Unhinged Duckling

Well it's official. I've gone a little nuts. As in "on meds" nuts.

Professionals don't call it "nuts" of course. I'm experiencing an anxiety disorder.

I guess it was earlier this year when I first started to notice that my brain was going a bit wiggy. Normal, innocuous things would give me a momentary panic. For example, my "you have a new email" message would pop up while I was working, and I'd get a surge of adrenaline as if someone had jumped out at me with a knife. But, I wouldn't actually feel emotionally frightened. I would wonder, "WTF, body? Calm down. It's just an email." Over time, these strange startles would happen more often, and it would take longer and longer for me to calm back down.

In the last couple of months I started waking up early in the morning, an hour or two before my alarm would go off. While I was lying there, trying to go back to sleep, random thoughts would occur to me, such as, "I should probably water the plants today." And that would be all it would take to panic me. I would get a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, and my heart would start to beat faster, as if I just realized that my neglect of watering the plants would have terrible consequences. Every little thought that popped in my head would cause this reaction until it felt like being shocked over and over by electricity. My arms and legs would be tingling with adrenaline by the point it was time to get out of bed.

In more recent weeks, I have been walking around with an almost constant sense of worry and dread. The simplest tasks at work seemed completely daunting, so I started avoiding them. I was taking random sick days and spending too much time surfing the internet instead of facing what needed to be done. Of course, that just made me fall farther behind and heightened my stress. All I wanted to do was hide. I was starting to lose my ability to function.

My regular yearly check up was last week, and I discovered I have one of the best doctors in the world. I'm swathed in a paper gown, and she comes in and asks how I've been doing. I told her, "...well, I've been better." I was so reluctant to bring up this big issue about how I'm crazy and all when I was just supposed to be having a check up, but she sat right down in a chair across from me and said, "Let's talk." Relief just washed over me as I finally said out loud what a hard time I'd been having, and she told me how common this issue is and that she could definitely help me feel better.

So, hopefully some drugs and a shrink will do the trick and I can go back to feeling like a normal person again instead of a paranoid tweeked-out spaz.

Quick Question

I know that many of you are aware of the ongoing issue with poor bathroom habits in my office building. Here's my quandry: When I am in the restroom and some poor, unsuspecting fellow office-dweller enters a stall I have already rejected due to obvious pee-spatters, should I warn them? "Watch out, the seat is wet," or some similar advice? Or is that too creepy?

My Name is Unruly Duckling...

...and I'm a televisionaholic.

There was a time when I thought it couldn't happen to me. I remember when I was too busy to schedule my life around TV shows and using the VCR to tape them was too complicated to be worth it. Commercials filled me with so much existential dread that I could feel myself losing the will to live every time I watched Friends.

My slow slide towards rock bottom started innocently enough. The Husband, back when he was The Boyfriend, purchased for me in honor of my birthday or Christmas or some such holiday (at my request, I admit) the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was wonderful - an excellent show I could watch whenever I felt like it with no commercials. However, boxed sets of DVDs are freaking expensive, so my urges were kept in check.

So it would have remained if not for the wicked offspring of the intertubular cyberweb and the U.S. Post Office - NETFLIX! Suddenly, without ever leaving the house and at a reasonable price, I could procure as many television shows as I could stuff in my eyeballs. I gorged myself on old favorites (Star Trek: TNG! Kids in the Hall! Absolutely Fabulous!) and caught up on all those awesome shows I never had time to watch when they were on the air (NYPD Blue! The West Wing! Homicide: LOTS!) Kooky stuff (Strangers with Candy!), dorky stuff (The History of Britain!), bizarre stuff (Twin Peaks!) It was all there at the click of a mouse.

I had no idea it could get worse, but someone just had to go and invent the DVR. Now, with our homemade "TiFaux" we could record 24 hours of shows every day if we wanted to. I am never without pretty moving pictures to point my eyes at when I should be doing something else. Right now we have weeks worth of Jeopardy, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld saved up. I've been avidly following The This Old House Hour. Sometimes we even watch (I can't believe I'm admitting this) American Idol.

I am officially totally out of control. The Husband and I are moving in 2 weeks, and I have only managed to pack 3 boxes because my grueling schedule of TV-watching leaves me with very little free time. I mean, Lost and Heroes and Veronica Mars and 30 Rock aren't going to watch themselves, now are they?

Maybe there's a support group or something that I could join.

Boring Story Short

The Husband and I bought a house today. We signed our names 50 bizillion times, handed over a big ol' check, and that was it. The previous* homeowners are renting the house back for a few weeks until their new place is ready, so it looks like May 19th will be moving day. You should stop by and help unpack a few boxes, and then we can all sit around in our hot tub and discuss how much better the house looked before we put our crap in it. It'll be great!

*I first typed "current." Then I realized: we're the current homeowners. This is going to take some getting used to.

Knocking on Wood

In about two hours The Husband and I will be homeowners. Wish us luck!

(Squeee!)

Live at the Awesome Dome: The Anxious Pin Cushion!

I hope I'm not compromising my pseudonymity, but this quiz cracked me up. I love "Cat Denton." Now I want to write a whole series of detective novels starring Cat Denton - a no-nonsense gumshoe who just happens to be a blonde bombshell with deadly aim. Also, is "Fruit Hoegaarden" not the worst barfly name ever?

The Unruly Duckling's Aliases

Your movie star name: Chips John Your fashion designer name is Jennifer Paris Your socialite name is Jeefer Austin Your fly girl / guy name is J Joh Your detective name is Cat Denton Your barfly name is Fruit Hoegaarden Your soap opera name is Renee Fourth Your rock star name is Gummy Bears Cheetah Your Star Wars name is Jendiz Johstu Your punk rock band name is The Anxious Pin Cushion

The Amazing Meganame Generator

A Very Masculine Blog Post

I've been having some fun this morning with this little internet doodad - The Gender Genie.

You paste in a sample of your writing, and it predicts whether you are male or female. When I used blog entries it almost always correctly identified me as female. However, when I used reports or letters I wrote for work, it assumed I was male. That's particularly interesting to me because the organization I work for is 100% staffed by females, and we write for a female audience. However, the more formal style still read as "male."

The algorithm the website uses to make its predictions is based on a scientific study, which you can download from the web page. In calculating the results, use of the word "be", for example, is considered female. Whereas, using the word "is" is male. "Where" is female, but "what" is male. The keywords seemed very arbitrary.

The Gender Genie gives me a segue to make a point I've been intending to bring up. Recently, I had a brief and frustrating debate with a friend of mine about whether or not some particular thing he said was respectful towards women or not. I realized that we were making different assumptions about a key point of our disagreement. He takes for granted that men and women have innate differences, and I do not.

Studies like the one on which the Gender Genie is based seem to support the innate differences position. However, there are also studies that show that from the time we are newborn infants the way that people interact with us and respond to us is based on their perceptions of our gender. Those early interactions with other human beings are what determine how a disorganized infant brain develops. Societal notions of gender begin to program us down to the level of our neurons from the day we are born. Without the existence of gender constructs, who knows how men and women would be the same or different. There are no control groups.

Assertions that men are a certain way and women are a certain way are just observations about how people respond to conditioning and pressure to conform to societal norms. These insights can be helpful only insofar as we use them to explore and explode the roles that we are all placed in - men and women - because of our biological sex, roles which constrain us and do not respect our individuality and our humanity.

P.S. According to The Gender Genie, this post was written by a man.

Pink Martini

The Husband and I went to an incredible concert this weekend by Pink Martini and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Pink Martini is one of my absolute favorite bands, and I can't wait for their new album to come out next month. Here's how they describe themselves.

Somewhere between a 1930s Cuban dance orchestra, a classical chamber music ensemble, a Brasilian marching street band and Japanese film noir is the 12-piece Pink Martini.

They incorporate musical traditions from all over the globe into their compositions both in the languages and instruments they use. I couldn't even name most of the percussion instruments they were using to produce some amazing sounds. You can listen to their two albums, Sympathique and Hang on Little Tomato on their website.

Their concert was a unique event for me. I'm not a very aural personal, and I usually find myself responding most to the lyrics of songs since I'm more verbal. But on Saturday night I suddenly could "see" how all the parts of the songs were fitting together in a mosaic of sound. For a few brief moments I understood how the trumpet and the shekere and the cello and the conga drums all fit together. It was an incredible musical experience.

I'm Busy Sputtering With Rage

So you should go read Bitch, Ph.D.'s excellent non-sputtery post instead.

My Days as an Accomplice

I used to work for the guy featured in the Justice Department press release below. I was actually an officer for one of his subsidiary companies that dealt with a specific sort of investments. While I was involved with the company it wasn't making any new transactions, and I handled very little money, but my name was all over it. There was a point when I was losing sleep over the possibility of being dragged into the scandal despite the fact that I knew absolutely nothing of any interest. However, I hadn't thought about it for ages until an ex-coworker forwarded me a link to Mr. Kornman's guilty plea.

The main company - for which I also worked - went bankrupt a few years ago due to an unrelated lawsuit by a former executive, but Kornman continued doing business under the name of a different company. If a cheated ex-employee hadn't brought the company down, both litigious, disgruntled clients and a pissed-off IRS were poised to do so. In the end, it was the SEC that really did him in.

This was my first job right out of college. I started there as an executive assistant. Although I knew the firm did some sort of financial consulting, they didn't give any details about their activities until after I had signed about 100 pages of employment contracts. I wasn't crazy about the idea of working for a company that helped rich people avoid paying taxes, but I believed that they were just in the business of giving legal advice - the operative word there being "legal". Knowing what I do now, that was rather naive of me. I truly do not believe that I directly performed any illegal or unethical acts, but my karma took a major hit being associated with that place as long as I was.

At least it motivated me to give up my life as a corporate cog, and I'm much happier working at a nonprofit now. I certainly hope the good work I do my best to accomplish will outweigh the time I spent aiding and abetting - even in a small way - an admitted liar and cheat.

	U.S. Department of Justice United States Attorney Northern District of Texas 1100 Commerce St., 3rd Fl. Dallas, Texas 75242-1699
			Telephone (214) 659-8600 Fax (214) 767-0978
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE		DALLAS, TEXAS
CONTACT: 214/659-8600 www.usdoj.gov/usao/txn		APRIL 10, 2007
LAWYER / TAX ADVISOR ADMITS MAKING FALSE STATEMENTS TO THE U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION DALLAS --- Gary M. Kornman, age 62, a licensed attorney, licensed securities professional, and tax advisor, pled guilty yesterday in federal court in Dallas to one count of making false statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), announced U.S. Attorney Richard B. Roper. The maximum statutory penalties the Court can impose are five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and restitution. He is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis on July 11, 2007. According to the indictment, Gary M. Kornman was an officer of The Heritage Organization, L.L.C. and was a licensed attorney who held Series 6 and Series 63 securities licenses. He operated and controlled Heritage Securities Corporation, a securities broker-dealer registered with the SEC. Kornman sold tax shelters and estate planning services to wealthy individuals and was responsible for the management and operations of Heritage. According to documents filed in Court, Kornman participated in a voluntary telephone interview with investigators from the SEC on October 29, 2003 regarding its investigation into suspicious trading activity engaged in by Kornman. During that interview, Kornman told the SEC investigators that he did not know who possessed trading authority over the brokerage account for a hedge fund through which he engaged in trading activity in MiniMed, Inc. stock in February 2001. MiniMed was a company that was, until its acquisition by Medtronic, Inc. in August 2001, a publicly traded company whose shares were listed on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automatic Quotation National Market System (NASDAQ). Kornman’s statement was false. He knew that he personally possessed trading authority over the brokerage account for the fund through which he conducted the trading activity in February 2001 that was under investigation by the SEC. In addition, Kornman admitted that he made the statement intentionally, knowing that it was both false and material to the SEC’s investigation. Kornman also admitted he made the false and material statement for the purpose of misleading the SEC in its investigation into his MiniMed trading activity. U.S. Attorney Roper praised the investigative work of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fort Worth Office, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey J. Ansley and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Toby M. Galloway of the SEC. ###