Who me? PAY $$ to march in the NEDA benefit walk? I must be seeing things.

The National Eating Disorders Association walk is taking place in a week here in the Boston area.  I’ll be there just like last year, but I’m sure not paying to march in it. Who ever heard of the sufferers being charged for such a thing. I think abusers should pay. Get these treatment place to pay sufferers for the damages they’ve done to us!

I lost my first college education and my entire musical career.
I was fired from my job due to hospitalization.
I was kicked out of nursing school.
I lost my dad.
I lost my partner.

No, “treatment” didn’t cause these losses. Not directly.

I’ve lost hospital roommates to suicide and other tragic horrors.  Much of this was treatment-induced.

However, my whole family split apart, mostly due to money spent on these quacks.

I was told I could not work or go to school because I should spend all my time in “programs.”  This was a lie. I never needed their programs and it was a waste of time and an insult.

I am suffering from trauma from repeated threats, forced care, accusations, physical abuse by staff, sexual abuse, manipulation, verbal abuse, and above all, extreme disrespect.

I experience nightmares and other signs of trauma.

Psychiatric drugging and medical neglect has wrecked my organs and this damage most likely will shorten my life.

And NOW, I’m being asked to PAY $25 to make people aware of this disease?  And the money goes to where? More treatment, where young people just like me get tortured?

Oh, c’mon, I shouldn’t be paying NEDA money, I should be the freaking guest of honor!

I’ve gone to the Facebook page for the event. You can see a photo of the NEDA folks up on the top of the page. So I’m old enough to be mom to some of them.

…meaning that I’m over half a century old.  If I’m still alive a decade from now, that is, 66 (I almost didn’t make it thru this year), maybe NEDA will award those proceeds to me if I’ve stood out there out front with my sign ten years in a row:

Never, ever shut up.

Well, if I get that much money from NEDA, I’ll be able to afford a fancy sign.

If not, put those words on my gravestone.

Hey, dudes, all new Juliemadblogger Radio EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT!

Tune in every Sunday night!

I pre-recorded tonight’s broadcast. Just a fun one tonight cuz tonight’s weather is so unfun! I will let  you know a more direct way to access these, but here’s the first broadcast, right here!

https://www.spreaker.com/user/juliemadblogger/first-broadcast-juliemadblogger-radio

How cool is that?  I think I pasted it correctly…

Next Sunday is the National Eating Disorders Association walk. If it ends up for me and Puzzle like last year’s walk, I’m sure that the next podcast will be awe-inspiring…even if I’m the only one who believes it!  Stay tuned cuz I hope to have plenty of listener input and contributions!

Remember, Never, Ever Shut Up.

Can I have that put on my gravestone?  Better yet, please do a grassroots e-mail, phoning, and petition campaign to St. Peter on my behalf cuz I’m sure gonna need it if I don’t shut up soon. See ya later!

The bus is coming any minute now

The bus will be here rather soon.  According to the “bus predictor,” that is. These handy little websites and “apps” on our cell phones are truly gems because it means that we no longer get soaked in the rain.

Well, no, I take that back.

You won’t get soaked If And Only IF

you don’t have the Cell Phone From Hell.

If you have the Cell Phone From Hell, forget it, you’re bound to miss every single bus.  The Cell Phone From Hell will ruin your life and everyone’s life who is within earshot of you, because….

Every word coming out of your mouth is this: “ASSHOLE!”

Every day, you grit your teeth and break a few trying your darndest not to throw that Cell Phone From Hell against a wall.

Texting while driving?  It can’t be done, so don’t worry. The Cell Phone From Hell won’t text when you want it to. You’ll crash trying to get it to send.  Either that, or you’ll be so pissed off that you’ll throw your car against a wall.

Do that enough times and I assure you, you’ll have six pack abs in no time.

I think I’ve invented a great Fitness Solution, haven’t I?

So what do you do about getting soaked in the rain?  You have no car cuz it’s been slammed against the wall too many times, right?

Get wet.  You do it every day in the shower anyway, or so I figure.  Meanwhile, I think the bus is taking its sweet time getting here. I don’t have time for a shower quite, but maybe I can quickly get online and order the Cell Phone from Heaven to replace the one that’s been making me mutter “Asshole” nonstop for the past year.

Just put it on my tab.

Love, Julie

G.F. Handel sure knew what he was doing in Lexington, Massachusetts….

When I was a kid growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, every year ’round Christmastime our whole town (or so it seemed to me) came piling into Cary Hall to sing together a rather long choral piece called

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

or so it was known to me, Julie, little kid version.  I sang soprano or alto or whatever I felt like singing.  I figured we were all there to have fun.  I was right. Lexington hadn’t gone through The Big Transformation yet. That happened after I took off, many years later.

Handel’s Messiah is the story of Jesus, meaning that in no way was I supposed to ever ever ever sing any of it according to my dad.  He was never thrilled that I was going to those big town events.  What did he expect?  Hanukkah Sing?  Since the Big Transformation, I wonder if Lexington has now banned anything but the very very very multi-culutural perfectly sterile and balanced PC correct non-God or many-and-varied-god whatever.  Maybe the Jewish families, at that point, just figured the heck with it, stayed home, and did their best not to burn their houses down with those last drops of oil…then again….It’s the New Lexington, so I’m sure there’s plenty of oil there.

So I was a little kid what I went to go sing and Handel’s Messiah, or the Messiah Sing, as we often called it. I remember every year it was freezing out and folks would come in, take off their hats, scarves, and mittens, and then blow snots all over everywhere.  It wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Coming down with a cold wasn’t the End Of The World back in those days. People were allowed sicknesses without some do-gooder coming in making

The crooked straight

all the time….because frankly

CROOKED IS BEAUTIFUL.

So here’s what I was thinking just a few minutes ago:

ALL WE LIKE SHEEP…HAVE GONE ASTRAY.

What a message!  Handel orchestrated that one well. We’d bellow out, “ALL WE LIKE SHEEP.”  Yeah, made that one loud and clear. Then, the next line,

“Have gone astray…..” Trust me, that “astray” sure wandered everywhere, down the streets of Lexington, into Waltham, down every hill and invaded all the baseball games and wrecked the fields and tore down the endposts and barreled into the bleachers. Then, “astray” flew up and floated over the Moon.  Yep, like that ole cow you saw on TV that comes from a nursery rhyme (it was stolen).  Couldn’t you hardly wait to see that cow each time?

So “astray,” that’s gone far, eh?

I invite each and every one of you, if you are a sheep, please, please please,

Do bust loose today, and go as far astray as you possibly can!  Handel had it right all along!

Love, Julie

URGENT: Forced care bill up for vote MONDAY 3/31/14 in Washington

Here’s the text I am sharing, copied and pasted. NOTE: I have been asked to share this widely and this is NOT copyrighted material:

Please share widely!

On Monday, the Senate is likely to vote on an urgent Medicare bill (HR 4302) that includes an unrelated program to fund forced psychiatric treatment (Title 224, Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program). A Medicare rule kicks in Tuesday, April 1, that cuts payments to doctors. The House passed HR 4302 on a voice vote with no debate last Thursday. The Senate could do the same Monday and the President could sign it before midnight.

Call both Senators from your State IMMEDIATELY. (They will vote on this bill Monday.) Leave a short message:

“I am (name, city). My Senator should NOT vote for a Doc Fix that includes Section 224 of the House bill (HR 4302). Section 224 has nothing to do with Medicare. It would use Federal dollars to pay for forced psychiatric treatment in our communities. Forced treatment is traumatizing. It criminalizes people in crisis. It scares people away from seeking help. It is costly but not effective. Keep Section 224 out of the Doc Fix bill. (Leave your phone number if you want a return call.)

Please make these calls TODAY. Your voice counts if you make the calls!

Forward this email to a friend

I will be making phone calls tomorrow.  This is essential folks.  If you are a voter, let your senator know, too. Your vote matters.

No matter who you are, one person’s vote is the same as anyone else’s. That means those of us who have felt worthless because we’ve been devalued because we’ve been stuck in “Mental Health Care” still get one vote just like anyone else.  Hey, as I always say, “Two can play at this game.”

Excellent article in Salon….sums it up.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/31/living_in_america_will_drive_you_insane_literally_partner/

I would have to say this is an excellent summary.  It’s an article about how mental health care has changed in this country over the past bunch of decades, and just how these changes have in fact has caused mental illness itself, that is, diagnosed mental illness.   The article states also that social isolation is on the rise as is dissatisfaction with jobs and increasing difficulty paying off school loans.  It’s a quick read if you want to get a good overall view of the goings-on.  As if many of us didn’t already know.

Then again, so many folks seem unaware.  You wonder what happy pills they are being given.  Or maybe Mr. Rochester had them locked up in that attic far too long.  Hey, ladies, want a light?

Why does my laptop’s wired Internet connection not work?

I had trouble with this a while back, too.  I made the following discovery:

If you are a computer “dummy,” you need to know the following, and I have no clue how this applies to Mac computers or Linux as opposed to Windows ones: Most laptops nowadays are made for wireless Internet connections. So they have wireless devices built right into them. Laptops have been made like this for years, so nowadays when we purchase a new laptop, we no longer have to purchase a separate wireless adapter. These are already included and most likely, your laptop has one and it’s turned on.  If you want to turn it off, there’s usually a very easy way to do this, usually a keyboard shortcut. You might see a symbol on an F key that looks like either an airplane or a signal tower perhaps with waves around it, or just a dot with widening waves.  On a Windows computer, press and hold the F key on the bottom of your keyboard, then while holding this key, press the numbered F key on the top of your keyboard, and this turns the wireless adapter on and off.  Sometimes you can just press the F2 key by itself. Sometimes, it’s a different key.  If you go to your laptop’s manufacturer’s site you might be able to download a manual which will give you instructions if you have any doubts. You can ask a computer guru or a reference librarian.  Or if you live near a computer store that sells the same brand, go in there as if you’re interested in buying, then casually ask the most enthusiastic salesperson how the wireless is toggled on a similar model.

(BTW: “Toggle” is one of those funny words meaning a switch that confuses the heck out of the average person. Why? Because you never know if it’s on or off.  A caps lock button is a toggle switch unless it’s like the old typewriter caps lock switches that you pressed and they actually stayed down.  Nowadays, the caps lock key doesn’t change at all after you press it unless you’ve got one that does you a favor by lighting up.)

I’m not a computer “dummy,” however, a while back when I connected my Windows 7 laptop to a wired connection, guess what I forgot? Yep, you guessed it.  I forgot to disconnect the wireless connection.  So both were running at the same time.  I wondered why on earth my connection was so darned slow!  This went on for a few weeks before I caught my error.  I was rather thrilled when I realized my mistake and was easily able to correct it.  You can bet I was laughing my butt off at myself.

Some computers won’t allow both at once.  Actually, I’m surprised that this one did.  Looking back, that’s most likely the reason my Windows 8 machine never accepted a wired connection. It was because I wasn’t disconnecting the wireless connection first.

In conclusion: If you fail to connect your laptop to the Internet via an ethernet cable, be sure that the laptop is not already connected to the Internet via a wireless connection.

This is only one of my many amusing “tech” experiences and it may not be the same as anything you will go through. I just thought I’d share.

Break a rule today

If you are reading this and like my blog it’s in part because you love the way I get sidetracked. Life is all about sidetracking and it’s about what distracts us.  It’s about Plan B, because Plan B happens to just about everyone.  We’ve been brainwashed into believing certain things are extremely important.  But if something grabs our attention from these supposedly important ideals, we’re told that’s “distraction” and that “distraction” is bad and being “unfocused” is a disease. Really?  Hogwash.

We’re told not to get distracted. Distraction is considered bad.   We are now told that being unfocused is a disease that needs to be corrected.  Really? Again and again, I see folks doing Plan B. Life happens when you’re not looking.  Love happens when you don’t expect it.  If you love my blog and are reading it, you love the way I go off topic and I don’t give a hoot.

Have you celebrated Plan B today?  Have you enjoyed what comes to you naturally, what was unplanned and unscheduled?  What rules or conventions have you challenged today?

Did you reach out to someone today? Did you ignore social prejudices and arbitrary boundaries our society has placed upon us based on race, disability, what people wear, their weight and appearance?

We do need to just about all the time stay within what’s legal, decent, and respectful considering what company surrounds us.  So if your dog poops on someone’s lawn, pick up the poops.  And if your dog poops on their lawn and they start giving you hell for it even though you are picking up after your dog, don’t make an issue of it, just avoid that lawn if you can help it.

Don’t walk around out in public naked.  If you go to a nudist colony or various events that have legal permission to walk around naked I hear it’s okay to walk around naked.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with walking around naked inside your own home, especially in the summer, so long as no one’s peeking.  I think I need to not talk too much about this.

In conclusion, my dog is usually not wearing anything at all. The Emperor wasn’t, either, or so I hear.

Fun

There’s a sale on pillows at a local store, so Jane, (a fictional character) decides her old pillow needs replacing.  She goes out to the pillow sale and buys herself the one that’s the latest “in” thing. She buys a bunch of other items as well.  She puts her usual pillowcase onto the new pillow and forgets all about it.

Six months later, she notices that she hasn’t been sleeping well for quite some time. She goes to her shrink and tells her shrink she can’t sleep. Her shrink tells her she must be manic and gives her pills.

Of course, I’ve already told you folks about the pillow. So you all know, and you want to scream to Jane, “Don’t believe the Evil Shrink!  It’s the pillow, Jane!”  This is one of those tricks that writers do, to inform the eager reader but not the character.

I could do this with memoir or blogging, too. I could tell you ahead of time, “I didn’t know, but….” and then show you the “me” that went on for a lengthy time uninformed.  I do this all the time, rather sloppily, I admit.

At any rate, my fiction about Jane could continue in various ways. She could go get a third pillow and then discover on her own that there’s a “pillow cure” to her insomnia.  Or perhaps it’s all too late for her and she’s  locked up forever or she’s died from too many pills.  Or maybe she joined antipsychiatry and became an activist and is now educating others and helping them avoid the pitfalls that she ended up in. Or maybe she’s a pillow activist, helping to spread the word about allergens in pillows and maybe you shouldn’t buy those for your kids or have them in nursing homes and day care centers. Aren’t I having fun with this story?  I love being a writer.  Maybe she committed suicide because she found insomnia to be intolerable, and never, ever found out that the pillow was the cause.

Know what else is cool?  Pill/pillow. Funny, huh?

Okay, I’m done with the story for now.  Oh no, I’m not. What about the fictional Evil Shrink?

The fictional Evil Shrink shrank in the wash, of course.

If Kafka could change a person to a grasshopper, and money can be laundered, why not throw an MD in with the same load, to save quarters?  Writers do this stuff late at night in laundromats.  See ya later.

ADHD and video games (what did I tell you about TV?)

What have I been saying about TV all along?  When I was a young girl, I wrote to a TV station and told them that their shows were causing my two little brothers to fight with each other.  I told them to please take their violent shows off the air so my baby brothers would quit fighting.  Guess my family strengthening tactic didn’t work, eh?  Oh well, no one in my family paid lost a cent on that effort except for the cost of a postage stamp.  Compare that to the thousands they later paid to therapists, doctors, and treatment centers that did far more harm than good…..

Oh well. Today, my little girl argument still stands.  Check out this link, or don’t even bother if you don’t want to:

http://www.healthcentral.com/adhd/cf/slideshows/10-signs-of-adhd-in-children?ap=104

It’s a slide show presentation, one show on ADHD and then one on how you shouldn’t let your child play too many video games because this will cause attention problems, seizures, poor posture, lack of sunlight leading to poor absorption of Vitamin D (they say this deficiency could lead to all kinds of emotional difficulty), sleep deprivation…hey, are we talking about ADHD here?

So what does this all mean?  What are the answers? Why do we see more so-called ADHD these days? Why does it seem like the “in” thing is to take pills of some sort?

How about raising kids without TV?  Just don’t buy one in the first place.   Those noise boxes ruin your eyes and they make yucky, loud, unnatural noise for hours and hours.  You don’t notice the noise until you are away from it, but to me, this noise is rather horrible sounding.  The flickering is especially annoying and after you are away from it for years, seeing it again is incredibly alarming.  You’ll see what I mean if you get away from it, cuz most people see TV every day, so they don’t have a clue when I speak of the “flickering.”  Save money. Don’t pay an arm and a leg to that cable company for those dumb “shows” that are nothing but a waste of time. Why not live in silence?  Yep, try turning off those electronics.

I write with a computer and I love gadgets mainly because I hate humans so much, but please, please, use gadgetry in an active, educational way.  Make your gadgetry serve you.  Your gadgets are your robots. They are toys. We are boss. Our toys aren’t our teachers or mentors or Big Brothers, and we aren’t their slaves.