The Battle of the Lardasses Continues

In my Homotron post elegantly titled, "Hey Fatty! Nintendo Thinks You're Fat!" I explored the furor raised over Nintendo's Wii Fit, and the game's propensity to say Fat instead of Overweight.

I think the obesity experts need to calm down. If Nintendo is going to give a weight complex to children, well, the parents of said "stocky" children should be aware of this and treat it like parents: nip it in the bud, send your kid to therapy, tell them that television is evil and judges Little Jimmy even when Little Jimmy is asleep, and that Little Jimmy should probably go outside and run around in circles until he feels better about his body image.

Besides all that, the concept of Wii Fit is to help overweight kids shed pounds whilst having fun. So it doesn't matter what they call them at first; what matters is the progress they'll make toward transforming as they please.

I stand by those words. But the problem hasn't ceased.

Today Kotaku, the gaming blog, delved into the issue a little further and, in effect, made the "issue" more weepy vagina-tastic than ever before.

The BBC posted the story of an 11-year-old girl from Lincolnshire who asked her Mommy if she could go on a diet after Nintendo called her—as the BBC says—a "porky." Kotaku writes:

... the fact that she told her mother she wanted to go on a diet after the game's diagnosis is very disturbing.

No. It's. Not. Little girls are always looking for an excuse to go on diets. Decades of abusive, unfair weight standards have permanently creased the minds of adolescents into believing that unless they're rail-thin, they'll never be attractive. To be "disturbed" by such old news is ludicrous.

Furthermore:

Weight is a bit of a sensitive issue with me, having recently spent the better part of three years living with someone with a serious eating disorder. While I can certainly understand that the issues of weight and health need to be addressed, I'm just not sure a video game, especially on a system that encourages people to play together, is the right place to address it. The only thing worse than a machine telling you (erroneously even) that you are overweight is having it happen while surrounded by your closest friends.

Here comes the insensitivity truck: I don't care about your buddy with the eating disorder. I know people with eating disorders, too. Who gives a shit? Eating disorders are like these delicious Skittles I'm eating right now: they're all over the place, fruity and delicious, and found in every candy machine in the United States.

Wait, what? What's that? That analogy makes no sense? Well, whatever to you.

The Kotaku author claims videogaming isn't an appropriate venue to address weight concerns, even in our modern obesity epidemic. To that I say well, don't buy the fucking thing, then. If you're frightened of being "unfit," don't buy a product with "fit" in the title.

And if you're self-conscious and reliant on Wii Fit for healthy physical activity, don't play it with your fucking friends. Or get friends that don't poke at your girth and call you a lardass as you're trying to lose weight!

If that doesn't work, make fun of their stutter, their slutty mothers, their low-income housing and their inevitable careers as petroleum distributors.

Mongo smash!

On A Lighter Note...

I'm currently having a love-affair with Skittles.

While I appreciate the multitude of flavors, I'm a fan of the original fruit collection.

Some people jam a bunch in their mouthes.

Some people take a bunch of the same flavor and jam them in their mouthes.

I eat them one at a time, slowly, savoring the fruity goodness.

The Fun of Meds, Specifically Effexor

Over the past couple of months I discovered I was drinking a lot and a lot of beer, eating crackers and cheese like stupid people's business, and gaining weight. A substantial amount of weight for my small frame.

I got concerned and tried starving myself but that lasted like, fourteen hours.

Then I read up on the medications I was taking (but since have been off) and discovered a wild and woolly world I never knew existed. Yes, meds make you fat. And certain medications can even turn you into a die-hard booze-swilling alcoholic wife-beater (except without the wife-beating part).


Thanks to Crazy Meds!, I did a little insider research on Effexor, the anti-depressant and -anxiety I gulped down once a day for, oh, eight or nine months. Here are my favorite bits of the medication's description, side-effects and weaning period:

Effexor's Pros: There are two last resorts among the modern meds to cure the deepest, blackest depression when your doctor is just switching you from one horsie to another on the med-go-round: Effexor XR (venlafaxine hydrochloride) and Remeron (mirtazapine). Either in combination with an antipsychotic would really get you out of that hole of despair, but first you should throw away every mirror and scale in your house and buy expandable clothing.

So ... I need to have a chat with my psychiatrist. Does she really believe me to be in the deepest of blackest despairs? Doesn't she understand most of my problems are circumstantial and, indeed, most problems in general are such?

Had I found Crazy Meds! earlier, I would've taken especial note of "you should throw away every mirror and scale in your house and buy expandable clothing." Yes, Effexor makes you fat. Even though I was told I wouldn't get fat. (Thanks.)

Effexor's Cons: For many people Effexor XR has the absolute worst discontinuation syndrome of an antidepressant.

This much is definitely true. I weaned off Effexor for a full month. As the dosages lowered, I got light-headed and developed an inability to concentrate. Nothing held my interest. Never mind the violent mood-swings that left my face soaked with tears most of the time.

Most of my fun came from the Effexor's Not-So-Common Side Effects page, where I discovered a thin slice of Brennon in almost every word:

Alcohol intolerance and/or alcohol abuse. So Effexor XR (venlafaxine hydrochloride) is going to be just the thing to talk about at AA meetings ... Effexor's broad spectrum use of liver enzymes probably interferes with alcohol clearance and tolerance, thus leading to the type of alcoholism that affects people without the proper enzymes to effectively metabolize alcohol. Between that and the way Effexor XR works your liver, you're probably better off giving up booze entirely if you're taking this med.

I clearly recall a conversation I had with my psych. It went something like this:

"Does Effexor have any side-effects?"

"Not many, no."

"Can I drink on Effexor?"

"With most anti-depressants, it's not a great idea to drink excessively, but yeah, you can drink."

Little did I know Effexor wanted me to drink excessively, so I did, and was intolerant of alcohol, so ended up shitfaced a lot, unintentionally.

One of the biggest complaints about Effexor is quitting the drug. I read up on some typical symptoms for "discontinuation syndrome." Here are the tasty bits (emphasis mine):

• Vertigo
• Lightheadedness
• Difficulty walking
• Nausea/Vomiting
• Headaches
• Fatigue
• Shock-like sensations
• Visual disturbances
• Agitation
• Impaired concentration
• Vivid dreams
• Depersonalization
• Irritability
• Suicidal thoughts

Wowwie kablowwie, right? What a fantastic collection of awfulness. Thanks, Effexor, for truly making life a living hell.


It's safe to report I have experienced agitation, impaired concentration, vivid dreams, irritability, nausea, fatigue and lightheadedness. I may have had a touch of depersonalization, but I soothe that with gadgets, Penny the Housecat and Netflix (it wasn't, and isn't, serious).

So anyway, I'm off the Effexor. For good. And I'm going to instigate a stern reevaluation of my professional relationship with my psychiatrist. She either wants to kill me, or thinks I want to be dead.

Blind Leading the Blind Right Into Blind Pockets (A Blind Story)

I was going to make fun of the NY Times article "Court Says Currency Discriminates Against the Blind" until I realized it made sense. It does discriminate. Any asshole in a beanie can rip a blind person off by lying about the forked-over money.

My favorite bit comes in the form of court snarkiness:

The government might as well argue that, since handicapped people can crawl on all fours or ask for help from strangers, there's no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible, the court said.

Fucking awesome. I love it when judges get their bitch on.

Some of the proposed design changes are different-sized bills and raised markings on existing bills. I vote for the latter. My biggest bitch about the Euro, besides the fact that it kills our economy with kittens, is the different-sized bills.

Better yet: let's abolish paper money completely. We'd save a lot of trees, and even if you, like me, don't give a shit about the environment based on morally-corrupt selfishness and a hatred for children and their fancy fucking future generations, it's a perfect opportunity to roll out the Credits system seen in every single sci-fi RPG ever.

A zappable card, directly linked to your bank account, with a crystal-clear LCD screen showing how much money you have left, recent transactions, and pending checks—I mean, why aren't we doing this?

Fuck flying cars. I want futuristic sci-fi credit cards.

This Time Next Month, I'll Be Dead

The Netflix streaming-video box is finally here, and though Netflix itself is doing an awful job marketing the $99 Roku player, the Internet is bubbling with reviews. I posted one myself on Homotron.

I'm goddamned fucking excited about the Roku player. Even though critics are all like, "You can only access 10,000 programs and they're not great quality," I say, "Uh, that's 10,000 streaming videos I currently don't have access to, all for $99 and the promise of heightened quality and expanded offerings in the future."

Shit yeah I'll spend $99 on promises.

What I'm most excited about is the surplus of low-grade horror flicks Netflix offers on their streaming service.

Of course nobody wants to put Puppetmaster vs. Demonic Toys on their queue lest their significant other find it and say, "Uh, what're you doing wasting space with this shit?"

Or, if you're like me, and don't have a significant other behaving as an editorial conscience, you don't want to be sufferin' a hankerin' for some Cloverfield (which sucked, by the way) and end up with Howling VII: New Moon Rising.

But, if you're like me an' really dig gettin' sauced and watching endless blood-drenched crap, shamelessly, with or without pants, Roku's $99 Netflix Box is abso-fuckin-lutely perfect for you. And me.

Not all the flicks on the Roku are crap. You can watch Dead Ringers and Misery and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, as well as the entire first season of 30 Rock and Dexter, all from the comfort and convenience of your home. (Plus: softcore gay porn!)

Meanwhile, if you're all sorts of snobby and don't want 480p but 720p, or whatever, your Netflix subscription still exists, so you can add whatever the fuck you want!

I doubt my soon-to-arrive Roku box will change Look Back In Anger back to its glory days of bad horror and beer, but you never know. I am finding it difficult to socialize lately.

Pants.

I bought these khaki pants at The Gap sometime last summer thinking I'd become all "professional" for my "professional" job. Turns out they're "beach" khaki pants and made of some whooshy fabric. Feels like a fucking tent.

They ride up my legs and into my crack. No matter what kind of shoes I wear, my bare ankles are always exposed and I look like a moron.

You know how when you don't shake well enough after urinating and get some dribblage? Well, with my Beach Khakis from The Gap, the wee-wee makes a distinct dark impression on my crotch that takes an hour to soak into the fabric. During that time I try to stay behind my desk or hold folders in front of my junk.

I hate these pants.

Today in Stupid: Mark Dice

As I quietly predicted, Christians have their panties in a twirl over Starbucks' decision to reintroduce their 35-year-old logo.

While the leader of—ahem—"The Resistance," a Christian organization, has no problem looking bad-ass with a pistol on his MySpace, he's certainly concerned about a fictional two-tailed mermaid's naked titties slathered on coffee cups.

You can read Dice's snore-worthy press release here, but here's the gist:

“The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,” explains Mark Dice, founder of the group. “Need I say more? It’s extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves, Slutbucks.”

The all-brown logo is a replica of the one the chain used when it opened its first store in Pike Place in Seattle in 1971. “The woman is actually a siren, not a mermaid, which in Greek mythology lures people to them with their beautiful songs, and then kills them,” explains Dice.

I actually like the name Slutbucks. If Starbucks changed to Slutbucks, I wouldn't go around telling people how runny my shits are 'cause of their coffee. And sluts! Who doesn't love sluts? Sluts rock.

And the woman is a mermaid. A cursory glance from the Wikipedia definition of Siren makes no mention of two-tailed fish. And you know what? Even if I'm wrong, I don't give a shit. Dice's inclusion of the "definition" has no bearing on his original complaint; who cares if mermaids slaughter people? Christians slaughter people, too! They've been doing it for thousands of years!

Dice and his complaint are a big, soppy waste of time. Welcome to the Stupid Club, dumbshit.

Whore!

Speaking of Homotron...

I posted a hate-laced editorial about the new Apple Store opening tomorrow on Boylston Street. Be sure to check it out. Leave nasty comments.

Largest Apple Store In The U.S. Will Ruin My City

My State of the Union: The Ugly Nitty-Gritty of Waking Up, Falling Asleep and Everything In Between

Since hitting the "Publish Post" button on "Gay n' Crazy" last Sunday, I've been obsessed with its inadequacy.

I rewrote the post several times before eviscerating its guts and tossing out the two paragraphs at the beginning and three closing 'graphs. Like most bad pieces of writing, it drops off at the end, like plop; makes no sense.

My editing process is actually a great illustration of the ins and outs of living this way, this eternally frustrating fucking debilitating way.

Hypomania is defined as "a mood state characterized by persistent and pervasive elevated or irritable mood." Two of the my best personality descriptors are "energetic" and "impatient." When something doesn't work, I get furious and quickly try to fix or flee.

Another important crumb of bipolar II is its horrible depressions. Mine are often categorized with cyclic, obsessive thoughts on one true-or-not-doesn't-matter subject. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Drink yourself into a self-preserving stupor. Rinse, repeat.

So let's backtrack: when I wrote, "Since hitting the 'Publish Post' button on 'Gay n' Crazy' last Sunday, I've been obsessed with its inadequacy," this is what I meant:

"Since slamming the everloving shit out of the 'Publish Post' button on that piece of shit article I wrote last hungover Sunday, I've been plagued with obsessive negative thoughts about my ability to write."

That, friends, is how it works. You can see how functioning like that can sometimes become overbearing. And you can pinpoint the rapid cycling of emotions—the obsession leads to frustration; the frustration to a more generalized, personalized frustration; and all that whittles down to depression.

It's important to emphasize depression. Bipolar II, unlike Bipolar I, is more a depressive disorder than anything else. While the root of my problems begins with mania, they almost always end up with me glowering or fighting back the urge to cry.

Bipolar II is cyclic as well—hence why I dropped variations of the word "cycle" twice now. Here's a good example. On my last post, a commenter asked if writing about my Blergh was difficult. It is. It's very difficult writing this right now. Why? Because it makes me think of my damage. Thinking about my damage makes me think of its permanence and whether or not efforts to quell messy synapse explosions are working and/or worth it.

I've had to come up with creative ways to tell people I hate living like this without insinuating suicide, which, rest assured, has never been a viable option. I'd be foolish to lie and say it's never been a thought, however.

I'm not writing this so you can pull out your tissues and hand them to me across cyberspace; I'm not looking for your attention, affection or sympathy. I once fired a therapist because she was too empathic; it made me sick to my stomach; I found myself pushing her buttons and outright lying just to shift the dynamic in that stuffy room.

Why, then? Partially for myself: I wanted to see exactly how hard it'd be; and partially just for the sake of it. And now that I'm through—another plop—it'll become just another post, sandwiched between insensitive jokes about down syndrome and AIDS, on a website.

Sausage Links: Handjobbing the Blogging Masses

Here's an update to my Sausage Links in the left-hand column of this blog. I've been reading many more sites lately, pruning the hedges of other people's writing abilities, and have included the following into my blogroll:


Dialectik: This guy found me on VerveEarth (post re: VerveEarth forthcoming) and basically told me he likes me because I'm angry. At first I got really pissed off at the insinuation that I'm fucking angry (???) but, after calming, I discovered he could put a sentence together.

Really, anyone who posts about a Jesus-shaped dildo wins points in my book.


Geek USA: A friend pointed me in this guy's direction. We all know I love and appreciate geekiness above and beyond any other human quality (see the soon-to-be-released Weekly Dig article called "As If Geekiness Needed More Debauchery" to see how much I cherish it), and the author of Geek USA brings it in droves.

Again, he writes about penises.


Gently Humping Your Leg: A friend's blog. He just started, so give him time to fry off all that pretentious soul-seeking we were all birthed with in favor of good stories and sharp wit.


I'm Always Right: Can't believe it took me this long to send a hey-ya out to this site; I've been reading it for a couple of months. The spotty, ADD post "I'm Unfocused" is a great example of her debauchery and humor.


Look At This Nigger: Am I allowed to even write that? Oh, fuck it. A little racial tension never hurt no one. This blog has the perfect mix of intelligence, self-righteousness and black (no pun intended) humor that makes it a must-read for any Look Back In Anger fan. His evisceration of R. Kelly is particularly recommended.


The Trouble With Spikol: Liz Spikol was featured prominently in the New York Times article I cited yesterday (which needs a rewrite). She, too, suffers from Bipolar disorder and treats her condition with humor and insight.


This Girl Called Automatic Win: Great combination of lifey dykey stories and sausage links.

Read and enjoy.

Gay n' Crazy

For a while now I've wanted to write about living with Bipolar II. I just couldn't decide if it should be funny or sad (oh, get it? Good one, Brennon).

The New York Times this morning had an article about "Mad Pride," a recent movement in the mental health community celebrating one's mood disorders. My favorite line:

Just as gay-rights activists reclaimed the word queer as a badge of honor rather than a slur, these advocates proudly call themselves mad; they say their conditions do not preclude them from productive lives.

Fucking A. I'm queer and crazy; proud of both. Neither are easy, for sure, but there's no rationale for feeling shame over either.

My love affair with Bipolar II is, well, bipolar.

Ultimately, I lead a fulfilling, productive life. Mood-stabilizers help this happen, I guess, even though treating one's disorders with pills is a crapshoot. I've been on three. The anti-depressant made me manic. The stabilizer made me depressed. And the anti-psychotic I took for three days before dumping in the trash made me sick to my stomach and really fucking manic.

Mania is all right. I write a shit load when I'm jittery. Some days it sucks. Two weeks ago I was at work and literally could not sit still. I stood whilst working and paced around my cube and then, later, my floor, all to stem the sensation.

I prefer it to the depression, though. Right before hopping on the anti-psychotic train, I suffered crippling panic attacks followed immediately by uncontrollable bouts of crying. One day I cried for seven hours straight. By the end of it, I had no idea how it had started; all I knew is it was impossible to stop.

But fuck it. It's me; it's mine; we're stuck together like an obnoxious roommate who just so happens to be your best friend.