TOTALLY A ZOMBIE UNTIL I GET MY MORNING CATNIP

On Object Dart Che Tibby wrote about the sad saga of Finn Higgins and Capital Coast DHB's incompetence and mental health and community issues and there was a comment from a Giovanni who used to work in public mental health in Italy and he wrote that:

Back home, once a person has sought help for a mental health issue, the local service has to take an active interest, do regular follow-ups, keep in touch, even talk to other DHBs if the patient happens to change address (it doesn’t hurt in this regard that Italy is much more of a police state). And the compulsory treatment option is taken VERY seriously, it can only proceed with the signature of the city’s mayor, who acts in this case as a guarantor of the health and the rights of the citizens. Fewer compulsory treatments and the obligation to care mean a much more proactive attempt to engage the patient in the voluntary forms of treatment, which alongside intensive and regular counselling (as opposed to the cheaper “throw drugs at them” option) is known to produce better outcomes.

I just thought that that sounded like a terrific community-care environment; you'd feel like part of a family who cared about you. A weird family, sure, but still part of something bigger than yourself and four walls.

Today's cat photo... well I'm cheating a little. This is Sockington:

He's not my cat, or my friends' cat, or anything.. I just follow him on Twitter. He's pretty famous. He regularly tweets such hilarious anthropomorphic cattisms as:

HA HA WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO SOLICITING give me a treat

and

looking out the window again so many wonderful things AGG SQUIRREL IS BACK stop whatever you're doing and go in my mouth please

and so on.

That which enabled us to be successful in the past must be used to help us chart a more hopeful future for tomorrow

The tooth thing continues to frighten and confuse me. Earlier I tweet'd "Have discovered linear relationship between functions plotted on modern dentistry and degree-of-confusing axes".. I was imagining them in some kind of 3D space with a third axis for buck$, dig.


Initially I was just gonna get the damn thing pulled, but now I am tending towards a root canal. I don't feel like I have enough data, though, to make a properly-informed decision. A root canal costs WAAAAY more, hurts WAAAAY more, and takes WAAAAY more time; despite that, there seems to be some current of contemporary thought -- that I don't understand -- that it's better. These are streams of logic with which my life trajectory does not intersect. This is pain I do not want.

...

I had the misfortune to catch G W Bush's opening speech at APEC on the telly. He grinned and mugged a lot for the cameras in a most disgusting way and I half expected him to whip out a red, white 'n' blue straw boater and a cane and bust into a tap routine.

That which enabled us to be successful in the past must be used to help us chart a more hopeful future for tomorrow... I want to talk today about how to do that.

I'm going to focus, and I think we ought to focus our efforts, on three great forces for economic growth: free markets, free trade and free people.

I'm not sure I agree with any of that.

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter

I am currently consumed by the first real toothache of my life. It's horrible, and sapping my will to think and write; it's almost begun draining me of my will to live as well. The only things which seem to really make a difference is aspirin and whisky -- which of course makes work a little more complicated than usual.


Bomber continues to frighten, confuse, and depress me with his latest post THE MENTAL DETOX: Where We At, NZ?. Read the article for yourself if you like; I will only quote his closing paragraph:

A hard rain is gonna fall and when the Daddy State starts taking effect, I can bet no one will be jumping up and down about Nanny State lightbulbs or shower heads in a years time.

In my last post I alluded to my loneliness. It's difficult to describe; it's not any kind of absence of activity or human contact, more.. a state of mind. I feel alone and isolated even when in a group of people. I haven't discounted that it is related to the post-election uneasiness I described in my first post, Democracy is Rubbish. I can't shake off this sinking feeling.

I'm also experiencing greater-than-usual misanthropy and associated anti-social tendencies. The confluence of this, together with the loneliness, is at best unfortunate. A friend said to me last night that the only solution she could see is if people began to impose themselves on me -- i.e. "Stephen, I'm coming over to see you and you're not gonna stop me so don't even try." Then she laughed, adding ".. but you'd hate that wouldn't you?".

I thought about it for longer than was probably necessary, and finally had to admit that I actually wouldn't mind it nearly so much as if you knew me you'd expect.



I'm rereading James K Baxter's Autumn Testament, his ultimate publication (he died while working on the galley proofs) and a book which is one of my favourites ever in the entire world. In an earlier work (Jerusalem Daybook) he'd anticipated his own death, writing "I may die without company", and in places throughout Autumn Testament he also wrote presciently of his end. However, despite the title of today's post he neither died in the gutter (R. Zimmerman) or alone (technically not -- he died on the couch in a stranger's house) (though possibly spiritually). None of this has anything to do with anything, except I want to share an extract from the Notes section of Autumn Testament.

  C-- rings me up and tells me she is going mad again. I go out and visit her in her glass barn in the suburbs, She has what others have: a husband, three children and the telly.
  'I was all right at Jerusalem,' she says. 'But here there's nobody. Nobody to see. Nobody to talk to.'
  C-- is a normal woman, I think. One day she will leave the glass barn and go to work, and move in the company of other people. She will not live at home. She will stay sane then. But from time to time she will dream that God is putting her in Hell for leaving her husband and children.
  Be married and go mad; or be single and stay sane. The choice is Draconian. The problem is not lack of love. C-- loves her husband and children. The problem is lack of community.

It's not me

It was a moment that defied all words, a moment when I felt something inside me fall asleep, and something else wake up.

When I began this I didn't have a plan, other than that to chronicle my life under the new administration; there'd be an emphasis on small-scale micro-communalism initiatives, as well as more personal insights and responses to current domestic political affairs. But I don't have a PLAN for making it engaging or interest-sustaining. I'm just kinda bashing it out and hoping that it makes sense. Somehow. It'll come later, right? I'll be able to pull the various threads together and weave a greater coherent whole... right?

I need to live on my own at the moment but I'm surprised by how lonely I am. Layla is not really a good companion; she's too young right now but I s'pose it'll come in time. The first action plan has to be to establish more closer ties with the immediate neighbours. Benign effortless socialising takes effort to pull off; it's not going to happen without a person or persons to lead the work.


Chasing solace of an evening..rest runs and hides and lives in a small yellow packet with an elephant printed on it..tonight the drug will take take take taken me past midnight but ditch me in the small hours groaning, sobbing and sucking on a bottle of whiskey.

Show me a bill that they can make me pay

We're not super-impressed with the response of our global leaders at the recent G20 Summit to address the world economic crisis.

Developing nations hail G20 summit outcome (article)

STRASBOURG, France (AFP) — Officials from EU and developing nations on Monday hailed the results of a crisis summit of world leaders while expressing concern at the impact of the economic strife on the world's poorest. Development ministers from some of the G20 nations, which met in Washington on Saturday, as well as other African and South American officials and African Union head Jean Ping published a statement welcoming the summit.

A poem written during a a meeting in Strasbourg by French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet, expressed their determination to contribute to the protection of international financial security.

Fellow citizens:
Do your part and make waste.
Life is easier when you lighten your load!

Fellow citizens:
The time is now to consume!
Why skimp, when you deserve more?

We must also continue to take our pills, although they seem to be working less and less well of late.

Party votes cast in Newtown

Some kind, clever person posted this (along the same lines as wot Tom made but much more localised) outside the supermarket:


Green polling higher than National and ACT combined? That's certainly not the "change" that New Zealand apparently voted for. Put it another way, Labour + Green (2705) trounce the National/ACT/Maori (814) axil of evis (sorry, Maori Party, but really.. what are you thinking?; sorry also Chris and Julian) by more almost 5:1.

Terrific.

And, oh, let's see what the government arrangements are gonna bring... Bomber:

We are now waking up to the fact that National’s claim of ‘moderation’ is just as hollow as their claim of ‘change’ with this massive environmental leap backwards. ACT are a climate change denial political party whose leader has claimed C02 is a misunderstood nutrient, which comes across as kinda Simpsons-esk, “Hi I’m Troy Maclure – C02, Environmentalists call it pollution, ACT calls it liberty” – Rodney has also claimed that a 2 degree rise in temperatures would be wonderful for NZ and we really have little to fear – all of this is inane and shows that ACT, a political party with original aspirations for 10% electoral support has changed strategy to be a 4% party plus electorate and as such can make their message as niche as they like, hence the climate denial bullshit and the sensible sentencing death penalty fantasist crap. Putting ACT in charge of global warming legislation is like putting George Bush in charge of the UN.

I'm too depressed about this to write. Here's the full article... THE MENTAL DETOX: National Under Fire For Plan To Review Climate Scheme.

...And Then We All Woke Up

We spent a long time this evening talking about this recent GraphJam chart, US Political Belief vs Media Attention Given:


We agreed that the situation was probably the same in New Zealand. We concluded that one of the most dangerous aspects of the media attention given to disproportionately extreme viewpoints is the fostering of an artificial sense of community among the nutjobs, when really they should be feeling like lone wolves -- Mark David Chapmans, John Wilkes Boothes.

We also noticed with some not insubstantial relief that on Tom Beard's Wellington Polling Booth analysis Google Maps mashup, our suburb is a solid red, indicating a 75% or higher vote for the "left-ish" end of the political spectrum:


In fact, the few blocks in the immediate vicinity of our home are the reddest out of almost the entire Greater Wellington region.

We don't feel like nutjobs, but when Bomber reports on Day 5 of Living under the Daddy State with the Beige Obama and nACTional in the land of the wrong white crowd-inclusive window dressing by Maori Party:

• On Wednesday in The Herald Rodger Kerr from the Business Round Table, a man well known for his interests in the private health industry was explaining why inefficiency in our healthcare made him sad and his solution – stunningly enough – was more private health industry, I guess because he’s on the Business Roundtable with his mates from the private health industry.
• Yesterday in the Herald we are being spun that beneficiaries on sickness benefits with depression should be kicked off the benefit after 2 months because it’s hurting them more then helping them
• The spin to soften you up for the hardline changes that nACTional are intending to implement won’t really prepare you for the changes though, as NZ looks to 6.1% Unemployment and a new law allowing bosses to end your employment after 90 days with no questions asked.

.........we don't feel like nutjobs, but quite honestly these reports don't engender respect, don't encourage cooperation, and leave us wondering if this time around, Soylent Green is gonna be poor people, beneficiaries and mental health consumers (just for starters).


Bomber concludes:

NZers who rushed enthusiastically to give the least experienced Prime Minister NZ has had for 100 years total power with one of the lowest voter turn outs in 100 years to elect one of the most rabid right wing parties into a coalition in everything but name with ACT may now be suffering buyers remorse as they watch ACT, a party bloated to significance by death penalty fantasists and global warming deniers, start to pass medieval law and order policy that makes the Spanish Inquisition look like the Greens after a smoke.

Tomorrow I'm going to shake the hand of every man, woman and child of voting age I meet who answers in the affirmative when I ask them if they voted for Labour, Greens, Maori or the Progressives. Welcome to our community.

Kitteh photo by Kowhai Montgomery.