Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Republicans in disarray!

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

I was promised a recession.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

You cannot shame the shameless.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / You Say “I Love You,” I Say Pass The Lithium Open Thread

You Say “I Love You,” I Say Pass The Lithium Open Thread

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Still too crazed to think a thought more complicated than “please pass the gravy,” but I thought I’d share a bit of kind of bit of way-we-live-now insight, gleaned from a presentation by the head of MIT’s Mental Health Services, Alan Siegel.

Asked if there were particular moments of high demand for his kind of help here in the land of mens et manus, he told us, oh yeah.

When might that be?

Valentine’s Day.

Apparently, scheduling love by the calendar puts juuuusssst a wee bit of stress on folks. (What a shock.)

It’s now just part of the planning process:  for a couple of days before and after Feb. 14, the mental health folks in my neck of the woods double up on staff on duty…

…which is another way of saying that “This depression is brought to you by Hallmark Cards.”

You may consider this a shrink humor open thread.

__

Image:  Quentin Massys, Ill-Matched Lovers, c. 1520-1525

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  2. 2.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    My friend Opal Townsend went to a psychiatrist once.

    The doctor was running late, and in fact didn’t get to see her for forty minutes after her appointment time, which I think is appalling.

    She said that he had a fish tank in his waiting room, and there was a single fish in it, which swam around and around in a tiny circle through the windows of a little pottery castle. Every now and then it would nibble at a plant, but then it just started up again, around and around and around.

    She started off reading an old National Geographic to pass the time, but had to put it down when some of the tribal rituals it showed were a little too graphic for a good Christian woman to see.

    After that, she watched the fish swim around and around in circles for half an hour while she waited.

    Finally the doctor came out and she had her appointment. She said he was quite lovely, but she felt awkward and a little shy, so she didn’t say very much.

    Of course, she went home that afternoon and shot her husband, but he had been asking for it for years, so no one really blamed Doctor Kennedy.

  4. 4.

    freelancer

    Yossarian: Let me see if I’ve got this straight: in order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy and I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy any more and I have to keep flying.

  5. 5.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @Cat Lady:

    Someone who would name themselves “Cat Lady” is scarely qualified to throw stones in that particular glasshouse.

  7. 7.

    asiangrrlMN

    That painting is creeping me out. And, it doesn’t surprise me that VD would garner so much mental health service providers’ energies.

    @Angry Black Lady: ‘Coz they shrink your monies (and, ideally, your problems and issues).

    @Angry Black Lady: ‘Coz they shrink your monies (and, ideally, your problems and issues).

  10. 10.

    Arundel

    Sort of Valentine’s Day-heartbreak related.. the superb young singer Adele has a song about seeing your ex move on with someone else, “Someone Like You”. Apparently a lot of people need a hanky after listening. Adele is the real deal, amazing voice, so young but an old soul at heart. So here’s for anyone who pined after an ex (and went to the shrink after Valentine’s Day). :)

    And do give Adele a try if you haven’t.. so talented.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Zs7XS3XUo

  11. 11.

    Brad

    Wow, a chance to comment on a few of my favorite things. First, that MIT is a complete shithole (had a friend barely escape their meat grinder of a grad school alive). Second, that college mental health seems to attract the most incompetent of a generally incompetent profession.

    I think I’d put less than zero stock in whatever this Siegel dude has to say about Valentine’s day or anything else.

  13. 13.

    Tom Levenson

    @Brad: That’s my home shithole you’re talking about, dude.

    Also — gotta say you know f-all about either mental health issues (especially in a college setting) and Alan Siegel in particular, who leads a service that does a vital service here. Seriously — he’s one of the good guys, and shooting off like that with zero actual knowledge does you no credit.

    Me you can slag all you want; you’ve ample data with which to work ;)

  14. 14.

    Tom Levenson

    @Angry Black Lady: from Word-Detective.com:

    Dear Word Detective: My wife is puzzled by the moniker given her chosen profession. She swears that in no way does she “shrink” patients. In fact, she believes her job to be “expanding” people — their options and their abilities. Perhaps this came about from psychologists and psychiatrists attempts to reduce a patient’s perceived problems to a manageable size? Have you a clue? — Carl Follin, Springfield, Illinois.

    Hmmm. Yes. Of course. I think that examining your letter might be very helpful in understanding your problem. Why do you suppose you decided to write to me? Is there some reason that your wife didn’t ask this question herself ? How did writing this letter make you feel? Anxious? Resentful? Itchy? Hungry? Do you ever dream about appearing in a newspaper column in front of millions of people? What do you think you might do if I keep this up for a while? Oh, all right. There’s no need to shout.

    I’m actually rather surprised that your wife didn’t know why people in her profession (psychiatry, psychotherapy or psychology, I presume) are often referred to as “shrinks.” Many professions actually seem to take a perverse sort of pride in the barbs society lobs their way — the lawyers I know, for example, tend to know all the best lawyer jokes.

    The slang term “shrink,” applied to psychiatrists and psychotherapists and psychologists, is a shortened form of “headshrinker,” a derogatory comparison of the profession to primitive tribes who ritually dry and shrink the heads of their slain enemies. The term “shrink” dates back at least to the early 1960’s, and first showed up in print in Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” in 1966.

    If “headshrinker” seems a bit exotic for an insulting metaphor, it may help to note that magazine cartoons of the 1950’s and 1960’s were awash in cannibalistic natives, witch doctors and the like, so the imagery of “shrink” is not all that surprising…

  15. 15.

    dr. bloor

    @Angry Black Lady:

    I’m 5’3″ in my stocking feet. I am the very definition of “shrink.”

    Also, too, I was disappointed to find that a thread with “Lithium” in the title wasn’t about Charlie Sheen.

  16. 16.

    Ellie

    Your “friend,” Sarah? Okay. I hope you, I mean “Opal,” is getting the help she needs.

  23. 23.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @Ellie:

    Your “friend,” Sarah? Okay. I hope you, I mean “Opal,” is getting the help she needs.

    Don’t be silly. Opal got fried in 1998 after her appeal process ran out, so any help she is getting is of the “fiery poker up the bottom for eternity” kind.

  24. 24.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @Ellie:

    Heavens – perhaps someone can delete my last two posts in moderation. Apparently, you can say “anus” but not “p*ker” on here.

    Your “friend,” Sarah? Okay. I hope you, I mean “Opal,” is getting the help she needs.

    Don’t be silly. Opal got fried in 1998 after her appeal process ran out, so any help she is getting is of the “fiery spike up the anus for eternity” kind.

  27. 27.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @freelancer:

    Jesus McFrodo Christdalf

    He hears every word you say, you know, and gnashes his big red teeth at the thought of rending you limb from limb.

    Have a nice eternity.

  28. 28.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @dr. bloor: I suspect that Charlie Sheen needs more complicated pharmacology than lithium (after stepping away from the crack pipe and speedballs). But, alas, I am not licensed to practice medicine on this planet, of the head shrinking variety or otherwise. So that would be just a hunch.

  29. 29.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Please don’t feel the need to educate me on swear words dear. I was reducing young men to jelly with an assiduously placed “bastard” back before you were even thought of.

    However, since I have been saved for God’s eternal banquet, I try not to soil his ears with filthy-talk.

  33. 33.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @Tattoosydney:

    AsiangrrlMN and I cannot be described a friends. After all, she is destined to be tormented for eternity by having her womanly parts poked with porcupines, while I will fly off to heaven with the righteous with one crunch of God’s fearsome jaws.

    I do admire her spirit in the face of porcupine-pokingness.

  37. 37.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @freelancer:

    Santa Claus and Pennywise from Steven King’s “IT”

    You should spend some time with Father McInerney down at St Barnabas’. He makes me look like that atheist Nancy Pelosi.

  39. 39.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @fucen tarmal:

    jealous of your friend opal for getting a fiery poke in the rear for all eternity, methinkes

    When I am in Heaven being orally serviced by the Archangel Gabriel, I will look down on you in hell and feel sorry for a second or two. Perhaps a tear will even roll down my cheek before I surrender to the heavenly embraces of his feathery angel tongue.

  40. 40.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    Do you have any pets or plants you’d like me to tend to after the Rapture?

    Thankyou, dear, but no.

    We don’t believe in the rapture, like those terrible evangelicals, just the long slow coming of God’s terrible teeth.

    Father McInerney has promised me that if I am good, my pekinese Fluff-Fluff (Breeding name: Fluff-Fluff Begrif Forrester III) will get crunched up by his fiery jaws at the same time as I do, so that’s all sorted.

  41. 41.

    fucen tarmal

    i’ve been serviced by an angel many times, charlie sheen calls them godesses, but he makes the big money, i have to take what i can get.

    i don’t think you have to die to get there, or maybe you do, but that is more of a you thing, than some sort of general principle worth starting a religion over.

  42. 42.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Sarah, Proud and Tall: Oh, okay. I have some trouble telling the various brands of Christians apart. Most of the ones here in the US seem as if they would consider the Jesus fella I learned about in my youth as a total DFH calling for commie soshalist tyranny against their freedoms,like their medicare.

  43. 43.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    Oh, okay. I have some trouble telling the various brands of Christians apart. Most of the ones here in the US seem as if they would consider the Jesus fella I learned about in my youth as a total DFH calling for commie soshalist tyranny against their freedoms,like their medicare.

    My church doesn’t so much believe in the Jesus parts of the Bible as the “wandering in the desert and being attacked by snakes because we have been sinful” parts.

  44. 44.

    Sarah, Proud and Tall

    @fucen tarmal:

    i don’t think you have to die to get there, or maybe you do, but that is more of a you thing, than some sort of general principle worth starting a religion over.

    If you do it on this side of the heavenly gullet, then it’s sinful and wrong.

  45. 45.

    Anne Laurie

    @Tom Levenson:

    That’s my home shithole you’re talking about, dude.

    To be fair, from the perspective of a friendly outsider (so far outside, you’ll have to squint to see me waving cheerfully from the horizon), many of the new students at our commonwealth’s Excellent Educational Institutions have a little trouble coping with the chilling discovery that they are no longer the very very very best’n’brightest frogs in their individual little ponds any more. But it’s mostly the newly dethroned newbies at Slipstick Central who are used to dealing with emotional setbacks by getting even moar academically rigorous, rather than resorting to such non-innalechul pacifiers as chemical enhancement and sexual display.

  47. 47.

    Frank

    I had to read this short commentary a couple of times to understand it. The first few sentences in particular are rather murky. Don’t mean to gripe, but I just thought I’d throw this observation out there….

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