Dyslectic Heart

DiaryLand

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:41:13 GMT

Hi,

I've moved my blog to diaryland, as I can edit the layout to match my site.

Check it out:
http://moodyluna.diaryland.com/

People are using my bases!

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:07:51 GMT

I've made these new bases that I named Tinka,
this is how they look:

And now I've seen several dolls on my base. It is a cool feeling to make a base, and then see people using it. Very Happy.

Friends Only

Thu, 25 May 2006 22:41:51 GMT

Please comment to be added.

If you want to know more about me before you become my friend, please check out my memories.

This beautiful image was created by naturalwonderz

Character Study - Correen

Sun, 07 May 2006 03:40:17 GMT

She grew up homeless in the lower 48, traveling in a mobile home with a dad that apparently was a Nazi. Nazi is the term used, it isn't clear if he was following the Nazi ideology or just an awes whole in general. She has seven younger siblings. The mom has never been explained. Was she in the bus? Where is she? As a writer it is always easy to blame the mom, Jane Austin did it very seamlessly, but in the upbringing of 'carrying it straight' Colleen the mom is missing. Now the mom has a role to play, living with her seven children in Delta (a place for inbreeds) and teaching all her younger children how to follow the laminated path to the white trash kingdom.

So the dad gave harm, and so this is where Colleen is. Her father harmed her and now she has to live with this stamp on her forehead for the rest of her life. Low cast, but fighting upwards. Fighting really hard. All she talks about is money, well, money and the Chamber of Commerce. I colored my hair a darker shade of brown and she commented in a way that I first didn't understand. Apparently in her world coloring your hair means you have money. Everywhere around her, every person around her has money. It's like she has an eating disorder and only sees people skinnier than her in the grocery shop. She is on the verge of breaking up with her attorney boyfriend of five years. They have constant arguments about, yes - you got it; money. He doesn't provide enough. She doesn't see that getting a job would solve the riddle. But she is fighting hard for that pass to middle class America. She has these blinds on her freaking head and all she sees is that house by the river, that new suit from banana republic, and the joy of networking with people who is like her, pretending they have money and status and in actuality are living in a freaking little town filled with gold miners. I feel sorry for her, but I can't respect her. Why the sorrow you ask? Because this whole frication about money and class doesn't mean anything. It is all made up. Good taste is just the taste of people who are in power, so good taste doesn't really exist on its own. And just like that, money has no value but for the goods they can bring us. They bring us goods so that we can survive and do what we like to do and do what we don't like to do. Live. And class in America is so foolish. It’s that social game that Colleen and her comrades have chosen to play. If it gave them any happiness that would be ok. But the result of their game is that they meet lots of boring people who laugh at stupid jokes and it doesn't have any value, and its not even fun. She doesn't realize that life is about having a good time, not about what group you are being put into by foolish people who also doesn’t know that life is about having a good time. Reality is hard, but there is possibilities of creating your own life even with the hand you have been dealt. I am me. Colleen is not herself. She is so afraid of herself that she has pushed down her spirit to the soles of her feet and they aren't walking anymore. And why don't I respect her? Because she doesn't dear to face life. She doesn't dear to face reality. I am not saying she has to face my fucked up schizophrenic reality, but at least /try/ to be happy, won't you?

Definition of the word and concept of Witchcraft

Fri, 05 May 2006 06:21:11 GMT

Definition of the word and concept of Witchcraft

I would like to define the concept of Witchcraft, as it is used in modern time, to you. A witch is a wise man or woman, and craft is the art of making changes in the here and now through the use of magic. The word witchcraft has very negative condensations to most people, but to neo-pagans who follow this belief system being called a witch is a symbol of honor and respect.

Witchcraft is not a religion, unlike Wicca (a neo-pagan religion made by Gerald Gardner in the 1950's,) but a way of life.

Witchcraft is unique in western culture by the fact that it is not dualistic. That means that there is no black or white magic, there is no polarity between good and evil, no race is more important than the next, and being an animal like a cat is just as purposeful as being a human being. Nature is revered as the awesome power and beauty that it contains. Some witches believe in Gods of ancient and new times, while some just work with spirits (like nature spirits, angels, demoins) and some are atheistic.

What people who “do” witchcraft have in common is that they actively try to make beneficial changes to their own personal lives. They do this by magic of course, but also by the choices they make and by the way they view the universe/world we live in. They recognize that every living thing has a personal power, and that this power can be harbored and centered to make their lives take the direction they seek.

While Witchcraft in itself is not spiritual, many witches add spiritual believes to their lives.

Eclecticism is very popular, where you take what you like from different world religions and incorporate it into your personal believe system. Every witch is free to believe in what he or she may choose, as no one should have the right to tell you what you should and shouldn't believe in.

Many think of witchcraft as old European Shamanism, or that witchcraft is watered down spiritual beliefs from priests and priestesses from old European religions. It is true that most witches descend from a European background. Witchcraft, especially with eclecticism, is one of the fastest growing belief systems in the western world.

I choose to separate witchcraft from religion, as I think that is what gives individuals the most freedom to live their lives according to their own beliefs and needs. The goal of witchcraft is to harmonize with the ever changing, and always the same, universe.

Causes and Effects of Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Fri, 05 May 2006 00:14:58 GMT

A paper on cause and effect for my English class:
________________________________________________

Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, hereby referred as PTSD, is a psychological and biological disorder caused by sever trauma. The disorder got a lot of attention after the Vietnam War; even though it has been noticed since ancient times and first written about during the Civil War in the USA and was then referred to as "Da Costa's Syndrome." Naturally most of the literature on PTSD revolves around Veterans, perhaps typical in the male-oriented world we live in. The National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, incidentally where I get most of this material from, highly focuses on Veterans of War, even though sexual abuse of women (a group that has high risk of developing PTSD) is more frequent than war exposure. About 8 present of men develop PTSD while the number for women is much higher, at 20 present. Why then the focus on men and PTSD? This is probably so because people surviving war zones are more organized and seen as a group, while sexual molestation and other abuse is often blamed on the victims and they are not organized as a group.

So what causes PTSD? Well, it gets its roots from a highly stressful situation. The longer the person endures traumatic stress, the more likely PTSD will develop and be chronic. Episodes like natural disasters, living in a war zone, sexual abuse like rape and childhood molestation, wife beating (for the lack of a better word) and abuse in childhood are the most frequent causes of chronic
PTSD.

Unknown to most is that PTSD actually changes the brain. It is not just a psychological disorder that can be cured by talk-therapy. PTSD creates stable neurobiological alterations in both the central and autonomic nervous system. PTSD has only recently been discovered to create alterations on the physical brain, so research needs to be done to clarify what is actually going on, but this is what they know so far: The alterations create altered brainwave activity, decreased volume of the hippocampus, and abnormal activation of the amygdala. Both the hippocampus and the amygdala are involved in the processing and integration of memory. The amygdala has also been found to be involved in coordinating the body's fear response. These findings are recent, and there has not been developed any medication to specifically target the neurotransmitters that is altered with PTSD. The medications now used are low-level antidepressants medication like Zoloft and Prozac. It is expected that with more research new medications will be developed.

Including changing the way the brain operates, hormones that deal with the body’s reaction to stress is overactive. The thyroid is overworked, while cortisone levels are lower and epinephrine and norepinephrine levels are higher than normal. An interesting point is that the neurohormonal changes that occur in PTSD are opposite to the neurohormonal changes that occur with depression. That is why I’m highly suspicious of the current medical treatment of PTSD with low-level antidepressants.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder gives severe problems dealing with life in general. There is a low level rage under the surface that is leaking out in how the person deals with family life in general; interpersonal situations like at work and social life, and you see many people with PTSD having problems with the criminal justice system. Bodily problems like headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, immune system problems, dizziness, chest pain, and discomfort in other parts of the body are common in people with PTSD. Often, medical doctors treat the symptoms without being aware that they stem from PTSD.
Here is a symptom of PTSD that I experience, and that I think is common:

Symptoms of PTSD - Leaving the Body:
When you have been sexually abused, you can develop a method of leaving the scene without actually going anywhere. It is a survival method. The problem with the method is that you can abuse it. Perhaps if you are under any stress whatsoever (like my husband asking me too many questions at once) you can then leave the scene. This is what I mean by leaving my body. One of my voices says: ‘Take of your clothes, lay down and die.” This is referred to the abuse, where a part of you dies when you ‘leave your body’. The voice is reminding me of the trauma of being sexually abused.
As you can decipher from this piece is that PTSD often occurs in correlation with other mental illnesses. The most common mental illnesses working with PTSD is alcohol abuse and dependency, major depression disorder, conduct disorders, simple and social phobias and drug abuse.

So how do people deal with PTSD? Since it is a disorder that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, people with chronic PTSD don’t do many positive things to help the disorder. It is most frequent that they use negative coping mechanisms like isolation, drug and alcohol abuse, violent behavior, angry intimidation of others, eating disorders and self-destructive behavior like cutting, crime, and suicide. There are, however, some positive coping skills that people with PTSD can take advantage of. Information about the disorder is a good first step (and perhaps why I’m writing this paper in the first place), talking with others (especially trained counselors who are educated on PTSD) to find positive coping mechanisms and relaxation techniques that can help keep the person comfortable in his or her body. Working through the trauma might be too intense for some people, but are a necessary part of treatment. This is so because PTSD can lay latent and bloom during reminder situations. This can occur even years after the actual trauma that triggered PTSD in the first place. Medication, as mentioned above, is being subscribed to PTSD sufferers, but I am unsure how many actually benefit from it at this current stage. It is a hope for the future though.
PTSD is getting more and more attention from the media, the medical researchers, the pharmaceutical companies, and the general public. This will lead to more information about the disease, and also better treatment of people who suffer from short term or chronic post traumatic stress disorder.

I hope this short piece informed you and gave some insight into this chronic biological and psychological disorder. If you would like more information from a person suffering from chronic PTSD, don’t hesitate to contact me at katadams@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading.

Sources:
May 03, 2006:
National Center for PTSD at http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/
What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder?
http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/facts/general/fs_what_is_ptsd.html
Coping with PTSD and Recommended Lifestyle Changes for PTSD Patients
http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/facts/treatment/fs_coping.html

This is the story of a girl who was crazy

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 20:49:24 GMT

I wrote this before I was admited to the hospital:

_________________________________________________

This is the story of a girl who was crazy. She had no real life, so she had to make up one. Sitting in front of her desk, in her well organized office, she lit her cigarette and thought about life. Life had not been gentle with her, and in return she had not been gentle with life. Abusing alcohol was in her past, but resent past. She would go to bars and intrude on peoples conversations. Perhaps because she didn’t have a life she wanted to persuade other people that she was the most interesting creature in the world. She would brag, she would lie, she would charm. She would do anything to escape the quiet moment where real thinking had to take turn. But here, in front of her big desk, she started to think. And what she saw in her minds eye was not pretty.

Suffering from madness from the age of seven, she had never really seen herself as well as other people could see themselves and their lives. She existed just like other people exist, but there was really nothing more to it. There was the struggle though. The only really sign of life was the immense mental pain of living. Die! Die! The voices told her. But she couldn’t make that choice. Sometimes she couldn’t die for her pedophile of a grandfather. Sometimes she had to protect her mother, who by the way wouldn’t let her eat. Then it was her dogs, which in the end was killed by the veterinarian at a young age. You always had eternal damnation, but after a while that wasn’t really what stopped her eighter. What stopped her I don’t know. Perhaps it was a silly hope; perhaps it was that she couldn’t really think rational. I always find people who commit suicide to be the most rational creatures on earth. They see their lives, figure out they can’t accept it, and do something about it. Courage. This the mad girl didn’t have. She didn’t have anything but her brain, constantly struggling with survival.

Her body was lean and muscular. Not from exercise, mind you, but from the terror of life. The constant flexing of muscles, so much so that you could see her six-pack. She looked like a cat that had been thrown out on the street. Hair big and fluffy, body lean and strong, carrying the shame with her everywhere she went. Dirty and stinking. Not much of a sight. She had no problems picking up men though. Men as lost as she was herself. There where half-wits, there where alcoholics, there where even one who ate candy till he threw up. He was on a constant sugar high, while she was on a constant low. They didn’t fit. She didn’t know they had to.

She started dividing up her personality into three parts. There was the child always crying for fun and attention. There was the responsible one who dreamt of a career. Then there was the mad and angry woman below the surface, always below the surface. I don’t know what good this did her, but she had read “The Face of Eva” years before and was sure this was the key; the answer to Freud’s riddle.

Everyone cried for therapy. She had to go to therapy, as if that would make any significant difference. In fact it did. She had one nurse after the other, one doctor after the other. She even started to believe therapy would do the trick. So she got addicted to it. Seeing them. Hearing them talk, of politics, of their divorce, of their schooling. One even fell asleep during the consultation. But this was the key. They told her many things about herself. Like that she had melancholia, that she had to get a job, that she had to come and listen to them talk. It made her worse. It made her madder then if she’d been poisoned by mercury. Why in heavens name do they let sane people help the insane? As if they have any insight. What is it they want to teach? Normality? And is this the selected method? So the girl failed again, this time with therapy.

In the end she ended up in a hospital ward for the mentally unstable. For the first time in her life she felt normal. This was a blessing out of nowhere.

And this is what the mad girl, sitting in her office looking at her life realized. She didn’t belong there, in her well organized office. She didn’t belong out in the streets. She didn’t belong in her home. She belonged in a hospital. A smoking hospital, mind you.

The Face of Schizophrenia

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 07:27:25 GMT

I’m sitting in front of Dr. Kielie, and am looking for words that don’t exist. How can I explain the unexplainable of this disease? All my senses have taken over, I am the victim of them. They fool me, and I have nothing to report. My mind is fighting my mind. I am lonely in here, in this white world of silence and excess. I want to crawl under my skin, but I’m already there. Waiting for myself. Waiting for rest. Waiting for the day my schizophrenia takes over.

Dr. Kielie is tiered of me, of that I am sure. He can’t help me, and I don’t want his help. I want a cure. Something definite. A shot that can make me as normal as you and you. Would that be too much to ask for? I don’t care if it gives me heart failure or diabetes; I just want to be normal.

I never was normal, so why do I cry for something I don’t even know what is? I remember going down the street, heading for a pedophile and his granddaughter. Someone started telling lies in my head. They where humiliating me. Let me be me. But I wanted to play with the granddaughter, Lise. She thought me how to masturbate with a vibrator, and I was mightily impressed by her finesse. I was 7. The world was a closed casket I would never experience. I would never know what was real. This is the nature of the disease I guess. This is the nature of me.

At one point in time I thought I had a television show: The Lena Adams Show. People where following me with video cameras. Everyone was steering at me, because I was famous. I am a super star. I am a fish. I can feel my fins swimming in the water. We are all part of this water. We are in a fishbowl and someone is looking at me, just like I am looking at the fish in my aquarium. My fins move gently, gently swinging in the stream.

I’m back at my psychiatrist office, waiting for Dr. Kielie to come out. I am hysterical because I’m not a fish. I am a human. How can I explain this to him? As it turns out he is more concerned with me being an envelope. He wants to know, he tries to understand, he’s overworked and sick of sick people. How can he help me? How can I make him understand? I start crying and screaming:” I want to be normal!” Our conversation is spent with me steering at his biology book. He has a bookshelf, and the nicest book is the biology book. It reassures me. It makes me feel safe. I am so lonely and tiered of hoping. Maybe if I just focus really hard on the biology book everything will be ok.

Dr. Kielie is my hope. I can’t trust myself, but I certainly can’t trust him. I have no faith he can help me, but he is the only one I can turn to. And he doesn’t even understand.

What I’m afraid of is that I’m not enough sick. Perhaps I’m not worthy of getting help. Perhaps I should just endure this. Stop kidding myself. Stop everything. Perhaps the voices are right: I am nothing. I have nothing. I should just end it all. There is no other way of escaping this disease. But I so want to live. I am so motivated to continue my struggle for normality. For sanity. I try so hard, and it’s never good enough.

If I tell people I have schizophrenia they get afraid of me. Or they do like my philosophy professor; laugh. I don’t see why they have to laugh. It’s not funny. Dr. Kielie asks me, right before I leave his office, if I’m going to hurt someone. I never understand why he asks me that. One time, I even asked him why. He just simply wanted to know. I don’t understand. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Anyone but myself perhaps, and even that I can’t do. This is the picture of the mad man, or the mad woman as the case might be. We are killers. We go out and slaughter the norm. That is so wrong. We are slaughtered souls, looking for God, looking for love, looking for acceptance. We are looking for ourselves.

I am so lonely, that when my husband gets diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia I get happy. Now we’re two who’s got it. Two fish in a bowl. He had been my hope, before. I thought that when I couldn’t count on myself anymore, at least I could count on him. Who’s going take me to the hospital when I break down? My biggest fear is that I’m going to end up living in a cardboard box somewhere. With my husband sick I no longer have the guarantee of safety, no choice in how my life’s going to end up.

I am not afraid of the hallucinations, they don’t bother me. I am afraid of the mind games, the over sensitivity, the haze that I find myself in lately. Schizophrenia is a degenerative disease. I have no control over how much or little it is going to cost me. It’s the waiting game that spews terror. I’m waiting for the flower to come into full bloom. I am in the process of becoming, like we all are. Only my course is slightly different than yours. I don’t know much but I know that I’m crazier today than I was a year ago.

A year ago I was looking at walls, interpreting patterns, searching for Gods. They would speak to me, trough me, trough my sensations. Iron casket on my head, which meant I had to go in and study more. The Mothers face smiling at me, while voices in my head said: “Do you want to kill yourself?” I always felt the need to reply. I still do. The answer is mostly no, I don’t want to kill myself. But sometimes I just can’t help it. After two hours of the terror, of the same question, I just want them to shut up. So yes!

I have good days. I go to school, and only pop an anxiety pill before I see my philosopher professor. I do this to ensure I don’t go into overdrive. If I don’t take the pill I become an excessive talker. It embarrasses me afterwards, and I am haunted all night analyzing what I said, why I said it, and what better things I might have said. So it’s better to take the pill.

The first big thing about having this disease is realizing that you have schizophrenia. You go to the doctors’ office, complaining in wage language about something you don’t know what is. Most likely they won’t tell you that you have schizophrenia even if they know it. To spare your feelings I guess. Perhaps it is to spare them from actually having to do something. They gave me mild antidepressants. The pill of choice for the healthy worried. For schizophrenics it drives the psychosis up the roof. So after a month, with the voices getting increasingly louder you decide to drop the pill. Then you’re suddenly non-compliant. They don’t need to help you, because you obviously don’t want their help. Nice.

The only thing that really helps against schizophrenia is pills. Anti-psychotics like Geodon, Zyprexa, Abilify, Risperdal… I could go on and on. Schizophrenia creates an overproduction of dopamine in the brain. I’m sure you’ve heard of serotonin, well, it’s another one of those neurotransmitters. This overproduction is probably what causes the psychosis, so the drugs blocks dopamine on the other side of the synapses. Not everyone is equally receptive to the drugs though, there is a lot of trial and error. I’m on Geodon, 240 mg a day. It doesn’t take away my hallucinations, but I’m afraid of an alternative pill. I’m afraid of the switch. I’m afraid of the day everything becomes cylindrical.

Aren’t we all afraid of loosing control? Grasping for it desperately, while knowing that life has no meaning, no purpose. And so it is with my disease: it means nothing. It serves no higher good. It offers nothing, except an implacable feeling of loneliness. Welcome to my world.

my try at a narration

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 00:32:21 GMT

I asked him straight out, from the middle of nowhere: “You’re bipolar, right?” His girlfriend moved anxiously in her chair, this was something we don’t talk about. But I needed that conformation of thought. I observed his sipping of his Long Island iced tea. Self-medicating. His triad of conversational topics, no consistency – no real cause; just being heard, confirming that yes; I do exist. He knows because he can hear his voice inside his head. It probably sounds very logical from in there, but out here in the real world it sounds sick. He answered by shifting his position, and said: I have been on Zyprexa, but it didn’t work for me. He mentioned that he hadn’t told the doctors or the “bad people” as he called them his real symptoms. I told him I was on Geodon, for schizophrenia. How it saved my life. He didn’t trust Geodon. He didn’t trust medication. Sweat! Don’t get help. Continue drinking your cheap beer and your expensive Long Island’s. Continue floating about in complete randomness, helplessly pushed from one moment to the next. No control. No essence. No self. Believe it or not: You have a choice. You're making it right now.

My Astrological Chart

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 05:36:51 GMT

I got my free chart online here

Rising Sign is in 22 Degrees Sagittarius
You are known for being open, frank, outgoing and honest. At times, though, you are also blunt and quite indiscreet. Others have to learn not to take everything you say personally, because you usually do not mean any harm. You appreciate living your life in a straightforward and simple manner -- you dislike social niceties and consider them to be hindrances to real communication. You have lots and lots of energy and tend to become quite restless if you feel confined. You demand the freedom to do as you choose -- you must be self- directed or you feel trapped and anxious. With your abundant energy, you enjoy being outdoors, and you should be attracted to physical exercise or to those forms of sport which can help you burn off some of that excess energy. Very gregarious, you love to socialize -- your innate enthusiasm livens up any gathering.

Sun is in 24 Degrees Cancer.
Very emotional and sensitive, you have an intuitive understanding of the "vibes" around you. You tend to be quite generous, giving, loving and caring, but only when your own needs for emotional support, love and security have been met. If they are not met, you tend to withdraw into yourself and become very insecure and selfish. Your home and family (especially your mother or the person who played that role for you early on) represent security for you and thus assume a larger-than-life importance. Very sentimental, you have vivid and long- enduring memories of the past. No matter how well adjusted you are, you will always need a secret quiet place of your own in order to feel at peace. Feeding others can give you great pleasure you would enjoy being part of a large family.

Moon is in 29 Degrees Cancer.
For the most part, you are very strong and secure emotionally. You intuitively know what to do to make others feel comfortable, loved, accepted and needed. You naturally enjoy feeding and taking care of others. Be careful that your mothering does not turn into smothering. At times, you tend to feel that those to whom you are attached can never do anything without your assistance and support. Extremely sensitive by nature, it hurts you deeply whenever anyone criticizes you. You have an almost desperate need to be loved and wanted and needed by everyone with whom you come into contact, and you go out of your way to be accommodating to them.

Mercury is in 11 Degrees Leo.
You are usually quite convinced that your own ideas are correct and you enjoy persuading others that they are. At times, you are very stubborn and proud of your beliefs and principles, and you get very defensive when they are challenged. You appreciate truth and honesty -- you practice it yourself and expect it in others. You have good talent for organizing, directing and planning. You delight in being asked for your advice and counsel.

Venus is in 11 Degrees Gemini.
You are friendly, warm, open and tolerant toward others. You love variety in relationships, indeed you may even prefer to maintain more than one relationship at a time! Very witty and humorous, you have the ability to amuse and please others. This makes you quite popular. You love to play the field and thus find it difficult to settle down and make any deep emotional commitments. Your innate charm and vivacity makes you welcome most everywhere you go.

Mars is in 29 Degrees Taurus.
Careful, slow and thorough about all that you do, at times you are also willful and stubborn when others try to alter your course. You are definitely not a quitter -- you will work long and hard to get what you want. Your possessions are very important to you. One of your continuing problems is that you tend to regard the significant people in your life much the same way as you do your possessions -- you become overly attached and much too jealous. You repress your anger when you get upset and that is not healthy. Try to learn to show your anger immediately in order to avoid painful explosions later.

Jupiter is in 23 Degrees Gemini.
You have a logical, detached, objective view of most things. Your interests are wide-ranging and you are an avid student, with expertise in many different areas. You love to work things out in your mind -- everything you do is reduced to an exercise in logic and reason. You have the ability to grasp abstractions and to deal successfully with the larger issues of life. Your overemphasis on developing your powerful intellect can cause your emotional and intuitive abilities to atrophy unless you consciously choose to exercise them.

Saturn is in 16 Degrees Leo.
Extremely self-reliant, you set very high standards of conduct and decorum for yourself, and you expect others with whom you associate to be that way, too. It is important that you had a strong father figure or role model early in life to mold your life course and direction. When you feel that those around you are unworthy or behaving badly, you withdraw, preferring solitude rather than associating with those who might besmirch your reputation.

Uranus is in 07 Degrees Scorpio.
You, and your peer group, demand to confront life at its deepest and most meaningful levels. Very compulsive and obsessive in your approach to everything, you will avoid anything that is casual or superficial, especially when it comes to relationships. You will seek out and explore new methods of healing as well as different ways to deal with deep-seated emotional problems.

Neptune is in 13 Degrees Sagittarius.
You, and your entire generation, are heavily involved in investigating and idealizing foreign and exotic intellectual systems and religious philosophies. The most extreme ideals will be pursued with gusto. You will be at the forefront of humanitarian attempts to improve the lot of those who are in need of assistance. You will be comfortable with the concept of the "global village."

Pluto is in 11 Degrees Libra.
For your entire generation, this is a time of radical changes in society's attitude toward marriage and interpersonal relationships. There is a general fear and awe at the power inherent in making emotional or contractual commitments -- they will not be entered into lightly.

N. Node is in 19 Degrees Libra.
You find it very difficult to be comfortable being alone -- you would much prefer to be in an environment where many people are working together toward common goals. Your charming and sincere approach to others assures your popularity -- you have the gift of being able to ease tensions just by your mere presence. You're the perfect "team player" willing to sacrifice your own importance so that the group goal can be accomplished. Be careful, however, not to become overly dependent on your interactions with others -- you have personal private needs that should not be neglected.

Website Design - Classification Paragraph

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:17:11 GMT

To make a website that accord with the World Wide Web Consortium, you have to divide the process of making a website into three different parts, namely: structure of data, layout and style of data, and functions of data. The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C for short, decides the standard for website design on the internet. For many years, the standard language for structure of data has been Hyper Text Markup Language, or HTML for short. Now we have other, similar, languages to use, the most popular being Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language (XHTML) and Extensible Markup Language (XML.) For year’s designers where forced to use HTML as a means for style and layout of data; this has now changed with the introduction of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS.) CSS is a language especially made for how you want your web content to look, and where it should be placed on the page. Instead of having to rely on tables and repeated style information, designers can now make one CSS file with all the style and placement information. Using CSS gives designers more creative freedom, and it makes the page more accessible to people with disabilities. You use functions to make your data do something, perhaps interact with the browser or interact with the server that hosts the web page. To do this you use scripting. There are two different classifications of scripting languages; client side scripting and server side scripting. Client side scripting interacts only with your browser. Client side scripting doesn’t need to interact with the server, so it’s a bit faster to load, but by not interacting with the server there are less things you can do with it. It is often used to make your site a bit more dynamic, and can create fancy navigation systems and scrolling images etc. The most popular client side scripting language is JavaScript. Server side scripting is where the big boys come to play. Here you have fully functional programming languages like PHP, ASP.net and Pearl. You can use server side scripts to make your site truly interactive. Server side scripts are used in shopping carts, forms that send you or your client information, and to interact with a database. Many design teams divide the work and let one person do the structure and style of data, while the other person takes care of the functions of data.

Trip to Turkey in 1995

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 23:37:17 GMT

The reason my mother and I went to Turkey was that my grandmother (who I grew up with) died after a long period of illness. We where exhausted, and so my grandfather bought the ticket for us. While visiting Turkey my mother developed extreme allergies. It is often like that when you relax after a long period of stress. She was very sick and had bleeding wounds. I remember not liking the smell of the place, just to later realize it wasn't the city that smelled but my mother. She smelled of rotting flesh.

It Was Like This: You Where Happy

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:15:46 GMT

This is a poem my English professor gave me, after I wrote about eating disorders. I really like this poem:

IT WAS LIKE THIS: YOU WHERE HAPPY

It was like this:
you where happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent--what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness--
between you, there is nothing to forgive--
but with the simple not of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is now a thing only for others.

It doesn't matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

-- Jane Hirshfield