I got this as an email and just assumed the list had been making the rounds. The fact that it was written by patients makes it even better. Too bad someone with anxiety issues had to put a stop to it!
The top ten of festive songs poking fun at psychiatric problems was published in a magazine for patients using mental health facilities.
The list - entitled Christmas Carols for the Mentally Disturbed - describes psychiatric conditions and suggests songs to suit the illness.
For multiple personality disorder there is We Three Kings Disorientated Are; paranoia is coupled with Santa Claus Is Coming To Town To Get Me; narcissism - Hark The Herald Angels Sing About Me.
The magazine, called Marooned, is produced by the Cromwell House mental health facility in Eccles, Salford.
Issued four times a year, it is put together by an editorial board made up of patients, with staff on hand should they need advice.
The winter edition was distributed in Salford’s psychiatric clinics and drop-in centres but after a formal complaint from the daughter of a mental health patient, the magazine has been withdrawn.
NEW YORK - Gunmen hijacked a FedEx delivery truck loaded with Christmas presents early Friday on a Manhattan street, officials said.
The truck was headed to a company facility in Newark after midnight when two men brandishing a gun confronted the driver at a traffic light, police said. The driver was forced out of the truck and into a car. He was found about four hours earlier in Brooklyn, police said.
It’s hard buying gifts for people. I’ve already decided what I want for xmas, but what to buy for my fellow MR’s? Since giftcards to Liquor Mart are a little out of my range, I’m thinking of another group activity that can bring us all together … maybe a board game?
“Is the Pope Catholic!?! - The Catholic Nostalgia game. The objective is to become the Pope, starting as an altar boy, and advancing by answering questions that require a Catholic background to appreciate.”
I wonder what would happen if we mixed it up a little, say, with this ol’ chestnut:
Exciting! Ha! My friend and I tried to play this one as young ‘uns. Sadly, all we had was a case of warm Narragansett Beer.
I don’t remember this game at all:
“The game where you create what your opponents draw or charade. Situations occur in a barroom, bedroom, dating or outdoors. Definitely an adult game!”
Now everyone will be going, “awww … God rest his soul” - typical. In Boston, I used to work at a place where I transcribed news programs. You read that right. Every night I was not only force fed news, I had to spit it back out. I had to transcribe Dapper O’Neil’s words many, many times. From today’s Boston Globe obit:
Flamboyantly conservative, Mr. O’Neil was defined more by the enemies he made than his political views. At various times, he railed against feminists, gays, and immigrants. He made a career out of his opposition to school desegregation, affirmative action, and other government initiatives he considered social engineering.
He was the only one of 13 city councilors to vote against a local ban on assault weapons and the city’s human rights ordinance, which prohibited discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
In the process, Mr. O’Neil seemed to delight in his ability to enrage liberals, who considered him insensitive at best and a bigot at worst. But his stands on issues served to solidify his conservative political base.
In the 1970s, he lambasted “hippies” from a bullhorn on the back of a pickup truck circling Boston Common. In 1990, after viewing nude photographs at the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, he said, “This country’s going down the drain. And while there’s guys like me in it, I’ll put a stop to some of this.”
During the 1992 Dorchester Day Parade, he was captured on a home video exclaiming, “I thought I was in Saigon for Chrissakes,” while he passed through a Southeast Asian part of the city.
Oh, it’s time to read the news from “back home.” I’m thinking cocoa with Fluff, a nice warm fireside, snow on the trees … but NO!
Critics of the Rotenberg school say the case shows that school officials have failed to live up to their public promises to deliver electric shocks only sparingly and with great oversight.
WHAT?!
Prank led school to treat two with shock
Special ed center duped, report says
Two special education students at the controversial Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton were wrongfully delivered dozens of punishing electrical shocks in August based on a prank phone call from a former student posing as a supervisor, a state investigative report has found.
School staffers contacted state authorities after they realized they had been tricked on Aug. 26 into delivering 77 shocks to one student and 29 shocks to another, according to Cindy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Department of Early Education and Care, which drafted the report. Both students were part of a Rotenberg-run group home in Stoughton for males under age 22.
The Judge Rotenberg center, which serves about 250 adults and children from across the country, has been under fire for more than two decades for its unorthodox behavior-modification treatments, including electric shock treatments. Its defenders say that the school takes in troubled students, some with self-damaging behavior, who have been rejected by other schools. The center, which Massachusetts officials have tried twice to close because of its treatment methods, focuses on serving people with autism, mental retardation, and emotional problems. Ernest Corrigan, a spokesman for the Rotenberg center, said the school contacted law enforcement “within hours” after discovering the prank, and that such an incident has never before happened at the school. Corrigan said they have instituted new safeguards to prevent such occurrences. He also said that while the school regrets the incident, the two male students who received the wrongful shocks did not experience any serious physical harm and did not need medical treatment afterwards.
The shock devices, which are strapped to some students’ arms, legs, or torsos, deliver two-second electric jolts to the skin. The devices are controlled remotely by teachers.
State officials said the identity of the prankster is known to law enforcement authorities, but they would not release his name publicly and he has not been arrested. The identity of the staffer who was fooled into administering the shocks has also not been released. State officials indicated that some disciplinary action took place, though they would not specify what it was.
“I explained there was no permit required at this time for street performers and received assurances that [Domingue] would not be approached by the police department regarding the possession of a street performer permit,” McGrath says in a signed letter dated Aug. 22.
But some time later, police kicked him off the pier again, Domingue says, after a supposed complaint was received that a “man is committing suicide by pounding a nail in his head.”
Domingue maintains his show, however insane it may seem, is safe, but Huntington Beach Police Lieutenant Dave Bunetta says that, in this particular instance, some spectators grew worried.
“He was bleeding all over,” Bunetta says. “And there’s kids walking around, and there’s bodily fluids. We informed him he could be involved in a hazardous activity that could harm the public.”
But “Lucky” John Domingue says he relies not on good fortune to prevent his various stunts—sword swallowing, fire eating and the nail-in-the-nose, or “blockhead,” act—from going horribly wrong and killing him, but rather on years of practice.
