Not this kind of little behind….

…those more or less run themselves.

No, what I mean is that once more, making today’s vid took a lot longer than I thought it would, and therefore I am writing my blog entry in a bit of a hurry because I want to be done before Felicity arrives and kicks off the evening’s low key festivities.

We’re bookish nerdy types. An evening spent quietly watching videos together and having deep conversations is our version of a ragin’ kegger.

Luckily, I have things to share. Like this extraordinary find :

That is the actual admissions list from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. This was their actual list from the year 1864 to 1889. So for 25 years, that was the Bible of admissions at the old TALA.

Now I could probably do a blog entry for every item on that list. So I will!

Item 1 is in a pleasant font reminding me of…. just kidding folks.

Still, the entries boggle the mind.

Like “Imaginary Female Trouble”. I know that probably means “hysterical pregnancy” (or worse), but I like to think it’s for people having trouble with an imaginary female. (The worst kind!)

And I can’t let “Masturbation For 30 Years” go by without comment. I wouldn’t think a person who can masturbate for that long needs treatment for anything but chafing. Perhaps the TALA was where you went to pick up your medal.

And both “Political Excitement” and just plain “Politics” make the list. They might be on to something there. Politics often seems to make people crazy.

Or how about “Excessive Sexual Abuse”. Apparently back then, sexual abuse was fine… in moderation.

Or how about “Exposure And Hereditary”? What the hell does that mean? Hereditary what? Exposure? To what?

It terms of language, I think my favorite is “Menstrual Deranged”. That is dying to be the name of some drama chick’s one woman show.

The worst mental image, for me, is “Snuff Eating For 2 Years”. Look, you either chew it, snort it, or smoke it. You’re not supposed to eat the damned stuff!

Oh, and did I mention that the reason I am running late is because the first video I shot turned out to have a flawed premise? I went on a long and fascinating discourse about this story about a man who went to bed an American named Michael Boatwright and woke up a Swede named Johann Ek.

I went into the psychological theory behind such fugue states (extreme stress overwhelms identity( , as well as the physiological one (stroke forces brain to improvise with what’s left.)

All fine so far. But then I went into the question of how this man came to know fluent Swedish when he was an American. What a mystery! I postulated that maybe it is possible for our vast and powerful intuitive minds to deduce an entire language via a deep understanding of the nature of language itself.

Wow, what a theory! But then I reread the news story, and found the bit where it mentioned that amongst Boatwright’s belongings were “pictures of him as a child in Sweden”, and blam went THAT theory.

I could have salvaged the first part, but meh. I didn’t feel like it. No sense in pump air into a busted balloon. Just get a new one and move on.

So after brooding and scowling about it for a little while and disconsolately flicking through my idea file, I made tonight’s vid.

It was made in a bit of a hurry, and it’s not as coherent as I would like. I sort of repeat myself in places and ramble on a bit. I really do have trouble just talking about one thing, beginning to end.

Maybe it’s time I brought back The Deal. That was the whole point of it.

Oh well. Calm down. Find your center. Watch the cute little duckie.

Awwwwwww! Such a cute lil quacker, all fluffy and soft. And the hilarious cartoony noise his little webbed feet make on the hardwood floor is so adorable and completely unexpected that it damn near did me in.

OK, I feel better now. Time for today’s vid.

It’s around ten minutes long. Sorry.

For you music buffs, the intro featured the beginning of Ship Of Fools by World Party, and the outtro has the intro to Tramp The Dirt Down by Elvis Costello.

Both are somewhat relevant to the topic of taking down the plutocracy. I couldn’t think of anything directly on point except maybe Eat The Rich by Aerosmith, and that seemed a little too on the nose for my tastes.

Besides, I don’t want to eat the rich. Or even kill them. I just want them brought back within the rule of law. I want them to be treated just like any other citizen, which I am certain would drive them crazy, but it’s exactly what our kind of society expects of its citizens.

We accept the system because equality of power might limit our own power, but it also protects us from the power of others, and safety beats status and the lust for power any day.

Freedom and equality are inextricably linked. If we are not equally powerful (one voice and one vote each), then you can limit my freedom and make a slave of me with your power. In order to remain free, a society must limit the power of its citizens to act against one another.

This flies in the face of that immature pseudo-individualism that calls itself “libertarian” in the states. The Big Mean Ol’ Government is a big meanie when it tells you that you can’t have everything your greedy little heart desires.

I would love to ask a room full of libertarians “When, exactly, is the government justified in stopping you from doing what you want to do?”

Make it personal. That’ll fry their noodles.

Bye bye for now, folks!