Author Archives: Jyoti

Happy Pills Make You Sad

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A five year study conducted with thousands of local teenagers by University of Montreal researchers reveals that those who used speed (meth/ampthetamine) or ecstasy (MDMA) at fifteen or sixteen years of age were significantly more likely to suffer elevated depressive symptoms the following year.
(Source: Science Daily)

It’s a very simple rule of thumb: for a drug to have an effect on you, there are probably going to be side effects. When the major effect is mood-altering… well, there are most probably going to be side-effects to do with mood as well.

Even if we had Larry Niven’s wirehead tech, a pure stimulation directly to the pleasure centres of the brain, no drugs involved, I’m guessing his extrapolation of how people would be addicted to that is also true. But psychoactive drugs don’t even approach that purity and simplicity of action.

They aren’t magic bullets, they’re sledgehammers to our sensoria.

Emma B&W

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My friend Emma is gorgeous but also very silly and camera shy. Sooo, I never get any pics of her. But I bullied her into letting me take some the other day and here’s the first set from then.

Click the pic to see them, more to follow! :-D

Nat Hailstorm

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Yesterday, Nat was round for a study sesh. We were ploughing through milk regulations, raw milk certification, possible bacterial infections of milk due to mastitis and other nasties when…

… the April skies opened up and the most magnificent hailstorm started.

Of course, we couldn’t stay in. I grabbed my camera, we went out in the garden and got soaked / cold / happy. Such gorgeous weather! :-D

Click the pic above to see them in more detail.

Scary Kid Road Safety Statues

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Scary Kid Road Safety Statue 1

Scary Kid Road Safety Statue 2

These horrific little bleeders were installed near the school down the road in December 2011. They creep the fuck out of me. I think because they remind me of these fellers:

Every time I drive by them, I swear their head swivel to follow me and I know that they’re just waiting…

…biding their time.

Bloomsbury Pro-Choice Protest

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Jennifer Reiter was on the protest. She says:

“Here is one of the outcomes of last Friday’s pro-choice rally and protest outside the bpas clinic in Bedford Square! I was the first person Pod Delusion sidled up to to interview. I’m honoured! About 2.05 is when I go on for a bit about why it’s important to raise our voices about what is going on with abortion and repro rights in the UK these days, what with ’40 Days for Life’ and allies (who are in the minority of the population) suddenly making a big impact on how women access legal, safe, free services.

I was also interviewed before & after the rally by a student who’s putting together a radio show about what’s going on with anti-choicers getting so much notice lately.

Finally, Time Out London (!) got some words from me and they’ll apparently be in the April 10 magazine with a picture too.

This all makes me feel somehow, like, *legit* and *profesh* after all these years…! From those first sightings of ‘aborted fetuses’ on 6 foot posters held by protestors who surrounded our entire high school for days on end so we could see the signs from classroom windows…to now in the UK seeing such tactics are coming into this culture. It’s frightening.”
(Source: Facebook)

A Walk

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Somewhere

Tonight, I went for my normal emo walk but I kept walking.

Maybe it was the Jon Hopkins I was listening to. Or maybe not. But I didn’t stop. I’m walking now, somewhere.

As I plodded by the Closes and Drives of my neighbourhood, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She’s left me concave, scooped out. Ripped out.

The space where she used to be is a space that she made.
I didn’t ask for it, she did.
I didn’t pursue her, she pursued me.
I tried to keep her out, defend myself because I knew.

I knew how it would end.

As it always does for me. The other moves on and I can’t. The other smiles and forgets and I can’t.

Thinking that, I’m angry at the fucking unfairness of it all. Why do I have to be crippled like this? Why can’t I be like every other human who loves as easily as they lie? They go from declarations of eternal commitment to not even caring if their former love is dead or alive, all in the time it takes to do of a couple of Facebook status updates.

I fall in love and stay in love and never fall out of love and never stop caring and never stop thinking or worrying or wondering where she is, how she is, who she’s with, is she happy with her/him and when she’s making love is it ever bittersweet or never because no-one else is in her head and maybe does she think of me though I know she doesn’t because it’s only me that feels love like that so why am I thinking this I should stop thinking this, it’s insane maybe I am insane but.

This time last week, I was in another country singing songs about her to total strangers. They even knew the words and sang along. At the time, that seemed like a gift, a hug. But now I feel I was lying to them as much as I do to myself.

Inside, I’m screaming, horribly lonely and abandoned. Outside, I’m chatty and friendly, the life of the party. The show must go on.

I ended up walking past my old house. The first one we had together. I slowed as I passed it. Every particle of my body wanted to be back then and there. I can’t believe I fucked everything up so badly.

And now I’m here, little more than an array of increasingly fractured and distant masks. The space between me me and outside me grows wider every day. She used to span it, she used to come in and take my hand and laugh and talk and love and cry. She made me feel pretty.

But she’s gone. And so am I.