Depression

I found Steve Harvey, one of the Kings of Comedy, unleashing his inner sexy beast over at Oh No They Didn't; which was in turn sourced from Bossip.

Oh no they didn't indeed.

There are no words to describe this photograph, and this is not even the best of them. Check out tiny after the jump :

Photo by Daniella Zalcman

If you don't know what the Kübler-Ross is all about, I am talking about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who in her book, "Death and Dying", outlined the five stages people go through in order to deal with grief and tragic loss.

1. Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening."
2. Anger: "Why me? It's not fair."
3. Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my children graduate."
4. Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"
5. Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."

The grief model is not a "5 step" program but milestones in a continuum of emotional stages. So if you have a group of people grieving the same loss, they all are not necessarily going to hit those milestones at the same time. Which is why I've been asking Clinton activist supporters the hard question : What if Barack wins?

I just found out Owen Wilson is in the hospital after attempting suicide this past weekend. It's not only weird since he's the last person I would expect to do something like this, but because I spent the weekend thinking of suicide.

The pain that has encumbered my body in the past 3 weeks has left me with a new insight as to why people kill themselves "to stop the pain". Such a cliché, no? "Stop the pain". Yet, this past week the pain has been so brutal that I found myself breaking down and sobbing for hours the other day.

It's hard enough to deal with the fact that once I past 40, I am official "old". It is harder to contend with the possibility of spending my old age inside an achy, ill and broken down old body.

So I thought a lot about Kurt Cobain. Not that I would ever pull a Kurt Cobain. Yet I hear that Kurt suffered from Chron's disease. That disease is supposed to be so horrible and debilitating that it was not a shock to a lot people to know Kurt had pulled the trigger. And all weekend, I spent thinking that if Kurt's pain was worst than what I am experiencing now, then I can completely understand why he did it.

Mi silla en El Alambique, Isla Verde (Puerto Rico)

after i come back home from going home, i get this melancholy limbo of a feeling : that i have left a home behind in search of a home that is not there and yet is familiar and welcoming and soothing and incomplete for the lost years and the lost house because i have no real place to be home but the few couches and extra beds to crash on my families places and even my mother's house is this foreign, mold controlled zone in which my lungs collapse, my heart stops with the toxic molds that makes me feel unwelcomed and pushes me into the asceptic living of hotels with their climate controlled hells drowing the sound of coquis and the rustling of platain and palm trees in the middle of the night and making my body remember how to go to sleep.

after i come back home from going home, the place i come back to is so familiar and yet so removed missing the little bit of heart and soul and pain and laughter i left back in spanish with its ay benditos and ave marias and its tu sabes and its bochincheo with arroz con gandules and alcapurrias and habichuelas and sancocho de medio día and el cafecito para empatar.

Are you gung-ho Marine Corps dog-face for Memorial Day, or just hangdog, as in depressed and demoralized? Favorite Daughter has been thinking about this in her drought-parched Hammock of Death:

"Of (Puppy) Dogs and Marines" by Favorite Daughter

There's a little girl who lives next door to me, about 5, and fully capable of walking and talking and waving to me on occasion, which is always mind-blowing because I remember her family moving in prior to her existence.

The family is, I guess, a good one, at least in the traditional American sense. They have a yard with nice grass and a back deck, an easy southern drawl on the rare occasions I hear them speak. They play country music on the radio on the weekend, host some sort of church get-together on Wednesday nights. They possess a comfortable façade of Americana, which I'm sure I could peel back quite easily, revealing a healthy amount of sordidness, but I won't.

They also have the meanest dog I've ever met.

He's a Boston Terrier, a breed second only to the pug in its tenacious ugliness. He despises me even more than he despises the rest of the world; whenever we're outside together, he runs to the edge of his yard and threatens me in every way he can. He once chased a garbage man up a brick mailbox.

I first posted this at Hollywoodistas.com, but it's such a culturekitchen topic to discuss that I just had to cross-post it.

I hate it when I get beaten to a story. For days now I have been researching the possible cause of Britney's meltdown ... and effing TMZ.com beat me to it by a day. URGH!

TMZ has learned Britney Spears' troubles may have little to do with substance abuse. Sources say doctors at her rehab facility think the underlying reason for her trouble may be post-partum depression.

Sources tell TMZ that Britney's doctors have two operating theories -- either that she suffers from post-partum depression or bipolar disorder. The doctors strongly believe post-partum is the problem.

I am not a doctor, so I cannot give a technical assesment of the pop tarts' situation, but as one of the many women who've been felled at one point or another by post-partum depression, I can tell you that what Britney's going through is way more extreme than your run-of-the-mill PPD.

Hers may be a case of post-partum psychosis.

There is actually quite a lot written about post-partum depression, easily available with the click of a google search. What seems still to be a subject of taboo is the idea of post-partum pyschosis, thanks in part to the Andrea Yates multiple infanticide case.

told several of you how excited I was about my new apartment.

Last night I finished moving in at 7. I moved everything all by myself and it was hard work but well worth the effort. I figured this place would be my last share until I finished my book, which is due at the publisher's on June 15th. Hopefully by then I will be able to rent my own place. I have to do things this way because of a combination of reasons; poor financial decisions in my twenties and a lack of money as a result being major among them.

This morning, the woman who lives here hands me her cell phone and tells me Tony is on the phone. She doesn't speak English so I thought perhaps he was just going to relay a message for her. Now Tony is the agent who my roommate service went through to obtain this place. Margaret at the roommate service told me he is a total drunk but only deals in the best places, so she uses him frequently. and after the rat infested dump I just fled, that sounded fine by me.

I said, "Hello?"

He said, "Tara, her family is coming. You have to leave."

I said, "You mean for the night?" Tis the season and all.

He said, "No. Forever."

I guess between eight o'clock last night and soometime today, her fucking Florida family fucks decided to move up here and now I have to leave. Tony said not to worry. She is giving me my money back and I should just come down to his office and he can find me a room and we can have sex.