blog words. Here are the ones that are new to me: vlogging (the video blog). These can be done in your car while driving (now that sounds smart!). ghostblogging - having your blog written for you and then taking the writing credit for it.

THE COLOR OF SOUND

THE COLOR OF SOUND: RAINBOW BRAIN CHEMISTRY Can you see that sound? People who have blending of the senses (a rare condition called "synesthesia"), find that a stimulus, such as sound, creates a reaction in another sense, as well as the expected sense. Synesthesia is thought to occur in just 1 per cent of all adults. I first heard about it on NPR in a Morning Edition story: "For Pianist, Music Unleashes Rainbows of Color" Here's where brain chemistry comes in...According to Wikipedia, "Synaesthesia is a common effect of some hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD or mescaline".

LEFT TURN

Last month, on the night before Christmas, a friend borrowed my car and as he attempted a left turn, was hit by a motorcycle—a black ninja appropriately enough. As you can imagine I told the story to a friend, who commented that you can never win on the left turn. If you say the light was turning yellow, they say it was already red, if you say it was a solid green, they say the other party had the right-of-way. Thus, from now on…the left turn will be my metaphor for: you just can’t win. Bye bye to “you can’t beat City Hall”, or do only Chicagoans say that one?

PHO'N WITH PUNS

Writing about Meta phenomena is perilously close to recursion. Okay, here I go: I was reading an article about blogs the other day (oy, I make myself laugh). The point of the article was basically that blogs are becoming increasingly specialized to target audiences in order to achieve readership. From there, they went on to list some “foodie” websites—among them a site devoted to my favorite Vietnamese chicken soup: Pho. The problem with Pho, is that it is pronounced “Fuh” and the LA Times probably didn’t notice the bad pun when the recommended readers visit the website: Pho-King (ouch)!

TANGENT: I don’t think a Wikipedia definition of recursion is helpful because you have to dig for the part that relates to my usage. I’ll just quote this little bit:

“A more humorous illustration goes: "In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion." Or perhaps more accurate is the following due to Andrew Plotkin: "If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is." TANGENT: I can’t even say “meta” without mentioning Douglas Hofstader’s 1979 Pulitzer

Prize winning book: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The whole idea of the self-referential idea (it's everywhere) completely re-shaped my thinking.

DEPRESSION IS DEPRESSING

I set out this morning to dash off a little entry on Prozac. In preparation I looked up the latest stats on usage in the US. The numbers are usually presented to stagger the audience, wow 21 million scrips written in the US in 2004, what is happening to our society? Etc. etc.

But keep this in perspective: 92 million scrips written for just ONE of the varieties of Viocdon (hydorcodone), 69 million for Lipitor (got to keep those lipids down), 29 million for Zoloft anti-anxiety medication.

That doesn’t even take into account the "pam’s" (Lorazepam, Clonazepam, Diazepam, Temazepam, etc.). Those would be your valiams, your xanax, your restoril’s. As a group, that would make 52 MILLION scrips!!!! My god man, CALM THOSE NERVES, reading about Prozac is giving me an ANXIETY ATTACK!

It isn’t hard to understand the 31 million Albuteral prescriptions for all that asthma, or the 18 million for Allegra, got to clear those nosies! Do I have to go on? OK, just one more, should I keep it up? 13 million….Viagra! (oh god, THAT was bad).

PROZAC MOVIES: YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

PROZAC MOVIES: DRUG INFLUENCE ON THE ARTS It was inevitable…first psychedelic art, and then ecstasy art, movements (one over, the other in progress) art and street drugs have always been joined at the hip (Hemingway and Spanish Wine, The Beats and Mary Jane, etc.). And so… it was bound to happen, with well over 30 million anti-depressants being prescribed…I announce the onset of the Prozac Movie. The problem is, as with all drug influenced art forms, no one is going to admit it. But I would hold out two flicks as evidence of the first signs: 1) Lost in Translation and 2) Garden State.

Psychedelic Art

I can’t argue that all the drug fried brains caused by overuse of LSD 25 really outweigh the outpouring of art that emerged around the time of its street popularity, BUT no one can deny that the psychedelic art (lights, music, poetry) weren’t worth something.

Ecstasy Music

I have to admit I have my own form of “they just don’t make good music like they did when I was in highschool” disorder. I would think, for example, psychedelic drugs gave us the Beatles greatest work, but Ecstasy only gave us 110 beats per minute of mind-numbing bass.

But before I finished the thought, I see that LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art is offering an exhibit called “Ecstasy”. Maybe they know something I don’t. I will make it a point to visit this one. The MOCA exhibit called “Ecstasy: In and About Altered States” running through February 20th 2006.

MODERN ART & FURNITURE: A MOOD ALTERING EXPERIENCE

Years ago my father introduced me to Modern Art, I remember the impression that Mondrian made on me at the Art Institute of Chicago, as a little girl. I also remember being bored to tears when he dragged me around exhibitions of modern furniture. I may have, if I had any reaction at all, wondered why anyone would care who designed that chair. I didn’t get it. But suddenly the idea found purchase, when at forty years of age, I found myself sitting in front of a furniture store looking at what I somehow knew was known as the Barcelona chair—in red leather no less!

That chair simply had to come home with me and then little memories from the past emerged and I began to read about the designers and to discover that so much of what I had seen in stores and homes had been, in fact, classics of the modern variety. The mind twisting part was that I found that so much the distinctive furniture in the trendy high end stores today were designed back in 1925. TANGENT: This led me to wonder about the word modern. I have to admit—to not do so would be dishonest—that my perspective on the subject had been formed when reading Tom Wolfe’s fabulous send up of the art world in 1975. At the time, the New York Times called Tom Wolfe’s book “The Painted Word” his “…most successful piece of social journalism to date". What fascinated me in the book—which I fixated on from that point forth—was that the word modern, wasn’t modern! I really enjoyed his discussion of the post-modern, etc. and the art worlds struggle to find the right word to describe what was actually current. How could modern be old-fashioned. We are certainly in a fix.

As usual, I am taking forever to get to my point, which is this: my house was finally shaping up, clean and flowing, punctuated by the “metro” coffee table and “Barcelona" chair. One evening I walked out into my living room and was startled by the starkness. It gave me a cold frightening feeling. Instead of the peace of openness and the calm of nature, I had a feeling like cold steel, hospital. Now what in the world does temperature have to do with feelings? All I know is that it was opposite of that cozy warmth you get when you come into a friends tiny living room and plop onto the tweed sofa. This is NOT what I was aiming for. I wanted beauty; I wanted something free of clutter, a perfect simplicity. But what did I have? I was scared to be in my own living room. Hmmmm.

TANGENT: In this case warm and cold are metaphors, which never fails to remind me of my favorite writer, the never heard of philosopher king from Carbondale, Illinois—Mark Johnson. Mark wrote “The Body in the Mind : The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason” in 1987.