Woman with her horse on a snowy day in 1899. Photo by Félix Thiollier
I love photographs from the 19th century. The sepia tint, the wild experimentation with a new technology, the unsettling feel of the photos. Even the creepiness is great.
It’s baffling that we went from huge cameras that required a long exposure time to having a camera in our pocket.
I actually wanted to be a professional photographer in high school. I even looked at several colleges that had a photography program. I was talked out of it though.
I’m debating making a link shortner. Kutt.it looks promising and I can either spin up my own version on a VPS or simply point my domain to the main page and use it that way.
I don’t know though. Link shortners are usually considered bad and for scammers, but I think it’d be a fun, short project. I already have a short domain to use.
Another thing, I don’t know if I’d ever use it. Twitter shortens links automatically. So does Facebook. Some Mastodon apps shorten them automatically as well. So I’m not sure if I want to pay for VPS just to have something sit.
What’s your opinion on link shortners? They’re usually maligned but I’d like to try out Kutt.
I write too much political crap. And it's bad political crap. Which made me decide that I'd rather take a new direction with this blog. Make it softer and more welcoming.
I'm going to leave the previous posts up as they took quite a deal to write. But I don't think I'm going to write in the same space as they exist anymore.
My academic training had me forcing an argument into everything—creating controversial topics simply for the sake of controversy. And it was what I was interested in, but mainly it was for controversy. Which seems a little fake, devious, manipulative.
So no more of that crap. I would like a balance between the breezy self-updates of TMO and the meaning created by a NYTimes article. But even the NYTimes has humor and light stuff.
So there. My blog was also down a day due to a payment issue. Worked it out and now everything is back.
Here are the contact options, social media profiles, and online personas allowing people to get in touch with or follow Douglas Shoback, the author of this blog:
I've lived with you so long I don't know life without being afraid. Because of you, I've missed out on so many good things in life I want to experience.
I want to go to concerts and music festivals. You keep me at home, making me feel ashamed and isolated. My iTunes account is so full of movies I've randomly bought to try to forget the panic and what I'm missing.
You randomly appear out of nowhere and paralyze me. I'm somewhere safe, somewhere comfortable surrounded by people who love me. And you decide to force me into bed, trying to make you go away with the breathing exercises I've learned along the way and failing.
You got me addicted to benzos. You made my mental health professionals distrust me with medication.
There are so many people I could've met, so many friends I could've made. But you show up and make me a fool, cause me to make excuses and run home to be alone. And even then, you're my constant companion.
I am so afraid of the world. This comes from the panic attacks you've caused throughout my entire life that I've learned that the only way I can go out is to force myself. To make sure I have the proper medication with me at all times. And to always be aware of the escape routes in case things get bad.
You ruined my marriage with your friend depression. You scare my parents. You make the one friend I have constantly worry about me.
Anxiety, I don't know life without you. You are fully a part of me like my teeth or my hands. Always buzzing in the background, always reminding me that no matter what skills I learn, the amount of help I get, you will be there, ready to ruin my dreams.
Author’s Note: I wrote this piece three years ago during a dark period in my life. Propublica picked it up when I published it on my Wordpress blog, using my experience as evidence of neglect. I am reposting it here since I am shutting down my Wordpress blog and want to keep my experience published.
More allegations of sexual abuse at Aurora Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, already under government scrutiny, have surfaced.
America is great if you're rich. Just look at Kanye West. Or the countless other celebrities that come out having a mental illness and become icons of bravery. You can have a mental illness and go to lush, private facilities dedicated to wellbeing and health.
Those of us with poor health insurance, who have to rely on underpaid, undertrained, uncaring health professionals are having the exact same treatment as our 19th-century peers.
Mental Health treatment in the West has improved somewhat from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Gone are Lobotomiesand Water Sheeting.
Yet, the mentally ill are continual scapegoats for larger societal problems. Every time there is a mass shooting, mental illness is to blame.
This is my experience trapped in a Chicago mental hospital for five days:
So my subscription to Ulysses ran out. I currently don’t have the money to renew (yes, I’m a broke ass chump), so I decided to use 1Writer again.
I still have to get used to it even though I used it constantly 3-4 years ago. The fact tha it’s on par with Ulysses but has no subscription cost is great for me.
I'm Asexual. Yes, I know, I know. There is the gender parade tromping around in 2021 and uptight, confused people are mocking the myriad genders coming out.
I'm ignoring those people. If you haven't had a cursory study of Alfred Kinsey's Work, you have no business discussing gender and sexuality.
Yes, Kinsey made mistakes and his scale definitely needed to be improved—but in 2021, who will take up the mantle? Who is willing to take a scientific perspective to watching people bang? Oprah? Nah. Maybe Eddie Izzard. But he doesn't have a PhD.
OH! Let's enlist Neil deGrasse Tyson to be the next Kinsey. I can see him now, sitting in a deep, soft chair, obscured by shadow in the corner, while two people bang on the bed. Tyson sips his tea and writes in his notebook. The two people moan. Tyson scribbles something. It's over. Shame sweeps through the room. Neil deGrasse Tyson lifts himself from the chair, nods to the two naked, sweaty people on the bed, then disappears without a trace. Gone. Poof. Back to his lab to do SCIENCE!
So a friend of mine noticed I'm pretty good with this online stuff. She's wanting to start her own service of helping people with art therapy. Which I dig, I'm all into art therapy, especially for kids (whom are her main clients). And these kids produce some friggin' amazing art.
I can only draw stick-figures. Poorly. Here's is an attempt of me trying to make my own cartoon “self portrait”:
Pretty horrible I'd say. I stopped drawing after I embarrassed myself by making a horrible personal comic journal. It was maudlin and with bad drawing abilities. Not the endearing bad drawings like Jeffery Brown. No, bad bad like a 3 year old with a box of crayons.
Nonetheless, despite any artistic skills beyond writing, my friend loved the design of my webpages and asked me to help her start up her business page. She's been having a really hard time lately—really hard—so I said yes.
She knows nothing of technology. I asked her what she wanted her domain name to be and she had no idea what I was talking about.
Anyway, I gave her the short and sweet of how the internet works, she kinda understood, I registered her domain, got it hosted, and spun up a Wordpress install.
Since I've been with my hosting company for over a decade, I get premium Wordpress themes and plugins from them. So I just installed one of the premium themes, added basic descriptions relevant to her business, and sent her the link.
I managed to make it a full week at work. Which is surprising because, about four weeks ago, I was in the hospital with severe pneumonia and in the ICU. Five days in a grubby hospital gown hooked up to countless tubes, getting poked in the arm at 2 a.m.
I got used to the hospital staff rotating, never seeing a familiar face, but always a rotating tribe of orderlies, doctors, and nurses. Beeps and alarms interrupted the static sound from the speaker that was supposed to be playing the television show.
A cacophony in prime-time.
My lungs were fire, each inhale striating a line of pain throughout my body starting in my chest. Not to mention the hospital bed began to cramp my back and I had to shuffle shuffle awkwardly to relieve the pressure. My ass still hurts from it.
And the pressure cuffs hooked around my calves pumping and deflating every 45 seconds.
Time became moments of pain and pressure interrupted by the most exciting moments of medication—a Percocet, my regular psych meds, antibiotics—and ordering disgusting hospital food.
BBC article on photos of the dead
