Crazy Talk!

Huzzah!  Christmas was a wonderful day!  There were lots of different things to eat.  I really liked my slice of ham.  Added a smear of gravy and it stuck to the wall very nicely.  Rita took all the napkins and stuffed them in her pants.  She said she was a snow man and looked the part so we all applauded.  Earl, Roy and Angus did the Can Can and mooned us, as usual.  When the chefs came in to gather the refuse we saluted them with confetti.  It was actually Chex Mix and popcorn, but they took it with good humor.  I was feeling quite mellow and gazed with tepid affection at all the antics of my psycho buddies.  It's at times like this that I feel much saner than the others and it gives me a heartening sense of superiority.  Who can resist the comforting notion that there are others worse off?  This observation lead my nimble mind to go visiting other ways we quantify and qualify each other.
Everybody knows the ordinary requirements to fit in any given group.  Everything from race to shoe size.  If someone defies inclusion in set categories it's a bit disturbing.  Like those Goth kids.  They're kind of crazy looking.  I knew a guy who lived in a tree.  Very nice guy.  Very quiet.  Many would call that crazy but he was a sculptor too, so it's OK.  If you try to break the world record for eating hot dogs you're not crazy.  If you think you're the reincarnation of Evita Peron you might be riding the crazy fence.  A notch or two up the scale are people who are delusional to their own detriment.  Bennie could tell you about that but he thinks he's Houdini.  When Bennie decided to cut a hole in the frozen Detroit River and act out Houdini's daring escape, he became a problem.  Personally, I think many other people should be included in Bennie's group.  People like Timothy Treadwell, who spent years with the grizzly bears until they ate him.  Or guys who climb Mount Everest.  What are they thinking?  Or my dearly departed husband Dwight, who went to swim with the sharks.  PAID to swim with the sharks.  They ate him.  It was a small funeral.  Or how about NASCAR?  Is that really sane?  You get the picture.

Lots of folks are talking crazy these days.  Crazy talk is in the news.  It's fun to speculate about who might be crazy but it's better to actually learn about crazy.  I found a really great op ed about schizophrenia in the New York Times.  It's by Paul Steinberg and it's very good crazy talk.  Click here:  Very smart, very right.  

The Fourteenth Floor

Hello my dears!  So sorry I've been out of touch the last week or so.  There's been an awful lot of stuff happening all at once here at the facility.  Last week, everybody on my floor caught the stomach flu and overloaded the plumbing.  What a mess!  Of course the chefs caught it too, so we got our meals late which we couldn't keep down anyway.  When we started getting better we were told we were moving all the way up to the fourteenth floor.  That was fine with me since all the floors are pretty much the same and I'd heard that the view of the local land fill is spectacular.  Some of the gang got a bit twitchy, but most of us were too worn out from the flu to mount a genuine protest.  So we all packed and said goodbye to our favorite plastic chairs.  Monty couldn't find his imaginary baboon and we all looked so he'd stop crying.  The big chef found it in the mop closet and Monty was all smiles again.  It seemed like such a lot of trouble for nothing until Dr. Idiot told us why we were moving.  Turns out the state closed ANOTHER maximum security psychiatric facility and all the patients had to be moved to the FEW that are left!  Very irritating!  Thankfully, our fourteenth floor was totally empty and available.  That wouldn't be the case except for poor planning going WAY back.
 
You see, darlings, the fourteenth floor was intended for the most violently dangerous and hopelessly psychotic people our country manages to produce.  There were some of that type up there until some years back, when the last one got really old and died.  He was all alone up there because for many years the state has been sending a lot of the truly dangerous psychotics to prisons where they can be properly stored.  But only the ones who break a big law while they're being truly crazy.  I suppose that makes sense.  Then there's that other little mitigating factor; most dangerously psychotic people kill themselves.  That's REALLY easy in the USA because we have lots and lots of GUNS.  So the number of seriously insane people that wind up in prisons is becoming bigger and bigger and the number that are stopped in time is getting smaller.
 
The TVs are still off and the computer was too until this morning so I just found out about Sandy Hook.  Even psychotics like me cry when children die.  Dr. Idiot wanted to give me a shot but changed his mind.  I've just been sitting here with wet eyes wondering why that sick young man had lots and lots of guns in his house.  How did that happen?  How come NOBODY was smart enough to snatch that guy up and put him on the fourteenth floor?  There's a bunch of people blogging about mental health care and intervention on the Sandy Hook stories.  Everybody should read that!  From what I can tell there's a LOT of folks with violently disturbed kids who can't find help for them.  Now THAT is INSANE!  Everybody should have help when they need it!

WHY ARE THERE LOTS AND LOTS OF GUNS BUT NOT ENOUGH MENTAL HEALTH CARE?  I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid.  There is no logical reason for the gross imbalance between available guns and available mental health care.  I can tell you one excuse.  Nobody wants to deal with it.  It's fine to yap about too many guns, but nothing is done.  Mental health care only gets talked about when people are murdered and then the talk dies down after awhile.  Believe me, I get it!  Mental health is such an uncomfortable subject.  It leads people to think about all the scary things they'd rather not.  Even when they're quite aware of a sick person in their midst, people don't like to talk about it, much less take action.  Meanwhile, the guns are out there and so are the untreated mentally ill.  It takes a story like Sandy Hook to get people wound up, but will it change anything?  Can that even happen in this crazy world?  Crazy doesn't just fix itself!  Period!  The guys who get to run the country are looking pretty crazy themselves these days.  And THAT is what gives crazy such a bad name.   

    

Brain Chips!

What a day!  Dr. Idiot didn't tell us we'd be having visitors!  We'd just finished eating breakfast and these folks walked right in!  There was five of them, all guys wearing white coats like the chefs.  They seemed to be a bit uncomfortable.  Maybe it was the oatmeal and Wheaties splattered all over the place.  One guy reminded me of Barney Fife.  He was all buggy eyed and his adam's apple was hopping up and down.  Naturally, everybody started getting all excited.  First the gigglers started, that set of the twirlers, then the screamers pitched in and everybody else either curled up in a corner or took their clothes off.  I love a floor show!  Then Dr. Idiot came in with the chefs.  That brought the volume down.  Nobody wants to wake up in the mop closet.
Dr. Idiot told us the visitors were going to take samples of our jeans.  We were all very confused.  We don't wear jeans!  We wear these floppy little outfits with Velcro for buttons.  Sometimes we take them off to see how many we can Velcro together.  My buddy the Meth Maker jumped up and yelled, "Piece man!"  Two of the chefs took him out right away.  I heard Dr. Idiot say the Meth Maker was just polluted, not psychotic.  Is that any reason to leave him out of the fun?  So next they started dragging us to one of the dining tables.  They grabbed Rita first.  They whipped out tongue depressors and Q-Tips.  They tried to get in Rita's mouth and she bit off the tongue depressor.  So they stuck the Q-Tip up her nose!  That was a big mistake!  Everybody who saw that started yelling, "Brain chips! Brain chips!" and the floor show started up again.
Brain chips are a big concern around here.  I've never really believed the rumors about brain chips, but the visitors said they wanted samples of jeans.  So who's crazy?  Everybody knows there aren't any jeans up a person's nose!  All the visitors, chefs and Dr. Idiot used their fake comfort voices to say; "now now, just be still, it won't hurt, it only takes a second".  Didn't work, but eventually they got in all our noses.  I kept MY dignity.  After they stuck that Q-Tip up my nose I grabbed a bunch and crammed them in my mouth.  That showed THEM!  Then we were all planted back in our rooms.  Lunch was late and a third of the bunch were still in their rooms.  After the chefs delivered lunch the muttering started.  Every other mutter was, "Brain chips!".
Now, I'm not crazy enough to believe I've got jeans up my nose much less a brain chip.  I've been hearing my looney buddies muttering about brain chips for so long I just figured they were paranoid, which they are.  Still, there was so much muttering about it, I thought I'd go online and see what I could find and...

OH NO!  IT'S TRUE!  THERE REALLY ARE BRAIN CHIPS AND PEOPLE ALREADY HAVE THEM!  The evil scientists are taking over!  Everybody will have brain chips very soon and if there's a power outage WE'LL ALL FALL DOWN!