Distracted by Air

Archive for December, 2007

merry christmas, manchester

December 14, 2007 11:58 am

Oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree, you used to be in a cemetery.

I kid you not.

Somehow, it makes my headless angel tree pale in comparison.

world not ending

December 10, 2007 11:38 am

“The world, on a large scale, has a history of pretty much not ending.”

—steven in this thread on Hatrack.

christmas carols for the psychologically challenged

December 7, 2007 9:19 am

The title of the post is the subject of the highly amusing email I received this morning. Now, being one who has worked both sides of the mental health field (provider and patient), I may find these more amusing than most. However, when I went to make this post, I was greeted by this pairing of my site’s motto and the random photograph that appears below it:

hopelessrandom

I believe that entirely applies to this situation.

Anyway. Here are the christmas carols for the psychologically challenged!

  • Schizophrenia: Do You Hear What I Hear?
  • Multiple Personality Disorder: We Three Queens Disoriented Are
  • Amnesia: I Don’t Know if I’ll be Home for Christmas
  • Narcissistic: Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me
  • Manic: Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants
  • Paranoid: Santa Claus is Coming… to Get Me
  • Borderline Personality Disorder: Thoughts of You Roasting on an Open Fire and You Better Watch Out, I’m Gonna Cry, I’m Gonna Pout, Maybe I’ll Tell You Why
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle
    Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells …
  • Agoraphobia: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day but Wouldn’t
    Leave My House
  • Senile Dementia: Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles from My
    House in My Slippers and Robe
  • Oppositional Defiant Disorder: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
    So I Burned Down the House
    *

*Note: actually, that seems more like Reactive Detachment Disorder than ODD.

Speaking of christmas carols, I’m tired of hearing them. Well, specifically, I’m tired of hearing christmas songs everywhere, all the time. Honestly, it seems to take away from the specialness that’s the holidays (there’s Hannukah songs, right?) and make me want to strangle them instead. By the time I’ve been in any store for more than ten minutes, I feel like I’m going out of my mind. This isn’t necessarily alarming, as my shrink once told me in this conversation which took place in his office during the holidays in a previous year:

Him. “Have you had any thoughts of harming others?”

Me. Pause for thought. Then, “Only at the mall.”

Him. “Well, that’s perfectly normal for this time of year.”

Of course, my shrink knew (knows) me quite well enough to know that I was kidding and that at times, my sense of humor can take on a sense of the macabre (also knows as gallows humor, but I wanted to use the word macabre, which I actually don’t know how to pronounce, just spell, but I do know what it means). And then some kid, whose name I won’t mention because he wanted to go out in style and be famously known and I refuse to help him become famous through the use of his name in connection with what he did, had to go and make the situation real by killing eight people at a mall before taking himself out. When I first heard about the story, with the scant information of a gunman had fired shots in a mall in the West (well, I knew the state, but I won’t mention it either), I thought that it must’ve been the christmas music. (I know I wasn’t the only one, don’t give me that look). Ah, gallows humor. You offend so many.

Apparently I am Antisocial Personality Disorder: In the Bleak Midwinter, I Giggle.