Duxford Girl

I've been watching Arrested Development the last week or so and I couldn't help but think of my youth of watching Little House on the Prairie. For those of you who don't know or remember, Jason Bateman played young James Cooper, an orphaned boy who watches his parents die in a horrific waggon accident.

“No, no, no!” You're saying. “Little House on the Prairie was a gentle, lovely family show. Stuff like that never happened.” Really? Go to this link and start the video at the 3-minute mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=ew6PJ-svR8k&NR=1

I hardly knew what to do with myself while watching the Oscars last night. At least four women around my age graced the stage and (GASP!!!) they weren't thin! In fact, they weren't even close to what is generally considered “healthy” by today's media.

Because, you see, “healthy” has become the new buzz-word when discussing the unacceptable largeness of women who the media feels have no business being all uppity and successful. Within the next week, several so-called “nutritionists” and “health experts” will appear on various TV shows and news casts all discussing how the larger ladies of the Oscar evening are all going to convince young girls to stop caring about how they look and eat whatever they want. I mean, heaven forbid! Can you imagine a world where women grew up to like themselves and are focusing on something other then their outward image?

For once, a Fox News reporter didn't offend me. Check out this video and see how uncomfortable the nutritionists gets when the reporter points out that she's too thin.



In all fairness to the nutritionist, she's not being totally crazy with her advice. She's pointing out that losing 10 to 20 pounds is a reasonable step to being healthy. I don't disagree, I struggle to keep my weight down and can certainly see a difference in my performance in various activities that I take part in when my weight is higher than I would like it to be.

However, the notion that young girls will see successful women like Adele and Kelly Clarkson and stop caring about their health is ridiculous. In fact, when women of all ages are exposed to photos of women that are a variety of shapes and sizes, they are more likely to take care of themselves and not get into dangerous diet habits. What's even more irritating, is that I don't see the media doing stories on how young boys may not be concerned about their appearance because of actors such as Seth Rogen.

Apparently, there is a shortage of people like this:



It's horrific to realise that in this century, in this millennium, there are still people who believe that the way to cure a broken mind is by ridding them of demons.

Apparently, how it works is, if you live at the Vatican, you're free from any nasty legal issues that may have cropped up while you allowed thousands of children to be raped at the hands of your minions.

http://itccs.org/

Meet Lama.



Well, actually, you can't meet her, because she's dead. So let's talk about her and remember her and see if we can't come up with a way to prevent what happened to her from happening to anyone, anywhere, EVER AGAIN.

Her father was worried that she wasn't a virgin, so he savagely beat her and raped her. She arrived at the hospital with a crushed skull, broken bones, burns and burns. Her rectum had been torn open and then her father had tried to burn it shut. It took ten months for her to die from these horrific injuries. DID I MENTION THAT SHE WAS FIVE-YEARS OLD!

Horrified? Offended? Sickened? Good, you should be, let's continue.

That's all love is, after all, a mix of chemicals coursing through our bodies and causing reactions that we big-brained humans have decided to call love.

Where to go from the topic of love? To mental illness, of course! One of the markers of several mental illnesses, is that of trouble within romantic relationships. (Check out http://www.cmha.ca/mental-health/understanding-mental-illness/ to see the various mental illnesses and their traits.)

As I've spent the last couple of years understanding my own mental health and all the how and whys surrounding my illness, I've come to FULLY realise that there are no easy answers and no cut and dried diagnoses. While depressive episodes come and go, they will build upon one another. Imagine if you cut yourself and it slowly bled and then healed, bled and then healed, each time becoming worse and more likely to fester with infection. That is the case with mental illness. When it doesn't get treated, it just get worse as the years pass by. While depression is what finally took me out, it was likely childhood ADD that led to the depression and anxiety I've experienced most of my life. ADD would not have even been on the table when I was a child, it wasn't even something that had a name. I was simply “over-sensitive” and “high-strung”. To give you an idea of what I experienced as a child, I was already having problems with insomnia as early as six. Many children have night terrors when they are three or four but mine have continued into adulthood. I simply have never been able to turn my brain off at night. As a child, I would lie awake worrying that the house would burn down, worrying that a nuclear war would occur, worrying that my cat would escape while camping and not come home. At school, I was terrified of ever publicly making any sort of mistake whether it be in class or in the gym. My sense of shame has always been crushing.

Because of the following video, PZ Meyers is worried about Canada:



You can view his worries here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/13/canadais-there-a-problem-you-havent-told-us-about/

It's nice that he's concerned.

... consensual chocolate egg sex!