captaincliff

1)  Since you probably dont think you are Narcissistic or have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), even tho multiple significant others have told you so (including those who have known you at your very best and worst) you might want to set aside the grandiosity and ego for at least ten minutes to consider the remote possibility. It could be worse, like metastatic cancer. True, others have compared you to cancer in the past but dont get hung up on that either for the moment.

2)  Go through the following checklist below (plagiarized liberally from Psych Central) only this time with my help since the last time someone dropped the NPD symptom checklist in your lap or stuck a page from the DSM Manual under your door and ran like hell you probably dismissed it as “complete nonsense”, psychiatric mumbo jumbo, or pure jealousy on the part of the “offending” party, chicken shit courier, etc.

3) Narcissistic Personality Disorder is primarily characterized by a long-standing pattern of grandiosity (either in fantasy or actual behavior), an overwhelming need for admiration, and usually a complete lack of empathy toward others. Ok, so you KNOW all that (and a million other things) and you absolutely deny that is YOU because you are confident that you feel alot of empathy, well, not for your ex-wife, any girlfriends/partners who EVER broke up with you, or anyone who disagrees with you and has the nerve to stand up to you, but for all your pets, disabled children, stray dogs, and anyone who kisses your tush on a regular basis. It doesnt count as empathy unless its in the difficult situations and/or moments that suggest you may have been wrong, overly judgmental, reflexively defensive, felt  personally insulted or were “called on the carpet” publicly. Kind of changes things that way, doesn’t it?

Bonus point: You still might have NPD if you manage to keep your overflowing ego and desire to verbally humiliate/abuse those who cross you in check most of the time. If you catch yourself replaying situations in your head with real and/or imagined dialogue evicerating your perceived foes (often a former “loved one” or person you feel has “betrayed” you ) that’s still possibly NPD. Just a more “closet” case.

4) People with narcissistic personality disorder often display snobbish, disdainful, or patronizing attitudes. For example, an individual with this disorder may complain about a clumsy waiter’s “rudeness” or “stupidity” or conclude a medical evaluation with a condescending evaluation of the physician, dentist, psychiatrist or licensed marriage therapist. Sure the marriage therapist whose been in private practice for 25 years you deemed “merely a social worker” after he/she tried to get you to own a simple mistake, and yes, the psychiatrist who suggested you might be narcissistic only went to a “non-Ivy two bit med school”, according to you, but I am suggesting here that you dismiss your tendency to dismiss others and their “professional credentials” long enough to see yourself more clearly. Again, it wont kill you. Like a shot or two at the doctors office, it might just sting abit. But if you “take it” like a man, or even a grown up woman, you might even develop a future immunity and resistence to your unhealthy tendencies.

5)  Ok, here comes the hard part but if you are still reading, that ITSELF is a small but positive sign for your prognosis and eventual recovery (see follow-up blog for my suggested NMRP, Narcissist Maintenence and Recovery Plan). Also, let me say in advance I realize how very valuable your time is and that you could be doing a million more productive and beneficial things right now like strategizing with your attorney about  your long contested divorce and custody battle (bleed then dry, etc.) or as mentioned laying back and fantasizing obtaining revenge on all the people who you feel have “wronged” you over your lifetime. As a consequence you feel entitled to make them miserable using every “fiber of your being”. No, you are not a serial killer or someone who suddenly bursts into a movie theater and starts shooting. You are WAY more clever than that and you know how to get alot of people to agree with your ultimately self-serving views and egotistically unbalanced perspectives. Of course money and power helps.

NOW do this:  This time read the list of symptoms listed below but DONT let the wording or specifics to immediately disallow your from having NPD or some significant degree of narcissism based disorder. Dont worry, I’m not trying to FORCE you to check the box YES or MAYBE, even tho MAYBE, once you look closer at it,  is possibly probable (especially if your two ex-wives started a NPD survivors group together and your kids act at times intimidated by you and you have NO REAL CLUE WHY).

Bonus: Be careful If you catch yourself thinking, “No way, everybody loves my ass. They all agree with me and love my jokes, my charm, and my confident airs. I go fishing with my son regularly and I coach my kids soccer team”!! Unfortunately that doesnt prove anything except that you have a tremendously self-confident and extroverted front. Kind of like a dark knight with snazzy looking armor. This is one of those cases when you have to ask the fish, the bait store clerk (who has nothing to lose and is from Maine), the little girl who recognized that the Emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes, and any others who arent afraid of you, your money, your wealthy family or your work/community/church/legal connections. If the fish or the bait store clerk think you are a “sort of a douche” and your kids seem to shy away from being with you on their court mandated custody visits, dont ASSUME its ALWAYS the ex-wife’s fault for engaging in Parental Alienation Syndrome. In fact if you blame the ex for NOT catching any fish while “bonding” with your son, you definitely might have a narcissism problem.

Ok, Here we go. First take a deep breath and repeat outloud this unique MANTRA which I have created just for you (and me):  “I can own some shit. Everything bad that has happened in my life was NOT necessarily someone elses fault.  I will not fall apart and melt by honestly admitting to having all or some of the following traits. If Dr. Cliff can do it at his age, and given the immense size of his ego (and number of artfully framed diplomas and certificates on his wall) I can do it too.

Now, for the first time read this symptom list but make room for INCLUSION rather then EXCLUSION of self. Dont immediately say, “Bullshit, that’s not me, no way, no how!!” Instead, without stretching the description too far (like really being a demented Paranoid Schizophrenic but preferring to see yourself as NPD) see if some significant PART of the diagnositc criteria applies to you and ESPECIALLY under certain conditions and circumstances.

Dirty Secret of Psychiatry/Psychology: Increasingly therapists and researchers of Personality Disorders are aware that even tho personality disorders are considered life-long and fairly intractable, they can lessen or worsen with age, with levels of stress and in the presence of other coinciding problems like depression, untreated bipolar illness, and anxiety disorders. I guess we should have guessed that one all along as it’s perfectly logical. The more important point is to realize that you might have met the criteria below to a greater or lesser degree at certain times in the past, and partially as a function of maladaptive coping. HOWEVER, before you conveniently misuse that information, it’s unlikely that you are CURED today and never resort to NPD tactics and defenses, with or without major life stressors. By the way, forget the stupid “you must have five or more of the following” instructions. They (the shrinks writing and evaluating the DSM codes)  just made that shit up. Dont give yourself a Get Out of Jail Free card just because you have three or four symptoms below. It’s not like bronchitis, which I happen to have right now.

Symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Taken from Psych Central (http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx36.htm)

In order for a person to be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) they must meet five or more of the following symptoms:

Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
Requires excessive admiration
Has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Good Job. See that wasn’t that terrible. It is however, very important that you SEE and own up to the aforementioned Narcissistic qualities. Why? Because they color your world. They make you see not through rose colored glasses but through myopic spectacles and distorted lenses that blind you from the pain you inflict. If you still have no empathy reading THAT then I probably cant help you. You are the smarmy, well-connected, falsely self-assured, over-entitled version of the crazy mass murderer, only you usually do it emotionally and verbally, and typically with bluster not bullets. You do it with your money, your attorneys, and with your wealthy family and their “deep roots” in the community you came from. In fact, they probably taught you how to be this way, which is another reason its hard for you to see it or perceive yourself or your narcissistic coping patterns as shortsighted and WRONG. Sometimes it takes many years, alot of regret, and a good hard look at oneself (in the honestly mirror) to admit it. I did.

Cliff Mazer, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and self-perceived humorist in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He loves Pirates, blogs under the nom de plume of CaptCliff on WordPress, and is a recovering Narcissist with bronchitis.   Contact:  404-932-7193

Dear NASA,

At the very same time your magnificent Mars Rover, Curiosity, shakes the Martian dust off it’s multi-billion dollar high tech chassis and prepares to engage in a trillion groundbreaking experiments, I am stuck in bed with a bad head cold.

I am tremendously impressed that Curiosity and its MSL spacecraft traveled many millions of miles through the cold dark recesses of space before plunging to the Martian surface in what has been called “seven minutes of terror”. Watching billions of dollars go down the drain in a split second is terrifying to imagine. Such momentous gambles are best left up to the steely of heart, like Warren Buffett or Dick Cheney, who apparently is able to replace his own internal organs once they malfunction.

This whole scientific symphony was accomplished through a series of unbelievably precise maneuvers carried out remotely and by computer programs more complicated than the most complex ballet ever conceived. Meanwhile, my flat screen TV and remote control in my bedroom is not working and Comcast wont be able to come out to adjust my cable box until December 2013, well after the Mayan Apocalypse. How is that possible? NASA, could I please borrow the guy with the Mohawk for a couple hours to fix my TV and reprogram the remote control? I’m pretty sure the Curiosity Rover will be fully operational and on the move before I will. I feel like total crap and I want to watch Law and Order reruns in between big swigs of Nyquil.

Sincerely, Cliff Mazer

Finally, just in the nick of time and in the least probable of places we have a bona-fide solution to bestiality. I have attempted to warn my readers (both of them) that their petty obsession with climate change, nuclear proliferation, and gay marriage, of all things pales in comparison to the near global epidemic of people having sex with animals. In blog after blog I have trotted out the grisly details. Horses, dogs, sheep, lamb, donkeys, I could go on and on in a Noah’s Ark like rendition of sexual perversity that appears to be reaching a climax of sorts. Notice I haven’t even mentioned the inanimate objects like stuffed animals, oak trees and imitation leopard skin Huggies (my personal preference) that have increasingly been assaulted by sex crazed humans without their “sentient” consent. Let’s face it, it’s hard for a Care bear or a crocodile to give it’s consent, but I notice that nobody is trying to take advantage of a lady crocodile, so that should tell you something. Apparently there is an enormous amount of denial in society, even in these significantly more liberal times about the spreading preference for domestic livestock over similar or even matching species for quick and dirty sex.

The small nation of Bali, with it’s beautiful beaches, tropical climate and ubiquitous creative arts and crafts has lead the way in coming up with a proactive and well, creative solution. They are making the man marry the cow. That’s right. He was forced to marry the cow in a formal ceremony with priests, guests and all the matrimonial “trimmings”. Bali has always been a favorite of wealthy people who seek an exotic locale to consummate their marital vows, altho I suspect the aforementioned ceremony did not take place at the well-heeled Anantara Resort and Spa. Disclaimer: From reading the article below, It is apparent that this tiny nation’s courageous attempt to make inter-species unions legal still has a few kinks in it, so to speak. It is reported that the young groom, Ngurah Alit passed out before pledging his undying love for Daisy and the townspeople in a fit of celebratory passion decided to drown the cow. Down here in the South where I live we would have just slow roasted and barbecued the bride to be. That’s some good eatin’, dammit!!

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/329632

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/08/03/20120803california-doctor-taped-naked-patients.html#ixzz22svSp65H

Posted on August 6, 2012 by captaincliff

And it makes me wonder…. Way back when, there appeared to be only two basic kinds of Baby Boomers. You remember us, right? We’re the large group of gray and balding men and women who used to be long haired hippies who smoked pot, attempted to play the guitar (only a few of us ever really could) and wanted to change the world. Yes, there were a few straight laced conservative people our age who looked at us as disobedient weirdos, but by and large THEY were the  “queer” and uptight ones who clung to our parents values, voted for Richard Nixon, and marched proudly into combat in Vietnam ….never to be seen again. Oh yeah, keep in mind that “queer” back then had a different connotation than what it means today. Back then it meant you preferred Perry Como and Andy Williams records to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.  We also correctly surmised the existence of alternate realities and sometimes used hallucinogens like LSD to explore the many sided mirrors and doors of perception, both ordinary and non-ordinary.

Over the years, strangely, this “split” or bifurcation of types of Baby Boomers has morphed into many different things. Now there are multiple mirrors revealing our fundamental differences. Some of us are now staunch Republicans (no, not me), some are knee-jerk liberals. Some are for more government, others for less. Some of us feel immediately bad for drunk homeless people and others think, “That’s a shame, but he should get a job and stop drinking!” Often they are good-natured differences, ones we can humorously argue about on Facebook forums and sarcastically call or text one another to say, “I know. I was there with you at the University of Colorado protesting the war and simultaneously trying to get laid too. You looked ridiculous with a beard and no mustache back then, man. Well, so did you!”

Sometimes our political differences get more heated and we end up sounding like the paid pundits arguing on TV, but then, just like them after the commercial break, we can usually shake hands and go out for a drink together. We recognize our philosophical differences but remember our shared place in history. I suspect we also know and mourn silently together in our culturally induced narcissism and idealistic losses. What I mean is we didn’t succeed in changing the world like we wanted to. We kind of know we sold out at some level. The larger system is essentially the same as it always was and most of us gave up chanting anti-war slogans, Hare Krishna prayers, and Transcendental  Meditation mantras and eventually joined country clubs, synagogues and brokerage houses just like our parents did. We became more interested and obsessed with making money and understandably in our own family’s economic survival. Creativity and living a care free, free spirited existence went to the same place our long hair and hippie beads went…..on the floor and in a drawer.

I’m not saying that’s such a bad thing. It’s just that many of us didn’t think when we were young that would happen. We were like the sweet natured Eloi  tribe in the old 1960 movie The Time Machine. We thought, metaphorically speaking, that nature would provide and large pieces of fresh fruit and baked bread would be served to us on silver platters when it was time to eat. We had a sense of destiny and “certainty” about things once. For example, we absolutely positively were CERTAIN we had the BEST music of any generation EVER, and it played in our heads, on our home stereos, and from our cars constantly. We also were certain that the world was made of two types of everything, like the cool and the uncool, the hip and the unhip, the enlightened and the unenlightened. It took us many years to see the various shades of gray in the world… and in opening our “eyes” to such complexity and uncertainty we lost something, just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they ate of the “Tree of Knowledge”. We didn’t just learn about good and bad, like John Lennon and Charles Manson, Woodstock and Altamont, but we began to see our own shadows and psychological imperfections in failed marriages, custody battles, parenting nightmares and substance abuse problems, sometimes ours and sometimes in our own reflexively rebellious teenagers. That was another “mirror” of reality many of us didn’t count on having to face.

Dont get me wrong. I’m not trying to be morbid or totally pessimistic. If you know me at all then you’ll understand it is more about humor, irony and, well, sentimentality. It’s ironic and hilarious to me that I cared so very much, at age 20, about having long hair that would “stay in place” so I could look cool at the protest marches in Boulder, and now I am totally bald (aided by my overly expensive Mach 3 razor blades by Gillette). It’s ironic that I am a divorced Clinical Psychologist with three idealistic 20-something sons. It is touching and soul moving when I hear music from the 60′s and 70′s or talk to high school friends (and others) on Facebook who, like me, look alot older but have the same twinkle in their eye that I remember from so long ago. Finally, I dont give a shit what my kids say. We DID have the BEST MUSIC ever!!      Peace and Love MY Brothers and Sisters….and really good food too.

Stairway to Heaven…..61 MILLION hits and counting:

Once upon a time well before there was a video game called Angry Birds, there was a headless chicken named Mike. That’s right, he had no head. If you care to get technical, he did have a partial brain stem and one ear. I suppose you might want to know how Mike lost his head, something most of us believe is pretty essential and usually required for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. In fact, Mike proved them all wrong and did just fine without his fine feathered head and prominent beak.

I will try to be brief even tho Mike, later dubbed “Miracle Mike the Headless Chicken” and his life story (see video link below) present us with a number of profound lessons and philosophical considerations. Mike’s owner was a nice guy chicken farmer in Colorado in the 1940’s. Just because you raise chickens and cut their heads off on a daily basis doesn’t make you a bad guy. Keep that in mind. Maybe that’s the first life lesson. Anyway, one day this chicken farmer, whose name was Lloyd Olson, cut the heads off a bunch of his chickens with an axe. Remember he did this for a living to sell the chickens parts to people who wanted to cook them for dinner, not just to be a crazy lunatic with an axe or because he held a grudge against helpless fowl. Regardless, one of the chickens got back up after losing his head and kept walking around acting relatively normal. Dont ask me what “normal” is in that situation because being beheaded is not really something most of us count as a common occurrence. You may already know that some animals can respond rather reflexively even after losing their head. Hence the term, “running around like a chicken with his head cut off”. The strange thing is that usually those chickens run around headless for a minute or two and then, realizing that life is rather limited without a head they keel over and die.  Well, good old Mike didn’t do that. He just kept walking around while trying to peck the ground and talking like a more “complete” chicken. Of course talking without a head is rather  different and sounds more like a raspy gurgle than a “cock a doodle doo”. Regardless, it  became obvious that Mike was a very unusual chicken who didnt seem to care that he lost his head.

Soon enough Lloyd decided to call his special chicken Mike the Miracle Chicken. He wanted other people to know about Mike and his unique situation. Of course back then just like today if you wanted to grab people’s attention for marketing and promotional purposes you would need to emphasize the part about Mike being devoid of a head. This was well before the advent of social media and web search engines with their various SERPs, SEMs, and SEOs for generating increased visibility and internet “traffic”. This was just a simple farmer out in the middle of nowhere Colorado with a very alert and active headless chicken. Of course he wanted to make money off of Mike. Who wouldn’t?

Can you guess what happened? Mike was sent on a grueling world wide promotional tour by Hope Wade, a very enterprising “promoter” and circus style booking agent. Mike the Miracle Chicken starred in shows from California to New York and even sailed to Europe once! Apparently even snobby French and English people were interested in seeing a chicken without a head who acted relatively normal. By this time in the story (sorry about me saying I’d be brief) most people want to know how Mike managed to feed himself or be fed since it usually helps to have a mouth. In fact, Mike actually GAINED weight on his fancy world tour and went from being a scrawny two pound chicken to weighing almost eight, which is a pretty hefty sized Butterball. It seems that Mike could be fed by using a eye dropper and pouring chicken feed down his open esophagus using certain simple tools. The technique must have been pretty successful since Mike actually got fat. Perhaps having a head slows us down from eating too much since we typically use our eyes and nose to tell our brains when we are starting to get full. Poor Mike had none of the above and his handlers pretty much saw him as the “Golden Goose” , so they often kept him “topped off”, so to speak.

Let me get to the point. Maybe you already figured out the rest of the story for yourself. For over a year they shlepped that plucky headless chicken around to sideshows, carnivals and store openings. People around Mike ( maybe somewhat like the folks around Michael Jackson) became too complacent, forgetful and lazy. One night in their motel room Mike the Miracle Chicken started to “gag”, either because he had gained too much weight or because it’s harder to breath without a head, but his handlers had forgotten the eyedropper and their other feeding equipment at the sideshow. Maybe they were too busy counting their Mike the Golden Goose chicken profits. Poor Mike choked to death which I’m almost 100% sure was NOT the origin of the phrase “to choke ones chicken”. If you dont believe this story then watch the video below or look up “Mike the Miracle Chicken” on Wikipedia.

There is much to be learned from this absolutely true story and real life parable about a unique “gift horse” (or gift chicken). We can admire Mike’s unusual lust for life and sheer tenacity. Personally, I wonder if he ever achieved the Zen Buddhist objective of “grasping emptiness with an empty mind”. No doubt he got close and losing his head may well have helped.

Sometimes I dont feel like writing. Often I become aware of a conflict between the part of me that talks way too much and another part that is highly self-conscious. I’m not self-conscious in a “shy” way but rather in a way that recognizes my egotistical need to gab, show-off, pontificate, and be noticed. I could try to believe I am merely attempting to “chronicle my thought process” and “share my personal insights”, but even I dont buy that load of horse crap. It’s narcissism  plain and simple, with a dash of theatrical genes.

The irony is that blogging without a fan base or dedication to social media success (through marketing knowledge, self-promotion, etc.) pretty much insures that ones writing will be alot like toilet paper, used today and gone tomorrow. There is something existentially funny but bittersweet about that. Sort of like that old Voyager satellite we launched into the Cosmos many moons ago that just keeps going and going looking for intelligent life, but not knowing if anybody or anything (like a three headed, eight limbed alien) would even be interested once it was “found”.  It reminds me of when I was addicted to going to thrift shops and garage sales (ok, I still am a little tiny bit). Everybody including myself is busy sifting through the piles and piles of personal debris and half-broken utensils. Like curious apes or incredulous aliens we turn household objects upside down and all around wondering what it was, who’s it was, and whether it had any value….to someone. It probably did at one time. Todays generic flotsam was yesterdays personal treasures. Most of the time we still see it as useless junk and toss it back in the cardboard boxes underneath the various non-matching tables at the estate sale. I almost feel bad for that stuff as it didnt even make the “cut” to be displayed on fold-out card tables and way out of date formica kitchen counters. It makes me ponder peoples lives, the span of time, and all sorts of nostalgic things, including how short and precious life is. Today we are here. Tomorrow is coming, if we are lucky. I suppose we should try and remember that and not worry so much about the little things or material objects. Still, I dont regret the mint condition Baconator I found for a dollar. That was a good deal.

Editorial Correction:  Thanks to an alert reader, I was reminded that a “Baconator” is NOT a Ronco product but an especially high fat, artery clogging kind of hamburger at Wendy’s. The correct term for the useless product I bought is a “Bacon Wave”. I hope Wendy’s Corporate office and Lead Counsel will forgive the error and now remove the lawsuit and lien off my home, cars and nearly non-existent bank accounts….

I have a friend who’s birthday is today, July 31st. I also know someone, a Facebook friend  who is celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary today. Both of them deserve special recognition. However, I never considered honoring such noteworthy events by placing lit fireworks in my ass (see Australian news story below). I dont know why, it just seems to be sort of an unnecessarily dramatic as well as over theatrical gesture. Normally cards, a nice note or a personal message with a few kind words would seem to suffice.  Also, I dont like the sound or ramifications of certain phrases from the article like his “private bits”.  It seems so Humpty Dumpty-esque, but alot more painful. The Aussies need to take it down a notch and be satisfied with just saying to each other, “Good on ya mate!” and then  carry on swimming among Great White Sharks and man eating crocodiles as usual.  Dayenu!

Man Shoots Fireworks Out Of His Buttocks, Goes To Australia Hospital, July 31,2012

File Photo
In what appears to be a birthday party trick gone awry, an Australian man suffered severe burns after he put fireworks between his buttocks and set them off.

The New Zealand Herald reports that paramedics near Darwin, Australia were called to the scene on Saturday night, but the unidentified man had already taken himself to the hospital to be treated for injuries to his posterior and genital area.

“What must of (sic) seemed to be a great idea at the time has backfired, resulting in the male receiving quite severe and very painful burns to his cheeks, back and private bits,” Senior Sergeant Garry Smith said. Police believe alcohol could have been a factor in the firecracker-fueled accident.

The 23-year-old man was later taken to a specialist burns unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Smith added that there’s a lesson to be gleaned from the man’s injuries.

“Apparently [the firecrackers] are not designed for that particular placement,” Smith said, according to The Daily Mail.

The man could also face fines because fireworks are illegal in the area, except on July 1, which is Territory Day.

The story comes just a few weeks after a Michigan man blew off part of his genitals with fireworks.

The official opening of the Olympic Games in London was impressive. Honestly I thought they got off to a slow start and by the time they worked their way up to Britain’s proud heritage as an employer of soot covered children and Mary Poppins-style chimney sweeps I was ready for a small but well placed Atlanta style terrorist bombing or  American Revolution.  Dont they realize we have zero attention span over here across the pond? Who really needed (or was interested in) the whole “we used to be Hobbits” Celtic choreography followed by the annoying actor doing his Shakesperian, “we are literate and you are not” Bilbo Baggins with sideburns routine? Luckily the show segued eventually into the great music that Great Britain is known for. The breadth and scope of British talent in defining so many different genres of music and showmanship are remarkable, especially given their uniformly bad teeth and lack of oral hygiene.

Be honest with me, when you think of the Royal family and people like Prince Charles, do you first think of polo ponies or an entire race of human beings who LOOK like horses and dress like Austin Powers?  Speaking of sex symbols, I was disappointed that one of my old favorites, 72 year old Welsh singer Tom Jones was unable to perform in London due to an apparent overdose of botox injections and face-lifts. Before he could launch into his medley of hit songs including “What’s New Pussycat” (see below) and “It’s Not Unusual”, his face retracted into a fixed grimace that barely allowed him to breath let alone gyrate his pelvis. Middle aged fans who remember the sexy singer from their childhood were horrified to see him carried off in a semi- rigor mortis position on a 1940’s era hospital gurney by faux nurses and male dancers dressed like Dickens characters who periodically stopped administering CPR to do the Funky Chicken and the Twist. That part was disturbing to me on many levels, not the least of which was my fear they would then bring out the embalmed bodies of John Lennon and Winston Churchill and make them do somersaults over a holographic image of Princess Diana.

Finally things calmed down and they started the flag bearing procession of participating countries and their athletes which lasted, as I calculated it, several days. Anyway, the next thing you know I fell asleep and missed the whole part involving Muhammed Ali  punching out the Queen and the lighting of the Olympic torch by a bare-chested David Beckham using his wife Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham) as kindling and Mr. Bean as starter fluid. Maybe it was all just a weird Freudian dream I had when I was asleep. I just wanted to see some swimming,  ping-pong and really tall chicks who can spike volleyballs. At least there were no obnoxious Kardashians in sight and Justin Bieber didn’t descend from the clouds holding an umbrella or  strapped to a hang glider. I’m grateful for that. That will have to wait for the next time the Summer Games return to American soil. I’m thinking Boca Raton 2020!! Look for a new grueling Olympic event by then, Skeet Shooting while insulting people in front of you in line at Publix Pharmacy while talking in a thick New York accent. Very competitive.

Tom Jones:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBdSqk78nHw

Chim-Chiminy:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGCmVDl46rY

For those few people who continue to wonder, obsess and theorize how James Holmes “became” the murderous Joker, and how the University system failed to notice a violent human storm brewing in their midst, I offer this last bit of speculation, even tho the supposed “facts” keep changing, ie. now they say the package he sent to his psychiatrist (with his diary and plans to kill) were received on Monday and did not sit unopened in a University mailroom, etc……..

I believe (my educated guess) that one of four practicing psychiatrists on the faculty of University of Colorado, Denver’s Medical Psychiatry program saw and/or evaluated James Holmes and was the recipient of the package containing his detailed plan to shoot people. Dr. Feinstein is the most senior psychiatrist in the group but most to all of them have expertise in both teaching and treating patients with psychotic mania, personality disorders and forms of bipolar illness. I believe that people in his Neuroscience program saw that he was under-performing academically and showing signs of difficulty concentrating, sleeping, etc. and that he “knew” after being referred to a clinical psychiatrist that his “days were numbered” in the Ph.D. program.  Failing the first year Prelim Oral exam was the last straw, and unlike his poorly organized oral presentation at age 18, he probably got direct and quite critical feedback from faculty as to his academic deficiencies. His mailing of the written plans and illustrations of his violent crime to the psychiatrist was a way of saying, “See you people dont know everything. By the time you get this it will be too late. Fuck you and your  5-7 year doctoral program”…..and yes, I think he has a psychotic mania and a schizoid/schizotypal personality disorder. He’s not the Joker. He’s a killer and a “sick in the head” criminal. He needs help and treatment, but his victims need help even more. James Holmes frustration and self-hatred (for failing academically) fueled a psychotic break that may have lasted for months and finally spilled out in an act of pure hatred and revenge upon a movie theater full of innocent people.