Lyrist’s Locution: your #1 source for locution pudding!

Seriously, who’s searching for this?

Zoey managed to get into the bedroom four or five times today, despite the chair (with legs down) being held in place by two ten-pound weights. We knew it was time for something new.

So behold! The most advanced cat barricade in the world!

It’s a table WITH A BIG CARDBOARD BOX BEHIND IT!!!

About fifteen minutes after I put that up, I heard a minor skirmish with the cardboard and a resounding thud come from the hallway upstairs. I walked over to the stairs (I was on my computer downstairs) and saw a very upset-looking Zoey looking pathetically down at me.

“Nice try, buddy,” I told him, as he meowed in protest.

Seriously, he meowed for quite some time after the initial failure to overcome this. After a while, he gave up, walked over the couch with his head hung low, and jumped up and looked really depressed.

He’s asleep now, no doubt concocting lesser cat barricades in his mind which he easily overcomes to rescue Tilly from her bedroom prison. The two of them will run off to the living room and madly, passionately play with a stick with a string attached to it.

Keep dreaming, buddy!

Ok, so I’ve been nominated to lead a writers’ group at work (nominated by one of the proofers, no less). I’m probably going to start with the new year. I don’t think I’ll be starting a group outside of work for lack of interest, but I will most likely post the exercises on here. Is there anything you, my three readers, are wanting to learn?

Both actual Google searches that led to my site. I’m going to become the go-to resource for all of your locution pudding and sardonian root needs. Expect full write-ups sometime soon.

I just realized that, since I’ve been blogging on this new platform, I haven’t once talked about my disorder. This is probably largely due to widespread misunderstandings of the disorder and some social stigmas that go along with it, but I figure, hey, if I can’t talk about it on my blog then I can’t talk about it anywhere, so why not?

First, just a word on normal chronic (clinical) depression. If you’re not familiar with chronic depression, it’s a problem with serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain. Serotonin and dopamine are chemicals that the brain uses to reward good behavior—things like accomplishment, pleasure, love, and any of a number of other good things. (Serotonin is the brain chemical affected by the drug ecstasy and dopamine is the brain chemical affected by cocaine, if that clears things up.) The reason you get good feelings when something like that happens is because the brain triggers the release of one or both of those chemicals, which are received by the brain and used to produce the pleasurable effect. So depression isn’t necessarily a sad feeling so much as it is a physiological inability to feel any joy.

A chronically depressed individual isn’t sad all of the time, and isn’t even depressed all of the time. The depression comes in waves, and can manifest itself in anything from sadness to complete apathy to self-destructive behavior to emotional desolation. An “episode” usually lasts at least two weeks, but can go on for years.

Bipolar disorder is marked by alternating states of depression, which involves lower than normal levels of those chemicals, and mania, which involves much higher than normal levels of those chemicals. So, while the consciousness and persona of bipolar individuals don’t actually change as with multiple personality disorder, the people surrounding that individual will have to learn to deal with two very different versions of the same person. The individual him or herself will have to learn to live life as two very different versions of the same person. (States usually last more than a year, so wild mood swings aren’t as prevalent as common knowledge would have you believe.)

Before I go any further, let me say that bipolar disorder, just like depression, is largely treatable. I doubt anyone in my life now knows that there’s anything wrong with me. Treatment can get a little tricky, and it’s harder for some people than others, but most bipolar people are able to live relatively normal lives once a treatment has been found.

I said this on my About page, but I didn’t actually get diagnosed until I was 21. Bipolar isn’t so bad in childhood, but gets bad in adolescence and gets much worse in early adulthood. I had no idea the disorder existed until I was 21, so I had to grow up alternating between my two states: on the one side, a quiet, angst-ridden boy with no self-esteem who had a negative self image sometimes to the point of self-mutilation; and on the other side, a very much extraverted, impetuous, fun-loving boy that spoke and acted without thinking—someone who was just as capable of damaging or hurting everything around him (not physically) as passionately pursuing ideals and charismatically bringing people on-board with them.

As you can imagine, these two sides of me did not like each other. As a result, I spent most of my life not liking either my past or present self (or both). I’d spend a year or two depressed, lamenting the careless things I had done just the year before or my own inability to speak up as I had, and just when I got a handle on being that person, I would change over to my other state. Truth be told, I actually got to be pretty good at managing these feelings, but my long-standing friends still weren’t sure what to expect from me from year to year. I don’t want to get into any particulars now, but middle and high school were a pretty rough time for me.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing good that came out of this. Bipolar individuals are generally highly creative, intelligent people. I found myself alternating between extreme introspection, which gave me time to formulate insights on life that many of my friends missed, and extreme creativity and capability, which put me in a spot to do some pretty great things. On personality tests, I walk the line between thinking and feeling, and I have no doubt that experience on both sides of the fence got me here. Not that I was an exceptional person, but I just didn’t want you to think that my life had been destroyed.

If you’ve kept up with me over the past few years, you’ve probably noticed some rather drastic changes in my personality. My later years in Florida (after I got medicated) and my early months in Kansas actually saw me quite hypo-manic, as I was not properly medicated. When I found a new psychiatrist up here, he immediately told me this and I started a new medication. The new medication’s dosage was initially much too high and sapped most of my personality away. (It’s hard for me to see these things because I don’t have any conception of “normal” in my life—I’ve always been off-balance in one way or another.) I was on this medication for a year and a half before tracing the problem back to the medication itself and switching to another one. Now, I’m still a bit on the introverted side, but I’m much more balanced and steady than I’ve been at any other time in my life.

So anyway, that’s my disorder. If you have any questions or anxieties about this (I don’t doubt that there will be at least a few people who will be apprehensive to talk to me after reading this), please ask me. I don’t mind discussing this with people who honestly want to know more about it, and I’d rather have you ask awkward questions than endure an awkward space between us. If you’re suffering from depression or any sort of mental disorder, feel free to drop me a line. I’m not a professional by any means, but I have put quite a bit of research into it and I’ve got some experience under my belt as well.

It was the 1984 Miss Alaska talent competition.

I’d like to see Joe Biden do that.

I tried cutting this list down to ten, but I just couldn’t cut any of these. So, in no particular order, 13 essential albums for listening:

1. Recovering the Satellites – Counting Crows – Most people will say that their debut album, August and Everything After, was their finest. I disagree. While August was certainly a good album that may even be more emotionally rich than Satellites, Satellites is a much more musically complex album. It manages to be angry, but not overbearing; upbeat, but not optimistic. In my opinion, their greatest album.
2. OK Computer – Radiohead – This album is about as perfect as an album can be. Every song is beautifully complex and unique, from the angry and chaotic “Paranoid Android” to the deeply moving “Let Down” to the emotionally desolate “Exit Music (For a Film).” This, to me, is the album that truly defined Radiohead and gave them a permanent spot in the list of most influential musicians.
3. Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend – If you can imagine a band that gives off the same vibe as a Wes Anderson movie, it’s these guys. Take The Kinks and add in a little bit of reggae and classical music and you might get something like Vampire Weekend. Fun, fun stuff. Also voted by the guy from Stuff White People Like to be the whitest band of 2008.
4. The Crane Wife – The Decemberists – The storytelling on this album is great, both lyrically and musically. I won’t say it’s the best, but the music and lyrics are woven so perfectly together that I have to mention it. It also helps that the music is great. Maybe not as upbeat as Castaways and Cutouts, but the emotional depth and musical integrity of the album win out.
5. Plans – Deathcab for Cutie – Admittedly, I’m not as familiar with Deathcab’s entire musical collection, but I have heard bits and pieces of most of it. Plans probably has the most widespread appeal, with a few pop-friendly songs scattered in amongst the usual slightly bitter angst anthems. It just seemed like, for this album, they knew how all the pieces fit together before they wrote the songs, so nothing seems forced together. Maybe not their most inventive album, but my favorite for casual listening.
6. Lost and Gone Forever – Guster – Ah, the bittersweet taste of Guster. Never before has angst been so much fun. For this album, they took great care to layer tracks upon tracks to weave a complex musical web that appears effortless. Having a hand percussionist rather than a drummer makes them inherently cooler than most bands. Also, “Happier” is probably the most fun song to sing at a concert, ever.
7. Absolution – Muse – An uplifting album about the end of the world. The odd but effective blend of alt rock with classical elements and a flair for the dramatic comes together beautifully in this album. It also helps that Matthew Bellamy has a voice you can drunk off of. The songs run the complete gamut of rock: “Butterflies and Hurricanes” dissolves into a classical piano solo and then returns full force to the aggressive rock song; “Apocalypse Please” balances Bellamy’s smooth voice with a banging piano and wailing guitars; “Sing for Absolution” is an emotional ballad that can stand with the best of them; “Stockholm Syndrome” rocks harder than most bands would even aspire to. A very diverse group, and this album is the perfect example of it.
8. Funeral – Arcade Fire – Sometimes upbeat, sometimes depressing, but always highly expressive and emotional, Arcade Fire is a very different band. French (Canadian?) musical influences can be heard on the album. Mix that with some interesting instrumentation (piano and and strings alongside the electric and bass guitars and drums) and you get a band that breaks the indie band mold. Take that, hipsters!
9. The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place – Explosions in the Sky – Deep, emotional, moving instrumental post-rock. (If you don’t know, post-rock is actually a somewhat dated term for music which departs from traditional rock structure and function while retaining rock instrumentation.) Basically, the group (comprised of three guitarists and a drummer) composes a 45-minute symphony in five or six movements, meant to be listened to from start to finish. Structually, it’s most similar to classical music. Meant to be played loud.
10. Good Dog, Bad Dog – Over the Rhine – After getting fed up with their record label, Over the Rhine ditched them and recorded tracks in basements and living rooms with friends. The result is a dark and beautiful collection of home-grown songs free from restraint and overproduction. The album contains what is possibly the best rainy day song ever (“Latter Days”) and what is possibly the most uplifting song about suicide (“Poughkeepsie”). The album does have its fair share of not-so-depressing songs as well.
11. Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me – The Cure – The first song alone (“The Kiss”) is enough for this album to make the list. “The Kiss” is one of their darkest songs, and it’s amazingly well-done. Oddly enough, the album is also home to one of their brightest songs, “Just Like Heaven.” The Cure were competent and comfortable in their form by this album, and the songs just seem so natural to the musicians playing them. My favorite Cure album.
12. The Sunset Tree – Mountain Goats – When John Darnielle set out to write an album about his life with an abusive step-father, he surprised everyone by putting out an optimistic album that displays a deep respect for the man while not excusing his behavior. The album offers hope to any who find themselves in the same spot. The album also represents a musical milestone for John, bringing his music to a new level by showing a skill and depth not seen on earlier albums.
13. The White Album – The Beatles – I don’t profess to be familiar with the entire Beatles catalogue—I know a lot of songs, but I don’t know their album contexts. So this choice may be based on some silly reasons. One, it has some of my favorite songs on it: “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” to name two. Two, this is a double album, so you get more songs (thirty, to be exact). The album is fun, but not off-the-wall like Sgt. Pepper’s. It also contains some very clever social commentary in the form of satire in songs like “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and “Piggies.” Overall, a great album.

I came home for lunch (which I’m eating right now). Just a minute ago, I heard Zoey start coughing something up. I figured it was a hairball. But when I looked back at it, there was no hairball—only a little bit of stuff came up. Upon close examination, Zoey had thrown up a foil wrapper of some sort (probably from a Rice Krispie treat). Oh, buddy…

I found this recipe and tried it a week ago. It worked great. First, get some sweet potatoes (figure one potato will feed between one and two people). Cut them in half, place them cut side down on a baking sheet, and bake for 45 minutes at 345 degrees. Now comes the tricky part: scoop out the insides of the sweet potatoes with a spoon, leaving about a half inch inside to hold the finished product together. Mix the potato innards with some cream cheese (1-2 ounces per potato… I used an 8 oz. package for five potatoes and it worked great), a little bit of milk (just enough to thin it out a little), some brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, and crushed walnuts (all to taste). Stuff the potato skins with the mixture, then place back in the oven and bake for 10-15 more minutes.

I’m on a food kick, so I might as well run with it. I came up with this one a while back. Many grocery stores carry cans of chipotle peppers (smoked jalapeños) packed in adobo sauce. Buy one of these. Take the peppers out, conserving the sauce, remove the veins and seeds, and dice finely. Work these peppers into some ground hamburger meat and season with salt. (It’s very important not to overwork the meat. Kneading and working the meat too much will make it rock hard.) Stick these on the grill or sauté them up. While they’re cooking, mix the leftover adobo sauce with some mayonnaise (just enough to dim down the heat to your tastes). Serve with sliced red onion and lettuce.