Colin Gunn as he appears on his Facebook site which the Governor of Long Lartin prison Ferdie Parker allowed him to use to communicate with friends and family.
Scientists have identified January 25 as the most depressing day of the year, and it's probably because people with seasonal affective disorder are reaching the peaks of their suffering.
I’m all for suffering. And I know I shouldn’t begrudge other peoples' suffering. If it makes them happy, why should I care?
SAD sufferers are tourists in the misery world.
But I do. Because whenever I hear someone say that they suffer from seasonal affective disorder, I immediately discount them as qualified sufferers. If you’re going to suffer from something and call it a disorder, it should at least have the potential for dire consequences. A kidney failing. Or being unable to leave the house for 30 years. What are SAD sufferers at risk of? Oversleeping. Craving carbohydrates. Oh, and negative thoughts.
OK, some people aren’t used to negative thoughts. But then why not just say you’re depressed? Like a normal person. I met someone the other day who said she has SAD.
“It’s a real disorder,” she said, “Believe me.”
I didn’t. Afternoon napping doesn’t count as a symptom.
There are several reasons I’m suspicious of SAD. For starters, the acronym is too cute. What are the chances a disorder just happens to spell out the precise sensation that it causes? Also, it’s seasonal affective disorder, but the only season it applies to is winter. No one gets SAD in spring. I’m convinced the acronym came first; it’s a made-to-order disorder.
SAD supposedly kicks in as soon as the days get shorter and it begins to get dark at 5 o’clock. I don’t understand this at all. I panic when the days start to get longer. It means three or four hours of extra daylight to fill. It’s a lot of pressure. In January, you can be in for the night at 5 p.m. and no one cares. But in June? It’s like the middle of the day. I feel like a loser when I’m in for the night and the sun is still out.
As for how to treat SAD, a light box is usually what’s suggested. SADsters swear by the mood-changing power of the light box. An effective “bright-light therapy session” would mean being exposed to a light of at least 3,000 lux for about an hour a day, three times a week. This will ward off the blues.
You know what else will ward of the blues? A big bucket of money. I bet if someone put that on my desk, it would instantly brighten my mood.
I went to a Web site based in the U.K.—the leading supplier for medically proven SAD lights. There was SAD Research, SAD help, SAD accessories, and so many SAD lamps to choose from and instructions on how to work out which SAD lighting was appropriate, I could feel myself sinking with every passing second.
I had to turn off the computer and sit in the dark to recover.
Not to mention that I was surprised they even have SAD sufferers in the U.K. It’s not like in America where everyone expects you to be up all the time. People in London are thrilled with the one hour of daylight that appears every other day. And in the U.K., “blues” are another story. Someone has to be dying of cancer before they’ll get the blues for further reading
MTV is playing hardball with the “Jersey Shore” crew, who have been holding out for more money to appear in a second season of the runaway hit.
Here’s the situation (or The Situation, as it were): The cast, which has been negotiating together รก la “Friends,” rejected MTV’s latest offer of $10,000 an episode (there will be 12 episodes in the second season) and a $5,000 signing bonus, but MTV now says they’ll be replaced if they don’t accept that deal, TMZ.com reports.
Any cast member that rejects the offer (and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and Paul "DJ Pauly D" Delvecchio are reportedly the biggest holdouts) will be replaced, sources say, and there’s no shortage of candidates. What’s the population of Staten Island?
With her leopard thong, poof hairdo, and “Pornstar in Training” trucker cap, Nicole Polizzi—better known as “Snooki” on the MTV reality series Jersey Shore—is no Meadow Soprano.
And not just because Snooki and her female cohorts on the show—in which a group of self-proclaimed guidos and guidettes shack up in a house in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, for a summer of boozing, clubbing, and Jacuzzi-ing—aren’t Ivy League-educated Good Girls. Or that Snooki’s response to an Italian-American group and companies that recently pulled advertising from Jersey Shore because they said it reinforced negative stereotypes was: “FUCK YOU! If you don’t want to watch, don’t watch. Just shut the hell up! I’m serious. FUCK YOU!”
The truth is, the show is actually undoing age-old stereotypes and replacing them, for better or worse, with a progressive, and even revolutionary, model of prima donna that is more Lady Gaga than Victoria Gotti. In contrast to the one-dimensional portraits of Italian-American women that have been trotted out over the years—the loud-mouthed bimbo (Marisa Tomei’s Oscar-winning performance as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny); the long-suffering housewife (Connie in The Godfather; Carmela on The Sopranos); the daddy’s princess (Meadow Soprano)—the trash-talking, overly tanned ladies of Jersey Shore pick fist fights, refuse to cook or clean up, and shuffle around in slippers and sweats while the guys in the house preen and put on lip gloss. Most dramatically, they are not women who are defined by, or in the service of, the guidos and goombahs around them, whether it’s their fathers, husbands, or boyfriends.
