My Mind Is Glowing

A Prodigy reference as a post title – my day has peaked.

Very frustrating day atm. Hard to explain but it’s like having your brain split in two. One half is mentally shouting ‘feed me’ and begging for input in a hyperactively bored way. The other is burnt out and just can’t take anything in. Books, tv, film, computer, music, ppl, exercise – just a complete inability to engage with it or for it to hold my concentration.

Much as I’m loathe to attribute everything to my disorder, it does bear traits with it. Pure O makes you focus on a thought and compulsively try and solve it by thinking it through. Yet that won’t work as the driving force behind the behavior isn’t the thought it’s the disorder and the chemical imbalance driving it.

Same here i guess. My mental hyperactivity atm is likely a function of my disorder. Trying to engage with something won’t work as the problem isn’t caused by boredom (indeed, like the overthinking solution, trying to engage is liable to tire you on top of it and make it worse) but by the imbalance.

Guess it’s an afternoon of lying dowo, listening to SModcast and Tell Em Steve Dave pods and battling the frustration (add some part self-induced, part first idiotic psychiatrist-induced guilt about how i should be doing something too).

Bah. M.

We’re down with OCD (Yeah You Know Me!)

Sometimes – just sometimes – it works in your favour…

Didn’t make last night’s meal for my niece’s birthday. Held out until the afternoon after a week of strain and a bad night where I woke up immediately on edge and then just felt the mental scales tip slightly from ‘is a strain but will be ok’ to ‘I’m nearly ok but it’d be too much’, Was gutted tbh. Still had to drive Mum there and pick her up later and is fair to say I really shouldn’t have been driving on the way up but she was too ill to so took the risk.

However it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The few hours after that I did feel relaxed and picked up a little. Then, upon Mum recounting the whole experience, it turned out I had a lucky escape not only from the venue itself (would have completely sent my OCD batshit) but the night. Apparently disasterous. Still, Charlotte seemed happy enough with the prezzies I bought her so it all worked out.

So proof that having a lifelong, incurable mental illness isn’t all THAT bad sometimes.

M

Panic on the streets of Frenchay…

Panic attacks. 

New one for me tbh. My anxiety normally comes out primarily mentally with my disorder but I guess the constant physical tension and physio-sexual tension is a symptom of it too (think i invented a term there) but rarely does it come out in the form of a physical panic attack.

Did again this morning though for the second time in about 6 weeks. Just going to answer the door to the guy with the shopping and kicked in – sudden shortness of breath and hyper-ventilating (my ears popped at same time this morning, unconnected I’m sure but the delivery guy must have thought I’d just swam up from 3 fathoms or so). Took me 15 mins ’til it subsided and then decided not to f*ck about and spend some quality time with Mr Diazepam.

Mum’s a little worried but tbh am certain it’s simply another symptom of my disorder. If i can’t control my anxiety level and, like I have this week, have been managing to keep on top of them slowly building mentally then it’s just another ‘grounding’ method for it I guess. Deny it one outlet and it jumps elsewhere, be it a new thought angle or a more direct physical one.

A little concerned I guess but I just have to hold out another 24 hours for my niece’s birthday meal and then if I fly apart Sunday it isn’t so bad.

Movie Review – ‘The Expendables’ (2010, 15, 103 mins), Stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham Dir: Sylvester Stallone

The Long and the Short – Boom! Boom Boom Boom! BOOM! Clunky dialogue. BOOM BOOM! Boom! Millisecond pause for attempt at emotional depth. FUCKING KABOOOOOM! End credits.

The above really does cover it for ‘The Expendables’. If you’ve seen the trailers, read the cast list (Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Li, Austin) and still turned up at the cinema expecting anything resembling a deep, meaningful dramatic experience then the world is way too complicated a place for you. Attendees to this 80s throwback want nothing more than big guns, fast cars and for anything that might possibly explode to explode. My friends, you won’t be disappointed.

Stallone has always been an extremely clever man in his acting and directing choices (ok, apart from ‘Cobra’) and, in an act of delicious irony, ‘The Expendables’ may just be his most intelligent move yet. Assembling a mixture of cult action icons from the past 25 years and throwing them into a film designed to single-handedly resurrect the spirit of the classic action films from the ’80s sounded like a winning formula from the start (especially given the resurrection of The A-Team this summer and the failure of more recent action blockbusters like ‘Predators’ & ‘Terminator:Salvation’ to deliver) and so it has proved. Seeing Sly and the others all on-screen together (especially the brief but hilarious scene at the start with the 80s other two A-list action icons) does supply a huge buzz of enjoyment and that goodwill continues throughout as the audience get exactly what they want from the first minute to the last. Highlights are too numerous to mention (and would frankly spoil the fun) but you’ll learn to never fire a warning shot with an explosive shotgun and never feel safe in a 50-foot high concrete tower with machine guns mounted inside if one man with a gun runs towards you.

Of course it isn’t flawless. The passing nods to the paper-thin plot about a South American dictator, corrupt CIA agents and conflict between our heroic band of  mercenaries tend to do the film more harm than good as, apart from a disappointingly brief few minutes of Mickey Rourke (who still nearly manages to steal the entire film), any dialogue that comes within a 1000 miles of respectable narrative drama almost brings the film to a shuddering halt. Giving Jason Statham the most superfluous romantic subplot since Peter Crouch caught a Spanish taxi is bad enough (though it does result in a wonderful basketball court pay-off and, as that seems to be the only reason for the romance at all, thank god it works!). However, Statham is a bard of aching elegance when compared to Dolph Lundgren here, whose inability with ANY form of dialogue beyond caveman proves near-fatal every single time he speaks. Fortunately, before your brain has a chance to reel back in horror and possibly prolapse at what the man does to the English language, Stallone blows something else up. It works.

So there you have it. With a sequel in the planning stages (Stallone already has the plot worked out) you can only drool about who may get involved next time round. Imagine Chuck Norris, Steven Segal, Robert Patrick, The Rock, Mr T…perhaps even Van Damne may reconsider given the first film’s box-office success. One thing’s for sure – they all missed out on a lot of fun this time around.

The Times They Aren’t a-Changing…

Ok, so I thought that the Twitter feed on the page would keep everyone updated – and have just realised Microsoft have removed the ability to link it! Oops…

So how the hell are you all? has been a good 2-3 months since my last full update on here and I hope my regulars (if still there!) are all doing well and bearing up. I keep saying I’ll keep this place up-to-date and never manage to so this time I won’t say it! But I will endeavour to try…

Anyway – things here…

In general am sad to report that the general state of things with me OCD-wise is not too cool. After a brief good period on Clomipramine it started to become pretty non-effective at 20mg and unfortunately then discovered that, as with Fluoxetine, my tolerance to even 5mg over that is dreadful. Made a few attempts at hiring the dose and they didn’t go too well at all so was agreed to stay at 20mg and hope they take the edge off as I’m not gonna get anything that does any more than that.

Worst thing is…I’ve run out of things to try in that tablet group now. SSRIs are now done and the results from the Matt jury say nil point. As we know tricyclics are pretty horrific on me and the health risks for me on anti-psychotics are just too great then Th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks in terms of med experimentation. In a way that’s not too awful – am sure other sufferers reading this know that the uncertainty of condition that comes from trying a new drug can cause just as many mental problems – BUT it’s a pretty bleak thought to the future REALLY knowing it ain’t getting any better than this. Only plus side really is that clomipramine was a rotation drug to get the fluoxetine out of my system as it had become ineffective. For the first 6 months-1 year on it, Fluoxetine didn’t work too badly so I need to find out of that’s always gonna be the case after a ‘flush out’ period. Still, we’re in territory here that is essentially guesswork mostly made by me since the psychiatrists admitted defeat so is quite a fluid situation.

I guess some of you can see one reason why I haven’t updated much as a result. Not only have I been mentally pretty screwed for the past 2 months (more in a minute) but there’s been little to report beyond ‘same old same old’ and seeing that itself in print is a depressing thing. However, I think I need the therapeutic side of expressing stuff on here a lot more of late as my OCD keeps travelling down long-forgotten obsessive pathways and that helped back then. *grins* I love my audience but need this place for me a little atm and if that means repeating myself every night for month then f*ck ya :P.

Anyway, by FAR the biggest thing for me was the Glastonbury return at the end of June. First time back in 6 years and, even with the disappointment of U2 pulling out, I was hugely excited and hopeful I’d get through it and had paid the money based on that risk Had friends from EFests and Twisto there along with 2 r-l lifelong friends in Glenn & Rob and prepared places to go to chill and backup lifts if things went bad. Was sure they wouldn’t though.

Oops.

Short version: they went remarkably badly for a plethora of reasons. Where we camped, heat, crowds, music, bad news from home (niece suffered a bad leg injury) and others. I first blew a fuse on the Friday (during Rolf ffs, didn’t even make it through the first ‘official’ gig!) and had to disappear solo for 7 hours+ to get my shit together and then blew AGAIN on the Saturday evening out of nowhere, spending the night in tears and locked in a few Portaloos just to get a personal space and try to chill. Saturday night Glasto and in bed by 11:15pm.

Decided to leave at 6am Sunday morning. Was not just mentally exhausted by then but the Saturday had really worried me…was very unstable emotionally and for the first time in 6 years genuinely worried that I might be capable of doing something extremely dumb if I snapped a third time as it was just so damn unpredictable. Unfortunately it was so early and unexpected that it caught most of my backup lifts by surprise so none were up/able to come and get me that early but was too eager on escape to care. Got the hell out of dodge on first bus to train station at 10:30am and was back home by 12:30pm.

So thereyago. Was an unmitigated disaster tbh and the comfort of making it through 3 1/2 days is kinda mitigated by the fact that I was going insane after 1 1/2! And missed virtually every band I wanted to see in the process. Pretty damn disappointing to find that a place I remember in a near-reverential way is now probably off-limits.

Since then? I suspect it’s no coincidence that, give or take the odd day or two, I’ve pretty much been stuck in a horrendous spell for 2 months and the past 3 days of feeling ok are probably my longest time out of it since then. Every time it started to fade it’d randomly lock-on to something else and retrigger – often w/o any warning, any seeming build-up at all and no provocation. Pretty much a 2 month chain attack which reduced me the past 2 weeks especially to lying in my room most of the day sleeping or listening to podcasts (thank you Kevin Smith for SModcast – has kept me sane) whilst on diazepam and painkillers for the repeated cluster migraines. Also a nice random assortment of past horrors – H-OCD and P-OCD both put in appearances – alongside a brand new one from 11 years ago which upset me at the time, was dealt with and I hadn’t even remembered for at least 5-6 years!!! And the aforementioned headaches, physical anxiety and feeling almost constantly horny. Not a great mix, believe me.

As for now? Like I said, 3 ok days…am taking it INCREDIBLY cautiously atm and my confidence in doing stuff has taken a huge knock. It’ll come back but, for now, it won’t be a particularly active week or two. Fair to say that exercise has been difficult and comfort eating very easy over the past month or so and am just hoping that all the weight I lost pre-Glasto has stayed off since.

Elsewhere? Really not much to mention. Avoiding the WC and LFC areas so not to depress myself (though Wayne – you idiot). Oh, me and Dad are talking again after a years break too. We never actually fell out mind! I just got irritated with his lack of effort and had other things on my mind. He’s starting to look old now though which is kind’ve odd. I know he IS old but Dad always had this air of invincibility around him, despite being constantly under the weather with an ailment and a bit of a shit – seemed very human last time I saw him and that was strangely unnerving. I guess you never get used to the concept of your parents’ mortality.

Right, that’ll do for the mo. Will try and update some links and maybe a few reviews over next week or two.

M

Proper update on the way…

Has been a few months but a full update is on the way.

And yes, that does mean I’m in a bad spell again. Predictable, huh?

Excellent H-OCD article

Yep, you can tell I’ve triggered this morning by my reading material *sighs*.

Just read the following article from Brainphysics.com and is well worth a read for a good summation of how H-OCD diagnosis and treatment works. Check it out:

http://www.brainphysics.com/research/HOCD_Williams2008.pdf

My Life & Other OCD Animals

Ok, I know – has been a while. I plead extenuating circumstances (which will be explained below). Anyway, having received a nudge from a reader (thanks Bill) thought I’d better do an update.

So lets start with the disorder. A couple of months into citalopram now and, while the results aren’t groundbreaking, they do seem to have helped me get back the kind of equilibrium I had before the fluoxetine started taking me to some bad places after the first year. My terrible headaches have subsided and my concentration does seem better though the trade-off is that they affect my sleep pretty badly. unfortunately, little else has changed. the anxiety symptoms have lessend but the obsessive thinking is about the same and I still burn out rapidly under any kind of pressure but at least i’m now able to socialise a little so that’s something.

Did try stepping up to 40mg but lasted 4 days – same as when I tried on fluoxetine. Pretty much turned into an energyless zombie with wildly fluctuating emotions and decided not to hang out there very long. of course, pure-O being pure-O, I had a few days then worrying about whether I came back down too soon but tbh there are always limits and ulktimately you have to decide what you can cope with.

It is frustrating though. In an odd way there are times when I preferred being worse on fluoxetine. Sounds strange I know but at least it was consistent. You couldn’t doubt the illness as it was ever-present. Relief of sorts is a double-edged sword when you have what we have as it tempts you to analyse your illness even more and always be waiting for it. Perhaps I still have a way to go before, deep down, I accept I have what I have and it’ll never shift.

Wednesday will be a big test though. Yes folks, after 6 years away, am returning to my Mecca – Glastonbury Festival. Have about 6 people on alert in case I’m overwhelmed and need collecting and a list of places there I can go to chill out (be prepared) but am hopeful I can get through it. Will be tough I guess (a recent day trip to see QI in London was pretty damn hard) but need a holiday of some kind and if all else fails I have a tent and a radio!

Other things? Would have talked about the football but after last night? No thanks. Am still in mourning. My Grandad has just come out of hospital after a health scare which has had a good effect of getting me and Dad talking again. Have been managing to get out for an hours walk 3-4 times a week over the past 3 months so am in better shape.

Oh and I don’t understand why people buy those socks that only just go over you heel. Why not just roll down normal ones? Pointless.

Anyway, that’ll do for now.

DVD Review – ‘Zombeak’ (2006, 15, 72 mins), Stars Melissa Gilbert, Daryl Wilcher, Dir: Sam Drog

The Long and the Short – Satanists kidnap redneck waitress. Rednecks track them down to an old house. There’s a big fight.  Satan is accidentally resurrected as a sacrificed stuffed chicken with a mission to impregnate someone with the antichrist. Same old story.

It’s easy to get your hopes up when you hear of a film like ‘Zombeak!’. Those with a love for the truly terrible and an affection for the deluded would be hard-pressed not to expect great things of a film whose main premise is a satanically-possessed chicken attacking rednecks and turning them into zombies via it’s mutant pecking ability.

In fact you’re obligated to watch something that makes such promises because despite 99.9% of them end up being low-budget, cynical rubbish (step forward ‘Manos’ and ‘Mega Shark’), just occasionally you’ll find a true gem. Admittedly it’s cubic zirconia and vomited from the Earth rather than mined but a gem nonetheless. It’s knowing that someone involved with films like ‘Plan 9’ or ‘Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter’ really believed that they could work. It’s the honest, sincere and thoroughly misguided belief that Bela Lugosi running around a housing estate in a cape or Jesus speaking to God in a diner who’s appeared to him via a bowl of cherries really IS the stuff of great cinema.

Or pushing the head of a rubber chicken out of the shadows above an unwitting character and then dropping it on his shoulder.

This really is a gem folks. Almost everything on offer – the acting, direction, plot – is hysterically bad yet done with such affection that it’s impossible not to warm to it. The rednecks get the best lines (“Evil….tastes like chicken” being a highlight) but the Satanists win on originality. Led by Tony Todd’s highly effeminate younger brother, they include a 7ft tall schizophrenic whose female alter-ego comes forth when he puts on a 99p from Tesco’s Hallowe’en mask (seeing him overpowered by a chicken is impressive) and a wildly overacting gothic girl who may regret the inference in later years that she’s had carnal relations with poultry, That they appear to drive the cartoon car from The Addams Family comes as no surprise when you spot that much of the blood (when not pea soup) has been drawn on a cartoon cell and superimposed onto the film soon after!

The chicken is the real star though. Hurling itself through windscreens, sneaking up on unsuspecting victims, launching itself through the air at head height to take out eyeballs and falling off of stairwells, it’s clear that Satan is clucked off and out for vengeance. You won’t believe it. Honestly. You really just won’t believe it.

A word for one tiny, tiny moment near the end though. There is a zombie scene that for a millisecond really does work and, in a Fulciesque kind of way, is oddly chilling. You’ll know it when it comes (largely because it’s the only moment where you won’t be on the floor convulsing with laughter) and it’s then spoilt by one of the actors misguided belief that playing a zombie means ‘act stoned and speak like Jim Morrison’ but it’s intriguing while it lasts.

So there you have it. A must for any movie geeks and horror fans who love a good bad film, ‘Zombeak!’ should be high up the list of those films you just have to watch after a few drinks too many. Bravo!

DVD Review – ‘Scarce’ (2008, 18, 93 mins), Stars/Directors: John Geddes, Jesse T. Cook

The Long and the Short – 3 young snowboarders get lost during a snowstorm in backwoods Pennsylvania and take shelter with local hunter Ivan after their car crashes nearby. Who’s a redneck and lives in a weird–looking house in the woods in the middle of nowhere. It’s a horror film. Do the math.

Ladies and gentlemen pray silence for the passing of a sub-genre.

After the likes of ‘Cabin Fever’ and ‘Wrong Turn’ revived the backwoods cannibal/slasher flick and remakes of ‘TCM’ and ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ (alongside ‘Wolf Creek’) saw it peak in the mid-‘00s, the past 12 months have seen it buried in deriative detritus of which ‘Scarce’ makes an unwelcome contribution. The lesson to be learnt? Just because you can make a genre film on the cheap doesn’t mean you should.

Gorehounds will point to the effectiveness of the non-CGI effects and there’s no denying that even hardened horror fans will need a strong stomach in places as bits get pulled, carved, stamped on, chopped, poked through and chomped on with a grisly, organic relish more akin to a squishy piece of torture porn. Yet I can’t help thinking that you’ll be disappointed even if that particular area is your pleasure as everything else surrounding the effects is just plain terrible.

Before some of you rush out to find it, that’s not terrible in an ironic, knowing way or even in a ‘so bad it’s funny’ way – it really IS just terrible. The attempt to give some kind of character depth to the three snowboarders before they’re taken is painfully contrived and artless and their journey into the backwoods as deficient as the inbred hillbillies they encounter. You’ve seen the whole thing a million times before and done a million times better. Cannibal Ivan looks the part but can’t act it while Cannibal Wade dons a mask for some reason which simply makes him look like he’s mislaid the car he was welding. As for gaps in logic and horror stupidity, ‘Scarce’ fares well. After watching it I now realise that:

a) If caught in a snowstorm on the motorway then the best thing to do is actually to turn onto the deserted back roads which you have no knowledge of and are buried in snow too. Who’d have thought it?

b) No matter how near you are to the false bookcase and how much you directly look at the hinges, the penny just won’t drop.

c) Hypothermia is no excuse not to run in sub-zero temperatures whilst barefoot and go through streams. It’ll wear off.

d) Just because no-one appears to attack you in any way at all doesn’t mean you won’t end up suddenly regaining consciousness and strung up in the bad guys cellar in the very next shot.

So there you have it. Another poorly-sculpted nail in this genres coffin c/o co-writers/directors/leads Geddes and Cook, whose clear horror knowledge and affection really should have made them think twice. The again, given its low budget and minor festival success, the more cynical amongst you may well have a few ideas why they didn’t. Me? I’m off to raise a glass in memory of a certain mad backwoods family from 1974 and their power-tool wielding offspring. Happier times.