Posts tagged as Craziness
You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Live Here, But You Will
Living in large cities makes you stressed out and crazy, but I'm pretty sure that still beats BEING BORED AND HAVING NOTHING TO DO. [Via]
Do The Drugs Work?
"Imagine that a virus suddenly appears in our society that makes people sleep twelve, fourteen hours a day. Those infected with it move about somewhat slowly and seem emotionally disengaged. Many gain huge amounts of weight—twenty, forty, sixty, and even one hundred pounds. Often their blood sugar levels soar, and so do their cholesterol levels. A number of those struck by the mysterious illness—including young children and teenagers—become diabetic in fairly short order…. The federal government gives hundreds of millions of dollars to scientists at the best universities to decipher the inner workings of this virus, and they report that the reason it causes such global dysfunction is that it blocks a multitude of neurotransmitter receptors in the brain—dopaminergic, serotonergic, muscarinic, adrenergic, and histaminergic. All of those neuronal pathways in the brain are compromised. Meanwhile, MRI studies find that over a period of several years, the virus shrinks the cerebral cortex, and this shrinkage is tied to cognitive decline. A terrified public clamors for a cure. Now such an illness has in fact hit millions of American children and adults. We have just described the effects of Eli Lilly’s best-selling antipsychotic, Zyprexa." READ MORE
Insanely Judgmental Hip-Hop World Flips Out Over Mister Cee Arrest
Mister Cee, a Hot 97 DJ and semi-old-school hip-hop guy, was arrested last week and charged with public lewdness and exposure, according to the NYPD. The rumor mill has been great on the blogs! A sample: "Rumors of Mr. Cee engaging in homosexual activity have run rampant for years"! And there's some great hedging: "allegedly arrested after he was caught receiving oral sex from a male prostitute dressed as a woman, according to several news reports." What could it all mean? Perhaps... an "April Fool's Day prank or possibly someone that is not too fond of Calvin Lebrun aka DJ Mister Cee set him up to take a fall." Oh, I see. They add: "hopefully Cee can find a way to explain this debacle." Ha! Here's the take from Diary of a Hollywood Street King: "I do know Mister Cee reportedly likes to pay female strippers to urinate on him. Is that Hip/Hop? I don’t think so." Uh, are you kidding? Paying ladies to pee on you is totally hip-hop. It involves money, ladies and peeing! What's more hip-hop than that, fools? READ MORE
The State of Current Musical Fame According to the Coachella Poster
Oh, look, the Coachella music festival lineup is announced! (The festival takes place in the desert in spring. Mostly indie-hippies attend.) And a good point is made: what conception of the fame and relevance of its performers does the festival seek to convey? To the poster! READ MORE
Is Violence "Crazy"?
I've become more and more uncomfortable with "Boy that Jared Loughner is craaaaazy" talk. Like Time's diving in to be servicey: "If You Think Someone is Mentally Ill: Loughner's 6 Warning Signs." Time says it's "easy to see" that he's crazy: because he laughed randomly a lot and posed strange questions! That's literally what those mental health experts over there suggest. Which: uh oh? Am I headed for a psych eval again? But people's first rationale for Loughner being crazy is that he shot a bunch of people. (Their second is that he believed that language enslaved you—yeah, well, so did bell hooks—and something something the gold standard—which, have you been to rural Vermont recently, for instance, or other parts of the U.S. where these beliefs about currency are actually rather common?) So the point is that people commit heinous, antisocial acts of violence all the time and we don't think they're crazy. And on the other side? Most of society's "crazy people" (which range from perhaps you and I to a number of less "functional" people) don't actually commit violence. But in our minds, thanks probably to the TV, people are most crazy when they are 1. weird and 2. mass murderers. But then you have to start asking hard questions, like: is bin Laden a murderous monster who knows what he's doing? Or is he "crazy"?
When Will OpenTable Crash?
As a casual OpenTable user, I've always had the client-side operations of the service hidden from me. Because for users, it's such a win: I can survey 40 restaurants and decide when and where to eat? Yes, please! So it's good to know about the costs on the restaurant side, explained in this letter from a restaurant-owner that's making the rounds. (And on the business side, yeah, wow is that stock overvalued.)
Paula Abdul, What Will We Do Now?
This love letter to Paula Abdul is rather wonderful, containing as it does this bit: "Not since Joan Crawford appeared, preposterously, as her young daughter's replacement on the soap opera The Secret Storm has a woman on TV performed with such catastrophic bravura."
Publicists Now Beating Reporters At Celeb Press Events
AMC brought out the cast of Mad Men last night in L.A. (well, PASADENA) for the Television Critics Association hoo-ha. There was much Jon Hamm chasing (obvs), which did not go well, as handlers kept yanking him away. But things apparently got worse? Reports the LA Times: "There was nothing else to do but whine to a colleague from another major newspaper who then shared that while he was interviewing one of Hamm's costars, he was interrupted by a publicist who resorted to violence to end that interview. She had the nerve to strike him in the back!" I knew the publicists were out of control-but I do believe this is the first non-paparazzo celebrity entertainment publicist-instigated violence incident! Also: who? Who hit whom? What!
Mark Sanford Will Ask Every Single Person In America's Forgiveness For His Affair
Holy crap the Mark Sanford press conference is TOTALLY INSANE! More soon! READ MORE
