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| We had some rain in Dunedin. About four times July's usual precipitation in around 12 hours. How does that feel? R always asks me how my shower was when I emerge and I say: wet. Friday and Saturday were fucking moist. We had fucking rabbits riding sheep to get away from that shit > |  |
I'm using other peoples' photos to illustrate what I mean because we leave taking photos in heavy rain situations to basics with shitty cameras. There's been a pretty big slip down the road at Back Beach beneath some houses and at times like this I'm glad we live in an old quarry on exposed stone and not on punk-arse loess. Just saying.
*braces for karmic rock to back of head as cosmic retribution for even mentioning that shit*
*braces for karmic rock to back of head as cosmic retribution for even mentioning that shit*
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 | A new species of sunfish was discovered in NZ: Mola tecta, the Hoodwinker Sunfish. I have a thing for weird fish, so you're hearing about this and that's just the end of it.  |
 If the adult morphology isn't awesome enough for you, this is how they look before they mature. |  |
I don't usually comment on the end-of-life choices of people I don't particularly admire and nor do I pretend to have any insight into his private circumstances, but the Chester Bennington suicide prompts me to pass on a warning about something I've learned for myself. Depressives need to look after themselves extra-hard as they enter their forties.
Like me, you might have thought you were getting your mood disorders/mental health issues somewhat under control in your late 30s. You found a decent partner. Got sober. Came to terms with your sexuality. Put down roots. Maybe had kids. Got your shit together. And then... it all falls away from under you.
Midlife troubles are more than just a perceptual glitch that runs you into an existential culvert. It is an actual, material, physiological thing. If you thought you knew irrationality, buckle up bitches because your hormones can take you to parts of nuttytown you never knew existed.
It is almost impossible to convey to the uninitiated just how hard the endocrine fluctuations that manifest at this juncture- for both women and men- can hit you. Nobody talks about it, especially in relation to the male experience, but I'm here to tell you it's real and it can fuck. you. up. I hadn't had explicitly suicidal thoughts for about 15 years... until I hit 41-42. Suddenly I was all the way back to a late teens-level of depressive ideation and hideous mood instability. I'm only barely perimenopausal (the nebulous stage before menopause, typically 35-50) and I wanted to walk off a fucking cliff.
Testosterone and oestrogen are present in and vital to all genders. They respond to all sorts of bodily travails and seasonal cues. Levels start to change and can swing out of relative balance in middle age, surging and dropping in response to each other. That unaccustomed state can be devastatingly disruptive to anyone who is already struggling with depression, bipolar, schizoid disorders etc. etc. It's a natural process, but this is me begging anyone reading this - especially men, who are often totally oblivious to their own hormonal fortunes- to prepare themselves psychologically and emotionally for the mental fallout. Pay extra attention. Get extra help. Just suck it up and tell your friends and family you're having trouble as soon you notice the needle pointing down.
None of this might have had any relevance whatsoever to Bennington's action. But I'm seeing a worrying pattern emerging in midlife depressives and fuck-all attention being paid to the physiological changes that are more than likely exacerbating it.
Like me, you might have thought you were getting your mood disorders/mental health issues somewhat under control in your late 30s. You found a decent partner. Got sober. Came to terms with your sexuality. Put down roots. Maybe had kids. Got your shit together. And then... it all falls away from under you.
Midlife troubles are more than just a perceptual glitch that runs you into an existential culvert. It is an actual, material, physiological thing. If you thought you knew irrationality, buckle up bitches because your hormones can take you to parts of nuttytown you never knew existed.
It is almost impossible to convey to the uninitiated just how hard the endocrine fluctuations that manifest at this juncture- for both women and men- can hit you. Nobody talks about it, especially in relation to the male experience, but I'm here to tell you it's real and it can fuck. you. up. I hadn't had explicitly suicidal thoughts for about 15 years... until I hit 41-42. Suddenly I was all the way back to a late teens-level of depressive ideation and hideous mood instability. I'm only barely perimenopausal (the nebulous stage before menopause, typically 35-50) and I wanted to walk off a fucking cliff.
Testosterone and oestrogen are present in and vital to all genders. They respond to all sorts of bodily travails and seasonal cues. Levels start to change and can swing out of relative balance in middle age, surging and dropping in response to each other. That unaccustomed state can be devastatingly disruptive to anyone who is already struggling with depression, bipolar, schizoid disorders etc. etc. It's a natural process, but this is me begging anyone reading this - especially men, who are often totally oblivious to their own hormonal fortunes- to prepare themselves psychologically and emotionally for the mental fallout. Pay extra attention. Get extra help. Just suck it up and tell your friends and family you're having trouble as soon you notice the needle pointing down.
None of this might have had any relevance whatsoever to Bennington's action. But I'm seeing a worrying pattern emerging in midlife depressives and fuck-all attention being paid to the physiological changes that are more than likely exacerbating it.
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Aphex Twin. Best conceptual subversion ever. Click right for the complete, long arse, super N-word version if your sensibilities can tolerate said epithet. I'm just going to pour Twitter petrol over my head right now and say that I personally prefer to differentiate between nigger and nigga. To me, one is obviously offensive and the other affectionate/inclusive, but then I'm not black and don't get to decide how it is perceived by people who are. In the same way as only I get to decide who can say bitch or cunt to my face with impunity. In my experience as someone who's probably been called almost everything under the sun except nigger (stupid fag-loving slut was probably my all-time favourite WTF high-water mark) it's best to back the truck up and repossess that shit so that racists and misogynists aren't the ones in charge of terminology. Not everyone agrees and that's their prerogative. But R is my bitch and we have learned, after 5 binged seasons of The Wire, that we are both off-brand niggas. I just wish I'd known before now.
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