Summer Food Fun and Drink Chapter 16 No Normal · Friday July 30, 2010 by colin newell
An updated edition of a mental health journal for doctors may include diagnoses for “disorders” such as child rage, binge eating and internet addiction. Experts observe, “This could mean that, soon, no-one will be classed as normal.
(I) Could have told you that. For free…
The new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is being tuned now for release in 2013, could devalue the seriousness of mental illness and label almost everyone as having some kind of disorder.
Like obsessive compulsive blogging or hummingbird speed twitter.
Many people previously seen as perfectly healthy could, in the future, be told they are ill.
The DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association, contains descriptions, symptoms, and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. I imagine there should be something, perhaps a chapter on Facebook. At least a chapter.
The criteria are designed to provide clear definitions for professionals who treat patients with mental disorders, and for researchers and pharmaceutical drug companies seeking to develop new ways of treating them.
Members of the psychiatric community worry that the further the guidelines are expanded, the more likely it will become that nobody will be classed as normal any more. Worried? This is job security!
With the classification of so many new disorders, we will all have disorders.
Comforting.
There was a time that the phrase “If you have 9 friends and they are all normal… then you are messed up…” would give me a chuckle.
Now, it seems, we all have a screw loose.
So. The Earth is one great big asylum.
Also comforting. Anyway. Enjoy your neurosis – who knows… like coffee, at some point this new normal might be considered healthy…
Summer Fun Food Drink Volume 2 Chapter 1 Smile · Wednesday June 23, 2010 by colin newell
Oil spills. Earthquake. Famine. Pestilence. Plague of locusts. And asteroids.
Pity the Planet Earth for if it had a personality it would have developed a complex by now.
It’s all out there. But you cannot dwell on that stuff all of the time. Because it will bring you down. Like it is bringing me down.
Until June the 21st when everything changes.
And so with the dawn of a new summer, it is time to begin that beloved series that my devoted reader appreciated so much last summer…
I give you Summer Fun Food and Drink – Volume 2 for 2010.
Smile.
The view from my balcony high in Rockland, Victoria, B.C. Canada.
It’s priceless. It is unspoilt. That is Oak Bay, Victoria in the distance. And the vague outline of a rainbow over the San Juan Islands – indicating a pot of gold… or at least a piece of paradise.
Living in Victoria is a little like taking your two thumbs and index fingers and making spectacles that filter out everything but the goodness. This is it. Smile.
Bob Harris, of BobHarris.com, Los Angeles and the World, 5 time Jeopardy champion and writer for CSI Las Vegas and Bones stood on my balcony recently and proclaimed… “You people are billionaires…”
And he was not talking about dollars and cents. It is a metaphor for what can be.
Bob is currently circuiting the globe writing a couple of books – one of them on the subject of micro-finance and the other on the subject of why people fight.
The photo above represents why people don’t fight.
So don’t fight it. Smile.
And welcome back to our Summer programming.
If you enjoyed last summers series you may remember this highlight – The Summer Food Fun and Drink Starbucks in decline series – enjoy.
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Winter Fun Food and Adventure Victoria - hug a stranger day · Tuesday February 23, 2010 by colin newell
Today is Hug a stranger day.
Who knew?
Go on. Do it.
You need it.
You know you do.
My friend and creative partner, Bob Harris, appears at the 1:12 mark.
Two strikes into a red flag moment - troubles with twitter · Sunday February 7, 2010 by colin newell
The problem with words is… like baseballs and rocks, they almost always travel further than you expect.
One of the saddest moments of my life was when I was 4 or 5 and while playing in the front yard… I picked up a suitably sized pebble and hurled it…
…bouncing it off my mother’s forehead.
And protest in pain she did. I felt like a bag of crap.
That was in the sixties.
Now in her 80’s she seems fine. Fingers crossed.
She’s okay. But what about me?
I seem to be still throwing rocks. Which means I have a bit of a bullying streak.
Don’t like it much.
While mucking with Twitter the last few days, I made 2 discoveries.
1.) When you want to bug someone about something (particularly on Twitter – or any other media for that matter) – you can do it quite effectively when you know you have their attention… and
2.) No matter who is out there, great and small… everyone can be tuned into your comments… even if you are directing them to William Shatner or someone else.
And no, I did not bully Bill.
What I did do was make some comments, in a very weak form of jest, against one of my favorite radio personalities. And he called me on it. Sent me a message.
And that rock on my mom’s head came back in crystal clear memory.
My dear wife, whom I love more than life itself, advised…
“For the love of Pete, leave celebrity name deleted alone… what’s wrong with you?” “And you are on twitter probation…”
Two strikes.
She has me scrubbing Jeffries tubes and checking plasma conduit.
The next infraction: Her finger is on the warp core jettison switch.
I am a bully. Working on a cure.
Keeping my hands away from rocks.
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