After reading "An Unquiet Mind" by Dr. Kay Jamison, I became inspired to write about my own experiences with bipolar disorder. I do not write for the purpose of gaining sympathy and like Jamison, I am well aware that being open about my mental illness may attract otherwise unnecessary negative attention and scrutiny as I pursue a professional career. However, I think it is important for all and any voices who have experienced and overcome madness to be heard in the way as to spread knowledge about bipolar disorder (also known as "manic depression") as to reduce stigma about mental illness and raise awareness about symptoms so that those who know or may meet someone with the illness may be equipped to spot someone who needs support and help, not judgment.

It is hard for me to say whether or not I have had any sort of natural issue with severe depression as the only depressions I have experienced were coupled with heavy anti-psychotics such as Risperdal and Seroquel, so the "depressions" I have experienced may have been chemically induced in my post-manic phases. So far, I have cycled through severe manic phases three times since age 21, two were paranoia-induced and the last very likely a side effect from ambien withdrawals, which according to Wikipedia, may be as severe as withdrawals from Benzos. This blog will be about fragments of experiences during my manic phases, my struggle with medicines for the past five years, and most importantly, my repeated and ongoing recovery-- and hopefully the prospect that with proper treatment, I will not have to experience the horrifying state of severe mania ever again.

By now, it is no secret that I am "in some way affiliated with Anonymous".  To be clear, I don't hack, I don't DDoS, I don't become a kiddie and script.  To be fair, I am also "in some way affiliated" with a number of other things; Rustle League (I like vile jokes on the internet that seek out the line between cyberbullying and trolling), The UC San Diego Koala (I like vile jokes in real life that test the lines of Free Speech Law), The California State Legislature (I like politics), the Legal Profession.. kind of (I like going to law school), and gardening. I am in some way affiliated with gardening.  I like planting plants and watering them.

Get over it, though.

This blog is dedicated to an idea that was presented to me in a chat with an Anon.  She proposed to me a scenario in which every digital database were to be wiped out.  She then said, "Now, go write."

So why not? Why not imagine a world where Anonymous finally went full-blown digital takeover and wiped out every digital database globally?

Go ahead. Click "Read More".

How much have you let a social construction- a lie, a manipulation, a made-up categorization, a designed distraction- control your life?  Even after you realized it was all made up?

How far did you let your cognitive dissonance take you?  How long did you go excusing the designer, the puppeteer? Human nature, societal order, ignorant bliss.  A mandatory framework in order for you retain your sanity?

Gender and sexuality for example. How do you see it?

"I think it's a spectrum," Mark told me. A paraphrase of the Kinsey scale. At this point, Mark had already asserted a position of hetero-abject social power in my life with unnecessary lies about his age, last name, and occupation. 13 years, 6 letters, and 25 miles.  To this day, I am still uncertain about the objective of his lies. I'm split between him being 1) a political operative/spy or 2) an overgrown child with a history of handling his personal affairs in a way where he's resorted to lying about his identity as a means of covering up his messes.  Usually when people lie, it's the latter explanation. But the former explanation would be really really cool, am I right?

Tall, and scrawny to the point where his stomach sunk in under his ribcage. He constructed his masculinity upon his academic record, family dynasty & wealth, and social connections.  I gave about zero fucks.  He snubbed that I came from (he thinks) "ghetto" east-end Covina (Hills) and said that us being together was like West Side Story.  Part of his star-crossed thesis was that I was but a mere public University Psychology major and he was a 'West Coast Ivy League' Private School MBA and Undergrad.  [LOL, he lied about undergrad, too. He went to state.]

By the way- lie to me, lead me on, and I will d0x your face off, bro.

"I used to think of it as a spectrum, too. Now, I don't think it's quite right," I said, brainwashed by the UC San Diego Gender Studies program.  I had tried to assert a race/ethnicity-gender-spectrum spectrum theory during an oral presentation in my first sexualities and globalization class and got major passive aggressive feminist hate stares.  Talking about chromosomes, evolution, and sciences seemed to really piss the lot of them off. 

"Do you know what I do for a living?"
You told me corporate advertising. Major media and entertainment conglomerate.  Notably, one that's all about promoting normativity, family & community values, and idealizations of gender.
"I do National Advertising Strategy."
Elaborate.
"Strategy. Something something New York. Something something Proctor and Gamble."
When he flinched after telling him I was very "Google-able", I should have known he was avoiding the truth about who he was and what he did by getting me to tell him about his identity as I knew it.  And he did it for sex and gender. He is an expert at this, after all. How often have we all assimilated our perception and interpretation reality based solely on our experiences, lessons, and the things told to us by others' in appeals to emotion, reason, and obedience (or lackthereof) to authority?

One of the things that surprised me most about Mark was his unwavering outward respect of monogamy.
Keyword: outward.
Let me back up.

One of the things that surprises me most about society in general is the unwavering, uniform respect of monogamy.  The nuclear family.  The polarity of gender.
The pressure on individuals to shape their narratives, honestly or not, around such respect.  The perception that those deviating from those accepted norms are doing so in rebellion. Some statement. Some biopolitcal blahblahblah.

I have gotten to a bitter cynical point in my life where, beyond biological condition, everything is potentially a lie or a charade as much as it is a serious life position.  The lies and charades are in fact, many times, serious life positions.  My long brown hair is a charade demonstrating a socially constructed illusion of feminine beauty, and at the same time, in the moment that I may come across a man that I am attracted to, it is important to me as anything else so serious to maintain this image of a socially constructed gender. Because I have made my decision of attraction based on his conformity to the charade of being male.

How do I make this as generalized as possible?  We all follow, and some of the most innovative invent, a socially constructed behaviour and narrative with sexualized, and therefore gendered, objectives.  Either to perpetuate or destroy certain biologies.  Ranging from strictly selective to unconditional.

All we are is sex and death.
And from point A to point B, we are gender.
An endless symbiosis of lies and truth perpetuating one another...

Ever wonder how a socially stigmatizing label is born? During World War II, the term “homosexual” went from a conservatively-held concept of sin to a label of disease with its “medically supported” purpose of banning homosexuals and suspiciously effeminate men from military service. Within a decade, military doctors and other reputable medical doctors and psychiatrists created the first publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Disorders which included homosexuality as a symptom of the Psychoneurotic Disease diagnosis of “Sexual Deviation”. Prior to this Mid-20th century official pathologizing of an entire group of Gay and Lesbian people, the gay lifestyle in America lacked centralization and political motive for visibility or respect outside of underground bars and clubs found sparingly in urban areas. Now, we fast forward to the 1969 Stonewall riots through all of the LGBT social movements in the decades since; though there is a long way to go in the field of civil rights for the LGBT population, it is ironic, mind-blowing and most of all, extraordinarily inspirational that the LGBT movement has finally achieved such a symbolic and substantial victory in the repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell military policy: the “homosexual” label has finally met—and resoundingly defeated— its maker.

Despite their victory, the LGBT community still faces decades if not generations worth of an uphill battle before it may achieve true equality in any political cause. The nation witnessed this unfortunate reality just recently at the September 22 Republican Presidential debate. When a gay soldier's video-recorded question was selected to play during the debate, members of the audience booed the soldier's proclamation of his sexual orientation. To explain the root of this blatant ignorance and reckless disrespect for humanity, I offer an extreme analogy: imagine what would it have been like if Jews in Germany felt that they could freely declare, “Ich bin Jude!” shortly after the end of the Holocaust. I present this analogy because it's important to recognize that long-term officiated condemnation of a socially-constructed label donned upon a sub-group of the population will be likely to continue to have grievous effects even (and perhaps especially) after breakthroughs in civil rights for those who were formerly, institutionally condemned. It is also important to recognize that these groups and their labels, or at least the stigma forced upon their labels, are usually not willed, asked for, or even merited by the actions of those who are categorized by these labels. Ironically, the condemned tend to find a foothold for their civil rights movements by reclaiming the labels used against them and identifying themselves with those labels with pride and for reasons of unity and political visibility.


The United States has had a unique opportunity for a sort of historical “case study” in institutionalizing the condemnation of the LGBT population followed by the LGBT movement's political fight back with a major national victory in the repeal of anti-homosexual service policies in the military (and many more victories to go). Many civil rights movements and other issues of justice regarding marginalized groups may potentially be able to draw several parallels to the themes and allegory of the LGBT movement. Though there is absolutely nothing to be resented or ashamed of when finding solidarity amongst those who share attributes that lend to a label of institutionally or socially condemnation, the end lesson is that those labels ultimately do not matter. At the dawn of the Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal we as Americans must trust the prevailing ideal that soldiers are not valued by who they love, they are valued by the fact that they love.

I loved a woman, J, as a friend very much after I met her at UC San Diego.  I saw myself in her, the best but more importantly, all the worst parts-- the hopeless romanticism, the confusion between sex and love, the internal fury. All of the things I kept hidden, she expressed readily.  She is beautiful, she is loving, she loves love.

And God Damn, could she have a temper. Could she, out of her own wild drive -- could she manipulate a situation into her favor with the pull of her love or anger or distress.  And yet, it seems, until somewhat recently, as I see her post happy pictures and statuses on her facebook, she was never able to get what she really wanted.

It was August 2008 and I had just experienced the most stressful three months dealing with employers who did not see me as I really was, a girl who loved my job and my community, but as some sort of threat, I think. And if not a threat, they definitely saw me for things that I was not, a smart-alleck, someone trying to shift blame, someone trying to "hide from the job", someone who must not be happy with their work because they "weren't smiling enough."  By the time I left for San Diego, I had heard my name, Lauren, be called too many times to be followed by a negative comment from people who were supposed to represent the city that I loved and worked for. The city that my hero would sacrifice himself for.  I buried my nametag at his grave, ran 100 miles South and told everyone there to call me by my longtime internet Pseudonym, "Ellie", a phonetic version of my first two initials.
J was my first friend at UC San Diego.  To this day, nothing gives me the same kind of joy as hearing her voice in my head say "Ellie".  Maybe happy, maybe whining, maybe asking for advice.  It's exactly how I wanted to hear someone call my name.

What J taught me, in the only way that an expressly emotional genius bioengineering major woman could teach an emotionally introverted pretty-smart-if-I-say-so-myself psychology major woman, was that emotions are tools as much as logic and reason are tools.

I remember our first conversation at Chipotle when she tried to make sure I didn't like the same boy she did in our acting class.
I remember the long nights of willingly staying up with her to let her cry about unrequitted love over Denny's and long drives to scenic spots.
I remember when I chased her down into her bathroom when she was about to lock herself in with a bottle of pills. I remember telling her I would take all of her pills, leave one dose, and come back the next day for the next dose and the next until I felt safe leaving them there. I remember her telling me, and convincing me, not to do so. "I'm not a child!" 
I remember when she ended up sleeping with the guy I liked, because since I wasn't aggressive enough to try to keep him, she scooped him up.  She probably remembers my rage when I found out. I remember her long apology letter in my facebook inbox that I refused to read for three months.
We were yin and yang.
We were alphafemales.

I remember coming into our mutual friends' house, seeing her lying down, distraught. Feminine. Defeated.  
You know, some stupid boy or something.
I got onto the bed with her and wrapped my arm around her.  We found each other and it was that perfect kind of crazy that needed to collide. 
I had climbed to hide in fear up one of the trees of the forest she had been abandoned in.
Our emotions were selfish, organic.  We had our hearts broken the same ways by the same types of men. We had both lived through the same style of uncontrollable obsession.  We both were painfully insecure in someways, and painfully confident in others.  We both didn't understand why people had to be so lazy or stupid or why things just couldn't be fair.

I met J in an extracurricular acting class during summer school my first session after transferring out of community college.  The theme of the course was achieving objectives with emotional expression.  In our first year as friends, we took that theme and learned many of the ways to succeed and fail at achieving personal, wholesome objectives with emotional expression.  

What the rest of this world- the sick parts of it- has taught me is the ways people achieve personal, opposite-of-wholesome objectives with.. let's not even give them the dignity of calling it emotions.  It is malicious head games.  It is social engingeering.  It is an act.  It is infiltration.  It is an invasion of another's trust and spirit and soul.

Girls like J and I-- the crazy, beautiful, pure-love, smart ones--  we aren't like you at all, or the way you abuse the tools of emotion to manipulate for your own evil, self-centered, and material gain to ruin this world and its love and the love we have to give.  
Because we use our emotions to get love.  Just love.

You have done something else.  You have done something sick.  You have made yourself the center of a world that is not yours.  You have selfishly and maliciously and without an ounce of remorse, tried to destroy people, and you continue to do so.

You know who you are.
You will lose.
You will.

One phenomenon that has always been hard for me to completely wrap my head around is false accusations of very serious physical and sexual crimes.  Perhaps, because I am an honest person by default, I tend to typically have issues comprehending the sense in lying, in general.  

The best I have been able to come up with is that the majority of people who attribute negative qualities to me- or other innocents- are themselves in possession of those negative qualities.  For example: my natural tendency to point out wrong and right are misinterpreted as smart alleck; my drive to help others comes across as sucking up, and I don't think I can count the times that my congeniality gets me pigeon-holed into a guilty-by-association narrative.

The subject of my last blog, California State Assemblymember Roger Hernandez, was recently accused of being a violent, raging abusive person with a cocaine habit.  I have previously theorized and still maintain that Hernandez's political opponents use the pathos of racism as a tool by constructing Hernandez within a "Machismo" framework-- betting (and losing the bet) that constituents will blindly believe the allegations in reliance of the common stereotype of a deviant, abject Mexican masculinity. This allegation of abuse by Hernandez came out one week before elections. An emergency protective order was served to him and the local media blew up.  The night after the news broke, Sheila McNichols, the Political Consultant of Hernandez's opponent, put out an urgent press release (which included libel claiming a previous arrest of Hernandez for domestic violence-- a violation of California's Election Code) about Baldwin Park Councilwoman Marlen Garcia calling for Hernandez to resign based on week-before-election, unsubstantiated allegations.   

I gladly called her out.

After Hernandez took a test within two days of the allegations and tested clean for a spectrum of drugs, and after the temporary restraining order expired without a fight, the alleged victim, Carolina Taillon (aka Carolina Juarez), recruited Gloria Allred for a civil suit against Hernandez, changing the substance he used from cocaine to marijuana, and adding a colorful story about how he beat her with a belt over her poor taste in music.

Yes, Gloria Allred. The night before election day.

It's very easy to pull at heart strings with an accusation of abuse.  I write this blog with no disrespect to the actual victims of abuse, and with my promise to dedicate future blogs to the topic.  

But today, especially after what the local Repuglicans tried to pull in the name of maintaining their pay-to-play status quo--- and ESPECIALLY after they failed at doing so, as Roger Hernandez pulled a 20-point victory thanks to the people of the East San Gabriel Valley who see through the lies -- 
I want to focus on the seriousness and the devastation caused by those who make such false accusations. 

One of the hardest things for me to watch is the emotionally- and mentally- damaging "Save Mila" online campaign waged by American University "Professional Lecturer" Lori Handrahan.

Lori Handrahan's retaliation against Igor Malenko, the man who divorced her in 2008, started with her failed attempts to get him involuntarily committed and has continued today with a desperate campaign to use social media to con others to believe that her 6-year-old daughter, Mila, is the victim of sexual and physical abuse by Igor.  The allegations have been thoroughly investigated and repeatedly proven unsubstantiated.

From retaining Gloria Allred on Election Day Eve to accusing the entire state of Maine to covering up a government-sponsored child porn ring, never underestimate the disgusting, desperate measures a woman scorned will go to sell a lie for personal gain...

Stripped to its core, absent financial interests and corruption, I contend that the American system of government, a mix of direct and republican democracy, is fundamentally strong and provides the population with a proper forum to request and achieve institutional change through their participation.

Unfortunately, there are financial interests, there is corruption, there are both organic and systematic political and economic functions in play that keep many stuck in a cycle of oppression, disenfranchisement, and a virtual inability to successfully participate in the political process.

While many in my generation are inclined to gravitate toward an unconditional distrust of the government and therefore, decline to participate through the established avenues and decorum, I respectfully maintain the position that the best way to achieve political and social reform objectives is to, well, give your government officials a chance.

There are political representatives and candidates that actually care about you. They push against the tide of a Corporate-run "democracy", they draft legislation with your interests in mind, they seek their power not for their egos, but for the privilege of executing the duties bestowed by that power for the benefit of the people. I promise. These men and women I describe are not characters out of a science fiction novel, they are real(!!!).

Unfortunately, these politicians become targets of the divisive machine that wants to prioritize monetary interests over public concerns.  If and when you finally find a candidate worthy of your trust, your voice, and your grievance, you may find that something peculiar begins to happen.

I prefer to convey general, ubiquitous themes and hypotheses with anecdotal methods. What follows in this blog entry is a non-exhaustive case study of one anecdotal example of the phenomenon that occurs when a politician actually works for you- and I mean second-person, plural, all-encompassing "you". For years, I've been watching, laughing at, and pulling my hair out over the many failed attempts by media and opponents to take down one such politician, California Assembly Majority Whip, Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina).  The pattern of tactics used to socially engineer the public into removing a true people's politician from their position is a pervasive, old, and tired technique that persists throughout the fabric of political discourse.  The goal is to protect private interests by preventing such politicians from gaining the rapport and influential positions they deserve.

When you finally find a councilman or congressman who represents the best interests of the people, I urge you to watch out for such tactics that subvert the real political issues while falsely demonizing character and personal life.  Question the motives of these attacks, keep focusing on the real issues in your communications with your fellow constituents. 

And if your local paper keeps trying to sell you the same boring story about how awful this politician is based on unsubstantiated "evidence" of his alleged "wrongdoing"- Please- remix that narrative.

Somebody give me a beat.

Micha Cardenas, artist and theorist, gave a guest lecture in my History of Sexuality in America course during my junior year as an Undergrad at UC San Diego. I was instantly smitten by her take on how to go about deconstructing, reconstructing, and challenging the concept of gender.  Between her Becoming Dragon project and her website featuring a portfolio of pangendered porn, my interest piqued. And when my interest piques, it's usually to due my utter confusion and need to understand a concept that is far beyond my years.

Gender theorists often go to war with the socially constructed concept of the female/male binary and its associated biological markers of sex on the body and relationships, normative and abject.  Technology and the Internet have blown open a new age of gender construction, discovery, and philosophy that seems to still be in its fetal stages.  Do a quick google search on "digital gender" and there is scant material on digital gender itself (a lot of "digital gender divide" articles discussing the male:female ratio on the internet, but, admit it, that's boring).  To save you digging through pages of search results, I recommend the mig@net transnational digital networks migration and gender site which contains an ebook that touches on the concept of digital gender, conveying that digital spaces allow for the change and mutation of gender "in ways very different from material space".  Its section on digital gender also cites a study by Daniel Miller and Don Slater that meaningful, trusting online relationships require a semblance to relationships in physical spaces in that they require continuity in their presence over time.  Does this continued presence establishing trust in an online relationship require a confirmation of gender? Need the gender be heteronormative or a gendertype established in abject relation to heteronormativity (agender, pan, trans, etc)? Can it be a new, individually- or collectively- constructed digital gender? 

This entry will discuss a few recent anecdotes from my life where I've been confronted with the issue of the portrayal of gender on the internet and the question of how gender ultimately translates, or if it even needs to be communicated at all. 

Real or imagined- reasonable or grandiose, I think we can all agree that things that Barrett Brown has recently said leading to his recent arrest and indictment were on the solid side of stupid.  People who hate him figured it was about time they nailed him on something, and people who... don't hate him as much... have defended him under the banner of "Freedom of Speech" and pointed to his claims of being harassed and goaded by the FBI and alleged informants, which, according to Brown, have included the Feds threatening to arrest his mother who he said has had nothing to do with his Anonymous hactivism and crowd-source-style-journalism ProjectPM activities.

As I mentioned in my previous post about the Kelly Thomas killing, the functions and execution of government powers and the legal system are by default biased heavily in favor of the powers that be and such powers have great potential to be, and many times have proven to be, corrupt as hell.  That said, before  we all collectively tell Barrett Brown to shut up regardless of whether such a pleading would tip a hat to his right to free speech, I think it is fair to acknowledge that Brown's paranoid ramblings and associated "threats" may have been his only recourse to defend himself from the fears he professed were true: Agent Robert Smith is corrupt; the FBI is corrupt; the Zetas are out to get him; the FBI is in on it with the Zetas; and if armed men charged in on his home, Brown would feel justified in assuming it was a Zeta assassination attempt coordinated in conjunction with the FBI.

...THAT said, and in addition to Brown's own confession of heroin addiction and issues with Suboxone withdrawal at and around the time of the "threats" and other tweets listed in the indictment, I think we can at least give the government credit for allowing a mental competence hearing for Brown before the trial against him proceeds.  This should especially be appreciated by Constitution enthusiasts as the evidence of actus reus of Brown's alleged crimes primarily revolves around a combination of arguably- and absolutely- protected speech. 

As for that "conspiracy" charge? Well, look at the indictment: he was soliciting others to find "Restricted" information on Agent Robert Smith, which has been dubbed a "conspiracy" due to another's attempt to find such "RESTRICTED" information with what is only described as an "Internet search". Because you know, when I want to get down and dirty on a Federal Agent's RESTRICED  information, forget unauthorized access to a security clearance-protected Federal Database, I'm all about the old-fashioned Google stalk.  For this charge, maybe we should give the FBI a mental competency hearing while we're at it....

If you haven't taken a peek at the Federal indictment against Barrett Lancaster Brown, I implore you to do so. Then, I invite you on a First Amendment adventure where I explain to you why we should all be offended and worried by the United States' Prosecutor's attack on our Right to Speech.  The tale I shall tell will not necessarily defend Brown completely or successfully, but it will point out the fallacy of this indictment against him, which is supposed to contain "essential facts of the case", but really just reveals the Government's fear of our right to voice dissent and grievance against them.

Join me...

Social Justice is not a guarantee. It has no institutionalized apparatus.  It is an appeal to pathos. It is a request for review and revision of the status quo- a request framed by an abject discourse.

Absent the pressure of social justice: law and order are subjective.  This subjection is not always abused, but when it is - and it certainly has been - such abuse will most definitely bend in the favor of the institution of government, the privileged.  Such circumstances of abuse allow for cover-ups, corruption, and the social engineering of citizens to remain ignorant to their civil rights and naive to the reality of how far the establishment of government will go to deceive the masses to advance a corrupt agenda.

An apathetic social consensus permits for this, citing accepted, widely-unchallanged demagouge and dominant discourse.


               Expansive exceptions to the search and seizure clauses 
               of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution

                                                                                                                         "Just following orders"
The PATRIOT Act
                  
                                         Unconditional respect and submission to the bureaucratic hierarchy.
                                                                  

                                                NDAA                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                         The Blue Code