#i already have weird enough dreams on prozac

[buglvr24]

a skunk sprayed outside my house so now it smells and i don’t do well with any strong smells especially skunk so i took 10 mg of melatonin to konk myself out wish me luck soldiers

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

INXS biopic tells an all-too familiar story

by Grant Smithies for Sunday Star Times (2014)

PLENTY OF EXCESS: Luke Arnold says playing Michael Hutchence was a dream role.

He was, at the end of the day, a charismatic narcissist with a Jim Morrison complex. Arms spread wide like Jesus, leather pants painted on, a second-hand Jagger swagger and, according to one girlfriend, "the Taj Mahal of crotches."

Talent, too, of course. The boy spoke fluent Mandarin. And there's no denying Michael Hutchence could sing. “He was one of the greatest frontmen of all time,” reckons young Aussie actor Luke Arnold, who plays Hutchence in INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, a two-part mini-series kicking off this Thursday on TV3.

“People who knew Michael told me he made you feel like you were the only person in the room, whether you were talking to him at a party or he was singing in a huge stadium. He seemed to be a really creative, caring, inventive guy, at the start of his career, anyway. And he never dream of being a singer. He was this wannabe poet, and it was only because he became friends with a bunch of musicians at high school that he was suddenly thrown in front of a microphone.”

Arnold is in LA, taking a break from shooting another series. As he drives around looking for a place to park, he jokes that he was born to play Hutchence. “Oh, yeah! For me, this was a dream role. Even in high school, I'd joke that if I ever became an actor, this would be the role I'd be called on to play because of my long, curly hair. Whenever INXS came on at parties, I was on the dance floor, hamming it up. So yeah, it was weird that I really did end up playing him in this story.”

Said story will be very familiar, not just to INXS fans, but to anyone who's ever watched a rock & roll biopic. We meet a bunch of naive young dreamers practicing in the garage, with tiny audiences yawning into their pints when they play live and their parents wishing they'd get real jobs. Galvanized by the right frontman, they tour their arses off, build a respectable following, go apeshit when their first song comes on the tour van radio.

International stardom follows. Cue sudden wealth, pliant groupies, oceans of booze, snowfields of cocaine. After that- burnout, decline, death.

Comprising three brothers and assorted school friends, INXS started out as two Sydney pub rock bands with the resoundingly unpromising names of Doctor Dolphin and the Farriss Brothers. Once combined, they would eventually become Australia's answer to U2, filling stadiums around the world through the 80s and early 90s with their clipped and shiny dance-rock, selling 30 million records worldwide, playing to audiences exceeding 25 million people in over 50 countries.

Rich with period detail, Never Tear Us Apart rattles through a checklist of key moments. Blossoming friendships between band mates. Shabby assignations with Adam Ant's left-over groupies. Hutchence's turbulent affairs with Kylie Minogue, Bob Geldof's wife Paula Yates and Danish model Helena Christensen. A rapid-fire roll call of triumphs and turning points, shagathons and shouting matches, set against a backdrop of acid wash jeans and stringy mullets, with more bare breasts on display than Woodstock.

There is, sadly, little room for narrative complexity as the makers attempt to cram in every chronological event they considered half-interesting.

Arnold, however, is convincing in the lead role, capturing the sexual magnetism and brooding darkness of Hutchence. As he leaps in and out of the scratcher with assorted hot sheilas, some reviewers have also noted the actor is blessed with a “nice arse”.

“Ha! I'm glad to hear that. When your arse gets featured as much as it does in that show, you'd hope it might have a positive effect on people! But yeah, it's a great story. The first two-thirds is more fun, a rock star dream, but then Michael had a terrible bike accident in 1992 that injured his brain, and he was never the same after that. He lost his sense of taste and smell, and became much more moody and depressed. We didn't pull any punches with that side of him, but we also wanted to show there was a cause for it, rather than just fame sending his ego out of control.”

The mini-series is billed as “the ultimate story of sex, drugs and rock & roll”.

What other key themes would Arnold add? “I think it's primarily about friendship between a group of mates who are all going through strange and special times together. The story was gathered from the surviving members, and focuses on their camaraderie as they deal with the blessings and the curse of fame. They could have whitewashed over the bad bits, but I think it was very brave of the band to be so honest about the darker days towards the end.”

Of course, the end in question is well known. On November 22, 1997, Hutchence was found dead in his Sydney hotel room, aged 37. The coroner ruled he had committed suicide while severely depressed and under the influence of cocaine, Prozac, Valium and alcohol, though speculation persists that his death was an act of auto-erotic asphyxiation gone horribly wrong.

The film doesn't make a call one way or the other.

Depressed, angry, drunk and pilled-up, his career in decline, Hutchence is depicted in his hotel room, wracked with distress after discovering his British girlfriend, Paula Yates, and their daughter, Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily, would not be joining him in Australia for Christmas. And then, fade to black.

“I'm really happy with how that was treated. When things happen like Michael's death, it can get ugly.”

“People soon can start throwing blame around. But the band made a good choice there, because they didn't pull any punches but also avoided becoming gratuitous with the darkest elements of the story. No one except Michael knows what really happened in his final hours in that hotel room, so we didn't need to go there. It's already tragic enough without some TV show trying to bump anything up for dramatic effect.”

INXS: Never Tear Us Apart airs 8.30pm on August 14 and 21 on TV3.

[hellotheretraveler]

A Story

I was three years old when I memorized the sounds the symbols on the page meant and realized that, together, they made the words that I spoke. I began to read every story I could get my hands on. I had a pile of books I had read next to my bed that was nearly as tall as I was. I loved the fairy tales and their happy endings, but my mother always told me that I would never be a princess, Prince Charming was never real, and that endings are rarely ever happy.

I was five years old when I learned firsthand what my mother meant. My mother cried at night when she thought I was asleep and she told me that she and my dad didn’t love each other anymore. I met a new lady who was supposed to be my new mom, and a man who I hid from under the kitchen table. I learned that my dad liked my new mom better than my real mom, and had decided to choose her over my mom, my baby brother, and me. My happy family and the world in which I lived was destroyed.

I was seven years old when I cried every day at school. The teachers were worried at first, but by the third day it had gotten old and they waved me off as attention-seeking. When they asked me what was wrong, I couldn’t begin to explain, and instead used the first excuse that popped into my head. I wanted my family back together. I was bullied by my classmates and shamed into hiding my face inside my lunchbox when the tears would come. They always came. I wrote happy stories where no one cried, and there were no bullies, and people helped one another when things were bad.

I was eight years old when I finally learned that crying was weak and I bottled up all of those feelings until I was alone. I met my new mom’s friend Carlos who enjoyed looking at me and touching me here and there. Most of that I couldn’t remember clearly, but I did remember the white powder on their noses. I wrote more and more stories, revolving around my stuffed animals. They were all friends, and loved one another. That was enough, I decided.

I was nine years old when my teacher discovered one of my stories and brought it to the principal’s attention. She said that it was evidence that I wanted to die. I was brought to the nurse’s office and eventually taken to my doctor. I was asked too many questions, but my mother answered them all for me. I didn’t understand what the word “abuse” meant, but it was said a lot. I was given a prescription for Strattera, which they told me would help me focus and keep me from writing my stupid stories.

I was ten years old when my classmates were all asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. They all wanted to play various sports or be doctors. I knew that none of them would ever do those things, because my mother had always insisted I remain realistic and keep my stupid story fantasies to myself. A doctor costs too much money and has to be really smart, she said. Someone who plays sports has more chance of winning the lottery than being drafted, she said. So when it came my turn to say what I wanted to be when I grew up, I proudly said I wanted to be an author. I was met with laughter from my peers. My teacher frowned at me and asked me to pick something more realistic.

I was twelve years old when I asked my mother for new jeans because my old ones didn’t fit anymore. She told me they were fine, and that clothes cost money. I told her I was being bullied at school because my clothes didn’t fit. I demanded she take me shopping for new clothes, and she chased me up the stairs beating me with a shoe before throwing me across my bedroom and pinning me down, attempting me to force on the jeans that didn’t fit. Not long after, the man I had his from all those years ago threatened to hit me again. I assured him I would go to school with the shortest shorts and the tiniest shirt and tell everyone just where I got my bruises from. They never hit me again, but instead used their words to hurt me in ways that couldn’t be seen. My stories began to start with the main character’s entire family dying.

I was thirteen years old when I learned I wasn’t alone. I met someone, a boy, who was also bullied for being weird. We instantly became friends, and I found I liked him a lot more than I liked the rest of my friends. The merciless bullying continued, but it didn’t matter anymore. I thought to myself that I would never be alone again, until he moved away at the end of the year. I thought that it had been my fault. I thought that maybe if I had said something about how I felt, we would still be friends. I looked at the stars every night and took comfort in the fact that he could see the stars, too. He could be staring up at that very same constellation, and maybe he would think of me. My stories began to feature boys. Handsome ones, kind ones, the kind that my mother had promised didn’t exist. The kind that made you smile when you cried and made the voices in your head stop. The kind you were best friends with since you were little and grew up to marry. That was the love story I wrote over and over.

I was fifteen years old when I was told I was beautiful. I had waited for two years to find my boy, but he had never come, and I hadn’t found him. I was afraid. I said no again and again, but it fell on deaf ears. He persisted. I believed he loved me. I believed the nice things he said and turned a blind eye to the way he touched me, the way he had no respect for my feelings or my body. I believed that, after being told I was unlovable, I had finally found the love story I had searched for.

I was seventeen years old when I found the drugs. I brought pictures to school and fell apart in tears in front of my favorite teacher. He sat and listened to me recount my whole life, and said that the way I had been treated was horrible. I told him I deserved it. He told me there was nothing I could have done to be betrayed by those who were meant to love me, to deserve the treatment I had gotten. He sent me to a social worker, and I told her everything, too. It really seemed that perhaps there would be a happy ending to my story after all. Perhaps heroes were real. But the social worker told me there was nothing they could do to help me, and I was left in my tower, alone. I had an internship at the elementary school where my tears were dismissed and my schoolwork was more important than my suicidal thoughts. I saw the same thing happening to another little girl. I saw the bruises on a little boy’s arms and I heard the children bully each other. All I had to do was care, and the little boy smiled. He wrote stories about his stuffed animals because it made him feel better. All I had to do was care, and the little girl stopped putting pins in her arms. I told her all the things I needed to hear when I was nine years old, and her dark eyes lit up with the hope that things did get better. I thought that perhaps I was the hero.

I was eighteen years old when he left me, angry that I had caught him cheating on me just as my mother had caught my father thirteen years before. He claimed I was controlling, and he tore me down and made me hate myself. I didn’t value myself at all. All I wanted was to die. I thought maybe if I got better, he would love me again. I tricked my mother into taking me to see the doctor, and ended up with a prescription for Prozac. I saw him for what he was, and vowed never to allow that to happen to me again. When my stepfather assaulted my little brother, I called my father as my brother begged me to. I called the police like my father said. My mother was enraged, blaming me and claiming that I didn’t know what the word “abuse” meant. I wasn’t nine years old anymore. She demanded I apologize to my stepfather for calling him abusive, and I refused. I was kicked out of the house, but not before making sure my brother knew I was there for him. Yes, I was the hero.

I was nineteen years old when I lived with my father. I sat on a sum of money and took care of the house and my little brothers while his body died. He preached ignorance to my brothers and called me a dyke when I cut my bangs. I visited my grandparents nearly every other weekend, and saw the way they interacted with one another. Yes, that’s true love. That’s a love story, and it was enough. I went to therapy and talked about the boy I hadn’t seen for seven years. I continued to lay out under the stars, like I had for seven years. I looked up and hoped against hope that he saw the stars too. I hoped he still thought of me. My brothers urged me to search, and I found his mother. I sent her a message on Facebook and nearly threw up from the anxiety. I had responses from her and from my boy in minutes, and began talking to him every day for months. We would stay up until the wee hours of the night talking on Skype and eventually we both admitted we loved each other. I bought a plane ticket without my family knowing and ended up across the country to see my boy. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking over my shoulder, afraid of who was lurking there. I saw his family as my own, and desperately wished to have something so wonderful in my life. Everything would fall apart only to be saved at the last moment, just like in the stories I loved. Just before his grandparents left, we got our own home. For the first time in my life, I was home.

I was twenty years old when I began to see cracks in the perfect veneer. My boy was in pain, and my boy had issues, but I promised that I would always be there. I wanted to be there for him, just like I had been for the kids at the elementary school. I wanted to do that for a living. It had become my dream. All of the stars were dimmed and I forgot what it felt like to cry for home when I was scared, because I was already there. I took home for granted, and I took him for granted. I had grown afraid of his issues, and I began to ask people I thought were my friends for help. None of them understood what home meant, or what a love story was to me. I was childish and foolish. Perhaps I was. But when my boy needed me most, I ran away. He destroyed himself and had to go back to where he had been a year before, and I thought I had saved myself.

I am twenty years old. I sit here and tell you that I am not the hero I thought I was. I want so badly to help children, to save them from my own fate. And yet, when faced with someone I care about and love more than anything, I fail. I sit here and I tell you that the love story is real, because I can assure you with absolute certainty that soulmates really do exist. I just gave up on mine, because I was weak and selfish. I promised that I would give up everything, but never him. But that was what I did. I want you to believe that love stories are real, that soulmates are real, that heroes or real. But none of these things were meant for me.

I am twenty years old, and I tore the pages out of my book because I was afraid I wouldn’t like the ending. I gave up on the story, and I have been lost between the lines of words that were never written. There isn’t a way to fix the book, to put it back together. The story was never about a hero, but about a coward. The moral of the story is to never, ever, give up on people that you love, no matter the cost.

I learned that lesson too late. I am twenty years old, and my story is over.

[csolarstormhealthjournal]

My life coach quit and didn’t tell me.  This is upsetting, but honestly I’m mostly upset that there’s one less person that I feel I can talk with at CalPoly.  It does hurt my feelings though, since I do feel like I achieved a lot with her, and there should be no reason for her (or CAPS, who know me by name now) to forget to notify me.  Luckily I did go back to see the psychiatrist, and I can at least talk to him.  At the time this happened, it seemed like the Effexor was taking effect, and I was in a pretty good, energetic mood.

Unfortunately about two weeks into it now, I’m calling tomorrow to ask him if I should pause the Effexor, because I’m afraid I’m coming down with serotonin syndrome, a risk of interacting with my pain meds.  I woke up with goosebumps, weird dreams, confusion, a hot feeling that commonly correlates to undetectable fevers in me, and digestive trouble, which read like the Wikipedia entry on it.  Furthermore if this is true it kind of makes sense why the Prozac gave me such bad digestive problems before, and why it seemed to work immediately.  It might have just been confusion rather than the actual effect, and I could have had serotonin syndrome then too.

If it’s not the pill, I probably have the flu.  The confusion is the one that stands out though.  One reason why I feel the doctor would be hesitant to stop it though is that it’s already been two weeks.  Why have this issue now?  Maybe it’s reached a certain level that’s just now enough to interact with my pain meds?

Either way.  I’m not in that bad a mood, despite all that.  I just felt like updating with the accumulation of what’s happened in the last week.  I’m really looking forward to Spring Break, and I hope it gives me to time to re-fragment.

After Spring Break I have to go to freaking Newport to get a sleep study because of that damn doctor that was so rude to my family and I.  What a waste of a trip.