How does someone know when they suffer from clinical depression? Is there a checklist where if you score 10/20, you must be depressed?

This question arose when I read Hugh Laurie saying that he realized he was suffering from depression because he felt nothing as drove around exploding cars in an event. It came back to me when I was watching a stripper gyrate her hips and realized I was more interested in a catfish cookbook.

So, I've been trying to find out if I have a hormone imbalance somewhere or if my brain is malfunctioning. Looking online, I find really, really useless information about depression where practically everything anyone can do can potentially be depression-related.

"Are you afraid of meeting people or find yourself relying too much on people?"

"Do you have a lack of appetite or find yourself eating too much?"

How on earth is that helpful? And how is someone who's depressed supposed to know they "experience bouts of helplessness more than usual"?

For myself, I've come to a conclusion that I'm probably not depressed. Most likely is that I'm just massively bored and for someone who takes a lot of pleasure in indulging in extremes, I'm starting to run out of extremes. By extremes, I don't mean jumping out of a plane or flipping a skateboard, I mean agreeing to kill for profit or fucking a cow.

Not that I've killed anyone or fucked a cow. So far as you know.

What is your level for standards and how much do things need to change before you change your standards as well?

It seems that as time passes, people tend to forget and abandon whatever standards they used to have. We seem to be born to this world with standards of immensely high altitudes and then slowly lower them till there's nothing left. In short, we never raise our standards as we age, we only temporary put them back closer to what they were.

For example, as a child, we automatically assume that everyone is good and pure and holy and saintly and whatnot. Then your parents and that nosy uncle tell you not to take candy from strangers. Then your friends tell you not to give money to that begger because he'll just buy drugs and bug you for more. Then your girlfriend tells you not to look at other girls because... well... apparently because they're cruel malicious beings of a diabolical nature.

As time passes, our definition of "good and pure and holy and saintly and whatnot" changes to a level that would have been "inexplicable cruelty and evilness" when we first existed (I doubt our brains at that time could have comprehended such a level anyway). Thus, our standards deteriorate.

I don't care about that. That's a fact of life. What I'm worried about is how people change their standards for the most ridiculous reasons. Subway made one bad hoagie? Man, I'm never eating at Subway ever again and will protest because they universally suck balls for life dudez. You suck at art? No, apparently I'm damn fucking awesome at art. I'm so damn awesome at my super awesome stick drawings that only people slighter better than me are awesomer and everyone else awesomer sucks a level of sucktitude only I can see.

People are naturally adapted to denial it would seem. Naturally adapted to justify everything they do as "the best" and resent everything else. I guess that's what ruins everyone's standards.

It's funny how as you get older, the world becomes bleaker and more depressing. Here's an example, all those people you admired (or detested) turn out to be far more stupider than you realize. Take the current global recession, global as in everywhere except Iran for some reason, for example:

Everywhere you hear people complaining about how the government is taking their money to fund big evil corporate scumbags who are now safe knowing no matter how badly they screw up, they can still rest easy knowing the government will bail them out. That's completely untrue from every single logical point of perspective. What's the point of a corporation? As a publicly traded company, their commitment above everything else is to maximize revenue to increase stock price. That's it. That's the purpose of a CEO.

Take a look at what happened to the stock markets of the world. Stock prices going down. People going bankrupt. Those executives are going to burn regardless of whether the government bails them out or not. What the US Treasury or the EU are trying to save are not executives or CEOs or any greedy individual out to steal your soul, they're trying to save the foundations of industry. Take, for example, if every single bank in your country went down under, which ironically is what's happening right now in the US. What on earth are you, as a consumer, going to do now? Cry? Put money under your pillow?

It's a much worse case scenario than you just paying a little bit more to rescue those companies. Not being able to conduct any financial transactions is seriously much worse than an extra $5 on your tax bill. Unless you're some isolationist prick, in which case I question your reliance on blogs for information.

It's funny how humans are. We tend to be able to be so stubborn and ignorant about everything and anything. Our mind is able to block out, ignore, and go in complete denial about anything... except when it comes to our money. Whoa, the moment someone touches our money, it doesn't matter for what it's for or why, we break out the pitchforks and torches.

"You took $10 of my money to save the world!? FUCK YOU! GIVE IT BACK!"

Hey, at least your governments are trying to save you. Look at Malaysia. Even now UMNO is still covering its ears, singing "it's gonna be alright" to itself every night.



- Image copyrighted by Sinfest.

You know... once in awhile, you get something that's so stupid that it has to be a joke. I'm thinking that about Kurozuka. (a Japanese manga)

Okay, the story is about immortals right. There's this demon chick who's immortal. She's immortal because as a child, she saw the corpse of Christ. In Japan. Washed up on a beach. Then the corpse asked for her blood. She ran back to get help from guys who then tried to rape her. Her blood gets splashed on Christ's face. Christ than stands up, crushes one of the rapist's neck and throws him in the ocean with one hand then obliterates the other guy by slicing the guy in half with another hand. He then rapes the girl and drinks her blood. Thus, she becomes immortal (but she steals the cross from Christ's neck).

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Sigh...