Crazy Meds: The Blog

We seem to be up and running

2012-01-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

I've yet to get a message from tech support. Everything is running OK, and it looks like they finished around 2:00 AM (Mountain time) Friday morning, but I'm still getting some odd messages in the system log. I'll check in with them Monday.

Make That Friday for the Scheduled Downtime

2012-01-12T17:40:00.001-07:00

Lunarpages tech support called me when I was on my way out getting groceries.  There's some sort of law covering that, isn't there?  

In any event the down time is now scheduled for tomorrow.  That's Friday, 13 January at 5:00 PM Pacific Time, 6:00 PM Mountain, 0100 Saturday GMT.

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It looks like the disk-drive replacement started last night around 7:00 PM Pacific, 8:00 Mountain, 0300 GMT.

So far the site is still available. Parts of the OS are acting oddly, so  don't be surprised if the forum or wiki software acts strangely, or any posts  made between then and some other time vanish, etc.

More Scheduled Downtime - As in Sometime Today

2012-01-12T11:06:00.001-07:00

The techs at Lunarpages are seeing another RAID drive failing and need to replace it today.  As soon as I know when that will happen I'll post it

This will affect the entire site - forum, drug pages, and PI sheets.  It will take as long as it takes, because it depends on a bunch of factors, like what happens to be on the drive that is failing.

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Update 1:25 PM Mountain Time (20:35 GMT) 

I haven't received word as to when this is going to happen.  I really  need to get some groceries, as I'm pretty much down to earthquake  supplies.  I'd also like to see if the pharmacy has the rest of my  methylphenidate prescription.  So don't be surprised if we're suddenly  gone, or if everything is running smoothly until sometime after 10:00 PM  Pacific Time tonight (0600 Friday morning GMT).

More Scheduled Downtime

2011-12-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

Tech support at the domain host need to tweak the replaced disk array a  little bit.  We scheduled Tuesday, 10:00 AM Mountain time (1700 GMT) for  that to happen.  They expect it to take no longer than 15-20 minutes.   As it involves hardware the entire site will be off the air.

We're back up, but who knows what things are going to be like.

2011-12-26T13:35:00.002-07:00

Well, wasn't that special.  When I restored everything to Sunday night's  backup it turned everything back online.  Which makes sense, because  that was the status at the time of the backup.

I hope it everything works.  Especially since I was restoring the fucking database, then converting it to a new format.            

And Now We're Gone Once More

2011-12-26T12:01:00.004-07:00

And the forum is offline again, because way too much is broken. Looks like I need to rerun the install. We may lose whatever was posted between midnight Sunday and now.

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OK, I'm testing the board software. Smilies are fucked-up. Not that I care.

And all posts, PMs, blog entries, etc. that happened after midnight Sunday are gone. Sorry.

We're Sorta Back

2011-12-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

The good news: the forum is back online.

The bad news: the blogs aren't.

I'll try again tomorrow with the blogs, although it may require tech support, which means Tuesday at the earliest.

I haven't tested everything, so I have no idea what works, what doesn't, what has and hasn't been fixed or broken.  Guess we'll all find out together.

Forum Software Upgrade has Begun

2011-12-25T12:13:00.002-07:00

I don't expect this to take too long, as in two hours or so. We'll see. Check in around 2:00 PM Mountain time (2100 GMT).

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OK, make that 3:00 PM Mountain time (2200 GMT). I thought I had already uploaded the software to a holding directory on the server. I didn't. Hence the extra hour.

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This is what I get for writing an optimistic target time. Apparently the tag conversion process takes a long time. The more tags (over 1,100) and more blog entries (nearly 4,000) there are the longer it takes. So this could go on for quite some time.

Reminder: Forum Software Upgrade

2011-12-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

I still plan on updating the forum software tomorrow.  Beginning whenever I finish amusing the cats, eating breakfast, and finishing the crossword puzzle.  So, figure noonish Mountain Time (1900, or thereabouts, GMT).  I expect to be finished within a couple hours.  Give or take.

For everyone else who shares my "It's just another day with an anomalous TV schedule" attitude, the only Xmas songs you'll ever need:

And We're Back

2011-12-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

It took until around 1:00 AM Mountain Time (0800 GMT) to finish rebuilding the array and repair the forum's database.  It's up and running now. 

This is why I love Lunarpages. I know from my experience back in the Big Iron Age that resynchronizing the data on a RAID after a hardware fault and rebuilding a large database can happen only so fast, but there was someone there until midnight Pacific time making sure it happened.

We're off the air again.

2011-12-23T13:01:00.004-07:00

Of course I don't check the site before doing anything, so I was unaware that we were getting an internal server error all over the place. I'll keep everyone posted.

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Update 14:41 Mountain Time (21:41 GMT): There's a hardware fault, and Lunar Pages tech support is looking at it.

In a way this is ~~partially~~ mostly my fault, as I had seen messages relating to the fault in one of the RAID drives starting a few days ago, but my social anxiety/avoidance was so fucking bad I couldn't even open a ticket about it. I kept trying to, but just couldn't.

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Update 16:45 Mountain Time (23:45 GMT): The drug pages, etc. are back up. The forum is still down, this time it's unhappy about the database. The new components of the RAID are still being synchronized, and nothing is obvious when looking at the database, so it might be a matter of waiting.
The Lunar Pages techs had the hardware replaced in about one hour. Pretty damn good for the Friday before Xmas.

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For anyone who is wondering and speaks *nix, here are the messages I was getting with increasing frequency for the last week:

Dec 22 16:17:02 server smartd[18984]: Device: /dev/sda, not capable of SMART self-check
Dec 22 16:17:02 server smartd[18984]: Device: /dev/sda, failed to read SMART Attribute Data

That's why I wrote it was my fucking fault this happened.
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Slight Redesign

2011-12-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

With all the traffic coming in from Crazy Meds itself, I figured I should change the focus of the blogrolls to something more in line with the Crazy Meds site. Hence all the pharmacology, brain, and assorted medical blogs are now first, followed by links to similarly-themed sites that aren't blogs, then emergency room/department blogs, then the panoply, other blogrolls, and links to other sites. I also added a shitload of blogs to the neuro-pharma-med roll.

There is also another Facebook page, just for site content and status updates.

I should have known better

2011-12-21T17:00:00.003-07:00

Just because I'm less susceptible to mood swings doesn't mean they won't  happen.  I wind up getting depressed and being unable to deal with my  life.  Oh well.  It's been over couple years since I was last depressed,  and that's the longest since I've been on meds.  As part of distracting  myself and convincing myself that I'm doing something I did a  huge reorg of the blogrolls.  I've pruned dead links, moved defunct  blogs, added a shitload of new blogs to the Panoply, and added a new section dedicated to Emergency  Rooms/Departments.  Now you don't have to just take my word for it, you really don't want to go to the ER unless you absolutely must need to.

Who knows when I'll do all the stuff that needs to  be done.

With Whom Does One Talk About Total Social Avoidance?

2011-12-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

How bad has my social anxiety/phobia/avoidance been?  By the time I've written and addressed 3-to-5 Christmas cards I'm emotionally exhausted, so that appears to be my daily limit.  I'll be lucky to get all of them sent by the end of this week.  The mailman just stopped by to drop off a package.  That's the sort of thing that throws off my entire day.

Answering e-mail is out of the question.  Posting this on my Crazy Meds blog or the Crazy Meds facebook page isn't happening either, as too many people would see it.

Like a lot of people I want more, because I can never get enough of what I already have.  I want more latitude, altitude, and solitude.  Living at 47° north has been good for me.  16 hours of daylight with long dawns and dusks in the summer, and 8 hours in the winter with the sunlight filtered by trees most of the day has made me less susceptible to seasonal mood swings.  I'd like to live further north and higher up to enjoy things like auroae and noctilucent clouds more often.  I'd really like a place at or above 53° north and 3,500 feet up, with a clear view of either the eastern or western horizon.  Someplace to set up a telescope to look at anything interesting that comes by, like another green comet, and a receiver to listen to the solar wind.

As if any of that will ever happen.  

If I manage to get the resources to leave this lemon of a glorified Unabomber shack I have to use them to move closer to a city with better doctors.  It's becoming more difficult for me to drive, cook, and generally deal with my life.  I need to live where I can take a cab to wherever I need to go, and get food delivered that's safe for me to eat.  Solitude is no longer an option.  Which sucks, because one of the few good things about this place is its location.  Depending on where you center it, the population density here is between 1 and 5 people per square mile.  When I lived in Berkeley and Missoula I often felt lonely.  Out here I rarely do, and when I do it's not as bad.

I'm Popular! Why?

2011-12-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a total stats whore.  Whenever I'm feeling a bit off I look at statistics.  Mainly Crazy Meds' traffic.  

Starting 28 November there was a spike in the number of visitors.  That happens.  For some reason on 8 November the whole world did a search on Lexapro.  Traffic has been continuously high since 28 Nov. - 10k-12k visitors a day.  Not that I'm complaining.  So I dug down to find out why.  A big chunk of that is due to people visiting the page on TCAs.  Directly.  Not from other sites, not from search engines, not even from clicking on an link in an e-mail, but from pasting the URL into their browser from another source.  The peak was 9 & 10 December, when over 3,400 people stopped by to look at that page.  On 8 December 1,700 people went there directly, on 7 December 900 did.

The thing is, they stay on the page for ten seconds, if that.  Hardly anyone goes to another page.

What the fuck is the attraction?

Most of the visitors are from major North American cities, but plenty of them are from Paris, Sydney, Dubai, Hyderabad and so forth.  Of the places with more than 20 visitors, the people of Istanbul  read the most on the site (78 visitors averaging 2.18 pages), and the people of Valencia stayed stayed the longest (39 visitors, average visit 3:54).  Contrast that with the 12 cities where the average time for their 21 to 30 visitors was so short it couldn't be measured - they must have serious connectivity problems in Spokane, Duluth, and Puyallup - and obviously didn't go to any other pages.

Some of you may understand how I can read so many studies without my eyes glazing over.  I may have lost the math to fully understand the more complicated stats, but I still like looking at the raw data.

They aren't printing the page.  At least they aren't using the print function from AddThis.  Have I done someone's homework, or is there something hilarious that I'm missing?  Because I don't care how ridiculously stupid something I wrote looks.  As long as the information isn't wrong and it helps people understand and/or remember something they otherwise wouldn't, I'll be happy to duplicate it elsewhere.

At some point the interest will probably die off, although site traffic overall is still over 9K on weekdays without the TCA page.

Abilify Page, Updates, More Cites, and I'm Sure it's Just a Coincidence

2011-12-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

At long last, a brand new med page.  Abilify.  It may not be a new med, but at least it's a med that's being advertised.  I'm still working on various pages, but the Basic Overview Page is mostly done.

I've finally added links to sites with consumer reviews.  Most of the ratings/reviews are from the Big Five rating sites:  Ask a patient     Revolution Health     Patients like me     WebMD     Drugs.com 

I have links for these meds: 

Abilify  BuSpar  Cymbalta  Invega  Keppra  Lamictal  Lexapro  Paxil  Risperdal  Seroquel  Topamax  Wellbutrin  Zoloft  Zyprexa

Crazy Meds was mentioned in another journal back in February, although  it's in an article I'd file under "blame teh InterWebs.".  From Psychotropics Without Borders: Ethics and Legal Implications of Internet-Based Access to Psychiatric Medications

Internet-based consumers have access to extensive medication information through websites such as erowid.com, crazymeds.com, and drugs.com, among many others.

That is one broad spectrum.

We also turned up as a source here, but it was one of those incidents when we seemed to be the only place someone could find the MADRS at the time. It wasn't the first time we were the only available source for one of the psych tests.

In a Zyprexa vs. Abilify study I found I learned that "which sucks less" has an official name - "time to all-cause discontinuation" - and that they run trials just to measure that. Whichever med has a longer time to all-cause discontinuation is the one that sucks less.
What's funny is when you run a search on PubMed and Google Scholar, the terms "all-cause discontinuation" and "all-cause medication discontinuation" are used in papers exclusively about psychiatric medications, and that comparative studies about how long people stay meds based upon which sucks less don't start appearing until 2005. Prior to then the term appears in a single paper about beta blockers and heart attacks, and then it was just to indicate that all the reasons for discontinuing are all lumped together.
It has to be just a coincidence that researchers didn't start doing studies comparing psych meds - using the fancy new term or not - to find out nothing more than which one sucked less (or the least) until over a year after I started a somewhat popular site about psych meds that used data from published studies, along with anecdotal evidence I collected and consumer ratings & reviews, to determine which ones sucks less than others.

Brand vs. Generic page. Finally.

2011-11-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

At long last the Brand vs. Generic meds page has been renovated and updated. 

As I come across them, I'll add URLs for case reports, studies, etc. that support one side of the issue or the other.

We're in PubMed, Bitches!

2011-11-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

Of course the journal is Journal of Medical Internet Research  and the article is mostly about consumers bitching about side effects  online, but, hey, there we are, going head-to-head with WebMD once  again.

Can  Online Consumers Contribute to Drug Knowledge? A Mixed-Methods  Comparison of Consumer-Generated and Professionally Controlled  Psychotropic Medication Information on the Internet

Crazy Meds and Ask a Patient vs. WebMD and former consumer-generated  media site Revolution Health on the effects of Lexapro and  Seroquel.  The results:

Consumer reviews and professional medication descriptions generally reported similar effects of two psychotropic medications but differed in their descriptions and in frequency of reporting. Professional medication descriptions offer the advantage of a concise yet comprehensive listing of drug effects, while consumer reviews offer greater context and situational examples of how effects may manifest in various combinations and to varying degrees. The dispersion of consumer reviews across websites limits their integration, but a brief browsing strategy on the two target medications nonetheless retrieved representative consumer content. Current strategies for filtering online health searches to return only trusted or approved websites may inappropriately address the challenge to identify quality health sources on the Internet because such strategies unduly limit access to an entire complementary source for health information.

The data are clear: WebMD can suck it.

The paper raises two points I constantly reiterate:
1 - Consumer-oriented sites, including this forum, skew negative, which is why I don't depend solely on them for the anecdotal evidence I use in my drug pages.
2 - Like drug company-sponsored studies, ~~drug company-sponsored~~ professionally-run sites tend to skew positive, which is one reason why I think they are still useful.

You have to really read the article to realize Crazy Meds and Ask a Patient are not total bitchfests about meds, especially since significantly more people taking each med reported they worked better on the consumer-oriented sites than on the professionally-run sites. I may have to re-evaluate how the stats skew.

Oh, NOW You're Crazy

2011-11-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Brent Arthur Wilson decided that he's crazy after all. The Montana Supreme Court disagreed. From the Missoulian:

Brent Arthur Wilson, who insisted on serving as his own lawyer dozens of times during court appearances last year and once threatened to "arrest (the) bond and seize (the) surety" of any attorney who said one word on his behalf, argued on appeal that he never should have been allowed to represent himself.
The court disagreed, and also ruled against Wilson on two other issues.
"Though we acknowledge that Wilson's demeanor with the District Court was unconventional and at times somewhat bizarre, the fact remains that he was found by a mental health evaluator to be mentally capable of making decisions and fit to proceed and act on his own behalf," Justice Patricia Cotter wrote in the decision.
"Mindful of Wilson's right to represent himself if capable of doing so, the District Court was placed in the difficult position of balancing Wilson's constitutional right to counsel with his right to represent himself," she went on. "We conclude the District Court did everything in its power to persuade Wilson to accept counsel, without unduly pressuring him to do so in possible violation of his right to represent himself."

Plus there was this bit during his trial:

"For the record, on the record, let the record show I have no constitutional rights, I want no constitutional rights, I claim no constitutional rights," Wilson said repeatedly during court proceedings.

Be careful of what you wish for and all of that.

Mug Discount & New Bumper Stickers

2011-11-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

Zazzle is offering a 30% discount on mugs today (10 November) only, until 11:59 pm Pacific time. In honor of Veterans' Day, which is tomorrow. Enter code:

VETERANSALE4 

at checkout in the "Zazzle Coupons/Gift Certificates" box.  More details here.

Crazy Meds mugs are here. You're welcome for all the notice.

I've also put up a bunch of new bumper stickers, which you may or may not be able to see when you read this.  A whole bunch of Team stickers: Agoraphobia / Anxiety / Bipolar /  Crazy / Depression / Epilepsy / Manic! / OCD OCD OCD OCD / Panic! / PTSD / Schizophrenia.  As well as: I Feel Fantastic!, My Doctor Can Beat Up Your Doctor, and My Shrink Can Beat Up Your Shrink.  All of which are available as mugs and t-shirts.

Also new is a Team Crazy Meds mug, which I've also done with a solid black background.  But it's not a completely black mug.  Let me know what you think.

I got a My Shrink Can Beat Up Your Shrink and a Medicine Is The Best Medicine mug for my doctor.  I'm impressed by Zazzle's print quality.  The imprints on the pills are really clear.  I have no idea how well they will hold up to dishwashers, microwaving, etc.  But fresh out of the box the 'art work' looks really sharp.

Crazy Meds Mugs & Bumper Stickers Now Available

2011-10-28T15:43:00.003-06:00

The annex to Straitjacket T-shirts is now open at Zazzle. Right now it's all mugs and bumper stickers. Some have the same designs you'll find on shirts, and some designs that may show up on shirts eventually, and some have their own designs.
A few examples manage to not look like utter crap as they scroll by:

So get your favorite medication prescriber a gift to show your appreciation, and let them know that someone besides their local pharm reps is thinking about them.

As much as I've complained about Cafe Press' gods-awful interface, Zazzle's is just as confusing, frustrating, and time consuming, albeit in different ways, such as being really fucking obstinate about orienting the mugs. I either want the handle on the left or in the back. Notice how many handles are on the right. And it handles alphabetical order as well as I did in 2003.

Plus at $14 for their least expensive mug, or $1 more than the cheapest t-shirt I offer on Cafe Press, I may wind up splitting the merchandise between the two shops or something. Fuck if I know. It's going to be a big pain in the ass no matter what I do, so figuring out which option sucks less is going to take time.

Occupy Big Pharma - or at least wear a t-shirt to tell other people to do so.

2011-10-25T18:28:00.000-06:00

New Shirts at Straitjacket T-Shirts:

Occupy Big Pharma
Big Pharma puts profits before people. Let everyone know you want to do something about it. Or at least tell people what you think they should do about it.

Fuck Big Pharma!
If Big Pharma really pisses you off, let everyone know about it.

Big Pharma Sucks!
Or you can wear one of these if "F#¢< Big Pharma!" isn't really your style.

Occupy Sanity
It's political AND a cry for help.

Team Crazymeds
And I want you to be able to advertise my site in as many ways as I can think of.

I've just opened a store on Zazzle for non-shirt items like mugs and bumper stickers. I'm working on those. I'll probably move the shirts there eventually.

Why I Hate Mythbusters

2011-10-24T16:38:00.000-06:00

First and foremost: fewer myths (urban and otherwise) and too many ads for movies disguised as episodes debunking Hollywood physics. Especially when they do James Bond, because it's product placement within product placement.
While I like explosions as much as the next person, not every episode needs to be about blowing things up. The Discovery Channel is the "Watch People Blowing Up Stuff Because That's Their Job" network, so they could have an entire show dedicated to great explosions and blowing stuff up. "Tonight on The Biggest Bangs we'll be making detcord macrame, comparing the different properties of explosions produced by vehicles powered by regular, diesel, natural gas, and other fuels, and taking a look back at the 1947 Texas City explosion."
Padding. My memory sucks, but is a detailed review of what happened prior to the commercial break really necessary?
This one might actually bother me the most: wasting all of that food. Granted that is a quintessentially American thing to do, but when I see the last 10 minutes of a Mythbusters episode before whatever I want to watch on the Science Channel is on (e.g. ~~In Search Of...~~ Dark Matters) and they're blowing up or otherwise destroying a shitload of food you know what's going to happen? That's right, there's going to be an ad about starving children that makes you sadder than watching an hour-long infomercial of Sarah McLachlan in puppy Auschwitz.
No wonder people who live in countries where they like to keep women uneducated and at home all day so they have at least eleven kids hate us. They're starving and we blow up food for entertainment purposes.

Away we go

2011-09-18T11:17:00.003-06:00

I've begun the forum and blog software updates.

I have no idea how long this will take.

It's about 11:15 Mountain Time (17:15 GMT) and the files are still being uploaded to the server.  This is a big-ass update, with over 3,000 files totaling about 31 MB.

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Update: It's now 1:15 PM Mountain Time (19:15 GMT). The file upload is finished and I'm now starting the install.

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Update: A little after 3:00 PM Mountain Time (21:00 GMT).  The upgrade is complete, and I'm going through some settings.

I may have fucked up the avatars.  The new version allows only one picture per account instead of two.  I thought I told the upgrade process to use everyone's avatar as the picture, but I'm not sure it did that.  Invision's syntax is often counter-intuitive, to me at least.

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Update: As of 4:10 PM Mountain Time (22:10 GMT) the Crazy Meds forum is back on the air.
I can't tell you how much I hate the new look.
Allegedly the old version of the default skin is available, but it doesn't work.  I'll see what I can do.
At least the avatars don't seem to be as fucked up as I thought.

Now 25% Less of a Crazy Cat Person

2011-09-17T17:45:00.000-06:00

One of my cats is missing, and presumed eaten. I don't know how long he's been gone, because he vanished around when I got really sick, and I don't know when that started or how long it lasted. I also don't remember if he was gone before I got sick, or if that happened while I was ill. I've never had a physical illness fuck with my memory like this.

In addition to being barely able to take care of myself and the other three that managed to stay, I wasn't concerned because one of his sisters is in the habit of going away for a few days, even a couple weeks, now and then. They are both really good hunters, and catch (and eat) hefty game like squirrels, wood rats, and decent-sized birds like robins. This time of year they'll catch at least one critter a day. They are both extremely shy, so putting up lost cat posters, notices on Craigslist (which gets maybe one hit a year from this neck of the woods) wouldn't do much good.

Then MAO went missing. And the porch was covered with the spray of a large predator. And MAO's remaining two offspring were acting really weird. I wasn't very functional that day. Fortunately I found her, 20 feet up a tree. She wasn't coming down. I dragged a ladder on top of the carport, fought the vertigo of standing on that (ladders and I don't get along) to hold out an eight-foot-long plank to a branch below the one she was on, and she wouldn't step on to that fucking thing to walk down to me. Eventually I had to give up. I was physically exhausted from repeatedly putting the ladder on the roof of my truck, climbing up onto the carport, pulling the ladder up onto the carport, trying various things, putting the ladder back on the truck, climbing down, getting more stuff, climbing back up, lather, rinse, repeat.

I figure, she's a cat. She'll get down when she's ready. The tree has a shitload of branches that are fairly close to each other, and stands between a carport with a flat roof and a garage with an A-frame roof. I left the ladder on the roof of the truck so she could get all the way to the ground. Karuna got down from the now-cut-down eucalyptus tree that was at my old place in Berkeley without any help. She was also about 20 feet up, and that tree had hardly any branches below her and the only thing near it was a fence.

Nope. MAO was still there the next morning.

I tried the plank again. Same thing.

Eventually it dawned on me. Falling out of a tree is probably how she broke her leg. No wonder she won't climb down.

So I started calling around, trying to find someone with a boom lift. Eventually I found a tree service in Missoula with someone available to come out right away. It cost $800, but when you live on the outskirts of civilization, you have to expect that sort of thing. MAO was more than happy to be rescued by them.

I don't know if the local volunteer fire department still rescues cats from trees. I wasn't going to call them, or the utility company. Even if either of them did that sort of thing, with my luck as soon as they got here there would be an emergency somewhere else, and today I would still feel like it was my fault.

So now everyone stays inside at night. They aren't all that happy about it, but tough titty.

Forum software upgrade 18 September, 2011

2011-09-17T15:56:00.000-06:00

I plan on updating to the latest and greatest versions of the forum & blog software Sunday, 18 September.  All subject to the whims of health, physical and mental, and fate.  

Most of the changes are behind-the-scenes sort of stuff, concerning things like performance, moderator tools, and system administration.  Changes everyone will see include:

A new text editor, which I usually classify as "change is bad." Like this new blogger editor and interface. At least IPB's new editor comes with two useful features: autosave (finally!), and it will notify you if someone posts a reply before you finish with your reply.
You'll be able to add tags to topics. I can hardly wait to see some of those.
Following topics, being notified of new content, etc. is supposed to be easier to do and less buggy.
Liking stuff and social media interfaces are supposed to be easier.
The user control panel, where you play with your account settings and the like, is supposed to make sense and generally be easier to use.
Fixes for various bugs on the blogs and the mobile interface.

I'm whining about my crazy & shitty health elsewhere

2011-09-08T12:51:00.000-06:00

I've started a blog on Crazy Meds exclusively for whining about my mental and physical health problems.

 Queror ergo sum  I complain, therefore I am.

Everything else, Crazy Meds updates, status reports, whining about other aspects of my boring life, and anything else I'd bother writing about, will still be here.

New Shirts at Straitjacket T-Shirts

2011-07-04T18:37:00.000-06:00

Has anyone else complained about how painfully slow Cafe Press' process to upload apply designs is?  I think a better question is: where are the Cafe Press sux shite websites?

I think I'm going to migrate to Zazzle.  Their options for mugs look a lot better.

In any event, new sections, new shirts, and I've given the sections thumbnails:

Bipolar Rollercoaster
Shirts to buy during a manic spending spree

alt.depressed.as.fuck
As if you you deserved to buy these shirts

Anxious and Panicked
Shirts that offer protection in a decidedly unsafe world, by letting people know you want them to leave you the fuck alone.

Obsessed and/or Compulsive
OCD shirts. OCD shirts. OCD shirts. OCD shirts. Wash four times before wearing

My Brain Hurts
Future rags to sop up the mess after your head explodes

Shizophrenia Nation
Messages for you to project into the minds of others

Those Crazy Meds
Shirts that let the meds express how you feel about your meds

Stigma Busting
Come out of the mental health closet with these shirts

Say it with Pills
Not otherwise specified shirts

Here are some of the new shirts:

Team Bipolar
Show your pride of being part of the team everyone wants to be on for some insanely stupid reason or another.

Team Bipolar Captain
We know who we are. You may know someone this crazy. You may even be this crazy.

Team Manic!
When too much is never enough.

Team Depression
As if you deserved to be on any team.

Team Depression Captain
The clock of your soul is stuck on midnight.

Picked Last for Team Depression
Because you suck that much.

Agoraphobia: Don't Leave Home Without It
It's an old joke, but it's still funny.

Team PTSD
You're not alone.

Team PTSD Captain
Suitable for civilians and service personnel of all ranks.

Team Panic Captain
If you think this is what panic looks like, you haven't seen a pro in action.

Team Epilepsy
Shake things up in your life by joining team epilepsy.

Team Epilepsy Captain
For those who've ridden the med-go-round too often, but aren't giving up.

Picked Last for Team Epilepsy
We are such losers that we're even picked last for Team Epilepsy.

Team Schizophrenia
Team Schizophrenia: It doesn't get any crazier than this.

Team Schizophrenia Captain
Anyone can wear a tinfoil hat and pretend to be schizophrenic. Spelling out your trans-dimensional adventures in psychotropic meds is something else entirely.

Picked Last for Team Schizophrenia
What's the stigma like? It's getting picked last for Team Schizophrenia, that's what it's like.

I don't know if I'm going to plaster what I've got uploaded onto any more shirts, let alone upload the remaining designs I haven't already, until I investigate Zazzle.  It's taken over three solid days just to do what I've already done, and I've got over 20 finished designs still to go.  

Not that these things are selling.

Crazy Meds Updates

2011-06-16T10:53:00.000-06:00

15 June 2011

Somehow I managed to skip converting the Thorazine (chlorpromazine hydrochloride) and Elavil (amitriptyline HCl) pages when I moved everything to the new format. I just finished the Elavil page.
Added anticholinergic and antihistamine subsections to the common side effects page.

11 June 2011

The Invega pages have been converted to the new format. These are the first pages written by someone else to be converted to the new format, so I’ve had to mess around with a bunch of stuff to get all the copyright information to appear correctly, which is why I didn’t include them in the first wave of meds.
I finished up the Meds & Supplements page.
The HONCode certification has been renewed for another year. You may have noticed we have the certification logo up on the forum. Sites that have collaborative aspects (blog, forum, etc.) are now reviewed as a whole. You won’t find many peer-run mental health fora with HONCode certification, although that’s mainly due to stigma. As I don’t have a problem putting my real name up all over the place, and I don’t care how much of a jerkwad people consider me¹ when I ask for some kind of source to back up claims of miraculous vitamin cures, we’re able to have a HONCode-certified forum.

Stats Whore

2011-06-14T17:44:00.000-06:00

Statistics calm me down.  Comfort me.  Stave off depression.  Con me into thinking I'm accomplishing something when I'm just dicking around.  

I'm such a fucking stereotype.

Thanks to all the different tools available I can analyze Crazy Meds' statistics in so many different ways that I wouldn't have to look at the same ones twice in a couple of days.

Today I looked at search terms that resulted in the highest eCPM.  If you speak Googlese you understand what I mean.  If you don't, eCPM is a hypothetical potential of how much money a page could make if a buttload of people showed up and clicked on the ads there.  It has as much bearing on reality as the applicants' incomes on sub-prime mortgage applications.

Here are some of the more interesting search terms used in the last 30 days that resulted in eCPMs between $2,000 and $450.  I'm not showing the eCPM numbers because that might violate something in the Adsense agreement.  In descending order of potential value, here are some of my favorite search terms that have led people to Crazy Meds, and my answers to any that are questions:

1. drugs that are named black boxed

2. how much remoron to takeremeron

3. intial dose wellbutrin sr broke in half

4. what is a doctor called who prescribes pi

5. how long for lamictal to show on blood test

6. cash price of nuvigil at schnucks pharmacy

7. sorrta remeber

8. why does my scalp twitch

9. can i take paxil with a factor 5 mutation

10. dexedrine minority psychosis

11. what if enzymes are taken near phych mess?

1. Black Box isn't a drug name, it's the name of a warning.  Drugs with black box warnings have side effects that are potentially life-threatening and everyone is sure it was due to the drug.  Unless a bunch of hysterical moms got together to pressure Congress to force the FDA to force the drug companies to add black box warnings to drugs that don't necessarily have those problems.

2. "Remoron."  Why have I never noticed that before?  It's brilliant.  In any event I think you might be taking a little too much Remeron.

3.  If your SR tablet broke in half, don't take it.

4.  She's usually called "Grandma."  Unless you're like me and are calmed down by some aspect of math, in which case the doctor is called "competent."  Or maybe "Grandma" as well, they aren't mutually exclusive.

5.  For all of its wacky pharmacokinetics, Lamictal is absorbed quickly and nearly completely.  It shows up in your blood plasma in 15 minutes.  How long it stays there is anybody's guess.

6.  I have no idea.  Why Crazy Meds is the first thing returned by Google for that phrase is beyond me.

7.  Whatever you're taking I hope it's working for you.

8.  I don't know.  Do you know where Mouse's pendent is?

That is not a question to type into teh googles if you're a hypochondriac.

9.  This is actually a very serious question that just looks weird as hell.  I honestly don't know what effect, if any, a factor V mutation has on any crazy med, or how any crazy med would mess with someone who has a factor V mutation.  I hope you find someone who has an answer for you.

10.  Minority psychosis isn't real.  The term isn't used in any of the literature, outside of dubious gray literature, or in the periphery when trying to succinctly describe extra-irrational racist behavior.  Racist scumfucks don't need Dexedrine, or anything else, to be racist, although abusing drugs would certainly make them even more irrational.  

As someone who is batshit crazy I find it really fucking insulting whenever racism is equated with an actual mental illness, as opposed to being generally irrational, or 'crazy.'

11. It all depends on the enzymes and the meds. As most enzyme supplements are a bunch of overpriced snake oil your biggest problem might be paying for your meds, so you're probably better off not taking the enzymes at all.

Nothing to see here

2011-06-03T14:48:00.000-06:00

First the stuff that matters - 

I've updated the Know Your Sources section, which includes:

That took care of the site's HON Code certification for the next 12 months. 

I'm done with most of the Things You Need to Know When Taking Crazy Meds / Basic Crap all Neuro-Psychiatric Meds have in Common section, which includes:

I'm still working on the updated Brand vs. Generic page.  No telling when that will be finished.

I've also juggled a bunch of blogs between defunct and the panoply of stupidity etc.

No need to read any further...

Extreme couponing has arrived in small town Montana.  I moved out here to avoid shit like that, but I should know better; if I live where broadband is available, and near where cable TV is available, there's no escaping the bits of civilization I can't stand.  The clerks at the grocery store were acting like Elvis showed up to buy some peanut butter and bunny bread.  They couldn't wrap their heads around the concept of people 'buying' four items (I don't know what, just making it to Superior to get my meds and a couple things from the store was a heroic conquest for me that day) with nothing more than two coupons from two different sources, and purchasing nothing else at that.

Fifty-one out of 54 counties in Montana have had a state of emergency declared due to the flooding.  So far Mineral county is one of three with no flood emergency.  Yet.  Instead we have to have other forms of excitement, like a bank robbery in St. Regis and a murder in Superior.

I had the snow tires swapped for the 'regular' (i.e. all terrain) tires on the truck, so at least I didn't have to deal with inclement weather when I drove to Spokane to see my shrink.  Twice.  Because the there was appointment confusion.  I should have called when I didn't get the usual appointment verification call, but thinking clearly hasn't been one of my strong suits of late.  It still took me three hours each way, and not because there was snow on the road (but plenty on each side) going over Lookout Pass, but because the shocks were shot and I couldn't drive any faster than 60.

Tuesday night Stephen Colbert smoked a pipe on his show.  It's not the first time he's done that.  While the main reason I smoke a pipe is a bowl of pipe tobacco is about all I want to smoke in a day, another reason is the chance of pipe smoking ever being cool-popular like cigar smoking is somewhere in the neighborhood of non-existent.  Still, I think even Mr. Colbert won't be able to elevate the pipe from eccentric curmudgeon territory.

Brace yourselves

2011-05-06T09:26:00.000-06:00

The switch to the new server just happened. It will take anywhere from one to 48 hours for the DNS to propagate all across teh interwebs, so some of you will still see the old stuff for a day or two. I unfortunately jumped the gun and reset the forum to full featured mode on the old server, so the only way to tell the difference is to look for an announcement about the site being on a new server. Although you might be able to get on the new server before I do, especially since I haven't had breakfast yet.

Up, up and away!

2011-05-04T18:06:00.000-06:00

I'm getting the server upgraded. The sudden increase in popularity warrants it. Expect even more outages throughout the night.

The forum's back, for now at least

2011-05-04T13:51:00.002-06:00

The forum is back, with a bunch of features turned off. I'll keep you all posted on dealing with everything.

What's in a named?

2011-05-04T12:04:00.001-06:00

I don't know how the fuck it happened, but the named service stopped. So it was a nameserver problem after all.

The drug pages are back up. The forum is still down, but that's intentional until I finish doing what I was trying to do in the first place.

Still have no clue

2011-05-04T11:19:00.000-06:00

I've opened a ticket with tech support. I still have no idea what's going on. I've put everything back the way it was, but only some people are able to get an HTTP connection to crazymeds.us or crazymeds.com and I'm not one of them. I can't even get a connection to the non-forum part via a proxy site. Traceroute fails to the name crazymeds.us, but works to the IP address. That indicates a nameserver problem of some kind, but I didn't go near the nameserver.

But some people are able to access the site. I can telnet and see active HTTP connections. Not only that, the access and error logs are showing typical activity. The traffic is way lower than normal, but the usual files being accessed. It's not stuff from Google's cache, but live data.

Crazy Meds offline

2011-05-03T15:20:00.004-06:00

Both the forum and the medication pages are off the air until I can figure out what the fuck is causing HTTP session to use unholy amounts of CPU time.

Update: the medication pages are available. The forum should be up soon, although some features may be a bit constrained.

Update: the forum is back up now.

Update: I've taken the forum is offline for a bit.

Update: well, I thought it was going to be just for a bit, but I've run into that problem where I can't get an http connection. I can see all sorts of http connections happening for other people, I just can't get one going.

Crazy Meds Ver 2.0 Beta Is Now Up

2011-04-25T17:32:00.000-06:00

Due to med pages coming up blank at random times for anyone using the  most recent versions of IE, Firefox, and Chrome, along with assorted other technical issues,  I've had to convert the  non-forum part of the site to the new format a hell of a lot sooner  (i.e. now vs. whenever I managed to get enough of it done to open it up)  than I wanted. 

So there's a lot missing, far too many of the pages are  fugglier than shit with no updates to the content like I wanted to do prior to unveiling it, and it's full  of missing links, dead ends, incomplete and barely started pages.  But at least you can  see all of my incompetence instead it merely taking the form of empty space.

The new URL is http://crazymeds.us/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/.  Redirects should be happening automagically, so don't worry about too much about updating anything.

No more frames, although there is a menu down the left side.              

Pay attention moron.

2011-03-23T10:56:00.000-06:00

As if I needed anything else to go wrong.  Shortly after waking up this morning I take the pills that were in the pill case, just like any other day, right?  Except that I took the night doses, not the morning doses.  And didn't notice until after I swallowed everything except the lamotrigine, which, of course, is the same dosage (100mg for those keeping score) both times.

So that was 250mg topiramate vs. 50mg and 30mg protriptyline vs. 10mg.

Other than being extra super spacey and completely unable to drive - hence screwing my plans for the day after they were hosed yesterday because the lack of antifreeze was enough to freeze me more than the truck - I'm not really worried about the early Topamax.  It's the protriptyline that has me concerned.  60mg in the course of 11 hours shouldn't be that big a deal, except protriptyline is one of the few crazy meds with an actual warning about, and recommendation of a dosage adjustment for people who are poor metabolizers of CYP2D6; and 60mg a day is the maximum in-patient dosage if your liver isn't as lazy as mine is.

One of the reasons why protriptyline isn't prescribed very often: complicated pharmacokinetics makes it tough to nail down a good dosage.  W00t.

I'm having second thoughts about Torrent's topiramate.  It might be as unreliable as Teva's used to be.   Or it could be I'm especially sensitive to being sleep-deprived.  I had a total of eight hours of somewhat restless sleep last night.  If I don't get that full 9-10 hours a night - and naps don't help, they just mess with me - I'll just do shit like this.

Missed the aurora, had a great aura instead

2011-03-21T13:33:00.000-06:00

There's been a lot of solar activity lately, some of which has hit the earth's atmosphere.  For details see:

Latest solar events.

Space Weather  and their   March Aurora Gallery 

Spring is Aurora Season

The only aurora I've seen so far made the sky look like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces were the same shade of faded green.  It's been too cloudy on nights with events that could be seen at this latitude.  Or I don't get the alert until it's too late.  Or I've been too out of it.  Or there's a full moon.  And when there's a lot of snow on the ground a full moon is as bright as, if not brighter than dawn.

Yesterday I had one hell of an aura.  At first I thought I needed coffee, as I've been drinking the extra strength stuff I make that's like a weird hybrid of Vietnamese and Turkish.  But no.  The headache was still there after the coffee.  Getting the electric-shock tingling sensation in the palms of my hands was new, so I thought I had slept on my arm in a strange way.  Nope.  The odd feeling in my stomach wasn't from hunger, as it stayed around after I ate.  I just zipped through the Sunday crossword puzzle, so I could think relatively clearly.  For awhile.  Eventually that stopped.  And the tingly-shocks started running down my legs as well as my arms.  My stomach tightened up, the headache was getting worse, and I began to get disoriented.  It was an aura, no doubt about it.

So take a 1mg lorazepam tablet, an extra 25mg of topiramate, 800mg of gabapentin, my usual afternoon 10mg of protriptyline and 25mg of topiramate a few hours early, crawl into bed and, for everything to go away and probably take a nap.

No such luck.

I don't know if the lorazepam has reached it's expiration date or the aura is just too strong, so I take another 1mg of lorazepam.  Eventually I pass out around 3:00 p.m.  I wake up around 1:00 a.m., stumble into the kitchen to take my nighttime dose of 250mg of topiramate, 100mg of lamotrigine, and 30mg of protriptyline.  Then it's back to bed.  Where I sleep until nearly eight this morning.  Seventeen hours of sleep and I'm still groggy and somewhat out of it.

I have no idea what brought it on.  Is Torrent's topiramate crap?  Have I been working too much on Crazy Meds?  Some days I'll work on it for five hours.  Am I sleep deprived?  Lately I'm getting only 8 to 8.5 hours a night.  Have I been drinking coffee that's too strong?  Or was it just some random epilepsy thing?

Life in epilepsyland, one never knows what could trigger a seizure.

You still haven't found what you're looking for

2011-03-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I get fed up with all the whining I've done about my boring life and how much it sucks.  Considering how I don't live in Haiti, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or wherever people wish they had my problems I don't have much cause for complaint.

So if you were looking for things like "Whaleshit on the Bottom of the Ocean," or "Nothing Nice," they've been relegated to bit heaven some time ago and are unlikely to return.  I've been using what time I have when I'm functional enough to do more than feed the cats and wash dishes to work on long-overdue improvements to Crazy Meds.  I may whine more here in the future.  If you're lucky, I won't.

Crazy Meds was temporarily off the air.

2011-02-27T17:13:00.000-07:00

We were off the air for about an hour and a half today.  This was due to several spambots, spiders looking for non-existent files, and one brute-force crackerbot all converging on the site at once.  The result was the same as if we were hit with a denial-of-service attack.  We weren't, it just had the same outcome.

It's back to the usual insanity now.

Happy Fucking New Year. Those Mayans had best be right about 2012.

2011-01-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

Nothing starts the new year right like a fuel tank lid refusing to come off, a blinking "check engine" light, and spiraling into depression.  So much for driving into Missoula early New Year's day, so I could deal with shit when everyone was hungover and the stores wouldn't be too crowded.

I've had plenty more to whine about for the last two months, but I didn't want to write about it.  What little functionality I've had has been devoted to keeping my life barely together or working on Crazy Meds - mostly behind-the-scenes crap.  I've become socially avoidant to the point of rarely answering e-mail and just occasionally checking in on the Crazy Meds forum.  That's it.  Not this blog - the blogrolls need a lot of pruning - let alone other blogs, no other sites, nothing.  I'll use my laptop exclusively as a radio for days at a time.  I haven't been depressed.  Sunday was the first time I felt real, near-suicidal depression in months, maybe more than a year, and I'm already getting over it.  I'm just fed up with clogged drainpipes that prevent the washing machine from working, and yet another mystery leak in the plumbing, and all the other problems people in Haiti wished they had.

I did find one thing that still cracks me up.  Best off-label application ever:

Exorcism-resistant ghost possession treated with clopenthixol.

Background: An Indian man now in Britain explained his criminal behaviour as episodic ghost possession. Traditional exorcisms failed to help.
Method: A 'Western' diagnosis of dissociative state or paranoid schizophrenia was made. Treatment commenced using trifluoperazine and clopenthixol.
Results: The patient underwent remission during neuroleptic treatment, despite previous evidence of genuine possession.
Conclusions: Many cultures give rise to apparently genuine cases of ghost possession. Neuroleptics may relieve symptoms of exorcism-resistant possession.

Forum software upgrade completed.

2010-11-21T12:34:00.002-07:00

I'm doing yet another software upgrade.  I hope this will resolve some of the problems users of mobile devices have been having, as well as some of the problems with searches.  I also hope this will be relatively quick.

No notice because my functionality has been dodgy, and this sort of thing has to happen on a weekend when traffic is minimal.

As of 2:15 PM Mountain Time (GMT -7) the upgrade is complete.  Nothing appears to be broken.  Yet.  However I don't see much in the way of fixes regarding the search function or mobile devices.

Now it looks like the search feature is working like it should.  Cache, cookies, the usual Interwebs wackiness was messing with me.  I'm still not sure about mobile devices.

Fuck if I know what the problem is, part 2.

2010-10-02T13:14:00.001-06:00

I still don't know what's going on regarding the sporadic connectivity problems I'm having.  Just like last year I have found that if http://www.crazymeds.us is unavailable http://crazymeds.us works just fine.  I haven't been messing around with apache, so I don't know what the deal is.

I'll probably change all internal links that explicitly reference the domain from the flaky www.crazymeds.us to crazymeds.us.

Fuck if I know what the problem is.

2010-09-14T16:15:00.001-06:00

Suddenly Firefox and IE can't find Crazy Meds.  But I'm still connected via telnet and ftp.  I can ping the site from domaintools.com and traceroute goes through fine, but ping and tracert fail from here.  For shits and grins I restarted the HTTPD service, but that didn't make any difference.

I'll ask tech support, but my money's on it being due to Internet weather or something else between here and the server.

--------------------------------------

Update: We're back on the air.  Whatever and wherever the problem was, it's gone now.

Dave's not here man

2010-08-20T13:51:00.000-06:00

You know how you get to keep your cell phone number when you switch carriers?  What they don't tell you is your previous carrier may give your phone number to someone else, so you both have the same phone number.  Anyone who calls the number using your old carrier will get the person who was just assigned your phone number.  Anyone who calls using a landline or any other carrier winds up calling you.

This happens to me three or four times a year.  Usually it lasts two days and is no more than a minor inconvenience for the person with my phone number, while I don't particularly care and, if I feel like answering the phone, tell the callers what happened.  Over the last two weeks it's been alternately annoying and amusing for me.  I have no idea what it's been like for the very popular B., as it took him long enough to both get a new phone number and let everyone know what it is. 

I wasn't up to talking on the phone most of the time, but they couldn't get a clue from my voicemail message that I'm not B.  I kept seeing the same phone numbers on the list of missed calls.  B.'s wife kept calling because she didn't update her contact list.  Only one person left a message, and he had just got out of jail.

The jailbird called the other night asking for B.  I tried to explain what happened and he couldn't quite understand it, because he kept asking for B.'s new phone number.  He said he had a wad of cash and wanted a big bag of pot.  That certainly explained why he couldn't grasp the situation, why B. is so popular, why it took so long for B. to get a new phone number and inform everyone he knows what it is, and why no one could take a hint from my voicemail message that I'm not B.

After telling this guy several times I didn't know B.'s phone number or where he could buy some pot he got pissed off at the world, ranting about the Mayans and 2012, and got pissed off at me.  He told me that everyone I know will die some day, that I'll die some day, and so forth along those lines before hanging up.  I think he was trying to harsh my buzz or something.

Blog roll updates

2010-08-12T14:27:00.000-06:00

Once again I've moved some blogs to and from the defunct list.  Nothing  new was added.  Anyone who reads the blogs regularly will notice, most  of you won't.  I still feel like crap, so I was barely paying attention  to what I did.

Video of Brent Arthur Wilson's Guilty Verdict

2010-08-11T12:17:00.000-06:00

I know it's a month after it happened.  I've been ill.

Like the other videos of Brent and Jackiya you'll need to turn up your speakers to 11.

Brent Arthur Wilson: Guilty

2010-07-14T14:04:00.000-06:00

Brent went to trial on Monday and was found guilty Tuesday morning. That's swift even by Montana standards, where it can be under a year from arrest to conviction for murder without a confession, and under six months with one.  It's not like I'm surprised or anything.  Sentencing is scheduled for 19 August.  The maximum punishment is 30 years in prison for the three felonies, six months in jail for the misdemeanor, and a $151,000 fine.  I don't have a clue as to what the likely sentence will be.  Judge Christopher might throw his ass in prison for 20 years just to save Lake county the cost of another trial. 

From the Missoulian's coverage of Monday's proceedings:

Peering through reading glasses, accused house thief Brent Arthur Wilson spent the first day of his trial Monday alone at the defense table and seemingly uninterested in what was unfolding around him, poring over what appeared to be an Internal Revenue Service publication instead.

A few feet away, Lake County prosecutor Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson told a jury of nine men and three women that a year ago Wilson was unemployed, deeply in debt and living in a travel trailer.
But, she said, he was a "man with a plan," and the plan was to steal area homes in foreclosure - up to 100 of them, according to journals seized by authorities after they executed a search warrant on his residence.

Brent's residence at that time being another house he was attempting to steal.  That's making sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed with the same colored ink.   

Wilson, who has refused all attempts by District Court Judge Kim Christopher to appoint him legal counsel, didn't lift a finger in his own defense outside of repeatedly telling the judge that as far as he's concerned, he appears in her courtroom not as a criminal defendant, but only as the beneficiary to a trust in his name.

For anyone coming in late, Brent has repeatedly asked Judge Christopher to be the trustee of the BRENT ARTHUR WILSON Trust.  As she kept declining one can only assume the trustee of Brent's other trusts - "the creator, Yahweh" - has taken up that position. 

He didn't ask a single question of potential jurors during the morning's jury selection, didn't exercise his right to preemptory challenges of any jurors, didn't object to the introduction of any evidence, and didn't cross-examine a single witness.
At times he appeared so engrossed in his reading material that only the silence in the courtroom made him aware the judge had addressed him and was waiting for an answer.
"Thank you for the question," Wilson said each time Christopher asked if he wanted to cross-examine someone, "but I appear only as the beneficiary. That question needs to be addressed to the trustee."

I can already see where this is going.  The basis of Brent's appeal will be that the trustee, i.e. God, was not allowed to be involved in the trial.  However, since God is omniscient and omnipresent, He was there and aware of all questions, statements, evidence, etc. and could have said something anytime He wanted to.  Even if prosecutor Cole-Hodgkinson said, "a trustee who apparently exists in his [Brent Arthur Wilson's] mind only."

The Missoulian didn't name the "Missoula financial institution" where Brent tried to get a loan for $125,000 using the property in question as collateral, nor how far into the loan process he got.  While I don't care all that much as to which bank / credit union / savings & loan was involved, just how deep into a home equity loan on property he didn't own is key to this symbolic denouement of the real estate pyramid scheme.

Not much happened on Tuesday.  A couple more witnesses, the prosecution's closing statement, and it took less than hour for a guilty verdict.  The verdict was the banner headline on today's edition, but there was a lot of padding with recap to justify that, because you can't run an above-the-fold story that's only five paragraphs long.  Plus there's not enough crazy, irony, or anything else to make up for the entire comics page not getting printed.  In any event, from the Missoulian:

Brent Arthur Wilson sat at his defense table alone on Tuesday, reading the Bible as jurors filed into the courtroom and delivered unanimous guilty verdicts in the peculiar case of a pilfered home.

Sentencing date, maximum possible punishment, recapping the saga, favorite wackiness, possibility of more charges, and at the very end the buried lede: 

Cole-Hodgkinson said the spurious documents Wilson filed "created a cloud on the title," and he even scrawled his name into the property tract books maintained by the clerk and recorder's office.
"Of all the crimes that the defendant committed, that was probably the most heinous. The most far-reaching," she said, adding that people rely on those records when choosing their investments.
"I think he undermined everyone's sense of security," Cole-Hodgkinson said.
Susan Newton has worked in the Lake County Clerk and Recorder's Office since 1982, and has always felt the records should be accessible to the public. The way Wilson manipulated the records has her second-guessing that policy.
"We're a small county and we'd like to keep our books open to the public, but after this we may have to re-evaluate that," Newton said.

Anyone who has bought, sold, or taken out a loan for property knows the importance of a title search.  Any hiccup can delay or derail the process, and this is why it's important to know how far Brent got in getting a home equity loan.  It's like identity theft, in that once some jerk screws with your credit history you're the one who ends up paying for it.

The AP picked up the guilty verdict and ran an abbreviated version of the Missoulian's report. 

I missed the report of a hearing on 1 July.  Here's a video of Judge Christopher and Lake County prosecutor Cole-Hodgkinson repeatedly trying to tell Brent all the different ways he can stop being stupid and get a shorter sentence.  Brent will have the last laugh. He's successfully stolen housing,  food, and medical coverage from the state of Montana, and will continue  to do so for how ever long he's sentenced.

FDA sanity fail: condoms cause breast cancer and eating disorders

2010-07-13T14:33:00.001-06:00

This puts neuropsychiatric medication fearmongering into a new perspective. I don't know exactly what that perspective is, but it's different. Not only are condoms bad, but pearl necklaces and facials cause eating disorders as well, but blow jobs don't. I guess this 'doctor' (who isn't a health professional) has issues and/or he's fed up with money shots.

Here it is on the FDA's website.

We're back on the air!

2010-07-04T20:00:00.000-06:00

The forum is back up.  I'm really loopy.  It's a little before 8:00 PM, the fireworks are still two hours away (as if I were planning on seeing them in the first place, although I did want to go to the parade, lumberjack games and other 4th of July festivities) and I'm ready to go to bed.

There's one remaining problem I'm aware of: importing additional skins (IPBoard-speak for color schemes / styles) isn't working properly.  I have a good idea why and how it might be fixed.  It can wait until I recover from all this, which might not be until Friday.

At least there are a shitload of new anime avatars.

And you can put polls in your blogs.

Have fun with the new forum.

The Never-ending Crazy Meds Forum Software Upgrade Status Report

2010-07-04T17:57:00.001-06:00

Actually there is some light at the end of the tunnel.  The software upgrade and data conversion are finished.  I'm doing some clean-up now.  More details to follow.

6:40PM MT  Jason from IPS tech support came through again.  When I hosed the production database two weeks ago I managed to convince the production version of the software that an upgrade was underway.  So even with fresh-out-of-the-box programs the process itself was somehow flagged as being about half-way through.  I'm still the better idiot that made me great at testing software.  So that part is done.

I'm finished with the system settings, and I just determined that I need to run the rebuild & recount tools.  That might take an hour or so.

Crazy Meds Forum Software Upgrade Status Reports

2010-07-03T14:52:00.002-06:00

I couldn't get my act together until around 11:00 this morning, mainly because I thought I wrote that the upgrade would be starting at noon.  In any event there was a minor burp during the initial upload of the software, otherwise that part is fine.  I don't have an estimated time as to when it will all be finished.

One problem the new version of the software doesn't fix is resizing avatars loaded into the directory via FTP.  A lot of the anime avatars exceed the 120x120 pixel limit, and that was occasionally problematic.  I found some freeware that resizes batches of files, so they all meet that standard.  I've also added a shitload of new avatars.  Because of those two events I sorted the avatars into several galleries instead of having the single anime gallery.  As always the promise of more of your1 favorite2 anime avatars will be hanging for who the fuck knows how long. Once I'm finished there will be over 3,000 avatars from about 20 different series, so that should satisfy your inner otaku.

3:25 p.m. MT: Look at that.  The upgrade to the most current version assumes you are already at 3.x and not 2.3.x  So I first need to upgrade to 3.something and then upgrade to 3.1.latest&greatest.

It's a good thing I don't throw anything away.

6:20 p.m. MT: Nope, that wasn't it.  I've opened a ticket with IPS tech support. 

My guess is the problem has to do with my breaking the forum on 14 June.  The message I get is an SQL failure when something runs a query with a select based on a column that exists only in version 3.x of a table that hasn't been converted, so it doesn't have that column.  In other words, even though the upgrade tells me it's going to take version 2.3.6 and turn it into version 3.1, when the software actually starts it expects version 3 data.

Why do I think that's my fault?  Because whenever I ran the upgrades in a test environment they worked just fine.  The only difference now is the funky database that's a mix of old and new tables.  It didn't give me any problems, so I didn't know there extraneous tables until it was too late to do anything about them.

So we're off the air until at least tomorrow.  The old version comes up just fine, so the fallback is still good.

1i.e. mine 

2that I could find

Crazy Meds Forum Scheduled to be Offline for Software Update

2010-06-28T12:53:00.000-06:00

I plan on upgrading the forum software this weekend.

We'll be offline for however long it takes from around 10:00 a.m. Mountain time (16:00 GMT) 3 July until I'm finished.  One way or another we'll be back on the air sometime in the evening of 4 July, (early morning 5 July GMT) even if that means still being on the current version of the software.

I'll post on here when I start and when the forum is back up, as well as any status updates I feel are necessary or interesting, or I have nothing better to do.

Unlike the weekly backups, I'll be doing a manual backup without the forum software running, so I'm fairly confident all posts, etc. will be safe in case anything goes wrong.

I spy with my little eye diverse fungi

2010-06-20T17:39:00.001-06:00

Last Saturday (12 June) it stopped raining after about 10 straight days of varying amounts of rain.  I walked around the property to check out what sort of mushrooms might have fruited and the pickings were pretty good.  As I'm way off of my game I have no real idea what these are, and, at best, can pin them down to their genera.

First up are the ones I see all of the time:

This one is representative of the ones that frequently fruit on or near the meadow (like this one) or the 'lawn' from late spring through mid autumn.  My guess is it's either a type of lepiota or amanita, although only strong remnant of a veil is the annulus / ring.  When I can pull one up the base of the stem is bulbous, it's just not an obvious volva.  Still, the gills are detatched, the stem isn't particularly smooth, and the spores are rather white.

Also popular...

Miniature puffballs, which I'm likely to find whenever the lepiotae / amanitae are fruiting.

I have mostly pine trees, most of which are lodgepole pines.  I expected to find more Slippery Jacks (suillus species), but the conditions aren't right, the deer like them too much or something.  Here's a fairly generic Slippery Jack that fruited amongst the pines:

And a couple of less-than-generic specimens:

You can't tell from this picture, but the cap is yellow.  I found the remnants of another one a deer really liked that was chanterelle yellow.

I found this suillus (I think) on the 'lawn.'  It had a very sweet scent and was hardly slimy.  As you can see it was popular with critters of all sizes, as a couple of fairly large bites were taken out of it.

This one from the meadow is pretty neat:

I found another just like it alongside the driveway.  It sort of looks like a bird's egg.  Based on the two I found the off-center stalk seems to be the norm.  It didn't cooperate and leave a spore print, so I don't know where to start in trying to identify it.

This one fruited Thursday the 17th.  It's obviously an agaricus of some kind, with the purplish-brown spores pretty much ruling out most anything else.  I'm impressed by how it forced its way up through the packed clay and gravel of the driveway!  It doesn't look like A. bitoruis, because its stalk and ring are too small, but I could easily be wrong.

Finally, file these under nothing special. Colorful, but otherwise unremarkable shelf conks and waxy caps.

Polite Antics Ensue

2010-06-16T13:31:00.000-06:00

That's the headline for the article the print edition I received this morning. The headline of the online version is far more staid.

Brent continues to treat the case against him as a civil matter involving the BRENT ARTHUR WILSON Trust and that the US Constitution does not apply to him. Good luck with that.

Brent Arthur Wilson's courtroom demeanor has changed noticeably.

His legal strategy, not so much.

The defendant, who at one time had lectured the judge presiding over his multiple felony case by telling her she was "not God," was polite - sometimes exceedingly so - during an omnibus hearing here Thursday morning.

But the alleged Polson house thief, who is representing himself, remained just as committed to his unusual courtroom tactics as well.

He insisted that District Court Judge Kim Christopher address questions she asked of him to herself instead, as his "appointed trustee" of an express revocable trust in his name.

[...]

When Wilson tried to waive his "constitutional benefits in a trial" on Thursday, Christopher told him, "We don't conduct them any other way, Mr. Wilson."

Wilson's polite reply:

"I appreciate your offer, it's very generous of you, but I'm going to waive that constitutional benefit offer."

The big news, to me, is that everything up to this point involved what I've been calling the "third house," i.e. not the one he was living in nor the one he rented out to someone else, but the house he attempted to use as collateral for a home equity loan.  At least I hope it's the house he tried to use for a loan, but as there could be more than three houses involved who knows if that's ever going to be evidence in a trial.  I really, really want everything regarding a home equity loan on a house with paperwork involving Yahweh and reincarnation to be brought out in the open, because that will be the icing on the cake of the YIIKes! decade's real estate pyramid scheme.  

It's not easy to bury that sort of stuff in Montana like it is in other states.  

I've bought and sold property in California and it takes several hours to go through all the paperwork with a good Realtor who will explain everything so you don't have to read all of it yourself (which would take at least a day, assuming you had the correct reference books at hand) and not be an idiot and sign anything they put in front of you.  In Montana you can actually read each of the few documents in its entirety, understand them, and be done in under an hour.

The Lake County DA's office is still compiling charges, and may file those as a separate case. Why?  Because it's so freaking complicated.

The other properties involve other witnesses and different paper trails, and all are complicated, the assistant county attorney [Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson] said. She must also decide whether to amend the current charges - which include theft, deceptive practices and tampering with public records or information, all felonies - to include the other properties.

If Brent decides to, or Judge Christopher rules Brent is too crazy to represent himself and forces him to use a public defender, he could plead guilty and instantly be out on probation for time served. Hell, he doesn't even need a public defender to do that, all he has to do is stop believing in the Sovereign Citizen bullshit.

No, really.  From the last two paragraphs of the story:

Her other option is to file separate charges in those cases in a situation where, at least some have speculated, Wilson might otherwise already be out on probation and credited with time served, were he not insistent on following his curious courtroom strategies.

Wilson has already been judged mentally fit to stand trial.

So if Brent isn't crazy and thinks the Sovereign Citizen thing is a rational defense, even if being a true believer is keeping him in jail longer than necessary, does that make him a de facto member of the 'patriot' movement?  According to David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars it does.  Personally I think that's insulting to Brent, who might be opting for the guaranteed three squares and a bed.

Don't underestimate Brent's legal kung fu.

Whoops!

2010-06-14T16:12:00.001-06:00

The Crazy Meds Talk forum is temporarily broken.  The database error is my fault.  It'll be back up soon, but everything posted after midnight Sunday Mountain Time will be lost.   Life just sucks that way.

--------------------------

OK, it's fixed now.  At least it was both easy and fast to repair.  That took all of fifteen minutes, most of which was spent RTFM for MySQL to make sure I had the syntax correct for a full restore.

I was doing yet another test installation of the forum software upgrade, because version 3.1 was just released so there wasn't much point in installing 3.0.5.  I forgot to change the database name in one location.  So the production database was updated to version 3.1 during the installation.

At least I know that part of the upgrade process works.

Everything is backed-up on Sundays around midnight Mountain Time, (GMT -6, -7 winter time), so it could have been a lot worse.

Jackiya Ford: Officially Crazy. Brent Wilson: Unofficially Scary

2010-06-05T12:35:00.000-06:00

Jackiya Ford is officially crazy. According to the article in the Missoulian from 1 June 2010 (I'm having problems with my meds, hence the delay):

A psychological evaluation of the 37-year-old woman accused of stealing a home in Lolo revealed that she is not mentally fit to proceed to trial, but prosecutors want a second opinion.

[...]

An appointment for the second evaluation couldn't be made until mid- to late July, however, and Public Defender Chris Daly said that was too long to wait under Montana's speedy trial guarantees.

[Judge Robert L. "Dusty" Deschamps III] agreed, and said the prosecutor would have to find a private psychologist who could perform the evaluation sooner.

"I'm not going to leave someone who is mentally ill and suffering from delusions sitting in a jail cell for two months while she waits for a bed at the state hospital," Deschamps said.

I wonder what gave it away? Was it her LinkedIn page where she claimed to have marched with MLK several times, the Dr. Bronner-like rant on her MySpace page (see Jackiya   Ford: Crazier than I thought for more of that sort of madness), or the pure insanity of an African-American gospel singer appropriating the language and methods of a scam rooted in Identity Christianity to attempt to steal property in MONTANA? (see Reverend Colonel William Potter Gale must be spinning in his grave for details)

Perhaps she had something new for the people evaluating her.

Meanwhile, since the 1990s were 20 years ago it's time for '90s retro chic.  Militias were hot as the right-wing political extremists of the 1990s, so they're back.  Montana had two organizations in the vanguard of patriots guarding against the Black Helicopters and New World Order: the Militia of Montana and the Freemen.  Brent is reminding people of the Freemen.  I originally thought he wasn't involved with the neo-Freemen who are openly back in Lincoln county.  Most political extremists are united only by overlapping aspects of their ideologies;  Brent is probably acting on his own, like whoever did the drive-by "paper terrorism" in Hamilton county earlier this year.  So if he used the Freemen's tactics to try to acquire some property, will he do the same during his trial?  An article in the Missoulian from 3 June 2010 tries to answer that. 

Nick Murnion was Garfield County attorney who prosecuted members of the Montana Freemen.  He said:

"Some have said very few things and mostly just sat there," ... "This fellow sounds more vocal. Obviously, none of them believe the state has any authority over them - they claim they aren't citizens and the courts have no jurisdiction. It gets kind of bizarre."

How bizarre?

"Does the courtroom where he's appearing have an American flag in it?" ... "If the flag has a fringe on it, I've seen them claim it's a maritime flag and therefore the court only has jurisdiction on water."

Like the Freemen Brent insists he has no rights, wants no attorney, and doesn't recognize Lake County's jurisdiction over him.  It's doubtful anyone would believe it if Brent offered a $1 million dollar bounty on the prosecutor as happened to Mr. Murnion, but Brent rented out one of those houses and was in the process of getting a home equity loan, so anything is possible.

In 2008 the US Supreme Court ruled that if someone is declared competent enough to stand trial the judge could still say that person is too crazy to represent themselves, and the judge gets to determine that however they like.  (Indiana v. Edwards) It's like obscenity, the judges know it when they see it.  However...

Broadwater County Attorney John T. Flynn says the Montana Supreme Court has said that defendants have an absolute right to represent themselves, in a ruling that essentially read, he says, that "in Montana, you have a constitutional right to be a fool."

A defendant who disrupts proceedings and does not conform to a certain level of decorum, however, does not have an absolute right to be present in the courtroom, and Flynn says that leads to a couple of competing rights for those who represent themselves.

They have the right against self-incrimination, but they also can't obstruct justice.

A defendant who disrupts proceedings and does not conform to a certain level of decorum, however, does not have an absolute right to be present in the courtroom, and Flynn says that leads to a couple of competing rights for those who represent themselves.

It would be a tad bit difficult to represent yourself if you're not allowed to be in the courtroom.  Judge Deborah Christopher would probably have to invoke Indiana v. Edwards, tell Brent to suck it up, and appoint a lawyer to represent him.

Read the full article for more potential courtroom antics and wacky prosecutorial war stories.  

Brent Arthur Wilson, public enemy #275,000

2010-05-29T14:20:00.003-06:00

A trial date has been set for 12 July.  Another omnibus hearing is scheduled for 10 June regarding charges for one or more other properties.  I really hope evidence about the home equity loan Brent was supposed to have started the process for comes to light.  That is what makes his case truly emblematic of the YIIKes decade's real estate pyramid scheme.  At his most recent hearing Brent took the dare to make even less sense than before.  From the Missoulian article:

[Judge] Christopher again asked Wilson to accept legal representation from the public defender’s office, again told him she could not rule on any motion that hadn’t been made in writing, and again warned him she would not accept nor perform and fiduciary responsibility in the matter even if he did request it in writing.

“I cannot assume that, I cannot practice law, I can perform only as a judge in this case,” she told him.

“Well,” Wilson announced, “I think it’s apropos then that, for the record, on the record, let the record show that I reiterate the situation from last May 20.”

And this is what he went on to say:

“I, Brent Arthur Wilson the man; on the land, born of spirit, of issue, of messiah on the most high; grantor, trustor, settler of the all capitals B-R-E-N-T A-R-T-H-U-R W-I-L-S-O-N Trust; do appoint and nominate District Court Judge Deborah Kim Christopher as the trustee for the Express Revocable all caps Brent Arthur B-R-E-N-T A-R-T-H-U-R W-I-L-S-O-N Trust, with the following three points of law:”

He went on to talk about trusts.

“The purpose for which a trust may be created is the tangent purpose of the settler in truth. It is the law of the trust,” he said, adding that “Brent Arthur … the man is not defaulted as the trustee for the all capitals B-R-E-N-T …”

Well, you get the picture.

“Do you have any evidence to the contrary, Your Honor?” Wilson asked when he was finished.

The other news was how Brent is in the news.  Even the Facebook group I created about Brent is getting some media attention.  OK, it got some local medium attention as part of an article in the Missoulian about Brent gaining national notoriety.  The group's entire manifesto (i.e. description) was reprinted, and I can't ask much more than that.  Alright, I can ask for a link to the group in the online edition, but a Facebook group is easy enough to find.

The article begins with:

When Assistant Lake County Attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson plugged Brent Arthur Wilson’s name into an Internet search engine Wednesday afternoon, it delivered 4,000 hits.
When she tried it again Thursday morning, it was up past 6,000.

That would have been the 20th and 21st of May.  I don't know which search engine or how she entered the search.  Asking the Googles today about "Brent Arthur Wilson" returns 93 unique pages, and about 800 to 7,200 if you include everything with his name that is a link to one of those pages and each time that link shows up on a site.  I've got over 150 posts and a label with his full name, so if you tell Google to show you every single entry you'll get over 150 links to this blog alone.  It's a similar situation with the Missoulian's site and any other media site in Montana with a news section that picked up at least one article about Brent.  Searching for "Brent Wilson" isn't going to work, as that guy is a rugby star and bass player who also happens to be a legitimate real estate agent in several states.  Entering Brent Arthur Wilson without quotes returns almost 800 unique results out of a possible 275,000.  Most of those are not about anyone named Brent Arthur Wilson, are from news/blog aggregators, or are the results of searches run on other sites, including searches that aren't about our Brent.  That search does return several pages about Brent that are outside of Montana and aren't the News of the Weird entries previously mentioned.

It's not possible to get a good fix on how many sites have written about Brent.  Regardless of the search method used, here are some other examples of Brent's growing notoriety.

Domestic Terrorists or Fierce Patriots? on the investment / money management site Main Street, Seth Fiegerman followed up on Tristan Scott's article from the Missoulian in comparing Brent and Jackiya Ford (whom the article is mostly about) with the all-American domestic terrorists - white stupidists supremacists & separatists - for appropriating the sovereign citizen & redemption scams.  Mr. Fiegerman wrote about sovereign citizens:

They want to rely on common law rather than federal law and restore a certain simplicity to America. The hope is that they can get rid of the big banks and big government so they can be free to live in this country without being “hijacked” by these imposing forces. In essence, they are arguably a more zealous and extreme version of the Tea Party movement. Sovereign Citizens promote individual liberties, but they also have taken controversial steps that endanger fellow citizens; members bill themselves as true patriots and yet they break laws and take steps to undermine the government.

The comparison is hardly new.  I read it a few places before writing this in a post commenting on the Missoulian article:

Some of the more extreme tax protesters have been linked with white separatists / supremacists. Lots of people have already connected the extremist tax protesters to the Tea ~~Baggers~~ Party, and Tea Party rhetoric sounds a lot like sovereign citizen / redemption rhetoric.

Wow! The Tea Party isn't exclusively white after all!

If you like it when Tea Baggers go ballistic, be sure to read the comments on Mr. Fiegerman's article.

Brent has been linked to the white stupidists and their sovereign citizen's scam by Rick Ross.  The articles are just reprints from the Missoulian, but getting listed on Mr. Ross' site usually qualifies you as a dirtbag.

Some nimrod stopped by the Tree of Liberty forum trying to sell the sovereign citizens scam as a way to "achieve true justice."  Two Missoulian articles about Brent were used to demonstrate how ridiculous the scam is.  If Objectivists who are still getting ready to survive a post-Y2K meltdown and veer into Black Helicopter territory now and then think something promising freedom from the government is crazy you know it's fucking crazy.

More Scenes from My Boring Life

2010-05-27T16:45:00.001-06:00

Downmarket Most Dangerous Game meets bum fight:

Man shot with blowgun dart outside Missoula homeless  shelter
A 32-year-old homeless man was shot in  the cheek with a blowgun dart early Monday morning and police are  looking for a suspect who drove away in a white Lexus.

A&C Drugs, the oldest pharmacy in Missoula and the one I've been using since I moved up here has closed.  Even after I moved from Missoula I kept my prescriptions there as they would mail them to me.  They were yet another victim of Medicare Part D, reduction of Medicaid payments, and competition with big box stores offering $4 generics.  Here's a good article on the subject, Disappearing drugstores: Small-town health suffers as rural  pharmacies close.  I'll be using the little pharmacy in Superior now.  I hope I'll be able to keep getting Teva's lamotrigine, as Dr. Reddy's may as well be a placebo.  The nearest big box store or chain pharmacy is 60 miles away, and they fill the prescriptions for the community hospital, so they should be able to stay in business.  If they go under I'll do what I can to get generics from specific manufacturers from a chain pharmacy, or get another dispense as written prescription.  I'm considering going to generic topiramate next year, as I'm reading reports that Teva has their act together with their topiramate now.

After a five-year absence I'm back on The WELL.  As I wrote on my member page, I pretty much spend my life just dicking around anyway.  The more things I have to do in a half-assed way, the less I ruminate on how much less my life sucks than a young woman living in Yemen or the parents of a child with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome.

One of the things I do to waste time / procrastinate / calm me the fuck down is look at visitor statistics for the various sites I run (I'll be updating the stats for Crazy Meds Real Soon Now), including the results of search terms used to find them.  One visit to this blog resulted from the search straitjacket design.  The result teh Googles gave me was for a page on paddling.net  Specifically the review of a strait jacket [sic] by someone named Beaverman.  "Beaverman" reviewing a straitjacket for a paddling site?  Kinky!  Unfortunately not.  Reviews for Lotus Designs Strait Jacket PFD, of which Beaverman's is the first, has to do with a jacket or vest one wears when kayaking or canoeing or something like that.

I've got traps out for hornets and yellow jackets, and traps for other social wasps.  The traps for other wasps have fruit juice in them, the traps for the hornets have only sexy pheromones.  I'll give you one guess as to which ones the hummingbirds are trying to feed from.  I can't find any reference to hummingbirds being attracted to yellow jacket sex pheromones. 

The Once and Who the Hell Knows about the Future Domain

2010-05-24T10:55:00.000-06:00

Thanks to forum member Sduibek crazymeds.com is now a valid address for Crazy Meds.

Way back in October 2003 I thought I had registered crazymeds.com with 1&1.  For some reason it didn't work and the domain was squatted.  Then and there I should have gone elsewhere, but as I wasn't thinking clearly enough to properly register a domain I wasn't thinking clearly enough to find another registrar and domain host.

crazymeds.us is still the primary domain.  At some point that may change. 

You're a legal genius Brent Wilson. Or maybe crazy after all.

2010-05-21T10:24:00.000-06:00

Judge Deborah Christopher declared Brent Wilson sane enough to represent himself at trial, with the usual caveats judges give to people who want to do that.  E.g. "You're an idiot."

Yesterday's promise of courtroom antics were fulfilled when Brent appointed Judge Christopher the trustee of the BRENT ARTHUR WILSON Express Revocable Trust.  Brent was very insistent about the capslock name, so it's pretty obvious he knows how to game the system; as long as the system is Linux- or DOS-based.  Judge Christopher declined.

Although Brent managed to address Judge Christopher correctly during  this hearing, he refused to rise for her when she entered the court.  I think he had risen in another way and didn't want everyone to know.  Really, Brent, there are better ways to stalk meet women.

More details at the Missoulian.  I'll post any video I find of this hearing.

Jackiya Ford: Crazier than I thought

2010-05-20T12:29:00.001-06:00

I thought the previous post about Brent was it for the day, but I'm in serious procrastination mode.

Jackiya Ford has some serious crazy and/or fraud going on.

First there's Mcjala Entertainment, her combination record label / promotions & bookings company / Millennialist church.  The website is sadly defunct.  Archive.org isn't aware of it.  A few of its pages are visible, for now, in Google's cache, such as Jackiya's narcissistic About Us / featured artist page and a page plugging the music of the artists they represent.  I'll give you one guess as to how many that is.  Without the graphics, especially on the site's home page, the Millennialist cult church aspects of Mcjala Entertainment are missing.

As someone who has been diagnosed as bipolar by numerous psychiatrists for the last 25 years, and who has lived with people with equally official bipolar diagnoses, I know crazy.  I'm not qualified to diagnose anyone, especially not over the InterGoogles, but I'm pretty good at spotting someone being mentally interesting to some degree.

Jackiya Ford's LinkedIn page screams "batshit crazy."

Sure, lots of people pad their resumes.  Many outright lie.  So her claims of having a law degree and a business degree with 4.0 GPAs could be simple fraud.  But Jackiya also wrote that she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King. That must have happened in a past life as she was born in 1972.  How reincarnation works with homo-hating Christianity (check out her YouTube play list) is beyond me.  She must have been born self-aware like those freaky kids from the Dune books that sucked, because one of her current jobs is "Freeman on the Land" and she's been doing that since 1972.  Those 4.0 GPAs are apparent as part of her duties as a Freeman is being a "Sovern Citizen."

While you're at the YouTube, be sure to listen to Send Me YHWH I'll Go.  Listening to her music you can hear how much Jackiya loves Jesus.  Really LUVS Him, and she'll be the best girlfriend He'll ever have.

Like any musician Jackiya has a MySpace page. Unlike her Facebook page, the MySpace page still exists. For now. It's a typically ugly MySpace page, but it has one thing you'll find on just a few - an awesome, Dr. Bronner-like rant of pure crazy. In case it goes away, here's a more legible copy of the dense text:

What If you wake up one day and realize that your entire life you've lived a lie? Everything you've been taught in school and about life was a lie. What if I said your birthrights were sold you into slavery the very day you were born? Your Birth Certificate, Social Security Card, Drivers License and any other contract you've signed in life was a contract signed with the devil, to take away your true GOD given freedom B.K.A BIRTHRIGHT. Want the TRUTH? God says that my people perish for lack of knowledge.... Ready to really go down the rabbit hole... Pray and ask GOD for Guidance and Wisdom and be assured that he will give it to you. Seek and you shall find. Ask and it shall be given, Knock and the door shall be opened. SEEK TRUTH, embrace knowledge. Study the U.S. Constitution, Common Law,Etymology and the Black Laws Dictionary--(STUDY EVERYTHING YOU CAN)know it & learn it by hard. Learn about the original people of the Land. Separate yourselves from those who embrace the darkness and walk into the Light. Don't worry about what others do unto you. Give it to God and Believe their days are numbered. Know who you are and who's you are. You will never be the same. Life will never be the same.... Know it doesn't matter where you've been or what you've done but it's where your going that counts. These are evil times that we live in. WOE unto those that operate in a De facto Government, WOE unto those that say there is NO GOD. And WOE unto those that have touched the anointed ones of GOD. We are living in a time when the MEEK shall surely inherit the Earth. IT IS WRITTEN. The Word of GOD shall not return unto him Void, but shall accomplish that in which it was sent out to do. I would like to dedicate this site to my grandmother who’s called me on my gift to sing the Gospel and believe GOD in all things early on as a little girl. Carrie Lee Patterson, proclaimed the prophecy that one day Ahayah was going to use me for his glory.( R.I.P. “I Love you grandma.”) Look out for my Album (My Life 4 the Gospel) (2010). My sound is hot and quite commercial. Yet most importantly, I sing to represent Ahayah, in the name of Yashua. Many people feel that they've got what it takes, but I think by now we all know that many are called but few are chosen. Ahayah, has raised up a new generation of nobody's to help him speak the true unmerited Gospel. Yah calls them a pecuiliar people... I understand and I accept the call by AhaYah, that I’ve been chosen to represent in such a way that'll tickle the hearts of mankind. I have full intentions on ministering the true unedited Gospel of my God; until the day I die. I can not be moved, brought, broken, shaken nor turned. I'm In this till I die. As far as the Illuminati's out there; know that GOD of Heaven is the GOD of Israel; who was and Is and is to come. Repent and turn from your wicked ways for his return is at hand. "What profit is it for a man to gain the whole world; yet loose his soul. I love what I do, I love what I’ve become ,I know who I am, I love being me, and most importantly I love living for Ahayah in the name of Yahshua. For those of you who don't know what Ahayah means or Yahshua; Ahayah is God's real name before man changed it. Yahshua is Jesus's real name before man changed it. Know the truth will set you free. However, "Need I say any more," Because when it’s my time to shine. I plan on shining just as bright as the North Star. SO! "WATCH OUT WORLD.... HERE I COME (By the grace of God as he leads me)....." In the true name of Yahshua. WORD OF THE DAY: The true beauty of a woman comes from within. It’s not necessary for a woman to reveal her body for attention. A real man is a man who loves & fears "Ahayah". It is then when Ahayah will lead him to a true beautiful woman that will love & honor him just as Ahayah Loves the Church (the called out ones)(The Remnant). A woman that is spiritually inclined. A woman that knows the truth about historical facts. A woman that respects herself. A woman that will refuse to sell her soul to the devil. A woman that Ahayah has created just for him. (A woman of Virtue). Wake up people if you’re living your life as if these aren't the last days than you’re sadly mistaken and obviously blind to the truth. Open your eyes..... The signs are all around you..... Yahshua, really Is coming sooner than we all think. "I'd rather live my life as if there was a God and die to find out there is none; than to live my life as if there isn't a God just to die & find out there is one. - Anonymous. Shout out to the 144,000 ( one hundred forty-four thousand); and the 2 (two) witnesses at the waling wall.

For anyone who doesn't believe that commercial soap was covered with wacky religious rants, or hasn't seen a classic Dr. Bronner label for some time:

Dilute! Dilute! OK!

picture via sethwhite.org

Brent Arthur Wilson: Sane enough to stand trial

2010-05-20T10:07:00.001-06:00

Hot off the Missoulian's press, or however they print their website:

POLSON - A drifter known for his courtroom antics and accused of trying to steal a foreclosed house in Polson is competent to stand trial.

Brent Arthur Wilson, 53, is back in the Lake County jail after being committed to the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs, where physicians determined he was fit to stand trial.

Lake County District Judge Kim Christopher sent Wilson to the state mental hospital after he refused to participate in court hearings or to work with a public defender.

The article continues at the website, although it's mostly a brief rehashing of what's happened so far.  

An omnibus hearing is scheduled for today. We'll just have to wait for more antics, and if Judge ~~Deborah~~ Christopher rules Brent competent enough to defend himself.

Drug-Drug interaction checker is working again

2010-05-15T10:10:00.001-06:00

The folks at AIDSmeds changed the URL for their drug-drug interaction checker. I'll try to update those pages today.

Edit: As of 6:10 PM Mountain Time the drug-drug interaction checker is working again. Copyright dates on most, if not all pages have been updated, and a few broken links I spotted have been fixed.

Do I still live in Montana? You bet!

2010-05-14T17:26:00.000-06:00

I was in Superior the other day and saw a totally FAH-bu-lous secondhand shop and beauty salon now occupies the building built atop the burned-out ruins of the hotel where Gideon first forgot his Bible a little over 100 years ago.  It replaced the 24 hour gym and "supplement" shop that was there.  Across the street the marquee over the dive bar (as if there is another kind in these parts) no longer advertises the 3 to 7pm happy 'hour' and which nights ladies drink half-price.  Now they have Wii championships.

In places like Missoula, Kalispell, Bozeman, Butte and Billings that sort of stuff is normal, but Superior?

A little before, and since then, several stories made the news that, while maybe not only in Montana, are certainly Rocky Mountain flavored...

Tea Baggers who are trying to unseat Republican incumbents for being RINOs are everywhere.  One such in Montana is Ron Lake trying to unseat Republican state  Representative Jeff Welborn in the June 8th primary.  From Mr. Lake's campaign flier:

It is going to take real Republicans committed to conservative values to make things right again, not Republicans who are ‘in bed' with Big Government.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but when a person runs as a Republican, when he gets to Helena, I think he should vote as a Republican.

Good, wholesome, American conservative values coming from someone who is a registered violent offender, and whose offenses include breaking into someone's apartment to use their phone to place "long distance phone calls" to "adult entertainment" providers.

Tea Party values: Republicans who are in bed with Big Government are bad; Republicans who are violent criminals addicted to  phone sex are good.

On the subject of family values, Missoula has a brand new law (as of today) that prohibits discrimination based on sexual identity.  Yay!  Certain people are uncomfortable with that sort of thing.  Especially priapic anti-porn crusader Tei Nash.  Nash, who is squarely in the "God hates fags" camp, decided to take a gentler approach this time.  He doesn't have a problem with how people are or anything, he just doesn't want pre-op trannies using the ladies room because it will confuse little kids and lead to sexual assault.

No, really.  notmybathroom.com  

I'm surprised Mr. Nash's head didn't literally explode when his daughter came out in front of him and half the county at the overflowing city council meeting about the ordinance.  

At least cowboys are still heroes in Montana.  Especially cowboys who rassle space  aliens to prevent a plane from being hijacked.  OK, it was just one cowboy and he helped the flight crew subdue someone who had too much to drink who was ranting about being a being from another planet, but the guy really is a cowboy.

If we have space-alien-rasslin' cowboys, we need Indians who still hunt tasty critters with handcrafted bows.  And teach kids about it in schools.  Not just about how it used to be, but what bow hunting is like now with handcrafted bows.

All that plus Brent and Jackiya!

I don't know what I was worried about, I totally live in Montana!

I don't think that was how YHWH wanted you to spread the word

2010-05-12T13:43:00.001-06:00

Jackiya Ford's story is the one with legs.  As expected, she's in News of the Weird.  It's not surprising to see her story in Fark.  You know she's got it going on when they're writing about her in India and using her to illustrate a point in the endless argument about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the Pravda.ru forum. That's why she has her own tag now.

I also found a blog entry from someone who claims to know Jackiya.  All of the comments have to do with the homeless and the politics of welfare.

There's an answer to my question about how white separatists / supremacists feel about someone like Jackiya using their scam to have all the fun crooked mortgage brokers had. On Stormfront (a very large and active site for those people) there's a topic with a title about a "Negress 'Sovereign Citizen'". There is much outrage about how such thefts hurts working people and how ludicrous she is for claiming to be a so-called sovereign citizen in the first place. Amazingly enough the sovereign citizen concept is praised all over that site as a way to avoid paying unconstitutional taxes to a corrupt and tyrannical government.

The site for her combination record label-promotions and entertainment company-millennialist church is "temporarily unavailable" due to a problem with the account.

Litany of complaints. Don't bother reading.

2010-05-09T14:52:00.000-06:00

There's one licensed plumber in this part of the county.  Fortunately Kelvin is an ace.  The sort of guy who grew up making stuff from the remnants of pipes and faucets using wrenches and hacksaws that had seen better days.  The plumbing in my house always finds a way of surprising him.

When Kelvin was here previously he needed to run 150 feet of a snake to get to a clog that was responsible for waste water overflowing into the basement / garage.  The access point for the upstairs pipes - only output from the upstairs fixtures spilled into the basement - is about 40 feet north and 10 feet below the farthest fixture, AKA the kitchen sink.

The plumbing here must be based on Monty Python's third season title sequence.

This time around something blocked the flow of water into the water heater.  Whatever it is*, 120 psi of compressed air from either direction isn't enough to dislodge it.  Kelvin decided to just screw it and route water from the sink in the downstairs bathroom into the water heater.  Everything works fine now.

While he was dealing with that a plumbing mystery has been solved.  For a couple years the water pump would turn on once or twice an hour.  I couldn't find a leak anywhere.  Kelvin was here installing a new toilet and he couldn't find a leak either.  When a pipe under the driveway burst and was later repaired the pump would still kick in several times a day for no good reason, stop doing it for a couple months, start again, and finally stopped.

And then it just stopped.  Why?  It sealed itself.  Huh?

So how hard is the water here?

Not as hard as lots of places, but I've been spoiled by the water in Missoula, San Francisco and Hawai'i.

Meanwhile the furnace / boiler is still shot.  It's not talking to the thermostat  in the front part of the house, but that doesn't matter as the water for the baseboards doesn't circulate if I manually override the thermostat control.  It can burn all the oil it wants to, not much happens in the way of heating the house.  On a good day that fucker is 65% efficient, and that's probably with the door to the boiler room open so the heat from burning the fuel oil comes upstairs.  

I don't know what to do, have it repaired, replaced, or just get some space heaters.  Switching to propane seems too expensive.  The three to five grand for a new boiler I could do, but digging and installing new pipes from the tank to boiler would cost a shitload.  Then there's my fear of propane go boom in case of a fire.  The fuel oil tank is way the fuck underground.  Plus if I did get propane installed I'd want to use it for the water heater and the clothes dryer.

And I'm still stuck with baseboard radiators that aren't all that hot.  Switching to some other method of heating this dump, along with everything else, would probably cost more than it's currently worth.  

On top of all that the methylphenidate is giving me trouble.  The split 5mg AM & 5mg afternoon doses weren't doing anything.  So I tried 10mg with breakfast.  That seemed to work for a few days.  Until yesterday, where I felt kind of off.  Today it's the same, only a little more so.  It's like I'm on the verge of an aura.  I have the headache and I'm more confused than usual, while everything else is somewhere between psychosomatic and actual onset.  If I do nothing else except pay attention to how I feel, I can just notice my stomach tightening, and a tingling in my right hand that comes and goes.  I haven't been able to walk straight for over two years now, so that's no longer a reliable indicator, but it's been worse today and yesterday.  So it's back to minimal functionality.

I've been working on the forum software upgrade as best I can.  So far so good now.  No idea when it will be ready.

*At long last, has some piece of Bob Crane's corpse surfaced?

Fuck my life

2010-05-05T14:30:00.001-06:00

It's snowing.  Normally I'd like that.  Not today.

This morning the furnace decided to go haywire.  It burns fuel oil just fine, it just doesn't heat the house.  When I turned the thermostat off it kept burning fuel oil as well as ever. 

Around the same time the hot water thought it was time to take a vacation.  The water heater still works.  Barely anything to absolutely nothing comes out of the taps when I request hot water.  No problem with the cold water.  Lots of cold water any time I ask for it.

At least I don't live in Haiti.  Or Nashville / Middle Tennessee (although I have plenty of Nth cousins X times removed living in eastern Tennessee).  Or Louisiana.  Or Iraq.  Or Afghanistan.  Or wherever else things are going to suck way more than my life.

Won't you please adopt a home today

2010-05-02T14:34:00.000-06:00

Brent and Jackiya aren't the only ones who've adopted the sense of entitlement, and brain-twisting ideology that justifies it, that was once the province of Identity Christianity and its pea-brained offspring.  "Home adoptions" are happening around the country.  The Missoulian ran an article about it.  What's happened here in Montana is far more interesting.  

Brent Wilson encapsulates the real estate pyramid scheme of the YIIKes decade by targeting foreclosed properties, 'adopting' more than one house, renting out one he wasn't living in, and being in the process of getting a home equity loan on one of the adopted properties when he was caught.  And I'm sure lots of felons wish they had the balls to sass a judge.

Jackiya Ford runs Identity Christianity through the looking glass.

But there is one guy who, at first, seems to be a real hero of the foreclosed upon.  From  'Home adoptions' in Lolo, Polson: Sovereign squatters a national movement:

The most brazen attempt at a property takeover by the sovereign citizen movement may have occurred last year in a Miami suburb.

There, one Angel Cruz showed up with 20 black-clad followers and 10 hired – and armed – security guards, to take over a strip mall branch of the Bank of America.

Wearing counterfeit U.S. Treasury badges, according to a story by Casey Sanchez in the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, the 30 blocked the bank’s entrance, parking lot and drive-through lanes.

Cruz apparently believed what he was doing was legitimate. A week earlier, Sanchez reported, the 49-year-old had stopped by the Palmetto Bay Police Department and asked that officers back him up during his “eviction” of the Bank of America.

“To an incredulous police officer,” SPLC’s Intelligence Report said, “Cruz handed over a ‘court order’ signed and sealed by a ‘judge’ from ‘The United Cities Private Court’ ” – United Cities being a company Cruz started.

The 20 followers who joined him were employees of United Cities. For turning over their personal assets, including cash, they had been promised new cars, 30 years of job security and that their mortgages and credit card bills would be paid off by their new employer. SPLC says Cruz intended to accomplish this using “fake bank drafts and fistfuls of ‘United States Private Dollars,’ a counterfeit currency he churned out in his Orlando, Fla., home.”

The so-called court order he handed over to police “referenced a pending $15.25 billion lawsuit against Bank of America filed by Cruz the previous month in Miami-Dade County Court,” Sanchez wrote. “Cruz claimed the bank had wronged him because an Orlando branch refused to cash $14.3 million in phony United Cities bank drafts.

“Taking his beef public, Cruz also had posted a YouTube video announcing his upcoming ‘foreclosure’ of two Miami-area Bank of America branches, while ranting about the Federal Reserve as ‘Satan’s banking system.’ ”

Angel Cruz: bastard love child of David Koresh and the Montana Freemen?  Did he get the modern equivalent of a pitchfork-and-torch-wielding mob together to go after a facilitator of the real estate pyramid scheme and foreclose them?  Hell yeah!

No, not really.  He went after Bank of America because they wouldn't accept a couple million dollars in homemade Monopoly money from the crazy multilevel marketing scam Cruz had going since the mid-2000s.  Long, serious journalism version.  Shorter News of the Weird version.

I still think Brent would make a better cult leader, since he totally looks like Charlie Manson.

Reverend Colonel William Potter Gale must be spinning in his grave

2010-04-30T15:39:00.001-06:00

Brent Wilson copycat Jackiya Ford had her first day in court yesterday.  From the front-page story in today's (30 April, 2010) Missoulian she's certainly following Brent's game plan, even if it's a water-downed version.

Not guilty plea entered for woman accused of stealing Lolo home

A woman accused of staking claim to a man's home by inhabiting the residence refused to enter a plea at an arraignment hearing Thursday because she does not recognize Montana as a legal entity.

[...]

Thursday's court hearing revealed little more of the ideology behind Ford's alleged acts, but a lawsuit she filed against county officials who stymied the deed transfer suggests a pronounced sense of entitlement.

In the lawsuit, Ford accuses officials of preventing her from filing her land patents with the county, of violating her birthright and of being unruly toward her. Ford, who said she is pregnant, is seeking compensation for "mental damage and scars due to duress and coorersion (sic) of all parties involved."

[...]

At Thursday's arraignment hearing in Missoula District Court, Ford asked to have the criminal case transferred to U.S. District Court, where she filed the lawsuit against Missoula County, and asked for access to the jail's law library.

When Desmond read Ford her rights, she asked the standing judge to clarify.
"Question. Are these rights outside of the Constitution of the United States?" Ford asked.

No judge sassing, no demanding to be her own lawyer, nothing as entertaining as Brent.  There is, however, one thing Brent can't top.

She's black.

What difference does that make?

Jackiya Ford essentially followed the instructions of the Redemption Movement by the book with preemptive lawsuits against county officials and filing land patents.   The Redemption Movement evolved from the Sovereign Citizens Movement, both of which came out of the Posse Comitatus (the vigilante group founded in the 1970s, not the 19th-century law).  The Posse Comitatus was key to Identity Christianity growing from an obscure cult to the de facto religion of white supremacists.  The late Rev. Col. Gale of this post's title was the founder of The Church of True Israel, as well as the Posse Comitatus and other paramilitary organizations.  Another group with the same lineage is the Aryan Nations.

I love it.

You go, girl!  This is post-racial America.  A pregnant African-American woman has every right to join up with the Sovereign Christian Redemption posse to get some real estate she's entitled to.  Emphasis on the Christian part as Jackiya is a professional gospel singer with her own record label / production company / sect.  She has a single available on iTunes and a video, of sorts, on the YouTube.

Some of the more extreme tax protesters have been linked with white separatists / supremacists. Lots of people have already connected the extremist tax protesters to the Tea Baggers Party, and Tea Party rhetoric sounds a lot like sovereign citizen / redemption rhetoric.

Wow! The Tea Party isn't exclusively white after all!

The front page of today's Missoulian is now doubly ironic. Right next to Jackiya's story is one about a bunch of asshats in Kalispell propagating a Montana stereotype:

Protesters rally as white separatists watch Nazi film in Kalispell library

At least the protesters outnumbered the dickweeds 20-to-1. So much for the "white homeland."

Brent Arthur Wilson in the media spotlight

2010-04-29T11:12:00.002-06:00

Chuck Shepherd wrote up Brent's doings the Creme de la Weird entry for his News of the Weird column of 25 April, 2010.  

Edit 6 May 2010: URL updated with permanent archive address.

Real Estate Scams = Domestic Terrorism? Why not.

2010-04-28T18:29:00.000-06:00

As Tristan Scott wrote in the second story:

The allegations against Ford smack of the recent case of Brent Arthur Wilson, 53, who faces felony charges in Lake County for his alleged attempts to steal a $300,000 house in foreclosure.

California woman charged with moving into, claiming Lolo home she  didn't own

Jackiya D. Ford, 37, was arrested on April 14 and her belongings removed from a house built by Bob Paffhausen. She made an initial appearance in Justice Court on April 19 and her bail was set at $50,000.

Paffhausen said Ford had showed up about two weeks earlier to view the house as a prospective buyer. Sometime after that, prosecutors say Ford delivered paperwork to Paffhausen claiming ownership of the house and the land in a 20-mile radius around it. She offered to drop the lawsuit if Paffhausen would pay her about $900,000 in pure silver and gold.

Paffhausen received a call from NorthWestern Energy saying someone had reported a natural gas leak at the house. Paffhausen went to the house, where he found the locks and garage door codes had been changed and notices were posted on the doors claiming the house had been given to Ford by "our Lord and Savior Yahushua."

Smacks of Brent indeed.  I like the part about wanting to be paid in real money instead of the Fed's worthless fiat script.  And her name.  It seemed a straightforward copycat crime.  Brent's meme was spreading.  Why should Wall Street types be the only ones to get paid by the government to commit white collar real estate crime?  Everyone should be able to get in on it!

The next day the Missoulian published this story:

Alleged Lolo 'house theft' may have been inspired by extremist  websites

Some highlights:

"It's very difficult to unrecord a document once it's been recorded, so we try to catch these things when they appear on the verge of legality," said Debbe Merseal, Missoula's chief deputy clerk and recorder.Merseal said Ford's filings were so unusual that she sent the paperwork to the legal eagles in the Missoula County Attorney's Office for review. She said the woman tried to have several certified deeds and patent documents re-recorded, but refused to give a reason for the request.

"This definitely was an unusual document," Merseal said. "She described it as a ‘patent sandwich.' I don't believe we've ever seen anything like this."

[...]

The woman first came onto the radar of local law enforcement when she became disorderly in the Missoula County Attorney's Office and had to be removed. She filed "bogus" lawsuits against several sheriff's deputies, said Lt. Rich Maricelli, and demanded settlements be paid in gold and silver.
"It's been an absolute nightmare," Maricelli said.

[...]

Ford told the deputies that she was a "sovereign citizen of the republic of America" and therefore officials had no authority over her. She said she owned the whole mountainside and that they were on private property.At the time of her arrest, she had been living in the house about two weeks.

Ford's alleged intimidation tactics are consistent with the Sovereign Citizen Movement, whose adherents use "paper terrorism" as a form of harassment.

Paper terrorism involves the use of fraudulent legal documents and filings, as well as the misuse of legitimate documents and filings, in order to intimidate, harass and coerce public officials, law enforcement officers and private citizens, according to an FBI news release warning of the practice.

[...]

That FBI issued its news release one day before Ms. Ford was arrested.  The Sovereign  Citizen Movement is the third in an ongoing series to educate the public about "U.S.-based extremist ideologies."  The Montana Freemen of the 1990s were sovereign citizens.  This is just one more indicator that they're back.

I don't think Brent is involved with the neo-Freemen, or any other sovereign citizens. I'm pretty sure his motives are from divine inspiration, and/or getting his share of the good times like everyone deserves and not just Wall Street fatcats.

I have no idea what motivates Ms. Ford.

New and Removed Entries on the Panoply of Blogs

2010-04-25T17:41:00.000-06:00

The following blogs have been moved to the Defunct, but not Forgotten blogroll:

A canna’ change the laws of physics

Adnoxious

Ask A Urinal - Wisdom From Bathroom Graffitti 

Fuck You, Penguin

Grammar Police a.k.a. GrammarCops

Making Maps: DIY Cartography 

Musings of a phenomenologist

Scalpel or Sword? 

Things I've Learned from Wikipedia

This is why we love them

Why The Fuck do You Have a Kid?

They still have great content and, like back issues of Skymall Magazine, if you haven't read it before it's new to you. 

Crass-Pollination: An ER blog is now invitation-only.  Pole Leaning Douchebag and Don't Judge my Hair completely vanished.  The latter is sorely missed.

The good news is there are new blogs to take up the space, although not necessarily the place, of the recently removed entries:

Autocomplete fail

Gross N00dz

Learn from my fail

My Very Worst Job

My Very Worst Roommate

People Of Public Transit

That's my boss

Tweetbaggery

Up On The Fridge

Woman fail

Autocomplete fail is the fifth such site I've come across.  Gross N00dz is just that, some of the grossest people you've ever seen with no clothes on.  There may not be enough bleach on the planet to clean your eyes.  The content warning, or something, prevents the last update and title from coming through.  Remember: once seen, it cannot be unseen.

I managed to get the Picture Pool from Texts from Last Night to update.  You need to have a Flickr account to see it.  I still can't get the Horse Head blogs to cooperate.

Forum Software Upgrade

2010-04-17T12:21:00.001-06:00

In preparation for the upcoming degradation upgrade of the Crazy Meds Talk forum software I'm updating some operating system software today.

Short notice because I was too stupid to first read the system requirements for the new forum software.  Otherwise I would have planned for this.  I want to test the new forum software and I sure as hell can't do that without installing it.

I have no idea how long the interruption will last. Assuming anyone notices.

------------------

I doubt anyone noticed a thing.

Hero The Cult - Round 2

2010-04-07T13:43:00.002-06:00

There are new ads for the HTC Hero smart phone.  A day or two prior to those ads showing up new ads for Scientology appeared.  The old ads for Scientology are in a higher rotation now.   Perhaps the new Scientology ads didn't test as well, or perhaps it's because the new Scientology ads are not as similar the new HTC Hero ads as the old Scientology ads are.

Funny how the Scientology ads kind of vanished until right before the new HTC Hero ads started showing up everywhere.  Suddenly the ads for Scientology were everywhere.  It's as if the clams couldn't afford the air time until HTC's next big media buy, then they suddenly had the money to spend on advertising.  Sort of like how the first big ad blitz featuring those ads that look and sound so much like the previous set of HTC Hero ads appeared shortly before said ads.  Makes you wonder about things, doesn't it? 

As the only TV I get is via satellite, my advertising landscape is different than it is for those who watch via cable, over-the-air local reception, or teh InterTubes, so "everywhere" for me is somewhat less hyperbolic than you might think.  Agencies can buy in bulk from companies that own multiple channels and really save, on the proviso that most of the spots will be preempted by local carriers.  So buying five spots an hour on the Discovery networks means I have the opportunity to see the same ad five times an hour on seven different channels (the People Blowing up Stuff at Work Channel, the Way Too Many Children Channel, Animal Planet, the Sex, Drugs and Circus Freaks Channel, the War Channel [not to be confused with A&E's Nazi Network], the Science Films They Should be Showing in Schools Channel, and the Serial Killer Channel), while someone with basic cable would see the same ad once or twice an hour, the other times local ads and national ads targeting a specific region would be seen.  Basic cable would probably have only the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC to watch it on.  While it's possible for the satellite provider to preempt a bulk ad with one they've sold, that doesn't happen nearly as often.

As Ian Flemming wrote, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three  times is enemy action."  Given how complicated the world is these days I'm willing to add a margin of error of one.  Twice may still be anomalous, or it could be evidence of collusion.

Video of Brent telling Judge Deborah, "You are not God."

2010-03-29T13:57:00.001-06:00

Video and mugshot courtesy of the Lake County  Leader.

Forum Software Upgrade and More Fantabulous Procrastination

2010-03-28T14:48:00.000-06:00

I'm preparing for an upgrade to version  3.0.whatever-is-current of Invision Power Board.

Crazy Boards runs  under IPB 3.0.x, so look there if you want an idea of what the new  software is like.  We won't look exactly like that, especially since  they're fond of modifying the software, but you should get the general  idea.

I can't give you an estimate yet as to when it'll start,  how long it will take, etc.  As always such things depend on my mental  and physical health, as well as consecutive hours of relative clarity of  thought.  I've downloaded the software and gave the upgrade manual a quick scan, so at least I've started.

As much as I'd rather leave the software as it is,  Invision software has announced that the version of the software we now  have will no longer be supported.  In addition to the usual health  excuses, I've been putting off the upgrade because version  3.0.lower-than-it-is-now was really fugly and, in some areas, had less  functionality than what we have now.   I'm still not a big fan of how it  looks, but it does everything the 2.3.5-and-up version does in addition  to all the new bells and whistles.

I like 3.1 a lot more, but  it's still in beta.  I just can't wait for that version if I need any  technical support, as support for 2.3.get-with-the-program will end before 3.1 will be stable enough for general release, let alone stable enough for me to install.

As for the procrastination, I've created yet another stupid Facebook group.  Fans of Brent Arthur Wilson.  Why? Brent Arthur Wilson encapsulates the entire zeitgeist of the real estate  pyramid scheme of the previous decade.  He's probably a criminal.  He  may be crazy.  But is he all that different from the predatory lenders  offering, or the would-be house flippers taking out loans where one made  payments only on the interest until that final, big-ass balloon  payment?  Is all the paperwork he filed packed with Biblical references  any more bizarre than the recursive, debt-based derivatives that led to  the near-collapse of our financial system?

To top it all off, he sasses and mouths off at the judge who is  currently in charge of his immediate fate.  While acting as his own  lawyer.  So not only is he charged with stealing oversized houses like  the bankers themselves, he's a one man pitchfork-and-torch-carrying mob  who doesn't consider himself subservient to a judge, or anyone else who  considers one person as being the better of another. 

News you can confuse, use, or lose.

2010-03-26T17:27:00.102-06:00

There's a proposal before the Missoula city council to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  Naturally a bunch of closed-minded bigots will have problems with that sort of thing, but this one is really special.  NotMyBathroom.com allegedly represents 17 or so groups opposed to the proposal because it would allow men to use the ladies' room and thus frighten and confuse children.

I shit ye not.

It will also force ministers to perform gay marriages, give homosexuals 'special' rights, and the usual litany of orgiastic end-times tribulations.

But they don't hate homosexuals.  Really.

And the various groups that are part of the umbrella organization can't be identified because, you know, gay bashing isn't protected speech.  And since contributing over $100 to a political campaign goes on the public record, everyone who gave more than $100 to California's Prop. 8 suddenly felt threatened and oppressed by homosexuals.

Who is behind the frightened people in the bathrooms?  Tireless WalMart-funded anti-porn crusader Dallas Erickson.  It doesn't matter that there's hardly any porn where he lives, that most of it is in the form of Playboy, Penthouse, and video equivalent, and next to impossible for someone under 18 to look at.  He's one of those guys who stays up late all night worrying that someone is having a good time.  Scroll down to Time to stop this permissiveness to see one of his great anti-porn rants.

Here's the Missoulian's story on NotMyBathroom.com

You know how first / emergency responders have large-scale drills to work out various scenarios.  A bunch of people with nothing better to do act like they've been killed or injured by an earthquake, terrorist attack, bioweapon oopsie, whatever, and the coordinated police, fire, and appropriate other agencies figure out how well their plans would work when there's nothing else happening outside of the few blocks they've roped off.

How do you do that when you don't have much money?  Actual headline:

Playing with fire: Agencies stage disaster using Hot Wheels, Army  men

The concept of getting paid to be a fireman who plays with army men and Hot  Wheels must be giving 8-11 year-olds total hard-ons.

Where do you go if your end-times, Mormon-offshoot religion is too freaky-weird for Utah and Idaho?  Montana!

Religious sect rejected by Utah, Idaho moves to Fromberg

A religious group led by a man who claims to be the Holy Ghost has moved to the Fromberg area after a brief stay in a small Idaho town where residents protested the group's building plans.

Their Fromberg neighbors are wary of the group and law enforcement officials have been notified of the group's activities in Utah and Idaho.

Members of the Church of the Firstborn and General Assembly of Heaven had fled to Idaho from Utah last year after their large home in a Salt Lake City suburb was raided by federal officials investigating claims of child sexual abuse and assassination threats against President Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Last September, the group started moving from Idaho into two homes on a lot at 605 Bridger-Fromberg Road. The main home had been rented by Larry Daniels, who was sentenced last week to prison for murdering his adult son in the house.

The church is led by 43-year-old Terrill Dalton, who said group members are peaceful and felt drawn to Montana.

"We all prayed about where to go next and a lot of people had the same feeling that we ought to go to Montana, somewhere nigh unto Billings, not the city, but nearby," Dalton said.

Geody Harman is the church's co-leader, Dalton's "first counselor." Asked how many people live on the property, Harman had to stop and count.

"Fourteen or 15, something like that. No, it's 16," Harman said. That number includes the 36-year-old Harman's wife and their nine children.

The article continues at the link to the Missoulian.  It's '90s nostalgia.  These folk are the Church Universal and Triumphant of this decade.  

Our good buddy Brent Wilson just can't keep his mouth shut.  The headline in the early edition of the paper I get has a much better headline: Alleged house thief continues to mouth off.  "Mouth off" isn't as good as "sasses," but is still pretty good.

Brent is obviously crazy, and medication would likely help him, especially since he insists on acting as his own lawyer, but I think he's great.  The way he attempted to steal the houses is totally batshit crazy, yet he managed to get a home equity loan for one of them.  He claims to neither have nor need constitutional rights, which is probably his justification for treating Deborah, sorry, Judge Christopher, just like any other person.  A bit dickish perhaps, but it's not like he called her a bitch or threatened her.  He's just asking to be held in contempt of court and/or in crazy lockup, but it could all be weird judicial kung fu.

There's no video of Brent mouthing off, but here's a direct link to the video when he first sassed Judge Deborah Christopher. 

Sassing judges: never a good idea

2010-03-19T18:22:00.001-06:00

One reason why I love living in Montana: reading this sort of headline in the local paper.

Man  accused of stealing Polson-area foreclosed house sasses judge.

Details  and video of sassing at the link.

The way he stole foreclosed houses is pretty imaginative.   He'd find a foreclosed house that was on the market, take down the "For Sale" signs, break in change the locks, and file a bunch of weird paperwork.  For example:

"The designation trustee and steward as used herein," it reads, "shall include said resurrected and non-resurrected sons of man, and their heirs as required by context.

"Witnesseth that the trustee, for a valuable consideration paid by the trustee to the creator, Yahweh, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, has and by these presents does grant and convey stewardship unto brent-arthur: in fee-farm, all that certain lot of land situated on Lake, the county, Montana, the land, commonwealth yiisra'el, and more particularly described as follows:"

What follows is a lengthy description that begins with the "third planet from the sun" and ends with plat tract book information.

The document appears to be notarized, but in her charging affidavit, deputy county attorney Jessica Cole-Hodgkinson notes "it does not list the notary's name, expiration of their notary power, or their location." Instead, under an illegible signature, it reads, "My commission expires: upon my final breath."

"I couldn't believe the Clerk and Recorder would take something like this, but what I learned was they can't stop anybody from recording anything," [Ed] McCurdy says.

Ed McCurdy is the Realtor of the foreclosed property in the above example. Mr. Wilson was able to get at least one home equity loan on one of the properties he and Yahweh "own."  I thought lenders were being more careful these days.

Great picture of him in court.  There's something familiar about about this guy...

 I couldn't help it.

Most Heartrending Consumer Medication Guide Ever

2010-03-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

I saw an ad for Sabril (vigabatrin) in the current issue of Neurology Now, unlike any ad I've seen for a prescription drug in a consumer-oriented magazine. The ad was nothing more than a headline reading "Help for hard-to-treat seizures," the Sabril logo
and 2.75 pages of patient /consumer information.  That's it.  No smiling people, no images implying  one's life getting back together, no toddler with the helmet on the  ground instead of on her head. Just easy-to-read text on epilepsy-awareness purple. If you fill out and send in the postage-paid card attached by the ad, Lundbeck will mail you a package of education materials that may have warm & fuzzy pictures.

Like most ads for medications these days the bulk of the ad buy is comprised of some or all of the medication guide / patient information leaflet.  Sabril's medication guide is also unlike any I've ever seen due to two words used repeatedly throughout the document: your baby.

Whenever the phrase "your baby" is used in consumer information it's always in  the context of warning you that a drug could harm your baby if you take  it while pregnant and/or breastfeeding.  Infants and 0-year-old children get all sorts of  medications and have their own doctors, but in the world of consumer medication information babies rarely do.  Babies get vaccinations,  caffeine citrate oral solution is given to premature babies, but  little else.  

In the second paragraph it states  that Sabril is used to treat babies and you and your doctor or your baby's doctor have  to decide if the infantile spasms (West Syndrome) is so bad you'll risk vision loss (which is not total blindness, but blurry tunnel vision). 

And  the which sucks less for your baby equation is repeated over and over.

There are treatment options that probably suck less. There's prednisone, prescription-strength &  pharmaceutical-grade vitamin B-6, ACTH (at the low, low price of  $23,000, yes, 23 THOUSAND DOLLARS a vial), Topamax (topiramate),  Lamictal (lamotrigine), Zonegran (zonisamide), Depakote (divalproex  sodium), Keppra (levetiracetam) and Klonopin (clonazepam).  If the kid's  been weaned the ketogenic diet is also an option.

If you look at these treatment guidelines and the American Academy of Neurology's official ones, the only treatments that "probably" work are ACTH (dropped by most insurance companies due to cost), Sabril, and the ketogenic diet, which can take anywhere from two to five months to start working.  Everything else is classified as "maybe it will work." B-6 is probably listed as first-line treatments due to a lower side effect profile.  I don't know why prednisone is, as it has a possible side effect of death.

Left untreated or poorly treated, infantile spasms can result in death.  Which sucks less?

Sabril was approved for use in the US in August 2009, but  available to desperate parents since 1988 after the FDA updated its  personal use guidelines. Lundbeck doesn't make it any easier to obtain Sabril now that it is approved in the US.  Lundbeck's SHARE program that doctors, pharmacies and patients must pass in order to prove they are qualified to respectively prescribe, dispense, and take (or give to their babies) is just as, if not more complicated than the Clozaril registry upon which it was probably based.  At least there is just one Sabril registry.  Every company that manufactures generic clozapine has its own registry.

Ironic Gun Safety Lesson or Subversive Recruiting Technique?

2010-03-12T12:32:00.003-07:00

Superintendent accidentally discharges muzzleloader in class

Dwain Haggard’s high school history lesson on Friday backfired.

Haggard, who used to be a Civil War reenactor, was showing the five students in Reed Point High’s American history class his replica antique black powder muzzleloader when the gun fired and lodged a ball in the front wall of the classroom.

“I can’t explain how it was loaded,” Haggard said.

Haggard has been district superintendent since 2007, and each year he’s visited the high school’s American history class to show off his Civil War-era equipment. When he shows the muzzleloader, he finishes the demonstration by firing a cap, which makes a small “pop” when he pulls the trigger, he said.

But this time, “when I dropped the hammer on it, to all of our surprise, it went off,” he said.

Jake Bare, a junior at Reed Point High, was in the class when the gun fired. He said it caught everybody off guard.

When Haggard pulled the trigger, there was a loud bang,and the room filled with smoke, Bare said.

“Holy criminy, you just shot the map,” he said.

Indeed, the ball shot through the “o” in the word “North” at the top of the map and lodged in the wall, Haggard said.

[...]

He described the incident as “bitter irony.” As superintendent, Haggard has worked with the school to increase safety at the school, updating its drills and the training staff receives.

Just one of those things that makes for a funny news story, right?

The thing is, the Freemen are making a comeback here in Montana.  Talk about being on the bleeding edge of '90s nostalgia; and perfectly timed with the growing torches and pitchforks anger and outrage the teabaggers are directing at the federal government and banksters. They haven't forgotten their roots.  In addition to starting petitions to recall elected officials...

Paul Stramer now heads a small group called Lincoln County Watch, where leaders of the unsuccessful petition drive attend meetings.

The group gathers in Eureka to talk about the "banksters" at the Federal Reserve, the judges "bought and paid for," the conspiracy that took America off the gold standard, and the need to "prepare for the worst."

Stramer has set his van up as a high-tech mobile communication base, he said, and is collecting silver against the collapse of the dollar.

"There may come a time," Stramer said at a recent Eureka meeting, one of many posted by the group on YouTube, "when the precious metal of choice is lead, because at least you can make some bullets out of it and shoot something to eat, and defend your family."

Participants at Lincoln County Watch meetings have told of Black Hawk helicopters landing in the rural area, and mysterious SUV's with dark windows and no plates, men in black, and C-130 planes flying low over the remote border town, the YouTube videos show.

Stramer, in turn, recommends that citizens carry radios and cameras to track covert government activity - creating a "local patriot network."

One take-no-prisoners issue the Freeman and Tea Party have is 2nd Amendment absolutism.  If the 2nd Amendment doesn't afford enough protection, Montana has added the 10th.  The Montana Firearms Freedom Act states that any gun and any ammunition manufactured and sold in Montana is exempt from federal regulation under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.  It doesn't state which state agency, if any, would be responsible for regulating made-in-Montana guns.

You can buy a left-handed 6mm Varminter now.  But what if you can't afford it now?  And by the time you can the ATF has a problem with it?  Who is going to protect the citizens of Montana from ATF interference in our God-given right to own hand-made, small-caliber, single-shot rifles?  Or muskets?

County sheriffs.  "Constitutional" county sheriffs have always been on the front lines of protecting our civil rights, albeit hypothetically:

While many of [former Utah sheriff Richard] Mack's backers are gun owners who believe the country is taking away their Second Amendment rights, Mack said true "constitutional" sheriffs will protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans on any front.

"What would a constitutional sheriff have done in 1959?" Mack asked the crowd.

When the call came in to the Montgomery County, Ala., sheriff's office that a black woman was refusing to move to the back of the bus - as required by law - the sheriff would have arrived on the scene and talked to Rosa Parks.

"Ma'am, what's the problem," a constitutional sheriff would have asked her, Mack said. Told she had taken an empty seat and just wanted to be left alone, the constitutional sheriff would have sat down next to her, ridden with her to her stop - and, once off, for good measure taken her into a whites-only restaurant so she could buy sandwiches for her and her husband.

He'd have then escorted her home, Mack said - asked if her husband was armed and could defend his family if anyone upset by what had happened came around and threatened them - and ordered extra patrols of the house.

"Remember, segregation wasn't a tradition, it was the law of the land," Mack said. "Rosa Parks taught us what you do with stupid laws."

Which brings us back to superintendent Haggard and his one-man Civil War reenactment.  He shoots at the North, literally, as an act of rebellion against the Federal Government.  He reminds the students how far the government will go to enforce its dominion over the states and citizenry.  True patriots must be willing to stand up and defend themselves.  With muskets and varminters.

This bit of pseudo-paranoia is brought to you by:

 Batshit Crazy shirts.

Alternative History Cartography: Japanese Division

2010-03-06T14:19:00.003-07:00

I don't expect much in the way of accuracy from a globe that's a paper balloon (kami fuusen). For what it is the geographic features and political boundaries are pretty good; far more accurate than the wildly distorted boundaries of the Ohio Arts globes I'm so found of. The errors that are here, accidental or intentional, are still amusing.

As the globe is from Japan I'm hardly surprised the Kuril Islands are depicted as Japanese territory, so that doesn't count.

The globe was designed in, or based on maps from early 1990. This is easily apparent as Germany and Yemen are divided, the Baltic states are independent, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia haven't broken up, and Eritrea is still part of Ethiopia.

While the most sloppily rendered section, the European nation states are relatively accurate for that time; allowing for Belgium and Luxembourg being too small to bother with displaying, and Switzerland and Italy being too similar in color to show up in this picture. Someone had it in for France. So far so good, right?

Now we get into the parallel universe. In addition to losing the Baltic states, the USSR has split into Soviet Russia (approximate translation) and Kazakhstan (Kazafusutan), which is comprised of all of the Soviet Stans. It's not clear from this picture that Afghanistan is an independent state as it's the same color as the super-sized Kazakhstan.

In spite of the pro-Stan stance the cartographer had, Pakistan got the short end of the stick when it comes to Kashmir. India has full control of it. But what the cartographer gave with one hand, the cartographer has taken away with the other. It looks like the separatists in Northeast India got what they wanted. Almost. Instead of being an independent nation they're part of the unlikeliest country on the planet to have any territorial ambitions: Bhutan! Some of the states joined with Bhutan, Burma grabbed the rest and half of Bangladesh as well.

In the early 1960s the Malay states, Sarawak, Sabah, Singapore and Brunei were trying to come to terms with their numerous conflicting, ethnic, religious and political forces and enclaves as they struggled for independence. Eventually the first three formed what is now Malaysia, Singapore became a city-state, and Brunei decided to remain a British Protectorate until 1984. At the time there were all sorts of possible outcomes, and an independent North Borneo Federation was one of them, albeit an unlikely one. Especially unlikely was naming the federation Brunei and moving Bandar a few hundred miles west.

At first I thought they considered Microsoft's headquarters as the co-capital of the United States. Nope. That's Toronto. Why Toronto is in Washington state and when it replaced Ottawa as the capital of Canada are the greatest mysteries of this globe.

I don't know who makes this globe, but you can get one of your own from J-List.

New Shirt Design at Straitjacket T-Shirts

2010-02-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

Just one this time:

Are You Sure The Door's Locked And The Stove Is Off?

Each shirt in the Obsessed and/or Compulsive section is now in its own subsection.

Dumbest Criminal of the Month (to date) - Montana Edition

2010-02-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

No comment necessary.

Trail of snacks, MySpace surfing lead to Hamilton burglary suspect

HAMILTON - Stephan Crane will probably never be a professional burglar.

The 19-year-old Hamilton man was arrested Tuesday morning following an early morning break-in to the Ravalli Republic.

Crane allegedly broke into the newsroom through a window and then watched some pornography on the computers he found inside. He also logged onto his MySpace and Facebook pages using his own name.

Somewhere along the way, the man doused the room with a fire extinguisher.

Following a short investigation, Hamilton police officers found Crane at his sister's apartment just across the hallway from the paper's newsroom.

The officers followed a trail of stolen trail mix and M&Ms to her door.

The article continues at the Missoulian's website, where you can read about Mr. Crane's incredible and nefarious motives, and further details of the Hamilton Police Department's efforts to catch Mr. Crane.

Unfortunately I am unable to find Mr. Crane's Facebook page.

Matlock. I want Matlock! MAAAAAATTTTTLLOOOOOCCKK!

2010-02-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

How old and out of the loop am I? I didn't know Rowland S. Howard died about six weeks ago, 30 December 2009. Then again it's probably remarkable he reached 50 in the first place. I consider myself fortunate to have seen The Birthday Party and Crime and the City Solution play live.

Screw the Olympics. I'm spending most of today listening to 20-30+ year-old vinyl recordings of The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party, Crime and the City Solution, These Immortal Souls, the collaborations with Lydia Lunch and The Bad Seeds, Barry Adamson, and whatever I don't have but can find on the InterTubes.

Obituary from Melbourne's The Age.

Remembrance from the UK's Guardian.

Brisbane Times interview from 1 November 2008.

MySpace page.

Discogs' Discography.

Discography by Maurice Maes and Leo Meijer at claranet.nl Although complete only through January 2001, and included as a subset of Nick Cave's, this one is easier to read and covers important omissions from Discogs' list. E.g. The Young Charlatans.

It didn't help that I was already weirded out yesterday when I heard Negative Trend had reformed. Showing once again how old and out of it I am.

While the various replacement bass players for the reconstituted version of Flipper haven't been involved, drummer Steve DePace was a couple times. The only reason I'm bothered by this is I'm one of the last people to have seen Will Shatter alive. The night he OD'd we were at the Mab watching somebody, drinking beer (at least I was), and, among other things, discussing my playing didgeridoo with Flipper or one of his other projects. A few hours later he was dead. His girlfriend even brought up the subject of how long he had been clean. Will and I were neighbors for a couple years (we both lived on the same block on Moss, then I moved about a block away), and when Will or Bruce saw me at a gig they'd ask if I paid with my "punk bucks" (currency I'd type screeds on). They got paid with some one night and asked to be paid with it whenever possible.

I guess whoever is supposed to walk over my grave needed to ask for directions.

Updates on Crazy Meds

2010-02-03T16:11:00.002-07:00

If I haven't written a real article about a med after six years (e.g.   Dilantin, the individual benzodiazepines), who knows when an article for   said medication will be written.  As such I'm deleting the stub   articles, associated PI sheets, and I'm in the process of removing links to   them from most pages.

As I'm removing all those pages, I'm expanding / cleaning up pages about   families of medications.  E.g. the page on benzos.    This is an on-going process.  Real articles for additional medications   may or may not be written in the future.

I'm removing broken links as I find them.

References to "the usual side effects" for anticonvulsants now link to   the anticonvulsants side effects   page, instead of the basic info about anticonvulsants page.  Like   they should have.

I'm also doing some miscellaneous cleaning up.

They're certainly appealing to my demographic

2010-01-23T13:24:00.001-07:00

The 1990s are back in force here in Montana.  The Freeman reconstituted around the fear that Kenyan-born and secret Muslim 'President' Obama is going to steal everyone's firearms and county sheriffs are the first line of defense against the baby killers in the BATF.  The black helicopter crowd has found a link between socialized government-run health care and the New World Order (NWO):  The FDA's Codex Alimentarius Commission.  Specifically its work with the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the International Harmonization of food.  And who is overseeing all of this? None other than the World Trade Organization!  Of course it's the WTO.

Doesn't that read like the scariest shit this side of the USA PATRIOT act?  It's one of those things that has the far right and far left meeting each other in the same part of Crazy Town.  Cue the theme from The X-Files.

I bring this up because the same UNABomberish guy keeps showing up in the ads at weather.com, regardless of what they're selling.  I put the first one up on fail.blog:

It could be a demographic identification fail, or he could be the 'mom' in the new UNABomber / Manson family.  Then again they could be enticing him with the promise of lots of moms attending college, because he looks like the sort of guy who'd be hitting on the MILFs.  Or any other mammal that is breathing, or at least still warm.

Now I'm seeing this:

Oh yeah, Harold could be my neighbor.  You bet.  Assuming he hasn't had his license revoked after his 11th DUI.  Although he doesn't strike me as the type who would bother with a driver's license, let alone insurance.

Crazy Meds back online

2010-01-22T13:57:00.001-07:00

I currently don't know why or for how long Crazy Meds was unavailable, but we're back now. When I do know I'll post something.

EDIT: Fuck if I know what happened. The server went down at 2:43 a.m. Mountain Time (09:43 GMT) and I brought it back up at 1:45 p.m. (20:45 GMT). I've been through every freaking log there is and nothing explains why a shutdown was ordered.

Pruning the Panoply 2

2010-01-13T20:33:00.001-07:00

I've pruned various defunct or defunct-seeming sites from my various blog rolls.  Most are still available in a new section further down.

I've kept some that have a history of dormancy, e.g. Hospital Food.  They may or may not be moved at a later date.

Some entries have misleading dates.  The Flickr version of Texts from last night is updated several times a day, but the feed I'm getting is updated only if someone posts to the discussion.  If the folks at Not Hired haven't received a truly awful resume in some time they'll post a classic, and that will get tagged as being a year old.  The Horse Head Huffer blogs (Spare some LOL, What the Face and others) have dates all over the map.

I'll probably be adding new sites to the various blog rolls in the relatively near future.

Scenes from my boring life

2009-12-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

All y'all should be as bored as I am with my 'life.'   This is the shit I do or just think about when I'm too demotivated and/or too medicated to do much of anything.  Which is how I am most of the time.

With only a few days left I come up with a name for this decade: The Yikes!2, which is probably more accessible than Y2Kes!, although the latter might be easier to understand.  I think "Yikes!" squared  pretty much sums up the Y2K years, which sandwiched terror attacks, war, paranoia, electoral turmoils, and a global natural disaster between the dual hangovers from overhyped panic & parties and the worst international economic downturn since the 1930s. 

Wacky weather haiku:

Texas white Xmas

bare, brown Montana landscape

Climate change? Really?

I got new snow tires, so of course it's not going to snow again until 2012.  If then.

I had a music-related dream the other night, yet another one that made me sad I don't know shit about music.  I heard Siouxie & the Banshees doing a Joy Division cover, which for some strange reason sounded like Siouxie Sioux singing with Interpol instead of her singing with Bauhaus / Love & Rockets, which is what Siouxie & the Banshees doing a Joy Division cover would probably sound like.  Anyway it was an original song (like all the music I dream about) with the lyric "I look in her eyes and see I can never win."  The Google can't find anything close to that in the same sentence, but there are so many great bands whose lyrics have yet to be published on the Intertubes.

Tremble in the majesty of my Kvetchmas booty, bitches:  Seasons 1 & 2 of Wonder Showzen. Robot Chicken Star Wars Episodes I & II. Family Guy Blue Harvest & Something, Something, Something Dark Side. 

The animation involving things like ships and asteroids in Something, Something, Something Dark Side is better than that in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  That's saying something, I just don't know what. 

I used to be told, frequently, that I'm the reincarnation of someone from Japan.  A Meiji-era comic was the final consensus.  While hikikomori is a modern condition, it certainly describes me during adolescence:

Called hikikomori, or social withdrawal, the ill-defined but debilitating syndrome afflicts as many as 1.2 million young people--seven in 10 of them male. Symptoms include agoraphobia, paranoia, aversion to sunlight and severe anxiety; sufferers become antisocial [sic] in their teens or 20s and spend months or years holed up in their bedrooms. "They see themselves as ugly. They think they smell," says Tamaki Saito, who runs the outpatient program at Sasaki Hospital in Chiba. "They fear that they're being watched by neighbors, so they cover windows with curtains or black paper."

I didn't think I smelled bad, but everything else fits.  Although I was socially avoidant, which is what most post people usually mean when they use the term "antisocial."   I'm the kind of dick who points out that sort of shit.  I came across the article while researching Apathy Syndrome for a topic on the Crazy Meds forum.

Christmas Music

2009-12-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

A bit late, given how this song is especially relevant this year.  But one of only two Kvetchmas songs you really need:

Culturcide's Santa Claus was my Lover

The other is Happy Flowers' All I Got were Clothes for Christmas.  From the Touch and Go compilation God's Favorite Dog.  I don't know if that has been re-issued on CD or not.

Lurn 2 spel

2009-12-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's "straitjacket" you moron, not "straight jacket." Someone is tightly (strait) confined when wrapped / encased (jacketed) in one. It is not a linear article of clothing. The Cafe Press store name and reference on the Mental Mall page have been updated.

It's been how many fucking years until I noticed that?

More Flavor, Less Lexico-Spatial Awareness

2009-12-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

My Topamax dosage was raised by 50mg to 375mg a day, in addition to the lamotrigine (250mg), protriptyline (50mg) and methylphenidate (a whopping 5mg).  This has allowed me to take the methylphenidate daily, work on a crossword puzzle if I don't have anything better to do, and eat food seasoned with nutmeg and cloves without worrying about having an aura.  Taking the methylphenidate is especially important because taking it daily means my sense of smell and memory are better, and the tremors aren't as bad.

One downside is my appetite isn't worth shit.  More Topamax + daily methylphenidate = can't even force myself to eat that much.  I'm not dangerously skinny, gaining weight is just another thing I've given in to giving up on.  While nutmeg and cloves are kosher again, peanuts are now part of my permanent Lent.  No peanuts means no peanut butter.  No peanut butter means no peanut butter and banana milkshakes, which were a great means of caloric intake when I couldn't deal with cooking and/or eating.  Fortunately I don't have the "look at a peanut and die" allergy, just an "eat peanut butter and spench" allergy or sensitivity of some kind.  As peanuts are legumes it doesn't surprise me that they'd eventually not like me any more.  The cost is too prohibitive for other nut butters.

I've gone back to needing nine to ten hours of sleep.  That wouldn't bother me if I were able to go to sleep at nine PM.  I'm lucky to fall asleep at 10:30.  Waking up after eight in the morning just messes with me.

The oddest effect is a kind of jamais vu or other Topamax-related size issue.  When I'm doing a crossword puzzle it won't matter how many times I count the number of squares and the number of letters in the word or phrase I know is the answer, I can't make it fit.  It's too short, it's too long, I've yet to discern a pattern.

Updates on Crazy Meds

2009-12-06T14:01:00.001-07:00

I did a minor update to the Abilify page and   posted a new PI sheet for it, to reflect its   recent approvals. 

I also did a slightly less minor update to the Clozaril page and posted   a PI sheet to replace the dead link, along with links to PI sheet equivalents and consumer information   from Australia, New Zealand and the UK.  Clozaril is being discussed   more and more these days.

New Board on Crazy Meds Talk for Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Conditions

2009-12-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

I just created a new board on the forum for Crazy Meds.   Schizophrenia & Other Psychoses: Messages from the Zernox Galaxies

Throughout their lives, membership in the nine versions of the Crazy Meds fora has skewed towards affective mood disorders.  We never have had many people in the spectrum of psychotic conditions, but we've been one of very few sites run by the mentally interesting that caters to the psychotic.  I've yet to come across a site specifically about schizophrenia that isn't run by, and is primarily for family, friends and 'caregivers.'  It's the same patronizing attitude NAMI has these days and it disgusts me.

What finally got me off of my ass to create the board was a post, that, in part, reminded me the latest round of anti-crazy bigotry from NPR, Huffington Post and other bastions of liberal groupthink. In their effort to avoid even raising the questions of what parts religion or nationality may or may not have played in the Fort Hood event (My take: Exactly like those of Timothy McVeigh when he killed 168 people in Oklahoma City 19 April 1995, a perverted form of religion mixed with an extremist and racist nationalism.) they dug and dug for the slightest hint of crazy. Long before the rumor of an insanity defense plea.  Unable or afraid to wade into a complex debate regarding the motives of a fratricidal traitor they prefer to deflect the issue by raising the specter of crazy.  Because it's perfectly acceptable for everyone to hate and fear us.

In the hierarchy of the mentally interesting the schizophrenic and other psychotics are pretty low on the social totem pole.  I've read posts from plenty of people with affective mood disorders (depression, bipolar, etc.) who were glad they aren't schizophrenic, don't want to be lumped in with people that crazy and so forth.  Crazy Meds strives to be the big tent of brain cooties, it was about time I continued with that tradition.

Tyler Durden: TV Commercial Consultant

2009-11-26T12:10:00.001-07:00

I sent the link of my HTC & clam commercial mashups to Adnoxious and a couple other ad-related blogs on the Panoply of Stupidity etc.

Adnoxious did something better than noting their interchangeability, they found the pedigree of the $cientology ad: the "You're not your fucking khakis" scene from Fight Club.

See for yourself.

Words of Wisdom

2009-11-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

From frumiousb's galleries via

Best use of Live Journal (Official) via

FFFFOUND!

Photonuclear Excitation by the Large Hardon Collider

2009-11-22T12:45:00.002-07:00

A diseased sun burns through the wounded sky...

The dealer's cold, black, insectoid eyes kept shifting to and from Nielsen and Ninomiya, the only two players at her table.  Sitting in the somewhat functional remains of what was once Singapore's finest casino they had doubledowned on a pair of diamond sevens.  They were dealt a pair of suicide kings.  Faye, their dealer, had 18.    Nielsen and Ninomiya were all in with all of their available time.

Two sixes of spades.

"23," Faye said, her voice as cold and flat as her eyes, "you lose."

"No," said Nielsen, "we all win."

"What are the odds?" asked Ninomiya, shrugging as he attempted to fade from his chair.

Strong fields and multiple excitations

Because of the strong fields associated with ultra-relativistic heavy-ions, the probabilities for several electromagnetic processes are very large at small impact parameters, and calculated, un-unitarized first-order probabilities may even exceed 1. This is for example the case for two-photon production of e+e− pairs.

The dominating process is photonuclear excitation of the target into a Giant Dipole Resonance followed by emission of one or more neutrons. The probability for mutual Coulomb dissociation reaches about 35% in a grazing Au+Au collision at the Large Hardon Collider.

 "As anyone who has read the literature can attest," Dr. Benway said, "not all particles require collision as a means to reach a state of excitation.  Many electron-hole interactions are often played out in the form of bondage and confinement scenarios, with the hole invariably the bottom.  Typically the interaction lasts only three pulse-pumps.  Photoexcitation is required for multiple excitations, but the second hardon won't be as large nor will it last any longer.  Two is usually the limit."

Subluminal Cerenkov Radiation

Three a.m. and two graduate students at CERN were playing cards.

"Blackjack is a stupid game.  Who in hell would want to play that?  If you can count cards it's easy, if you can't you're a sucker.  Plus someone has to be the house, so there's no point in playing if not in a casino."

"You're right.  I don't know what I was thinking."

Weak Force 

"When the largest quantum orgy of all time happened, what did electrons do when they had a chance to interact dangerously with positrons?  They were as conservative and repressed as Lutherans!"

The large mass of the "W" Intermediate Vector Boson (IVB) is also interpreted as a re-creation of the dense spacetime metric of the primordial electroweak force unification era during the initial moments of the "Big Bang".

Looking at a simple example, we diagram the decay of a muon (u) to an electron (e-) (antiparticles are underlined and the symbol (v) represents a neutrino):
W-[u- (e+ x e-)] ---> vu + ve + e-
(Where the square brackets indicate the interior of (or the mediation of) the "W" IVB)

We see how natural a reaction this is when diagrammed via the catalytic action of the W- and a virtual electron-positron pair. The negative muon (u-) and positron (e+) simply cancel each other's opposite electric charges, which frees both their neutrinos (vu and ve), and forces the electron (e-) to become " real", as it no longer has an antiparticle annihilation partner. All the W has done is catalyze the reaction by bringing the muon (u-) and the virtual particle-antiparticle pair (e+ x e-) into intimate contact, where the charge cancellations and energy transfers can take place safely. Hence the "kissing box" of the IVBs is really a "conservation containment", which ensures that charge and energy transfers take place in a secure environment - a perfectly natural role in the well regulated and orderly conservation domain of spacetime.

 "One can only hope," Dr. Benway drawled, "that the Large Hardon Collider is used to excite particles beyond the kissing box and get them outside of what they would normally consider a secure environment."

This quasi-Burroughsian pastiche and interictal interlude is brought to you by:

Extra Medication For All!! shirts.