Batshit Crazy & Medicated for your Protection

Plumbing Mystery Resolved

Mystery solved. Thanks to a burst pipe. In a wall. Along the only pipe in the Monty Pythonesque plumbing that can't be isolated from the water pump. So no running water, and the downstairs apartment is flooded. I expect a nice crop of Peziza domiciliana any day now.

Fortunately I have 5 - 7 days of drinking water stashed away. And plenty of snow. It's not the heavy wet stuff, so bringing it to melt will be a pain, but at least I have something to wash with until I can find someone willing to come out here to fix the plumbing. But I need to deal with the insurance first. When they open on Monday.

No matter what, I need to take care of this before all the snow is gone. With any luck it will keep snowing and I can put this off indefinitely.

I'm so fucking chill...

What's the difference between yesterday (top) and today?

Yesterday I had hot water.

I'm close to my limit. Really. Fucking. Close. Crazy Meds isn't making enough money to support itself and now this.

I'm pretty sure the water heater itself is working, and something is preventing the water in it from getting anywhere. There's a leak somewhere, or the pressure tank is about to die, or something. My guess is a leak, because the pressure tank kicks on once or twice an hour for no good reason. And a leak would be the most expensive thing to fix.

I'm not even able to care all that much at the moment. Right now I want to sell this dump to whatever "we buy houses for cash" douchebags will give me the most cash, sell Crazy Meds, clean out my IRA, buy a shack somewhere, and just drop off the grid.

meta update

I've moved more blogs back from the short-lived personal blog at another address. There's still some more crap I want to bring back here, but it'll keep.
I've also moved a lot of stuff to the defunct blog roll, and deleted a bunch that have nothing to do with what they used to be (and of little interest) or are nothing more than parked domains. I hope to look for more interesting blogs and sites.
I want to use the name Crazy Meds: The Blog for the real Crazy Meds blog's Feedburner feed. That happens to be the name of the feed for this blog. So if the three of you who are subscribed to this via Feedburner could please resubscribe via the form way the fuck down at the bottom of the page so I can delete the existing feed I'd appreciate it.
The essay on criminalizing mental illness as a misguided method of protection against violence is now available on OpEd News.

Forum's back up.

We're back on the air. Yay.

Forum down for emergency software upgrade.

We're off the air until I upgrade the software. Sorry.

Crazy Meds: The Blog

~~In a desperate attempt to SEO the fuck out of Crazy Meds~~

~~Because I can’t deal with my life and need to do something that appears to be productive~~

Crazy Meds has needed an actual blog for some time. A place for announcements, news items, and some short-attention-span tidbits from here or elsewhere. So now it has one.

This blog will continue to exist, but it will now be more ~~narcissistic~~ personal and procrastination bait. I’ll still post notices of impending software upgrades or anything else that will cause a significant interruption of service there, and anything where an off-site location for posting is required because the entire domain is down. As well as the occasional site update of note. All the links to research, medical, and assorted pharma-related blogs and sites have been moved to the new blog.

Posts to the G+ page and Facebook page will continue as they always have. While anyone can, in theory, read public posts to the G+ page without having a G+ account, who does? Not that anyone reads the blogspot blog all that much either.

Rxmas Consumerist Orgy of New Products at Straitjacket T-Shirts

I've been putting up a shitload of new products at Straitjacket T-Shirts. Just the thing for anyone who responds well to retail therapy, with or without Havidol (avafynetime); including those who respond to online window-shopping.

Most of the new merchandise is in the Pile of Pills motif, featuring buttons and cheap jewelry, and some ridiculous, and ridiculously expensive, household items, such as curtains and a tablecloth. Those last two are among several items that, while actually for sale, are mainly for entertainment purposes.

There are also more clocks, with both the pill design and the Medication Time design, some of which are reasonably priced.

By popular demand there are now buttons and magnets. Currently only the most popular designs are available in those media. I'll see how well these do before even thinking about adding any more designs, as buttons are a pain in the ass to do in the Pill Font. As I was adding the buttons to the store I saw the designs fit three magnets, so I threw those in for the hell of it.

I hope to add some new designs in time for Rxmas.

Begging for Attention

The beg button is back on the wiki. There will soon be an obnoxious expansion of links to the CafePress store. As I'm one of the lucky people who actually responds well to BuSpar I'll be looking into some form of advertising that isn't subject to ad-blocking software. Such as those supremely annoying keyword links.

Lots & Lots of New Merchandise at Straitjacket T-Shirts

I've put up a shitload of new designs on shirts, mugs, stickers, and assorted other media at the expanded Straitjacket T-Shirts. I had to make some slight changes to the mug designs to get them to look nearly as good as what they can do at Zazzle. When I compare mugs from each of them side-by-side the difference is probably something that maybe 5% of people would notice.

When it comes to media the only thing Zazzle does that is massively superior to Cafe Press is jigsaw puzzles. Cafe Press' puzzles are a miserable 30 pieces, while Zazzle's puzzles are a respectable 252 pieces. I'm not even bothering to add puzzles to the Cafe Press product line. I don't know if it will be worth keeping the Zazzle store open just for puzzles, so check them out while they're still there.

I still have more to come, but as always I doubt if I'll finish when I need to. What's up now is barely in time for RXmas.

Straitjacket T-Shirts Consolidating at Cafe Press

Zazzle now officially sucks more than Cafe Press. Which means I'll be shutting down the Zazzle store. And since I have to recreate what I want to sell on Cafe Press, I'm getting rid of designs that aren't selling. Including shirts. So if you want any of the really crappy designs, get them soon.

I've been updating existing designs of shirts and mugs with new versions of the Pill font, as well as creating new designs. I suggest you don't buy any of the shirts that haven't been updated (Brain Cooties Aren't Contagious e.g.), unless you like the original Pill Font more than the new ones.

By popular request I've finally created more bumperstickers and other items like mouse pads. I plan on converting some discontinued shirt designs into one or more of bumperstickers, mouse pads, mugs and maybe some of whatever other cheap crap Cafe Press offers that looks interesting.

New designs include things like:


United States of Pharmaceuticals sticker	Medication Time Mug

So stop by the latest version of Straitjacket T-Shirts.

The way traffic to and revenue from Crazy Meds is plummeting who knows how long I'll be around with this garbage.

All Crazy Meds Are Now Ratable

But wait, there's more!

More ratable meds are up:

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Paxil

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Lexapro

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Cymbalta

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Wellbutrin

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Lamictal

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Seroquel

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Abilify

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/Zoloft

http://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/Meds/BuSpar

New Feature on Crazy Meds: Rating Meds

One Weird Trick to Banish Annoying Facebook Ads

Let me be clear: I have nothing against advertising, even the ultra-targeted ads on Facebook. I make my living from the ads on Crazy Meds. Crazy Meds wouldn't exist without AdSense and, face it, Facebook wouldn't be free without ads. The increased use of things like AdBlocker is having a noticeable effect on how much money I make.

What bothers the shit out of me are ads featuring people with the bizarrely exaggerated chests and hips that are usually found only in hentai (Japanese erotic anime) who are selling "weird," "strange," "soon-to-be-banned," or similar secrets for weight loss, muscle growth, financial success, and other popular spam-subject-line miracles. Although the most common thing they're selling is dating services. Why they think those women with freakishly huge tits are attractive is beyond me.

In order to provide a higher quality infotainment experience for their customers (i.e. better ad targeting), FB lets you hide specific ads and asks why you don't like it. So I hid anything featuring excessively top-heavy people and gave rotating reasons as to why I hid them. I found all such ads to be one of:

Obscene
Uninteresting
Misleading

Just like some old episode of Star Trek, the conflicting reasons caused the ad serving software to have an aneurism. I'm now into day three of no ads on my timeline and far fewer ads on my newsfeed. The first dating service ads have returned after a 72-hour hiatus, but no bizarre models. Yet.

I doubt this will last much longer. I've been disappointed by teh Internets too often. If they are promising weird hentai I expect to see demi-human schoolgirls in skimpy uniforms toting MAC-10s in charge of hermaphrodites undergoing forced lactation. I do have some standards.

Try it for yourself. If there is one group of excessively annoying ads that are essentially variations on the same theme, give FB contradictory reasons why you don't want to see them.

Pop Quiz! Forum Software Upgrade

We're back up. Annoying bug still there.

-----------

I'll be doing a forum software upgrade today. Sorry about the utter lack of notice, but, given my current spate of depression, I have no idea what I'll be up for on a day-to-day basis.

The usual parameters: starting noon Mountain time, 1800 GMT, and lasting as long as it takes. How much of the fix for the most annoying bug is IPB software and how much is system maintenance makes it difficult to tell how long this will take.

Roadblocks. Everywhere Roadblocks.

I've been trying to buy groceries for almost two weeks. I dropped off a prescription a week ago. Today I finally have it together to drive to Superior, pick up my meds and buy some food.

My truck has a flat tire.

The tube may be punctured, or the problem in the valve stem has become worse. It doesn't matter. I can't deal with AAA or anyone else besides the people at the pharmacy and the grocery store, as they were the ones I was prepped for. I tried pumping it up, but even after jacking up the truck, inflating the tire to the point I could drive a mile and a half without fucking up anything is beyond the capacity of the bellows pump I have. Although I've used it before, for some reason the can of fix-a-flat was too complicated for me to operate.

I gave up after about half an hour. An unusually short time. Either I immediately collapse into despair or I worry at something until it's solved, I've tried every possible solution - no matter how ridiculous or unlikely they are to work - numerous times, or I finally give in to exhaustion. Whatever it is that is causing me to be wiped out after something like vacuuming or just 20 minutes of Yoga, plus the depression and depression-induced absence of appetite, reduced my usual never surrender attitude from hours (days, weeks, months, years - it all depends on what the problem is) to thirty minutes.

Lately it seems like there is nothing but obstacles in my attempts to do anything. It's hard enough for me to just get motivated to deal with my life, I'd rather completely ignore it, but when I try to accomplish the least little things some random event has to happen to make it all the more difficult. If life is a journey, why does it have to be filled with so many fucking roadblocks and detours over shitty roads through bad neighborhoods? I used to like getting lost, but that was when I had it together. More or less. Now that I'm barely functional, getting lost really, really fucks things up.

The agoraphobia and social anxiety are getting so much worse, and depression exacerbates them. My latest theory on why they suck so much more these days: it's become much more difficult for me to pass as an NT. Which is ironic, because autism, especially being in the Asperger's part of the spectrum, is socially acceptable. So I shouldn't have a problem with people knowing I'm autistic, but I must be really fucking crazy to not give a rat's ass about people knowing I'm bipolar and have been in a psych hospital. From an intellectual perspective I don't care, but in the real world I can't deal with people as I really am. I've spent so much time passing as an NT it's automatic; it would be more work to not do so in public. Either way I don't have the emotional energy to deal with people.

Looks like another day, or two, to be spent watching DVDs and dwelling on my mistakes. While I like the isolation I have, and would feel vastly more lonely were I surrounded by people in an urban area, or anywhere with a population density greater than...something more than the 5 per square mile I now enjoy, I miss a lot of things. The two I really need are food that is delivered and being able to shop at 3:00 a.m. I could theoretically drive to Missoula to shop at 3:00 a.m., and if this depression shows no sign of letting up I might just start doing that. Make that 4:30, as I don't want to be on I-90 soon after the bars close.

Assuming I ever get that fucking flat taken care of.

"The dead do not have problems." - Kai, Last of the Brunnen G. Lexx episode 4.5 "Xevivor"

Countdown to the solstice

I'm looking at a good six weeks of severe depression, and nothing I can do will be able to fix it. It's a struggle to comprehend e-mail, or much of anything. Posting this much has taken me two hours.

I'm trying to switch to a nocturnal schedule, just so it's not as bad when I am awake. Damage control is about all I can do.

It's one of those times. I need something completely out of my control to fix it. Some random event. Big, small, I've never been able to tell if there's a correlation between how fucked up I'm feeling and to what extent the universe's unexpected gift has to rock in order to drag me out of this pit.

Another thing that makes me feel better is running away. For someone who doesn't deal with change very well, the crisis of moving can really cheer me up. But it's not a vacation. The thought of a vacation depresses me further. I want to just run away. From everything. Just keep going north. More latitude, more altitude, and more solitude. Whenever I get profoundly lonely increasing my isolation is faster and safer. I feel like a psychic contagion. I don't want to spread the misery.

The house is falling apart. Lack of maintenance will do that. Lichens and rust are covering more and more of the trees and shrubs. The landscape of my despair is spreading outward like some miasma. All the more reason to go off the grid. Find some remote place and retreat into a the comfortable crazy of conspiracy theories. There are so many new ones to keep me entertained, and old favorites like cattle mutilations are still around.

There's not much point in continuing.

All I Want is a Burrito

All I wanted to do was mow the fucking yard. Was that really too much to ask? Two of the three local gas stations had signs up stating they carried ethanol-free premium. Apparently not any longer. Fine, I'll fill the gas can with ethanol-tainted premium and get some of the good stuff from Plains when I get bait for the wasp traps. Then the fucking gas pump has an issue with my credit card. That's all I needed. I've been dealing with enough depression as it was, that one roadblock sent me spiraling down into alt.depressed.as.fuck territory. I couldn't deal with trying another pump, or driving a hundred feet to the other gas station. I drove home and spent the rest of the day watching Farscape.

I feel worse today.

I fed the cats. Maybe I'll eat something. It's a good thing I did a little more retail therapy a few weeks back so I have plenty of DVDs. And lots of atlases and other reference books to browse.

A cross-quarter day is approaching. Unless something miraculously cheers me up today or tomorrow, I'm looking at a minimum of six more weeks of severe depression. Perfect timing, as it's worse during daylight hours. I should just give up on the delusion that I'll start exercising, or even do yoga again and sleep as long as possible in the morning so I can be awake as long as I can at night. If I can not beat myself up on yet another failure I can have more time each day when I'm somewhat less depressed.

I'm tired of all the pills. I'm tired of the permanent gluten-free, corn-free, legume-free, alcohol-free Lent. Right now I'm even tired of the isolation. I want a Mission burrito, I want some beer, I want to do something fun, I want my life to have meaning again, and I want someone to share it with.

The way things are now, I feel guilty about subjecting the cats to my misery.

I Think It's Funny, Even if It is Happening to Me

Medicare terminated me, so I guess there are death panels after all. I knew my coverage was going to end eventually, as I'm not getting SSDI any more. At least I shouldn't be getting SSDI, but they can't seem to make up their minds about that, as I still get money from them every now and then. I've sent them another shitload of documentation to try to straighten it all out, along with an offer to write them a check. Our tax dollars at work. Did Medicare bother to inform me that my coverage was going to end in March? Nope.

As for the drug coverage, AARP MedicareRx/United Health Care did tell me. Unfortunately they did so the same way they give my monthly statement, any minor update to the plan, change to their website, or similar "news" - a long e-mail with the subject "Jerod, a plan document is ready for you online" and absolutely no information in the e-mail itself about what that plan document is about. I'd have to log in, navigate the site, and read a .pdf document. They're as bad as the credit card companies with "important account information" letters containing balance transfer checks that I keep telling them not to send me.

It gets better. What to they do a week after they terminate my account? They still deduct my monthly premium. Now I have to decide if the $42 is worth dealing with their customer "service" department over the phone. It's going to be bad enough trying to find some insurance racket to pay protection money to in order to get coverage for the remainder of this year. I've been able to find all of two companies available in Montana who sell to individuals, and not a single plan that covers any of the drugs I take. So I'll be paying full retail for my meds for the rest of this year no matter what.

The best part? After taxes and everything else I'd have more money on disability than I do with Crazy Meds. Before you suggest just going ad-free, non-profit, etc. I looked into that in 2004. Aside from official non-profit status being a huge pain in the ass to do, with all the traffic Crazy Meds now gets, I can't afford to pay for a domain host to handle that load without ads or lots of grant money.

The reason I couldn't keep up on all the crap AARP MedicareRx/United Health Care was sending me is due to the amount of e-mail I get. Excluding all the stuff relating to Crazy Meds I still get more e-mail than I want no matter how many times I click on "Don't send me a fucking thing not explicitly related to a specific transaction that requires an e-mail." No wonder people are getting only five hours of sleep a night and don't get any work done, how the hell are they able to keep up with all the e-mail?

Ted Kaczynski was right. Technology makes everything worse. Says the guy who makes his living off of a website. Events like this rekindle the dream I've had for close to 40 years: to live off the grid.

I think it was Kevin Kelly who wrote an essay on the impossibility of self-sufficiency/reliance titled something along the lines of "Where Did That Hammer Come From?" An essay the Internet desperately needs. Complete self-sufficiency/reliance is next to impossible, unless you want to live at the technological level of 40,000 years ago. It's that time of year in the northern hemisphere when each day has significantly more sunlight, especially in latitudes above 40°. The bipolar objectivists should be coming out of the woodwork with their plans for John Galt's utopia, often planned for in Alaska. But who will make their fancy espresso drinks? Who will grow their food? Fix their 15-year-old cars? Where will they find temp work? It's easy for me to make fun of them, as I live in a house that's falling apart on two acres of land being reclaimed by local plants and taken over by opportunistic invaders. As much as I want to get further away from everyone and everything, I can't. In fact I need to get closer to civilization, as driving and caring for myself in general are becoming more difficult.

Maybe I'll get lucky. The icecaps could suddenly melt and civilization could come to me.

If You Can't Cure Them, Give Up

Should the Crazy Meds forum include more support group-like qualities? Should we discuss 3rd parties? Mentally interesting children? To what, if any, extent should Axis II disorders be involved?

In other words, do we go back to what the place was like in 2004, more or less, but with better software?

You don't need to be a forum member to read, but you do if you want to join the discussion:

Let's Cloudsource To Re-Envision The Crazy Meds Forum Paradigm

And we're back.

The Crazy Meds forum and blogs are back on the air after our planned software update. Nothing seems broken so far.

New Content, more or less, and Software Update.

New content, of sorts. I've finally put up the long-overdue page of: Definitions of Neurological, Psychiatric, Medical, and Miscellaneous Terms, Abbreviations, Acronyms & Initialisms used on Crazy Meds. It is not a medical dictionary. That is still in procrastination mode.

I'm also planning on doing a forum & blog software update this Sunday, 5 April 2013. It should be business as usual - starting around noon Mountain time (18:00 GMT) and lasting as long as it takes. An hour? Two? Less? Hell if I know. The rest of the site should not be affected.

What Fresh Fucking Hell Is This?

In addition to doing some real work, or at least procrastinating from real work, I had planned to write about more great atlas acquisitions. Instead I'm complaining about yet another problem with this fucked-up house. The most fucked-up problem to date.

How the holy fuck is there fucking carbon monoxide in here when every fucking thing is electric? The fucking water heater, the fucking clothes dryer, the fucking stove, all of that fucking shit. My fucking lawnmower is in one of the fucking outbuildings and my fucking truck is parked next to that fucking outbuilding. I don't burn anything in the fucking fireplace because that fucking thing is only useful for those fake fucking wax firelogs. The only standard fucking source of fucking carbon monoxide would be the fucking boiler, which I fucking broke two fucking years ago! The only reason I know I have a fucking problem with fucking carbon monoxide is I finally installed a real fucking smoke alarm with a carbon fucking monoxide detector the other day and the fucker started screaming at me for no obvious fucking reason. So I look up the fucking symptoms for carbon fucking monoxide poisoning and I've had all of those fucking things for a couple of fucking months, except for the fucking nausea, but I rarely feel nauseated from the fucking flu, or fucking meds, or most fucking things that make people fucking spench all over the fucking place.

So now I'm fucking freezing because I'm leaving the fucking windows open and I'm not turning on the fucking space heaters. Those fuckers are filled with oil, so that's one potential fucking source. I've been more fucking tired and have had more fucking problems thinking clearly in my fucking office, so the fucking cheap-ass flooring I put down to replace the fucking carpeting could be part of the fucking problem. I've been waking up with fucking headaches, so something in the fucking basement could be the fucking problem. As the only thing in there is the fucking pump for the fucking well, a bunch of fucking shit I need to take to the fucking dump, and one more possible fucking source that's doing the exact fucking opposite thing of what it's fucking supposed to do: instead of trapping the fucking carbon monoxide and other fucking vapors, carbon fucking monoxide from the fucking septic tank is making its way into the fucking vapor sink (or whatever those fucking things are called), filling up the fucking basement, and moving upstairs. All contrary to how that fucking shit is fucking supposed to act. I should get the fucking tank pumped anyway. And take all that fucking shit to the fucking dump.