Some photos that I took (with no pervasive theme)

Some time ago in this journal, I posted a statement that I was going to start posting some of the things I photographed with my Nikon D5100. After setting up a little Photobucket account and trying to get to grips with how Photobucket in its present form actually works, I started uploading some photographs that I took or edited in order to provide some examples here.

One more post about my hospital visit.

You already know I have a profound difficulty with letting things go. So it should not come as any kind of surprise that I feel like writing yet another confused pile of words about my visit to an acute care ward at a hospital that makes a joke of all of Australia’s collective governments’ claims of wanting to take mental healthcare seriously.

A response to A Letter to Victoria’s Secret From a Father

I will tell you something that should be bloody obvious to anyone who follows me closely enough. I spend a lot of time reading Internet documents. Being old enough to remember when the idea of a unified collection of public computer networks was fantasy to all but a few, I thrive on going as far and wide as I can with this source of information.

Sometimes, when reading what people I am linked with on Fudgebook post links to, I wonder “where do they get these people?”. Sometimes, I applaud every written word. Sometimes, I even feel compelled or at least motivated to write responses. Such a case of the last of those responses exists in Reverend Evan Dolive‘s open letter to the Victoria’s Secret company.

Another post about my hospital stay.

When I first conceived of what you are about to read, I thought I was going to write a post about the music that I listened to whilst I was being treated in an acute-care mental health facility. However, without a context to hang it all on, I find that writing articles about music tends to get boring. And if I get really bored with writing something, I usually take that as a sign that what I am working on is probably not worth the effort.

Pets are cuter when they are little (or more about my involuntary holiday).

Again, the names, locations, and quotes relating to where I spent the latter half of February are fudged in order to protect identities. Since they have a policy of there being no photographic equipment being allowed on the ward to protect the privacy of the patients, I have to respect that.

During X-Men: First Class, one of the many accusing-sounding things that Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) says to Professor X (James McAvoy) is that she guesses pets are always cuter when they are little. That, in a nutshell, sums up the reality for autistic or mentally ill adults in today’s “enlightened” society. They spend literally billions of dollars advertising initiatives to “help” the children or adolescents. Sometimes they even throw a dollar or two in the direction of those services or initiatives. And when the initiatives that were too ignorant or cash-strapped to use the right approach inevitably fail, it is the children and adolescents they were supposed to serve, who end up bearing the real cost. As the failure progresses and those children or adolescents become adults, the costs mount. And in cases of severe failure, such as the failure to properly diagnose an individual before their twenty-fifth birthday, the costs borne by the patient become so high that it makes the value of life very difficult to see.

How I spent the second half of February

(A note before I begin: This entry is going to talk a lot about the goings-on inside an acute-care ward within a mental health facility. For that reason, I am going to use aliases and flat-out mess-ups of names in order to protect anonymity and privacy. Please do not ask me who is who, because even if I do remember, I am not going to tell you. Similarly, if you recognise yourself in these writings and would like to be completely blanked out, feel free to comment.)