I got the writing class with Jonathan Safran Foer! So excited! !!!
Ahahaha there are so many parts to this there is no reason I shouldn’t just be allowed to read this information.
Can this presentation have less fluff and just tell me the important things. Don’t tell me what math is because I know that. Just tell me how many credits I need in it.
Watching a presentation that I’m required to watch to be able to register for classes. Every single person who’s speaking sounds like they hate being there. These voiceovers radiate contempt for me.
Mention Miami this week and the first thing people will talk about is the “zombie” attack. What they are obviously referring to is the gruesome near-killing of Ronald Poppo by Rudy Eugene, who was shot by the police after virtually devouring 75 percent of Poppo’s face. The Police are blaming it on a synthetic drug called “bath salts,” while the Twitterverse is blaming it on a looming zombie apocalypse. But once you finish with the jokes, look into the lives of both men and dig deeper into the city they call(ed) home, some stuff just stops being funny and starts being sad. Even the “only in Miami” assumptions about the attack fall flat. As I write this, I just got word of another flesh-eating homicide in Maryland.
But the sensationalism and the sick jokes do make sense. It is easier to stock up on supplies and firearms (which Miamians really don’t need any help doing) while preparing for a zombie apocalypse like the ones in the movies (I Am Legend, 28 Days Later, one of those bad M. Night Shyamalan flicks), than it is to really look at what would make a man like Rudy Eugene, who friends have called “funny” and “a really nice guy,” do the things he did to Ronald Poppo, a man who has spent the better part of 30 years homeless (in spite of attending an elite New York high school). It is also easier than admitting that there were plenty of warning signs in Eugene’s life indicating that he needed help. Unfortunately for him, those warning signs went off in a city where the early warning systems and institutions are constantly crumbling.
But this wasn’t the first or last gruesome attack and Miami wasn’t the first and won’t be the last city a gruesome attack takes place in. Many followers of Hip Hop before it went Pop will remember when up-and-coming Cali-based artist Big Lurch was put in prison for a PCP-induced murder of his 21-year-old roommate in 2002. He tore out her insides and apparently devoured them before being arrested walking down the street naked and screaming into the sky. Just last month, a Shrewsbury, Massachusetts man suffering from dementia was involved in a horrific killing/cannibalization of his wife. If we step away from the gory and sensational and just talk about the disturbing, we can find a weekly story of a domestic violence-related homicide or a foreclosure-induced murder/suicide of an entire family. Similarly, once we step away from the “zombie” meme, look at what caused these other attacks and compare it to Eugene’s near-killing of Poppo, we start to see a lot of similarities.
Yes, Eugene’s friends and family have very little bad to say about him, but he also allegedly threatened to kill his mother during a 2004 domestic incident in her house. Even though he worked at a carwash and wanted to start his own business, he may have also lost his home to foreclosure in 2011. His girlfriend of six years called him a sweet and well-mannered man with no history of violence and who rarely left home without a bible in his hand, but his ex-wife says she left him because he became increasingly violent toward her. His friends found him funny and religious but claimed that he had recently been “battling a devil.” And even though he wasn’t known to have a history of serious drug use, he was known to smoke marijuana a lot and was trying to stop. Although the speculative public, police and message boards have yet to see a toxicology report, there are too many similarities between Eugene’s flesh eating attack on Poppo and other drug-induced homicides like the one Big Lurch had perpetrated in 2002 to rule out that Eugene my have been on drugs that day.
Nevertheless, it is still hard for almost anyone to believe that Rudy Eugene, a man who told his friends he wanted to get his life right and get “closer to God,” woke up last Saturday and made a conscious decision to maim, kill or devour anyone’s flesh. Which is why it is easier to blame it on bath salts and zombie apocalypses, until you realize that if you are trying to “get your life right” or “battle devils,” Miami has become a hard city to do that in.
On my show on Wednesday, Kamalah Fletcher from Catalyst Miami laid out the declining mental health and substance abuse infrastructure of Miami and Florida as a whole. Just consider that:
-Florida is the second to worst state in the country when it comes to funding mental health services. Of the 325,000 people with persistent and severe mental illness, only 42 percent receive treatment.
-In 2010, the State Legislature cut adult community mental health funding, children’s mental health funding and adult substance abuse services by more than $18 million. This year, the state legislature tried to make Florida the worst state in the nation at funding mental health, and almost succeeded.
-Prescription drug overdoses and the prescription drug death rate are up in Florida by 61 percent and 84 percent respectively. That didn’t stop state politicians from trying to cut funding for drug treatment by 20 percent, which would have kicked 37,000 people out of services while they were trying to kick a habit.
- First responders across the state say that they are seeing mental health cases that they have never seen before, such as a Palm Beach man that was held in custody 50 times in one year under the state’s Baker Act because he was a threat to himself and others.But it is still easier to demand the death penalty for “bath salt” possession than it is to talk about a real need for services. After all, wanting to detect and address early warning signs of potentially destructive behavior makes you a “bleeding heart” liberal. Cracking jokes about bleeding hearts and eaten flesh while doing nothing just makes you normal.
As a trained social worker and former community organizer, I have no illusions that even the best services will stop every destructive act caused by a mental illness or substance abuse problems. I also have no illusions that every penny spent on service agencies will be used wisely. But in a state that paid tens of millions of dollars in welfare money to sports stadiums like the Miami Heat Arena on the condition that they shelter the homeless on off-nights (something they never did), I have more faith that our community mental health centers will help the mentally ill than I do that the Miami Heat will house the homeless.
I also realize that we still don’t have all the details, facts or medical reports to really understand why Rudy Eugene did what he did last Saturday. But if the police can speculate about “bath salts,” and bloggers can speculate about a “zombie apocalypse,” I don’t see why I can’t speculate about a real documented apocalyptic public health crisis in our state.
About the petition:
First off, Alex is not going anywhere. Yes, Alex’s mother tried to regain custody of her child after she initially lost it and failed, but her father doesn’t have custody either.
The court ruled that way because they feared keeping it with either her parents while they argued would delay therapy and damage Alex’s health. Custody has been given to the child welfare services who will help Alex and make sure she can receive proper treatment like hormone blockers and such.
The official ruling also stated that Alex is not going to be institutionalized - permission for a forced admission has not been given by them and so Alex cannot be admitted against her will.
Also, the TAZ posted a correction underneath the original article where they correct the claim that the court ruled that “Alex can now be forcibly institutionalized”, saying that the court did not allow this at all and that she cannot be admitted.
They further more posted a statement by the Berliner Charite, the psychiatric ward Alex was supposedly meant to go to, in which they stated that they will not institutionalize Alex without her permission or that of her mother. They also couldn’t forcibly treat her without court permission and such has not been given.
In conclusion, Alex is not at risk to be forced to conform. She will be able to express her gender freely.
Sources:
The court ruling (sadly no English version): http://www.berlin.de/sen/justiz/gerichte/kg/presse/archiv/20120329.1450.368160.html
The TAZ article, untranslated version, first two paragraphs underneath the “Berichtigung” heading: http://www.taz.de/!90229/
(Translated version as linked in the petition, look for “Correction”.)
Good news!
I think there’s something a lot of people don’t understand about folk with anxiety disorders.
It’s… I mean, it’s a disorder. Your wiring is laid out on a slightly different track. You, like most humans, actually, are not always open for business. And when you are, other people are either mysteriously absent because you pissed them off, or they’re banging down the door to get to you, because maybe sometimes your illness makes you more eloquent or more thoughtful or more interesting because you spend so much time examining things. (Or maybe they just see you as a pet project, either way.)
Your battery life is unpredictable. Like you do the laundry, you return overdue DVDs, you drive to the shops and back, you answer emails, you go out for lunch with friends, and you need a lot of recovery time. And maybe it’s not even because you don’t like doing these things, or because you can’t, because you probably can, right? Maybe you’re really good at them. But so much of your energy, which people normally use for like, socialising and home improvements and going on holiday, gets used up just trying to make internal repairs. For some people, their usual logic machines might go something like, Wake up— Eat— Go to work— See friends, go to pub— Come home for dinner— Watch TV— Go to bed. Mine might look more like Wake up— Panic— Rearrange bedside table— Wash— Wash again— Clothes on— Wash again— Rearrange shelf?— If X is sorted in correct order, eat breakfast— If not, return to X— Work? Work?— Panic (and that’s all before 10 AM, too). From the outside, it might look like Wake up— Stay in bed— Why didn’t you have breakfast?— What’s taking so long?— Just get on with it, stupid— And why didn’t you answer my texts, FFS?
And this… even when you’re doing the best you can. When you’re eating well and exercising regularly and sleeping and not drinking and going to work and getting your five a day, which is probably more than you’d expect from most people, anyway. This is always there. You always have to wrestle with it. And it means that you might be a little more distant and more cautious and more edgy and less available. Your defences will be raised all the freaking time. And you might not even register it when somebody else outside of your head is trying to get through to you, even if they’re being kind. Your extra happy-making energy all goes into keeping yourself safe.
So I guess you look for people who are patient, or people like you, who’ll wave at you from over their own battlements and maybe share their biscuits with you.
Can we talk about how diet Dr. Pepper tastes like watered down shit.
I feel like the rest of the year is just an exercise in seeing how mean I can be to people before they realize I don’t like them.
