Twitter has been down most of the day. I’ve gotten used to “listening” to it while I work or study and posting the occasional sentence about the day’s assignment, and now it’s all quiet. I feel as lost as I did during the week my web host went down and took my blog with it, and I’ve only been twittering less than a month.

Not that anyone talks to me on it, but they talk to each other. Now I’m in this office all by myself. That’s the hard part of working from home. I didn’t realize it until I lost a little of my isolation.

I’m lonely.

I need to do something about that.

It’s tough being young and repressed. A NYT article talks about the lengths young men in sex-segragated Saudi Arabia will go to meet young women. One of the most popular ways is “numbering,” trying to exchange phone numbers with women they pass in cars.

A phone number written out on a piece of cardboard is “the classic approach,” Fahad said, but most of the time he and his friends use Bluetooth to try to send their phone numbers directly to the cell phones of girls in the vicinity. Usually this means chasing cars containing women, but sometimes Fahad and his friends drive past the entrances of shopping malls where women wait for their drivers. It’s not easy to tell which of the black-shrouded shapes might be young women, Fahad admitted, but there are a few tricks.

“You look at the style of the abaya, the way she holds her bag,” Fahad explained. “See that one there, how thin she is, and how carefully she’s covered up her face?”

He pointed out a slight figure with a pastel handbag. Sure enough, a pair of girlish-looking sneakers were just visible beneath the hem of her abaya.

“I’d say that maybe 3 out of 10 nights of numbering,we have some success,” Fahad explained.

“You mean that 3 out of 10 nights you get a girl to talk to you?” I asked.

“No, no,” Fahad laughed. “Maybe 3 out of 10 nights we get one phone number. Getting a girl to actually talk to you on the phone is much rarer. But it happens, so we’re always hoping.”

This reminds me of the male Saudi college students I know in Spokane. Forbidden to drink alcohol, or even be in a place where it’s been served, they hang out at Shari’s, an all-night restaurant chain, drinking coffee for hours, hoping a woman will stop and talk to them. Lack of success doesn’t seem to deter them. They’ve been doing it a couple of years now, with just enough “meets” to keep them coming back for more.

Their staring and attention-getting behavior can feel threatening. Any female, particularly with long hair, even a middle-aged woman like me, merits ogling. In Shari’s help is a foot away. But on the streets of Riyadh, that attention can take a more frightening turn.

I looked around. We were surrounded by several other cars, all containing young men and all trying to get the attention of the figures in the GMC, while simultaneously trying to edge each other off the road at high speed.

“Isn’t this getting a bit dangerous?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Fahad. “Sometimes the girls get really scared, there are so many cars chasing them. Sometimes they’re in their car, crying and screaming for us to go away. It’s fun to make girls angry.”

“It’s fun.”

Doesn’t sound quite so innocent and cute now, doesn’t it? It proves that even cloaked in an abaya, forbidden to drive for “their own protection,” woman still get punished for leaving their homes, all for the amusement of men.

Boys will be boys.

Yeah.

After 4 months in Denmark, Meredith comes home tomorrow. In 2 weeks, Julie will be arriving to spend the week of Tony’s graduation. For a few short days my nest will be complete again, before they all scatter to Arizona, Tacoma, and Idaho, to their own lives.

I’m going try to treasure every moment and not anticipate the good-byes.

I’ve been twittering about it, but it just occurred to me that I haven’t done a school update here. I’m 2 weeks into an 8 week program in statistics and probability, and after 2 homework assignments and 2 tests, I have an A. Yup, I’m pretty impressed with myself. It’s taking me twice as long as the younger folks in the class, but I’m persevering until I’ve mastered each concept. I have a notebook full of equations and practice exercises - I do every example and every self-test question in every section. Perhaps when I get further along I won’t need to do that, but for now that’s what it takes. My motivation? If I can get As in 2 of my 4 classes, added to my previous GPA, I’ll graduate magna cum laude. The requirement at BVU is a little looser than some other places - just a 3.70 GPA, class rank not counted - so it’s not as impressive as it would be from a major university. But it would be thrilling to me.

But that’s months in the future. Right now I’m focusing on staying caught up day to day, managing my meds, and finding time to write a blog post once in awhile. I got the go-ahead from a dear friend on the manuscript I want to workshop this summer, so that pressure is off. After the crises of this past week, work is under control, too, so I can just enjoy being a student for a little bit.

All I need is a kegger out at the lake to make the experience complete. You bring the tapper, I’ll bring the PBR.

From CNN Political Ticker:

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Given the not necessarily unjustified fears in the African-American community that someone will assassination Obama for daring to run in a “white man’s game,” this doesn’t even approach humor. Is it just bad taste, or a veiled threat? I don’t know. But if Joe on the street said the same thing, the Secret Service would be knocking on his door.

McCain needs to call him on this. Now. And beg like hell for forgiveness. Because this is so far over the line you can’t see the line from there.

See it for yourself.

If so, I’m making one right now. It’s not paranoia if they really are beaming voices into your head.

From Physorg:

A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people’s heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.

A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled “Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons,” under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written.

The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of “microwave hearing” - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when your goal is to find better means of torture.

Think that because you’re not a terrorist or enemy combatant it’s all academic and it will never happen to you?

The microwave heating technique was tested on a Rhesus monkey, where a 225 MHz beam caused an increase in the animal´s body temperature. Depending on the dosage level, the temperature increase occurred within a time of 15 to 30 minutes. After the beam was removed, the animal´s body temperature decreased back to normal. The report suggests the technique could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations.

All you radical anti-war protesters better watch out. Take a step out of the “free speech zone” and have your brain heated with a microwave.

But the one that’s truly terrifying here is the little snippet “in negotiations.” Negotiation between countries? Between corporations? Just how is it negotiating when one party has the power to torture, or at a minimum to induce a high fever and disrupt the thought processes of, the other?

They say there is no proof that anything more was done to develop these weapons after the paper was written 10 years ago. But at that time experiments were carried out on guinea pigs, cats and monkeys. Sounds like serious intent to me. Are there other, related, documents that have not been recovered by a FOIA query? Is the program still going on under a different name?

The government of a country like Myanmar would give a lot to get their hands on a weapon like this.

So the question is: just how far do you trust your government? Your military? Intimidation is the first weapon of a tyrant. This could do a lot of intimidating.

Denmark is generally more progressive than the US, particularly on health issues. But a current program makes that startling clear. They are selling gift certificates for HPV vaccinations, and grandparents are buying them as gifts for their grandchildren.

While the Religious Wrong carries on its campaign to make sure that women who have sex face the consequences, Denmark inoculated 21,000 girls the first month the vaccine was available. They attacked the problem aggressively, even though their cervical cancer rate is low at 400 diagnoses a year, of whom 175 die annually. They rightly see it as a health issue, not a moral issue.

I think such a gifting program would do well here. Grandparents tend to be less judgmental and more practical about almost all aspects of childrearing. Perhaps that’s where the pressure to protect the health of our children needs to come from.

Via The Copenhagen Post

My visit with the doctor yesterday went ok. Hard as it was, I was honest and leveled with her about the symptoms I’m still having, and even showed her my arms. That was really tough - I have a lot of shame issues surrounding the scratching, and while my old doctor knew, this is the first time I’ve told this doc about it. Even as I struggle with it, I’ve always bought into the idea that self-harm is just a selfish bid for attention, a childish acting out, and I’m ashamed of it, ashamed of myself for doing it, feeling like I should be able to just decide to not do it anymore and have it go away. If only it were that easy.

I just wish the dr hadn’t looked so shocked and disturbed. I wanted to hide, not talk about it after that.

So the new plan of attack - increase the Prozac to 40 mg and hope that takes away the general nervousness that makes me scratch. If it hasn’t gone away by next Monday I’m to increase the dosage of my Geodon, the drug I worked so hard to cut back on, up to my previous level. If all that fails, we try a different drug. I go in to see her again in 3 weeks.

I get the feeling she’s running out of ideas of what to do with me. I feel a lot of pressure to say I’m doing better when I’m really not because of that. I have a real terror of being hospitalized against my will, and not responding to treatment scares me for that reason, enough to make me lie about it. So I walk a tightrope of what I can say.

It’s ironic that I spill it all here, huh.

I honestly don’t know what I’d do without this outlet. With a thin veil of anonymity I can talk about the things that are forbidden. In a way, I think that helps me cope.

Thank you all for listening, and caring.

I wanted the Prozac to work. I really really really wanted it to take care of my symptoms and fade into the background so I didn’t have to think about meds anymore. But that’s not happening.

3 weeks on it and I’m scratching again. It’s 10:30 am and I’ve brushed my teeth 5 times already, and I’ve only been up since 7. My brain is spinning and I’m having trouble focusing on my school work, so I obsess over it and spend twice as long doing every single example instead of the handful assigned. Worst of all I’m having fibro symptoms again, like I did on Serzone. My muscles ache and feel heavy, and I’ve got little electrical sparks running under my skin for hours at a time. The only upsides are that I’m sleeping 4 or 5 hours a night, no small accomplishment, and after the first homework and test, I have an A in stats. It’s nice to know that obsessions are good for something.

I see the dr. tomorrow, so I’ve got a big decision to make. Do I tell her about the symptoms that have come back and take the chance she’ll put me on something else, something that will make me gain weight? Or do I just relate the positive stuff and hope that the next dosage increase fixes things?

What I really want is my Zoloft back. Zoloft and diet pills. Ain’t going to happen, obviously.

So is this as good as it gets? If so, I’ll live with it. But I keep hoping for more.

There are no magic bullets, no matter how much I want one.

I made my choice and voted at caucus, but I’ve tried to stay out of the advocacy business since I’ve got friends on both sides of the Democratic Party contest. So make of this what you will.

From USA Today:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Freudian slip? I wonder.