Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Friday, September 16, 2005
*
*(And I don’t care how many wives that motherfucking chickenshit, entitled military brat, pseudo-christian, sicko smegma-net has had – he is still an assaulter and a rapist and if you don’t want to hear about it DON”T pronounce his sick, disgusting name to me anymore. Besides, I still suspect him of being a first-wife beater. He isn’t allowed to grow as a person in my eyes.)
Thursday, September 15, 2005
(not) romance challenge
Abandoned Dogs and Fallen Women
The women led her up the interior ramps of a glass pyramid. Formed in the Pythagorean / Egyptian style of pyramid it was shot through with luminescence. The light seemed to gather from the sparkling velvet and diamond-studded spiral that was the center of the Milky Way and matched the shine emanating from the cheekbones and eyes of the tall, sinewy women draped in gauze togas.
She would step into their arms and move through the solar plexus of each, in turn – twenty-one times as each women grew taller and more radiant until she reached the twenty-second woman. This was the mother of all who appeared as if composed entirely of many points of light refracting into her core, delineating each chakra into four-dimensional perception, each in its own fabled rainbow color: red orange yellow green blue indigo violet.
Mia continued ascending the ramp, hypnotized by the depth of those midnight eyes, older than god’s. The goddess spoke, “You need to pay attention to this –“and hundreds upon thousands of coyote pups fell yelping from her mouth. Mia plunged through 21 layers of glass pyramid, free-falling through space as miles of pressure shifts pushed against her eyes until she crashed hard against the scarred linoleum of her kitchen floor.
The multitude of coyote pups rushed the kitchen window while her good, big dog Gellert stood 5 ½ feet tall on his hind legs trying to chase the coyotes away, guarding Mia until death, if necessary. There were too many coyotes. Invasion was imminent.
A bolt of lightning tore across the sky, briefly illuminating the rows of feed corn across the gravel road and a solitary hunter on the other side of the field aimed his shotgun straight at Mia. He pumped and squeezed the trigger. She heard the shot followed by the keening of dozens of coyote mamas as she bolted upright on the loveseat where she’d fallen asleep. A full moon spilled through the window pane. She squinted through it and saw coyotes running down the hill and the neighbor, shotgun over his shoulder like a sentry, turn on his heel and walk back inside the house. When too many coyotes surrounded the houses, he would blast a couple of rounds in the air to scare them away.
“Shit!” hissed her roommate, from the other couch.
Angela was on her back and between the blanket and the light from the television and the moon, she reminded Mia of the Sleeping Woman Mountain in the Ozarks or New Mexico or Tennessee.
“We must have fallen asleep during the movie,” Angela said while shifting around on the couch. “I was having the weirdest dream.”
She sat up and raked her her fingers through the tangled ends of her chestnut hair. She leaned over the coffee table and foraged for a cigarette. “You were walking down the hill towards the river, but the road was made of glass. I was following you, but I couldn’t keep up with you – the glass was too slippery and I kept falling on my ass. It felt spooky. It was so quiet.
“I kept walking, but I couldn’t see you. Then you were back. You fell on your ass in front of me.” She leaned back against the floral velour couch cushion and lit her smoke.
“Is that when the coyotes showed up?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “Weirdo! Get out of my head! I didn’t tell you about the coyotes yet.”
I smiled. “Ange, the coyotes were real. The had the house surrounded and were howling at the moon. Gel was barking at them and Will came out with his shotgun to scare them away. The gunshots woke us up.”
“Oh, my god! I thought I dreamed it. In my dream Gellert was barking bullets at the coyotes.”
Hearing his name, my big, sweet fuzzy dog padded heavily into the living room, gave me a grin and leaped onto the loveseat, accidentally knocking me onto the floor. He lowered his huge head past the couch cushions and gave me a sloppy kiss. His breath smelled like he’d been snacking in the garbage can.
“Good dog,” I said.
He wagged his tail and knocked over an end table lamp.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
SUNY's excellent description of dopamine
C6H3(OH)2-CH2-CH2-NH2
(from http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~drs/newsletter115.htm)
Dopamine (C6H3(OH)2-CH2-CH2-NH2) is an important neurotransmitter, similar to adrenaline as a chemical messenger. Dopamine affects brain processes that control movement, emotional response, the experience of pleasure and pain, and the ability to focus attention. Dopamine is synthesized in the midbrain by cells clustered in the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area. It is transmitted to and released at synapses (nerve terminals) in the nucleus accumbens and striatum and the frontal and prefrontal cortex, where it binds to a receptor and generates a nerve signal. Normally after dopamine has been released and had its effect on neighboring neurons, excess amounts are pumped back into the transmitter cell axons by an active re-uptake mechanism. Cocaine is particularly destructive in binding to the re-uptake site and preventing termination of dopamine signaling. As a result, more dopamine remains to stimulate neurons, which prolongs feelings of pleasure and excitement. Many other drugs have a similar effect. For example, experiments on animals have shown that amphetamine produces a 1100% increase in dopamine levels compared with a 150% rise in a normal pleasure stimulus like food. Animals will self administer these drugs to the exclusion of all else and most eventually die.
Once returned to the sending neuron by the re-uptake system, dopamine is subject to an enzyme called monoamine oxidase (MAO), which breaks it down. Because of the vital role that MAOs play in the inactivation of neurotransmitters, MAO dysfunction is thought to be responsible for a number of neurological disorders such as depression, substance abuse, criminality, attention deficit disorder, and social phobias. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are one of the major classes of drug prescribed for the treatment of depression. Substance abusers using cocaine, amphetamine, heroin, alcohol, and even obese individuals have lower numbers of D2 receptors (one of the 5 kinds of dopamine receptors), which may mean that they have an understimulated reward system. Susceptibility to addiction is affected by genetic make up and environment as well as chemistry. Low receptor levels may make people more susceptible. Experiments in animals have shown an increase of social interaction is protective in increasing D2 detector levels.
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