Me

Today's update

Feeling much better today, waking up wasn't nearly as difficult as it has been the past five days. My boss was much kinder when I called in sick to work yesterday, I imagine I shall be back at work (aka hell) on Thursday but in the meanwhile I might look for a new one (job).

Listening to Neil Young this morning yet again, this morning it is On the Beaches, last night it was Ragged Glory. I'm really into Neil Young right now, I wonder if this will last and how long? I find his music really enjoyable and expansive, and he has so many recordings.

I've got a lecture for my Feud module today so I will now go and read some more from The Interpretation of Dreams. By the way, if you want something extremely hilarious to read, might I recommend The Time Waster Letters, and The Return of the Time Waster Letters by (alias) Robin Cooper.

Yet more photos

Some photos

Due to popular demand (one request) I will now post some photos (first is of nephews, Bjorn and Josh:

Star struck

Had 3 highlights already this morning. Woke up at 8:50 and called the clinic and arranged 9:50am appointment. Doctor said that since I experienced withdrawal symptoms I should go back onto 10mg a day for 2-4 weeks and then go down to one 10mg tablet every second day for a month or two before stopping altogether. So I'm sorry to say there may not be any interesting accounts of bizzarre withdrawal symptoms on my blog, but let's see first what tonight brings.
As for the highlights, when I came home I found that I had received two emails. As I suspected, my nice friend Hannah Price did indeed visit my weblog and posted a nice comment, so did my dad, which pleased me immensely although it did not surprise me as he is so nice. Those are Monday morning highlights 1 and 2, highlight number three relates to the picture below which is of Tariq Ali. He is a political writer whom I admire very much and an editor of New Left Review. I sent him an email on the 20th of January and today received a reply. It was quite enjoyable to receive an email from someone who is famous, and only the second time it has happenned. The first time was went I sent an email to Labour MP for Rotherham Dennis MacShane regarding an article he had written in the Independant and I was scathing of his hypocrisy regarding this and that and he was kind enough to reply politely.

Anyways, my correspondence with Tariq Ali went like so:
January 20th, 2006

Dear Mr. Ali,

I enjoy your writing and have learnt a lot from it. I was wondering if you could suggest a book on the history of the formation of Israel, as it seems like it would be a controversial topic about which a lot of rubbish would be written.
Sincerely yours,
Andrew Johnston

And today, I received the reply:

Norman Finkelstein's 'Image and Reality' would be a good start......


And that's it. I shall be visiting the Library at the soonest possible oppurtunity in order to follow his suggestion. It's funny how enjoyable it can be to receive a sentence fragment from someone who is a hero of yours and is also somewhat famous.

Once again today I am enjoying Neil Young's After the Goldrush. I have been told that Bruce Springsteen is also well worth a listen and will be checking out some of his stuff later today as I continue my musical odyssey.

Ooh, one more thing. I today received in the mail a book I had ordered of Amazon market place by Freud entitled The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and it seemed quite fitting in light of my recent mental state.

-dj

Bedtime

After starting this blog in an effort to combat my symptoms of SSRI withdrawal tonight, I now feel better and will thus be heading to bed. First however, I will email my link to Hannah Price as I think she is most likely to read it, even though I will also email it to my family in Calgary, although they may well try to read it out of kindness despite its boring nature.

Peace out, I will post an update after my visit to the GP tomorrow.

-Drew

Media

Reading:
So what else is going on in my life that I may kick-start this blog? Let's see, I'm reading Freud right now. I'm just over a third of the way through The Interpretation of Dreams and I'm enjoying it immensely. Freud must be one of the most misinterpreted, misquoted, misjudged, figures around. His ideas, whether correct or not, are brilliant, and are easily accessable as his writing is crystal clear and quite plain.

Listening:
Neil Young - After the Goldrush
As I mentioned in an early post, I've been listening to Neil Young's After the Goldrush. I was under the impression that Harvest and Harvest Moon were the quintessential Neil Young CDs; at least as far as his more mellow, Western sounding stuff is concerned. But After the Goldrush is by far my favorite of all his albums I've listened to, I heard it in Starbucks the other day and since it was only 3.99£ at Borders I picked it up (especially since it wasn't available illegaly as a bittorrent).

Coldplay (blush) X+Y
I've also been suprised by the non-crappiness of Coldplay's X+Y. As with the other two Coldplay albums, I have the feeling I will listen to it intensely for a few weeks only to then banish it forever to the unplayed nether-regions of my ipod.

Imogen Heap - Speak for Yourself
Lastly, I've really been enjoying Imogen Heap's album Speak for Yourself. I found Imogen Heap on the O.C. soundtrack, and have never heard or seen her mentioned anywere else. I am slightly embarrassed to admit how much I enjoy this CD. It sounds alot like any other well produced piece of top 40 rubbish, only more human. In keeping with the theme of shameful pleasures I might point out my embarrassment at the fact that I once spent two weeks addicted to The O.C. when I watched the first season everynight on DVD in a blitz of fake tan and plastic surgery. I have since made a full recovery and resumed my stance of intellectual and moral snobbery/superiority to the O.C.

Ratatat - R-A-T-A-T-A-T
I downloaded this album after hearing the first track seventeen years on a skate video called Skate More. The first track is probably one of the best songs I've heard in a couple years. The rest of the album is good but I don't enjoy it really.

Movies
Napoleon Dynamite
Everybody has already seen and loves this movie. Nothing more needs to be said, it is an instant classic; consistantly funnier each time you watch it. The first time you watch it you are most struck by the way that a movie which moves so slowly and unexcitingly can keep such a constant level of low interest. It's just interesting enough to keep you from moving or turning it off. The funniness doesn't strike you until afterwards.

The Chorus
I watched this movie under compulsion by my wife, it is a testament to the excellence of this film that I enjoyed it so much after swearing to Beth that I would make it my business to not enjoy it at all. It is a French film with English subtitles. This movie is the best film I've seen yet in 2006. It is extremely sweet without being saccharine - like Baklava, rather than Butterfinger. This movie is like Amelie, only less pretentious and more good. For that reason, the Guardian will not like it as much.

Review: Memoirs of a Geisha - worst movie of 2006 so far.

What an awful experience, 3 hours of very, very, bad drama - if one can call it that. Sure enough, the pretentious wankers at the Guardian gave it a very favorable review. That is because their reviewers have no soul, just a pretensious loser checklist: non-western? check (or so they thought, the movie was actually a Hollywood offering); anti-American? check (very lame jabs at Americans - "these American men are bastards!"); so called artistic beauty? check (the movie is liberally sprinkled with shots of ostensibly Japanese villages and mountain scenes which make you wish you were outside and not in the cinema enduring the third hour of a story that would have been told better in three minutes).

So anyways, I hated this movie passionately. I can't remember a movie arousing so much anger in myself through sheer crumminess. And it is long. Looooooooonnnnng. Needlessly long too. It is as though they said to themselves "lots of good, serious movies, are long."

Basically, this movie is far worse than what one imagines would come out of George Orwell's imagined script writing machine from 1984. "Prole-feed" entertains you, even though you are ashamed to admit it. Memoirs is a case like that of the Emperor's new clothes: pretentious people have been told it is good, and will tell others it is good because they don't want to look as though they didn't 'get-it'. Blech!

First entry

Feelin' ruff today. Quit taking SSRI (citalopram, aka. Celexa) on Tuesday of last week. Experiencing gnarly withdrawal symptoms: chills, nausea, shocks etc. Pretty weak. Listening to Neil Young's After the Goldrush to make myself feel better. Also Coldplay X+Y although I'm ashamed to admit it. Something lame about the way Chris Martin preaches eco-conservativsm while flying around the world in a private jet. He probably pollutes more than all the guests of a Coldplay concert put together as a result of his jet setting.

Anyways, like I said, quit SSRIs, feeling bad, looked up symptoms on internet and found many testimonies of others who have had the same problem. I'm going to head down to the doctor's tomorrow first thing and get some citalopram. I'd been dropping by ten milligram doses with no problem but found dropping from 10mg to 0mg to be quite a different story altogether. YIKES! Feel like a crap sandwhich.

As a result of crap-sandwhichness I called in sick to work on Saturday, will do the same tomorrow (Monday). My boss was a wanker about it which was not suprising. Apparently my employers have "a very strict policy regarding sickness". How sweet of them, may they all be poxed with sores and boils. Of all my symptoms right now these shivers are the worse.