I recently started ‘reading’ a book that has collected a considerable number of euphemisms together, and in the introduction the author touched briefly on the topic of political correctness.  Even though, as he points out, PC has little to do with modesty, politeness or good taste, and more to do with with protecting special interest groups from what they deem to be insensitive language, it has also gone on to produce a greater awareness of the importance of considering how the words we use can affect people.

As with most things, things can get out of hand and suddenly you have people trying to introduce femholes and herstory into general use, while others try to sanitise nursery rhymes and fairy tales.

Over the weekend a story emerged that presenters at this years Oscar ceremony may return to saying “…and the winner is…”, after saying “…and the Oscar goes to…” for over 20 years.  I never watched this year’s ceremony so I have no idea what the presenters ended up saying, but I found it rather amusing why the wording had been changed in the first place.  Allan Carr, the show producer in 1989, decided to change the wording “to make it not seem as competitive”.  Creative types can be fickle, with delicate ego’s, but I doubt anyone was fooled by the change in wording.  Even children in kindergarten are competitive.

This made me also think about food packaging and how they play with words to make the processed poison seem healthier than a wheat-grass-whatever:

• 0 grams trans-fat
• sugar-free, or even better, no added sugar
• free-range
• corn-fed beef
• made with real fruit

Today I bought a flavoured drinking yogurt and was surprised to see that “artificial flavourants” had been replaced by the much nicer sounding “nature identical flavourants”.  Gee, that must be better for me than artificial anything.  Oh, and then you have this story too!

Well I’m off to sing the catchy nursery rhyme referenced in the title of this post.  Mmm, rainbows.

Wonderful, not only do we have to find out over and over again that our President has no clue what constitutes morally acceptable behaviour, but we now also discover that our Minister of Arts & Culture doesn’t have any.  And is homophobic too.

Lulu Xingwana’s department gave R300 000 towards a Innovative Women exhibition, and the exhibition has toured the country, returning now to Constitution Hill where she was to open the exhibition.  Sadly she never go to read her speech -  after taking one glance at the work of prominent artist, and lesbian activist, she referred to it as pornographic, spoke to her aides, and then left in a huff.  And believe me, our politicians are very good at leaving in a huff.  I’d say Prima Donna, but then they don’t have the same grace of Opera singers.

The offending pictures were as far from Robert Mapplethorpe as you could imagine: -

A somewhat explicit Mapplethorpe

Zanele Muholi Photographs

Obviously I’m in no position to decide what is offensive and what is not.  A statement she released later stated

“Our mandate is to promote social cohesion and nation building. I left the exhibition because it expressed the very opposite of this.

“It was immoral, offensive and going against nation-building.”

“Minister Xingwana was also concerned that there were children present at the event and that children should not be exposed to some of the images on exhibit.”

We live in a society (and I’m specifically referring to South Africa here), where young children are being exposed to rape, and worse, in their neighbourhoods and even in their homes.  Rape and child abuse are far worse than the sight of two women embracing, instead we are left with a bitter taste realising that this dear minister is shamefully homophobic – what disturbed her more was not the site of naked flesh, but the knowledge that these photographs were taken by a lesbian, and therefore the embraces suddenly became something more in her twisted mind.

Immoral, offensive and against nation building?  I challenge you to look at both the images above and point out exactly how they are immoral and how they could go against nation building.  I concede that the one image may well be offensive to some, but that is all

She clearly would have preferred the works to have been censored, or not shown at all, and this in a country which supposedly has the most liberal constitution.  Alas, the liberal minded individuals who put that great document together have been replaced by narrow minded idiots (sorry, is there a better word?) not fit for the office they hold.

The glottis is the combination of the vocal folds and the space in between the folds.

As the vocal folds vibrate, the resulting vibration produces a “buzzing” quality to the speech, called voice or voicing or pronunciation.

Sound production involving only the glottis is called glottal. English has a voiceless glottal fricative spelled “h”.

Skilled players of the Australian didgeridoo restrict their glottal opening in order to produce the full range of timbres available on the instrument.

The vibration produced is an essential component of voiced consonants as well as vowels. If the vocal folds are drawn apart, air flows between them causing no vibration, as in the production of voiceless consonants.

Following that brief explanation, enjoy the audio visual spectacle – Glottal Opera!  Beautiful, yet slightly bizarre.

Harold Camping, a biblical scholar, has referred to beliefs that the world is set to end in 2012 as being “like a fairy tale”.  He should know, apparently, he refers to that great and authoritative book “The Bible” , which, as we all know, contains nothing but the truth.

“That date has not one stitch of biblical authority,” Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world.

Camping,  now 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years (no word on what he scrutinized for the first 18 years of his life) and claims to have developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Harold was visited by Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, crunched the numbers (again, no mention of whether he used a calculator or good old Excel) and was stunned when the result was actually a date in the near future -  May 21, 2011.  Sadly, this is 10 days after my 40th, so I’m now under even more pressure to ensure that my birthday celebrations are nothing short of awesome, though I can’t help worrying that no-one will attend as they rush about doing all the things they wanted to, now that they have a reliable date for Armageddon.

Of course we won’t dwell too much on the fact that he had previously predicted the return of Christ to take place on September 6, 1994.  Incredibly he was able to put this down to a possible ‘calculation error’, and has managed to grow his following over the past 16 years.

What?  One born every second?  Now now, let’s not be too harsh, it could have happened to any one of us; forget a zero off a million and suddenly 21 May 2011 becomes 6 September 1994.  I know I can no longer count on two hands the number of times someone has asked for my date of birth, and instead of saying 11 May 1971, I answer 26 August 1954.  Such an easy mistake to make.

My Bipolar Disorder has only really started to affect me over the past two years.  Prior to that I can safely say that I cycled between Baseline and slightly manic (something which I will discuss in greater detail in another post).

What has happened over the past two years was a fairly rapid decent into depression and the unexpected appearance of anxiety, and my cycling over these two years has been from Baseline to Depressed and back again.  In between I have bouts of extreme irritability or anxiety, but it is the anxiety that bothers me the most since it appears to be getting worse rather than better – and the bulk of the medication I’m on is actually meant to help minimise the anxiety.

Cycling of moods is part and parcel of having Bipolar Mood Disorder, but for most people the cycles run in months, while I’m one of the unfortunate few whose cycles run in weeks and days.  Last week is a good example, starting in the weekend and extending to Tuesday afternoon I was comfortably Baseline.  Happy, content with no anxiety or irritability.  Until I left work, and in the 15 minute drive from work to home I went from Baseline to slightly depressed and extremely irritable, with no obvious trigger.  Traffic wasn’t bad, there weren’t any idiotic driver’s, and the radio station played a good selection of music, yet by the time I got home I was struggling to contain the rage.

I woke up the next morning with my mood even worse.  I found myself wanting to smash my breakfast plate on the floor, a fleeting thought that I was able to prevent from becoming an irrational action – breaking the one would have only resulted in me breaking all crockery.  At work I warned everyone to stay well away, and by late afternoon the foul mood had disappeared to be replaced by a morbidly depressed mood.  I left work wanting to go home and crawl into bed, which is what I basically did, my medication helping to send me off to a dreamless sleep.  I ended up staying at home both the Thursday and Friday, even though my mood had improved somewhat by the Friday morning.  The Thursday had been an agonising hell for me with moments of mild sadness suddenly giving way to despair and feelings of utter worthlessness.  At times like this it is easy to look at Alexander McQueen, Andrew Koenig and Michael Blosil and say

I know how you were feeling, and I fully understand your actions.

regardless of the promises I made to friends, and even the realisation of what it would do to them, it all becomes too much as you wonder does it ever get better.

As mentioned, by Friday I started feeling better, and by Saturday was back to Baseline.  Today started with anxiety again, and some severe irritability at work (I might have broken my mouse) – the frustrating thing is that I know the anger is irrational, but I cannot stop myself.  As I sit here writing this I am just happy that it didn’t give way to a depressed mood again.  Some anger lingers, but it is manageable.

So where does this end?  Does it get better?

I don’t know, and no-one else can tell me since it differs from person to person

There is an interesting sub-genre of the traditional ballad known as Murder Ballads.  A murder ballad typically recounts the details of a fictional or true crime — who the victim is, why the murderer decides to kill him or her, how the victim is lured to the murder site and the act itself — followed by the escape and/or capture of the murderer. Often the ballad ends with the murderer in jail or on their way to the gallows, occasionally with a plea for the listener not to copy the evils committed by the singer. Some murder ballads tell the story from the point of view of the murderer, while others tell the tale of the crime from the point of view of the victim.

In 1996 Nick Cave released an album, Murder Ballads, which combined both traditional murder ballads with original ballads, all with very macabre, but fascinating, stories to tell.

My favourites, with a bit of an explanation of the song are:-

1.   “Song of Joy” is a story of a man whose wife Joy and their three children, Hilda, Hattie and Holly, are murdered -

Joy had been bound with electrical tape
In her mouth a gag
She’d been stabbed repeatedly
And stuffed into a sleeping bag
In their very cots my girls were robbed of their lives
Method of murder much the same as my wife’s
Method of murder much the same as my wife’s
It was midnight when I arrived home
Said to the police on the telephone
Someone’s taken four innocent lives

The Narrator portrays himself as the victim of the crime, but the song itself strongly suggests a connection between the killer’s continuing murder spree and the widower’s seemingly aimless wandering; either he is the killer and murdered his wife and 3 daughters, or at the very least their murders have turned him into a killer too -

And so I’ve left my home
I drift from land to land
I am upon your step and you are a family man
Outside the vultures wheel
The wolves howl, the serpents hiss
And to extend this small favour, friend
Would be the sum of earthly bliss
Do you reckon me a friend?
* The sun to me is dark *
* And silent as the moon *
Do you, sir, have a room?
Are you beckoning me in?

2.   “Stagger Lee” is based on a traditional song about the African-American murderer of the same name. Cave’s version draws most of the lyrics from a 1967 transcription published in the 1976 book The Life: The lore and folk poetry of the black hustler.

“SHOT IN CURTIS’S PLACE
“William Lyons, 25, coloured, a levee hand, living at 1410 Morgan Street, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o’clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan streets, by Lee Sheldon, also coloured.
“Both parties, it seems, had been drinking, and were feeling in exuberant spirits. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. The discussion drifted to politics, and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon’s hat from his head.
“The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon drew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen [...] When his victim fell to the floor, Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away.”
- St Louis Globe-Democrat, December 26, 1895.

Nick Cave’s version is quite graphic, and while portraying Stagger Lee as a truly nasty creature, doesn’t give too much of a back story -

“I’ll stay here till Billy comes in, till time comes to pass
And furthermore I’ll fuck Billy in his motherfucking ass”
Said Stagger Lee

“I’m a bad motherfucker, don’t you know
And I’ll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy’s asshole”
Said Stagger Lee

Just then Billy Dilly rolls in and he says, “You must be
That bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee”
Stagger Lee

“Yeah, I’m Stagger Lee and you better get down on your knees
And suck my dick, because If you don’t you’re gonna be dead”
Said Stagger Lee

Billy dropped down and slobbered on his head
And Stag filled him full of lead

3.   “The Curse of Millhaven” is a song of a mad girl, Lottie, whose “eyes are green” and “hair is yellow”. She describes the deaths of townsfolk, pointing out how “all God’s creatures, they’ve all got to die”. It is then revealed, in the failed stabbing of Mrs. Colgate, that Lottie is in fact the killer. She goes on to confess being responsible for quite a number of deaths, including many that were believed to be accidents.  She is quite proud of her deeds, and is happy to admit she’s a monster -

Twenty cops burst through my door without even phoning
La la la la La la la lie
The young ones, the old ones, they all gotta die

Yes, it is I, Lottie. The Curse Of Millhaven
I’ve struck horror in the heart of this town
Like my eyes ain’t green and my hair ain’t yellow
It’s more like the other way around
I gotta pretty little mouth underneath all the foaming
La la la la La la la lie
Sooner or later we all gotta die

Since I was no bigger than a weavil they’ve been saying I was evil
That if “bad” was a boot that I’d fit it
That I’m a wicked young lady, but I’ve been trying hard lately
O fuck it! I’m a monster! I admit it!
It makes me so mad my blood really starts a-going
La la la la La la la lie
Mama always told me that we all gotta die

4.   “Death Is Not the End” is the final song on the album and features several vocalists, such as Anita Lane, Kylie Minogue, PJ Harvey, and Shane McGowan, each singing a verse of this Bob Dylan cover.  It is also the only song that doesn’t feature a death or murder -

And all your dreams have vanished
And you don’t know what’s up the bend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

When the storm clouds gather round you
And heavy rains descend
Just remember that death is not the end

And there’s no-one there to comfort you
With a helping hand to lend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

This may appear to be a rather grim topic to write about, and the songs even darker to listen to, but it really isn’t, especially if you know what influenced each track and listen to each song as a story told in a lyrical manner.

Lately I’ve started to think that receiving treatment for Bipolar Mood Disorder (BMD) is like going through a McDonalds Drive-Thru and being asked “Would you like a side-order of tardive dyskinesia with your crazies? Can we super size that for you?”.  When I started on my anti-psychotic (Seroquel) I was told there might be some weight gain. Some! Some weight gain is gaining 3kgs over two months, considerable weight gain is 26kgs in two months. And it’s the kind of weight gain that behaves like a friend who asks to crash on your sofa for a few weeks, and 3 years later he’s still there, now with his girlfriend.

I try and out-stare it in the bathroom mirror, but I always lose, and then have to put up with its taunting afterwards. I end up feeling the same way Garry Kasparov would if he were to lose a game of chess to Julius Malema.

Weight gain seems to be the common side-effect for all anti-psychotics, and because they don’t want more negative publicity, the pharmaceutical companies have teamed up with a local Health Club to offer a ‘lifestyle programme’.  As part of the programme I have to have my blood pressure measured once a month, along with waist measurement and weight.  No surprise there, my blood pressure is high, 157/93, so now I have to have it measured twice a week and then possibly see my GP for medication to reduce it.  Astra-Zeneca famously took out a magazine ad’ earlier this year that stretched over 7 pages – 1 page for the advertisement, and 6 to list all possible side-effects.  The message that came out following that was that in the treatment of BMD one has to measure the benefit against the risk, and right now Seroquel doesn’t seem to bad.

Extended use of most anti-psychotics can lead to tardive dyskinesia - a lovely little condition characterized by repetitive, involuntary, purposeless movements. Features of the disorder may include grimacing, tongue protrusion, lip smacking, puckering and pursing of the lips, and rapid eye blinking. Rapid movements of the extremities may also occur. Impaired movements of the fingers may also appear.

In comparison, Clozapine was voluntarily withdrawn by the manufacturer in 1975 after it was shown to cause a condition involving a dangerous decrease in the number of white blood cells, that led to death in some patients.  It was reintroduced in the late 80s, but Clozapine is usually used as a last resort in patients who have not responded to other anti-psychotic treatments due to its danger of causing agranulocytosis as well as the costs of having to have blood tests continually during treatment.

Actually after reading up on some of the effects of the various drugs one can’t help thinking that just maybe ignorance is bliss, since to continue may just scare one stiff – literally