Godammit, I’m Mad!

Intermezzo was a movie starring Ingrid Bergman, and of course it’s a musical term. Now it’s also a drug for people who wake up in the middle of the night. I’ve seen ads for Intermezzo at least ten times tonight while watching TV. In the last week, I must have seen the ad 100 times. I almost know the side effects by heart. (In depressed patients, there is a risk of suicide. Not suicidal ideation, but suicide.)

You might also drive, eat or engage in “other activities” while not fully awake, without remembering the event the next day. Other abnormal behaviors include aggression, confusion, hallucinations and agitation. Common side effects are headaches, nausea and fatigue.

Is it worth all this shit for a few hours of drugged sleep? It is right to market Intermezzo as a brand new drug when it’s just Ambien at a lower dose?  Why this deluge of  TV commercials? I can answer the last question:

“Facing lower-than-expected demand for sleep drug Intermezzo, Purdue Pharma and Transcept Pharmaceuticals are broadening the commercial strategy to include DTC and a larger selling force.

Intermezzo is a sublingual version of Sanofi’s blockbuster insomnia pill Ambien (zolpidem). But the new formulation, approved in November 2011 and introduced earlier this year, has had a lethargic launch. Hence, the firms are rolling out a $29-million DTC ad campaign and, for the first time, tapping into Purdue’s analgesics sales force of 525 reps to call on PCPs and retail pharmacies. Another 90 contract reps will detail specialists.

“There are a few ads for Lunesta out there, but the market has been fairly quiet,” said Transcept president/CEO Glenn Oclassen on a conference call this morning. “So we get to take fullest possible advantage of that and believe this level of expenditure will be sufficient to get the impact being sought.” (more here)

Oh no, the ad is playing again RIGHT NOW! Unbelievable.  I won’t be happy about this until the lawsuits start rolling in.

Which one do you want more?

or

I went to see my psychiatrist when he returned from his three week vacation. Before I could make a peremptory statement about my hair, he said brightly: “New Hair!”

He had no idea what I’ve been through, hair-wise. This is the new corrected hair, a desperate follow-up to the horror of the Real Housewives hair. It is so much better, right? But still a shock to my system and a challenge to my identity.

I started to say something about the hair and he continued happily, “It’s a softer look.”

Naturally, I took umbrage and we talked about hair and self-image for the rest of the psychiatric hour.

I don’t want a softer look, first of all, because that implies that my former look was hard, or harsh. I don’t want a softer look because I don’t want to project “softness.” If I have to project anything, I would choose tough. Then he confused me further by calling my former look “forbidding.” I argued that I wasn’t trying to look forbidding but merely “attractive.”

Then we had to define the audience I wanted to appear attractive to. I explained that I wanted to be attractive to the guy in the next lane if I wanted to cut in front of him. If I’m attractive, he will smile and gesture me into his lane. Being attractive is a tool in one’s social arsenal.

We talked about black hair and red lipstick, which I defended as a classic look, citing Snow White, Betty Page, and Veronica in “Archie” comics.  If you have black hair and pale skin, you need to work with what you have. You’re not going to be a California blond, after all. The way I look is pretty consistent with how I looked at eighteen. Clearly, in the eyes of my shrink, I looked like a kooky Goth or maybe a biker/dominatrix.

I had to deconstruct my appearance and think about the message it sends to the world. We are all attempting to project something with our hairstyles and fashion choices. I’d rather not think about it but I discovered that above all I want to look attractive, while still being true to who I think I am. I want to look fuckable and intriguing but I don’t want to look fashionable and I don’t feel comfortable in prints or high heels. I don’t want a Softer Look. I hate change. If I’m not projecting the right Me, I will have to dye my hair black and find a new way to distract myself from the bludgeoning pain of existence. I will also have wasted a fucking ton of money.

Thoughts, confessions, insults?

Let us all follow the Christmas tradition* of reading  The Story of the Lesbian Stick.

~

* Heartfelt atheist blessings to all you people who come here and especially you special ones who have given me so much. xo

Aside from life and death, hair is all that matters. A really bad hair situation will trump  everything else, and I mean everything.

Fucked up hair is excruciating. The pain is relentless. The knowledge that it’s your own fault makes it a source of  bitter self-loathing. “Why did I do this? Why wasn’t I satisfied with the hair I had?” Every encounter with a mirror is a fresh horror.

If both my legs were broken, I would still be wailing about my hair. If I had thirty seconds to live, I would scream, “But my hair looks awful!”

Fiscal cliffs, gun nuts, my dog’s toothache, our fine young men and women in Afghanistan, none of it matters like my bad hair. It was once long and luxurious and black, even though it was frizzy and brittle. Now I look like a Real Housewife from Somewhere.

If character is destiny, I’m a complete cunt. But I can’t go on like this. Tomorrow I’m going to try to change it back, or at least restore its brunetteness.

If you hate me, this should be a great moment for you. Enjoy! If you love me, then pray to the god of your understanding that my hair turns out okay.

Smile Makers are sex toys with a cutesy design and a “playful” concept: they are named after different male stereotypes, kind of like the Village People.

I don’t know much about sex toys and that’s the way I like it.  But I love internet generators. Smile Makers lets you design your fantasy man, and with only a limited set of options I still came up with a very nice facsimile of my personal dreamboat.  His name is Fernando, and he’s all mine. You can make your own here.

I’m disappointed in the choice of masculine archetypes, since I have no interest in tennis coaches or millionaires.  (I did have an adorable French boyfriend, back in the day, but he became hysterical when I got my period.) Where is the Poet, the Biker, the Revolutionary, the Pimp, the Grad Student?

Go make your own loverboy and let me know how it goes.

Watching the news tonight, I am struck by the word “evil” in reference to the shootings in Connecticut.

A disturbed 20 year old young man who lives with his mother, has no friends, hasn’t spoken to his older brother for two years and is remembered only for his nervousness and inability to fit in….that is not evil. I see no possible evil in this tormented soul.

A mother who hoards firearms and leaves them around her house, now that might be evil, since no one could be so astoundingly careless and stupid.

I am dreading the revelations to come.

Twenty years on, I am still rattled by my husband’s fucking ex. Not only has she opened a tiki-themed restaurant too close to my neighborhood,  she has recently written the following:

“There was a time in my youth, those long gone halcyon days, when it seemed I spent a large part of my life in front of a camera. In the pursuit of an acting career it was standard operating procedure to continuously update and change the 8-by-10s that were the calling cards of all of us who tramped the mean streets of Los Angeles in constant and often futile rounds of meetings in the offices of agents, photographers, producers, directors and various unsavory characters.

“Perhaps in retrospect it is the smiling [photos] that fare the best, as I was innately happy, clear of eyes and had good teeth. For my fiftieth birthday and retired at that point, I pulled out all the old headshots and plastered them over a large wall at my parent’s house, creating a sort of gallery. They made a remarkable display and told a story of my own evolution, not to mention hairdos. The one topless shot, though artistically done and revealing but a modest bosom, shocked my brother. Frankly, I was rather proud to shock anyone.”

There was one thing that each photo had in common, one through-line, one essence captured. It was youth, my youth. And youth is hope. There it is, around the curve of my smiling lips, in the gleam of my eye, in the open expression.”

Jesus. Christ.

I brought up the subject of her uniquely annoying existence with my husband, who flipped out. Why can’t I be normal, he wants to know. It’s easy for him to talk about normal: My ex, though a cunt, stays quietly in his corner and doesn’t open restaurants or write about his modest bosom.

Some things are just awful and they stay awful. Some things fall away in the stark awareness of what really matters.  I am waiting for the ex-wife to move from the first category into the second.

If you’re shopping for a poseur, this is the best coffee table book ever (not counting the billion dollar Mohammed Ali enterprise by Taschen, of course.) At $1,450, it is a lavish waste of money, the better to showcase his pretensions to coolness.

How awesome is it to add a studded leather cover to this book about leather motorcycle jackets? The only thing better would be to add the word “Moto,” which has somehow been overlooked. Oh well, you can’t have everything, even for $1,450.

Would you like to hear these two douches talk about their book? The one on the left reminds me of Bruno, and the other one is a classically annoying and self-important Brit with a fetish for punk. Go here.

Isn’t it funny how the harder you try to be cool, the uncooler you are?

Fiscal cliff.

I don’t want to hear these words one more time.  I used to think that “fiscal cliff” sounded like a painful and depraved sex act, but the amusement factor is long gone. Stop saying it! Whoever started it needs to die.

Also:

Push back
Double down
Middle class
Grover Norquist
John McCain
Taylor Swift
Lady Gaga

Which two words would you like to ban? In the spirit of Christmas, please share!