Sunday, August 19, 2012

Leader of the parade 陣頭

Just watched this movie 陣頭 (Leader of the parade )... A very "earthy" (鄉土) movie with Taiwanese expressions I have never used before and  陣頭- a folk culture indigenous to Taiwan.  Following is a parade I came across on Mother's day, 2012...


Back to the movie 陣頭 (Leader of the parade ), I find it very inspiring.  Apparently, it was based on a true story of 九天民俗技藝團.

What I find most impressive about this group is that many of the team members were once dropouts from school and might event be juvenile delinquents.  However, this group helped them to find a niche for themselves and start a new life.

Following are some clips I found about the movie 陣頭 or the performing group 九天民俗技藝團.



A clip someone took when the team members were practicing.


The group apparently just had a performance in Lincoln center on August 3, 2012.


A TV program made after the group took 三太子 to a marathon across the Sahara desert.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Telepathy


"Telepathy" itself is not a symptom, I guess, since maybe there really are people who are telepathic.  The world is large and nothing new under the sun.  However, "telepathy" in my case has always benchmark the opening of the gated doors to the cuckoo's nest.

In addition, when "telepathy" comes out, in place are symptoms already there.... It's an addition.

Some thoughts I drafted concerning telepathy back a couple days ago in my private blog to share with ya...

Why the emergence of da telepathy thing?  Well, cutting the dosage down to less than 10 mg of seroquel within 6-7 months from 300 mg for the purpose of being functional to perform work, which requires the usage of brain power.... that of course would do it since- duh, disordered thoughts are part of the thinking process! lol sigh

Need to continue using my head to do work with da "telepathy" thing while getting it under control on 100 mg only....  That is amazing grace!

MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2012

Telepathy etc



An interesting discussion occurred during my meeting with the shrink...

I told him about the telepathy and thought insertion thing...

He said, "Thought broadcasting and thought insertion."
Well, I figure that he understood what I was talking about...
Not quite sure how thought broadcasting is defined... thought it meant that thoughts in my mind are being broadcast to everyone.
What's the difference between my aka "telepathy" and thought broadcasting?

Sure, the symptom of being "telepathic" is simply a combination of thought broadcasting, self-reference thoughts, hallucination and psychotic symptoms otherwise not specified in thought and physical formats.

Yet, the sum of the parts seem to be qualitatively different from the parts themselves.

Granted, the addition of the thought broadcasting itself will add even more stress to a head already handling the commonplace psychotic symptoms.

But, in the "telepathic" state, all symptoms are united into one.... if not integrated (amazing grace that while I can't get to da integration thing after all these years, symptoms can get themselves to do the synchronous dance so very easily.  Sort of like... so speak my psychotic self... "What's all the fuss about integration?  I get your integration done in a breathe all the times except for you keep on trying to disintegrate me?  You don't even have to make any effort!" 8-O lol)

In this state, not only are one's thoughts broadcast to the world telepathically... Other's thoughts can broadcast automatically to one's mind... And, the back and forth of broadcasting here, broadcasting there, and broadcasting everywhere paves the unterwegs zur cuckoo's nest easily in no time- not to mention the noises contributed by oddly synchronous events here and there.... Like me thought of taking a trip to see the Pyramids this afternoon and saw one of the cartoon character going into a pyramid early this evening.

Also, da thought insertion... the feeling that something forced thoughts or visions into my head. Also institutionalizable grade kinda symptoms. Although, the phenomena of thought insertion actually precede telepathy.

It remained damn strange that... I was all the way up to 300 mg of Seroquel last year while I do not recall the occurrences of thought broadcasting and telepathy. Da 100 mg Seroquel, this round, has strangely kept them symptoms mostly under control- meaning- I can better getting the propensity towards such thoughts negated.

The occurrences of the symptoms and the dosage I can handle... tres buzzard...

Don't know, though, whether it is the same thing for the rest of the psychotic populations... the equivalence of insertion, thought broadcasting and telepathy as well as unterwegs zur psychiatric ward.

Since I am unterwegs zur Seroquel, let me entertain yet another question-- oops... forgot...

Let me select one question randomly then... were they already there throughout the past few months except for I was too sleepy to get them entertained?

Nope. I don't think so... they grew exponentially this past month as I was becoming more and more awake in comparison to the months past.

At the same time, simply my mindless mumble jumble.

What is wrong with my cognition?

Someone came to the post about Impaired Metacognition: Part II and I got to revisit the following paragraphs:

Quote 1
"On the other hand, the so-to-speak breakdown in the self-controlling mechanism is manifested in one’s inability to make appropriate adjustment to one’s interpretation about events, provided one’s self-monitoring capacity remained intact.
In plain English, I might agree with the notion that there is some impairment in the controlling component of the metacognitive model when I can not change how I interpret my experiences despite of my awareness of the biases and irrationality in my frame of references.
However, is this really impairment in my metacognition?
I don’t really think so. But, of course, that is but my really tired and loco interpretation."
Quote 2
"At the same time, as I have elaborated in previous postings, just like Rome, delusions are not built in one day. At the micro-level, as time goes on, it is inevitable for the delusional to develop a propensity to attribute observations in a way that is deviated from the norm. As a result, provided with the same environmental cues, delusionals might gradually develop a pattern in attending and interpreting environmental inputs that is different from that of a normal person.
In other words, both the normal person and the delusional are capable of performing metacognitive tasks, namely, self-monitoring and self-controlling.
However, a context is required for one to exercise his or her metacognitive skills and the context contains both the environmental inputs and one’s past experiences. Given the same environmental inputs, provided adequate ability capability of performing metacognitive tasks for both the delusional and the normal person, I feel it should be one’s past experiences that result in differential experiences, rather than the impaired metacognition." 

From where I stand today I would say, I agree and disagree with these comments- though it is sort of difficult to agree or disagree since some part of the texts seem a bit ambiguous to me.

Starting from the second part of the quote, past experiences do not necessarily destine one to think in a particular fashion although learning does promote the strengthening of cognitive pathways, as per cognitive processing doctrine, and this is why old habits are hard to break- especially in the context of automaticity.  In the context of the discussion, what is missing is the component of the present.  For the normal, there is one set of reality and the limited numbers of hypotheses to entertain.  For the psychotics, there is more than one set of reality with them realities entangled.  As a result, there are far more hypotheses to be entertained while hypotheses beget more hypotheses- and this is why psychotic like me live a living trying to not get drown in the sea of hypotheses.  8-O lol sigh

The notion of da sea of hypotheses brings me back to the first quote...

Am I still in agreement with the comment that I don't have metacognitive impairments as per "Is this really impairment in my metacognition? I don’t really think so"?

I disagree despite of the word "really" in da quote.   Coming right out of, if not still coming out from, a state of institutionalizable grade of psychotic symptoms bench-marked by telepathy (i.e., the sum of thought broadcasting, thought insertion and I can read you mind), I can tell you for sure that there are huge problems in the "control" department.

This is not the "let go of control" or "illusion of control" kinda control I am speaking of... (or is it the same thing? 8-O)

It is the phenomenon of, given the equal strength of verbal and non-verbal stimuli in the background, you brain is biased to attend to and interpret the inaudible verbal stimuli despite of your attempt to focus on the non-verbal stimuli such as music in the background.  

That is an impaired department of "Control."

Regarding monitoring, well, though possible to achieve, the one major confounding variable would be simply- How do you tell what is real and what is real?  Sounds like a chicken and egg question here... 8-O lol

At the same time, it appears to me that when it gets really "positive" (amazing grace that I could outsource 100 mg of Seroquel and a whole lot of rest to save myself my the cuckoo's nest while still kick at large), a huge part of the department of control seems to go on a vacation, possibly went on to Mars with Curiosity- leaving only an understaffed division working with the exponential increase in "biased observations."  Sort of like.. I guess.. the scenario of the arrival of Fallen and them excessive number of Decepticons when Optimus Prime was "on leave" in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? 8-O lol 

(Oops... hope my symptoms don't get aggravated by my describing them as decepticons.... 8-O 8-X lol)

Just an updated thought.


Monday, August 13, 2012

Russia?

Still get quite puzzled by the number of hits through Russia nowadays.... though not so many hits to my blog anyways... 8-X lol


Alo, Russia?

(Courtesy of google translate... )

Кто вы?

Любой комментарий?

My walking fish? 8-O

Was thinking about this quote 

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Albert Einstein

and this pix...


And I decided to look up some more pix of walking fishes... via google image with the simple keyword of walking fish...

When scrolling through them images, I saw a pix of my walking fish with the pix linked to a website unknown to me....

I was overjoyed... OMG... my fish is on a website!

My walking fish returned by google image search

The pix of my walking fish linked to article.wn.com



And I thought... how on earth did I recognize this fish? 

Friday, August 10, 2012

New tooth

Got the crown put in-- I just got a new tooth!




Been laughing like Arale Norimake (則巻アラレ, 丁小雨) or 則卷卡斯拉 (則巻ガジラ, 可美) in Dr. Slump with a missing tooth...


Missing tooth!  Missing tooth!

Finally, new tooth in.....



Guess... um............. ain't no nothing to brag about? 8-O lol

And, I surely have watched a whole lot of cartoons while doing my 英英美代子 kinda swinging these past few weeks.... 8-X lol

 

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Visits

Though I entertain the sources of visits to Ratology Reloaded not all that much- since, with a proxy, you can identify yourself from arriving from any location on this planet- as long as you don't ask me to ponder why anyone would go through such hassle- just my default psychotic protocol.

This month

This week

Today

Past 2 hours (Now)


Interestingly, I am getting quite a bit of hits from Russia and Taiwan.... as well as... manchmal... China...

Don't know whether the pages were ever retrieved successfully on the client side in China? 

Friday, August 3, 2012

Not enough depth but run really fast


Trying to get a crown done for that tooth of mine that's been undergoing tooth canal.  Ended up, as per the dentist, the height of the tooth is at around 25 percentile with only 25 percent of teeth in the teeth population shorter than it.  Not enough depth.

At the same time, though the teeth not using the retainer were tighter than with the retainer right after I had my accident, nowadays, them teeth need da retainer noch ein mal.  Well, though das body of mine can run not, my teeth do run fast...

So I say... not enough depth for the teeth while my body surely is fat enough...  Can't run no more except for them teeth wouldn't stop running.

Surely all in the wrong places... though, still, some parts de moi have the depth and some parts run really fast... brava, brava, bravissima! lol



National treasure- The Declaration of Independence

The last time I saw someone with due enthusiasm with the declaration of independence was in the movie... National Treasure.



Today, when I was, with due diligence, doing one of my physical therapy routine, I heard this gentleman, also receiving his physical therapy then, reciting the declaration of independence in the doctor's office in Taipei.

Wow... that was the first time I heard anyone reciting the declaration of independence from his head... Really impressive!

The last time I came across something related to the declaration of independence was possible when I watched the movie.... the pursuit of happiness based on the story of Chris Gardner.



So I decided to take a look up the Declaration of independence drafted by Mr. Jefferson... and saw it for the first time... I think... though in digital format.

The front

The Back

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Typhoon Saola 蘇拉

Typhoon Saola 蘇拉 just landed the second time, within 12 hours, in Taiwan... with its rain and wind... mucha damages done already...

God bless!