In last night’s “Ghost Whisperer”, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character has a paranormal encounter with a stripper, who takes control of her body to give her a message from the other side.

Everybody wants to play a stripper, nobody wants to be a stripper.

Jump to see the clip, in which JLove tries to look confused while pole dancing.

Watch this video, which I think originated with Aziz’s twitter, but is too good not to share.  The three men in this band are so spray tanned, so overly necklaced, and so Wallace and Grommit mouthed that I don’t know what to do with them.

B4-4 with “Get Down”  (I’m not even mentioning the weird framing device of the movie)

Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and she would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas.  Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential.  Today, Gynomite takes on being concerned about a friend’s mental health.

I am worried about a friend of mine.  We both live in a big city, and our families are far away, and she has just been acting very jumpy and strange lately.  I’ve known her for about 8 months and haven’t seen anything like this until recently when she started calling me in the wee hours of the morning asking me questions about philosophy and trying to read me stuff she found on the Internet.  But then she’ll kinda be fine for a day or two afterwards.  Then it’ll happen again, and she’ll get sweaty and kinda frenetic when we’re out at a bar, yelling at strangers about weird things.  I feel like I’m the only person who is concerned, but I don’t even know what I should do?  Do I make her go to therapy?  Call someone?

I get this question in person all the time.  It is very scary to watch a friend act strangely and be genuinely worried about their safety without knowing what to do.  It’s especially scary in big cities, where families, i.e. the people responsible, are often far away.

I don’t know what state you’re in, but generally, you cannot force anyone into counseling or treatment.  At all.  The laws are set up to protect the person experiencing the symptoms.  The only way that you can force treatment on a person is if they have indicated that they are unsafe to themselves or others, and “unsafe” means imminent danger.  Not “if they keep going down this path, they could get hurt”, but “she has a knife and called me to tell me goodbye”.  So there’s no making her go to therapy. This may be frustrating to hear, and it is frustrating to a lot of people who care about someone experiencing symptoms of mental illness, but this is the system we have.

I can’t speculate on what may actually be going on with your friend.  It could be a manic episode, it could be psychosis brought on by substance abuse, it could be absolutely nothing but shifting worldviews, it could be a psychotic break.  My first suggestion would be to talk to your friend when she seems to be okay and ask her how she is feeling these days.  Ask her if she feels at all out of control, or like she’s had any changes, or if anything is different with how she’s feeling, and then listen to what she has to say.  Bullying a person who is having emotional issues about their behavior, or telling them what they should do about it, will only serve to isolate you from your friend more.  Let her know, gently, that you’ve noticed some changes in her behavior and you’re wondering if she could use someone to talk to.  If she is experiencing symptoms of mental illness, it’s likely very confusing and upsetting for her.  Be on her team, and put the symptoms you’ve noticed on the other team, so that she doesn’t think you are criticizing her.  If she’s open to it, ask her if she’s ever seen a therapist before or taken any medications.  Tell her you’d be happy to help her find someone to talk to if she wanted help.  (Resources listed below)

I would also recommend speaking to any of your other mutual friends to see if they have noticed the things you have.  They may have been friends with her longer and have seen these things happen before, or they may not be noticing anything at all.  Don’t make it a gripe session, but just checking in with the other people that serve as de facto family.  I don’t want you to feel like you’re the only person responsible in this situation.  Reach out for help yourself.

If your friend decides she’s okay with you finding a therapist for her, (or even if she doesn’t), give her the names and numbers of several.  You may want to call and make sure they’re taking new clients, but you cannot set up the appointment for her.  You can ask about it on occasion, but hounding her about whether or not she’s going will not help.  You should also know that her behavior won’t immediately normalize again- it may take a bit, even with therapy, before she feels “normal” again.

If things escalate to a point where you are becoming legitimately concerned for her safety, or you feel like you’ve done all you can do to help her and it’s not enough, you should call her parents.  This should only be done if you are really actually concerned, because it’s a bit of a harsh thing to pull on someone.  I have recommended that people get phone numbers out of their friend’s phone if they feel like they wouldn’t be able to get it directly, but again, by taking steps like stealing phone numbers and calling parents, you may be damaging your trust with this friend, so it better be worth it.  Don’t scare the parents, but explain to them the behaviors you’re seeing and let them know that you’re just concerned for their daughter.  They will certainly have more information about her patterns of behavior, and they can make decisions about what to do from there.

Mental illness, depression, suicidality, and serious substance abuse are all incredibly crippling for the person experiencing them, and incredibly frustrating and exhausting for the people around them.  Make sure you are reaching out for help for yourself too, and always remember that people aren’t mentally ill, they have mental illness.

Ok, fun time!

Here are some places you can browse/call for help on finding a therapist or just getting more specific info on how to help people you care about.

NAMI is amazing, and helpful both for people experiencing symptoms as well as the people that care about them. Here’s how you find info for your state.  Psychology Today (yes the magazine) actually has a great resource for finding therapists that are not tied to just one insurance company.  I would also recommend googling “sliding scale therapist” and the city and state you live in to find local therapists who adjust their fees for people that don’t have as much money.

Good luck.

Psych today

NAMI

Kumail and I were in Atlanta, and after a long and fun day, we decided to reward ourselves with Thai food.  We love Thai food.  A local guy with an IPhone looked up the closest Thai place to where we were, and gave us the number and address, with the warning “I think it’s a nicer restaurant”.  “Perfect” we said.  We found out that they were only taking to-go orders for the next ten minutes, and it was questionable if we would reach the restaurant in the next ten minutes.  So even though we had wanted to peruse the menu and find what fun little random Thai dishes they had in Atlanta, we ordered our curries over the phone, menu unseen, and continued driving to the restaurant to pick them up.

When we arrived at the restaurant, a valet approached my window and asked what we were doing.  That should have been a sign.

I told him we were picking up food and he moved to Kumail’s side of the car, where he informed Kumail that the car we were next to was a $130,000 car, and that Kumail should be careful.  This should have been another sign.  Kumail got out very carefully, and the valet begrudgingly agreed to let us stay in the spot we’d found.  We walked into a gorgeous window and gold filled space where three well-dressed Thai women bowed at us and invited us to sit and wait for our food.  They were gracious, but it was clear to me that we were disturbing the dress code, which was formal.  We asked for a menu to see if we wanted to order anything else, and this is when we learned that we’d already ordered $60 of food.  Two curries + two soups = $60.

We both started giggling uncontrollably, clutching the bamboo and brass menu.  I asked if we should just run out, but Kumail was against it, having already given them his phone number when he ordered.  This was not a place that was used to getting take out orders, so our food took a while, and we used the time by pampering ourselves in the enormous bathrooms, admiring pictures of Martin Scorcese eating the same food we would soon be eating, and trying to stay out of the way.  When our food finally came to us, I felt like apologizing, though I wasn’t sure why.

The valet told us on the way out that most people choose to enjoy the food in the ambiance of the restaurant.  I understand that, it was beautiful, but I preferred eating in the ambiance of our hotel room, squealing over its yumminess while watching Aliens on the couch with my man.

If you’ve ever been curious about what a bear would look like without any fur, then journey to this zoo in Leipzig, Germany, where all the female bears have lost their fur.  With fur, they look like this:

Jump to see what they look like now.  It’s not super pretty.

They haven’t figured out why it’s happening yet, but they’re working on it.  Poor girl bears.

Today’s emotional assignment is to take more responsibility for your emotions.

When I worked with teenagers a few years ago, we played this “game” where I would describe a situation, and the kids would have to write down, independently, what their emotion would be based on that situation.

I would say “Your mom isn’t home because she had to work”.  For some of the kids whose moms didn’t work, they felt excited that she was working and also happy about having time alone in the house.  For kids whose parents were always working, they felt ignored and bummed that they were alone again.  Admittedly not a fun game, but it was a good introduction to the idea that our emotions are created by us, and not by situations.  The situations are ambiguous, WE are the ones that give them meaning.

It’s terrifyingly easy to forget this.

So today I would encourage you to remember that you are adults, and that you have the ability to think.  Babies, out of necessity, have to react to their surroundings without processing them.  They wet themselves = they cry.  They don’t have the neural development to be embarrassed about wetting themselves, they just know it feels wet and gross down there.

When things happen to you, like getting cut off by another car, encountering a crazy person on the street, having your heart broken, being rejected for a promotion or job you’re applying to, etc, remember that these are all just ambiguous events.

EVENTS lead to THOUGHTS lead to EMOTIONS lead to ACTIONS

So when an ambiguous event happens in your life, take the time to go through each of these steps.  Think about what the event was like for you, figure out how you feel based on that, and then take action based on those feelings.  They’re your emotions, but they don’t happen in a vacuum.  Everything you’ve ever thought or felt or experienced is leading you to react to things the way that you are, it’s time to take a little more time to appreciate that process rather than just “knee jerking” everything.  This is the first step to understanding and controlling your emotions.

Sudanese rapper Bangs with “Take You To Da Movies”

Via Vivek, via Jarrod Routh (Hooray!)

I want to share with you an actual excerpt from the NY Times article about Jeff Dunham.  That’s this guy:

He is incredibly popular.  He has the most viewed Comedy Central Presents of all time, and his new TV show debuted with 5.3 million viewers, bigger than any other premiere in Comedy Central history.  He’s popular.

Gradually, a lot of Dunham’s material has come to reflect his exhaustion with political correctness — though he needles taboos in the same impish way that his dummies used to cut down untouchables like the lunch lady or Jack Welch when he was a kid. Unlike the acts of some other comedians with a big red-state following, Dunham’s doesn’t feel resentful or vindictive, and he’s not eager to brand himself ideologically. His outlook struck me as almost alarmingly uncomplicated. He defends himself by noting that he tries to insult all races and ethnicities equally, and ultimately seems to treat jokes about all Indians being customer-service operators or all black people drinking malt liquor not all that differently from jokes involving other well-worn comedic tropes — like all wives being annoying nags or Florida being way too humid.

Dunham does concede that he’s extra-sensitive to one of his largest constituencies: the conservative “country crowd.” “That’s why I don’t pick on basic Christian-values stuff,” he told me. “Well, I also don’t like to, because that’s the way I was brought up.” He then stopped himself short and said: “Oh, boy. I’m walking into something here.”

Dunham started to explain — as if realizing it for the first time — that this would appear to make the jokes he does about Islam with Achmed “hypocritical.” But he quickly unburdened himself of the idea. “I try to make the majority of my audience laugh,” he said. “That’s my audience. They’ll laugh at the dead terrorist.”

In fact, the jokes that get some of the wildest, loudest reactions aren’t really even jokes, just statements. Like when one puppet shouts that all Mexicans should learn English, or when Dunham wishes Walter “Happy Holidays” and Walter responds: “I’ve been wanting to say this for a couple of years now: Screw you, it’s ‘Merry Christmas’!” And the crowd doesn’t laugh; it riotously applauds. Dunham describes them as moments of “catharsis,” when the dummy says something “everyone wants to laugh about, or that you snicker at with one or two friends, but that you could never say out loud.”

Listen, it’s almost too easy to pick on Dunham, and in the NYC comedy scene, it’s expected, so I won’t burden your eyes by repeating the same insults everyone else has.  I’ll just say this:  JEFF FUCKING FOXWORTHY MADE HIS WHOLE CAREER OUT OF MAKING FUN OF THE CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY CROWD, AND THEY LOVE HIM.  Leaving yourself out of it when you’re doling out the generic stereotypical humor you do is a sign of how out of touch you are, and how stupid you think the country crowd is.  Rednecks can laugh at themselves, it’s you who can’t.

Instead of reading the article, just go read the NY Times profile on Kumail instead.  It won’t leave you seething with rage, and you’ll see my name too!

Understandably.

"What is this thing?"

This Halloween, wonderfully named band Hoobastank covers Ray Parker Jr’s “Ghostbusters” theme.

Here’s the original video

And jump for their mind numbingly boring and yet still totally hateable cover.  Then find a way to slip the word Hoobastank into conversation today.