Friday 30 September 2011

****Missing**** Amy Ahearn

I'll write more later but want to get this up ASAP. I have an updated photograph of Amy Ahearn, the woman with Huntington's who is missing in the Los Angeles County area. She was last seen in Norwalk and before that in Cerritos. Thank you for looking at this flyer. I would really appreciate it (as would her worried sister) if you would take the time to post this on your Facebook, Google+  and/or Twitter accounts. We don't know who will read this, but she has been seen. We need to give this maximum exposure. Amy has been suffering from the psychiatric issues that come with Huntington's.


Thursday 29 September 2011

Pan Am, Meekodev and lack of cable

Yesterday was uneventful so I didn't  blog about it. Today appears to be more of the same. Outside of going to the store and watching Conrad Murray's bald spot growing, its been very pedestrian. The one change is that I am back on my high carb diet. It consists of six top ramen daily. That alone puts my calorie count over 3,000. I also enjoy sugar soda and I haven't cut back on that. I understand this is not a healthy diet, but I also understand how important it is to get the weight back on my body. Even before HD entered my life I had problems keeping weight on, much less gaining weight. Sure it will clog my arteries but realistically the HD is likely to get me first. Being the proper weight, or slightly above it, gives me a nice buffer when I take ill.


------Music break-----




------Is it just me or did Joy Division suck when they became New Order?----

In addition, I really need to get to the grocers. I will take a walk and pick up a few items later, however I do need to get a lot of items at Costco once my anxiety leaves me. That is not today. I walked to the nearby shopping center and didn't get past the first store. My anxiety went from 5 to 7 on a 10 point scale. By the time I got home I was sweating, my arms were plastered to my side and my hands sweating and closed up tight. I made it home and managed to get dinner down me. That's better than yesterday when I lost my appetite over my anxiety.


Other things I did today included watching several Frontline episodes and I just started a promising documentary on Guantanamo Bay I hope to finish before falling asleep. Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and streaming websites in general. I don't have cable as its so expensive and the only time I watched it was the world cup and Olympics. Today I finally saw Pan Am. It was a cute show and I'm already looking forward to next week. Its set in 1963 and took that fact very seriously from costumes, music to the political climate. 









Tomorrow Amazon is delivering Credo, the new Human League album on my door so expect a thorough review from me. I also have a friend who is the biggest Human League fan coming over for a listening party and I'm trying to convince her to do a guest column and review of the album here as well. It will be interesting as we have very different opinions on music, although we generally like different bands, THL is one of the few we share. Her taste in music is also much more broad.




I was really glad to see that Wall of Sound Records gave them a decent budget for a video. The video really gets me in the mood to go out clubbing which I haven't done in too long. I don't drink anymore with all my meds, but I still love to people watch. Another thing I'll say about this single and that is instead of using AutoTune I love the way they threw the girls' voices in a vocoder. 


Here's another artist that refuses to use autotune.



Not a big fan of either artist but in this song they hit every note perfectly. It was a great match. I first saw this video after my friend recommended it, and she knows I'm not a Eminem fan. As for Rihanna I have never heard a song of hers I could stand, but again she is really good in this and her voice is so melodic. 


Now this is music! 
Kraftwerk's Autobahn

Just got finished a Facebook chat with my friend and she's willing to review the album AND do a guest post. I'm looking forward to MeekoDev's input here on my blog.



And with that, its bedtime for me. 

I'm Paul Ware and you can reach me on Facebook or follow my Twitter account

Monday 26 September 2011

Survived the DMV, Amy Ahearn and more.

Please take a good look. This is Amy Ahearn. She's been missing for a few weeks now. She is suffering from psychiatric symptoms related to her Huntington's disease. Last seen in Norwalk & Cerritos in Southern California. 


If you live in these areas, would you please distribute this flyer on your facebook or any other way to help Amy's sister be reunited with her? 

Thank you.



I've been Facebooking and tweeting her flyer daily. Amy lives about a hundred miles South from me. I'm really concerned for her.

I survived the DMV today, yes I did. It wasn't very bad at all, and I was in and out of there. There were only three people ahead of me so I got my duplicate license right away.



If you aren't in a decent enough mood you may want to skip this next song. Its the Cars song drive, sung by their late guitarist Benjamin Orr. These guys had the guts to bring a full Fairlight CMI onstage with them at Live Aid. Talk about being insured, those synthesizers cost 20,000 pounds sterling new.



From the Cars to Paul Oakenfold performing some Trace.





I was asked on Twitter earlier if the back pain I alluded to in my last blog is related to my HD. Its actually an old sport injury from my pre-HD days.

I hope to find you well rested tomorrow.

Catch Paul Ware on Facebook or Twitter




....and even more anxiety.

Please forgive. I started this last night, and didn't have a chance to hit send. I'll do that before going to the DMV.


Well, I stumbled upon a great group of people today. I had no idea how large the internet HD community was. I had been searching high and low for several months only to find  it was right in front of me.


Still battling this depression. Time to up my anti-depressant tonight and pick up the mood stabilizer at the pharmacy tomorrow. My back is also giving me pain, spasms on the right side of my middle vertebrae nudging them out of whack. I finally took a pain reliever and lay straight down on the floor with a comic book for 50 minutes. Let's be honest here, pain rarely lifts one's emotions up. So I'm giving myself a little slack today for still having a mood in the crapper.


By blogging time, I still haven't gotten near the shower. So in I jump, turn on the transistor radio, (yes I still own and use a transistor radio in this day and age) only to discover that someone has nudged the dial. Suddenly I'm doing the blues. I say doing because, to my ears, you can't passively listen to the blues. They are to be felt. One can passively listen to rock, classical or even trance music, not so the blues.




After the shower, I fell right asleep. Then at 5:30 in the morning I woke up with an anxiety attack. My nice calm sleep had turned on me. I tried to pinpoint where this has happened, was there a nightmare I wasn't aware of? 


The only thing I could imagine is that a relative of mine is coming to California from Arizona,and wanted to know if I would be willing to spend a couple days down in Long Beach catching up. Normally I enjoy a trip like this, and will take advantage of leaving town on a train so I don't have the responsibility of having to store a second vehicle at my destination. Lately though, I just don't like to give up any little bit of independence and I wonder if that is what I was reacting to. If it comes to it, I'll just rent a car once I arrive in Long Beach.






For those of you who don't know, Arlo lost his father Woody Guthrie to HD. His mother founded The Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease (now the Huntington Disease Society of America). 


Sunday 25 September 2011

My depression playing peek-a-boo, the Rushent children and more

First off with some very sad news. I just logged on a few minutes ago to find out that music producer Martin Rushent's three children  lost their mother Linda Rushent a little more than 48 hours ago. She was 58. Those poor children just buried their father, at a young 63, in the beginning of this summer. I can only keep their children  Jo, James and Tim  in my prayers. I ask you do the same. You can also give condolences on the  Martin Rushent Memories Facebook page .






Speaking of Martin, here is another Rushent produced gem:  Fault by Then Jericho.






Yesterday I promised you some Sparks. Here is a double dose, first is No. 1 Song in Heaven






When I Kiss You (I Hear Charlie Parker)




Had an interesting encounter with my depression earlier today. I was out with friends, and everything was going smoothly. I come home and things are still doing fine. Then I feel my mood dip, and I mean dip, into what is beginning to act like another major depression.  I mean another ass-kicking depression. Everything suddenly looked so different, and not in a good way.


Now mind you, it was just a few months ago that I switched off my SSRI and back onto an older anti-depressant. By the time I brought this up in the doctors office I was more than willing to jump in front of a Mack truck. In fact, depression and anxiety were my first HD symptoms. They have been my friends ever since.


Sorry about the segue. The long and short of it is that I don't have many medicinal options left so I have fight these moods with all of my energy. I knew yesterday was a rough one, and so today when my mood turned from my usual "I'm here, I'm alive so I'm grateful" mood into "Slow down Mr. Truck-you and I have a date"  I plugged my headphones in and let everything go for an hour. By now I was royally pissed off


...ah Fuck it!  Sparks has played through.



Do you think that instead of De Niro I might dream of these girls tonight with any luck?

So here I am, dropping another hour out of a day that I've already lost too many hours from whether it be too much sleep (depression) or just  lack of get-up-and-go. I do know that it wasn't until early this morning that I realized how bad off I've been doing. I came across the last few weeks of writing samples and thought to myself 'Holy Crap I didn't feel half as bad as I sounded', only to realize that yes in fact I had been feeling that bad for weeks.  That was a bit of a shocker and scared the hell out of me. Having lost my Huntington's effected mum to suicide I try to stay on top of my emotions and here they have slipped right through my hands. Starting tomorrow I'm going to start charting my moods along with my food intake journal to see if there is any correlation. It will also help me to graph any further mood drops and what did or did not work. 





That's all for the night. This already took several more hours than I expected. See ya soon



Saturday 24 September 2011

Struggling with depression today

I have been struggling with my depression all day today. It's just one of those times when nothing seems to be able to lift my mood up. I woke up with less than eight hours of sleep. That was most likely a contributing factor. 


After running some errands, I went over to a friend's house for a pizza party of sorts. We spent the time on the floor relaxing, listening to upbeat tunes and just trying to keep each other's company. My friend Meeks has been hit a double whammy this last month. First she lost her mother rather quickly at the young age of 65 and then she discovered her mother had tested positive for HD in her last days, putting Meeks at 50% risk of getting the disorder herself. Her mother was the first family member to suffer from HD so it was a real Double Shock. I've really tried to lift her mood up as well, and if we didn't accomplish this 100% we still did a pretty good job at telling the Depression beast where he could hide for a couple hours. 


We sat and listened to some of the late producer Martin Rushent's best work,  Human League's Dare album as well as a few other singles he produced. It did us both good to just hang out away from peer pressure to get over our bad moods. Instead, we each had a set of listening ears and that alone helped lift the cloud, even if just for a little while.




You may remember in an earlier blog posting I mentioned my one very serious girlfriend had thrown dishes at me when I refused to get tested for the HD gene. If you watch the above video a little over half-way through you will see the blonde Susan Anne Sulley chasing someone down a hallway, throwing items all the way. Let me just say that scene hit a little close to home for me. To give my ex-gf some credit, testing for HD is much more common back home in England than it is here in the United States. In fact, unlike America you can outright be denied insurance if you aren't tested. Since there is no cure, and the medications are only for the effects of HD itself, this argument just does not hold water to me. If there were drugs that prolong life as there is now for person's with HIV+/AIDS they might have an argument for testing, but if still not treatable its more like a Big Brother watching your genes, at least for me.






Yeah, I know 9 minutes of music without graphics, but if you have seen Soft Cell's other videos be grateful. You wouldn't be able to watch them in a house with small children that might awaken. As much as I like Soft Cell they are not the cleanest of bands. On the other hand, this really cannot be heard on anything besides the extended mix. 



Instead of the planned Sparks video, I'm choosing As She Was by the Talking Heads. When depressed this always fits my feelings without dragging me lower. I'll save Sparks for another time.

Feel free to reach me @Twitter. I'm PaulWorre












Friday 23 September 2011

Random Tunes and Deep Questions

Been listening to Al Stewart tonight. He's not exactly Synth-Pop, Techno, or Trance but sometimes even I need a break from what I normally listen to. Its been an interesting musical foray the last few days and I'm glad I have an open mind. 


That being said Paul Oakenfold uploaded this great piece this afternoon. It deserves a listen if you are into this style of music at all. I am hooked.


Was reading an interesting blog entry earlier. From At Risk for Huntington's: Huntington’s disease, loneliness, and love entry of Wednesday March 23rd of this year.  It just told me how fucked up this disease is, that it screws with people's minds in so many ways. It also reminded me of the song Will I? from RENT (The Musical). In this case, it was the AIDS epidemic they were signing about. 


I'll end with a quote from the above blog article by Ken that reminded me of this song. These are questions teens with an HD parent may begin to have as they start dating. I know I had many of them.

When will my symptoms start or worsen?

Should I opt for preimplantation genetic diagnosis to assure my children don’t have HD?

How will I be able to raise my children?

How will my spouse care for me, and for how long?

Why would anybody want to enter a relationship charged with such huge health and emotional challenges?

Will I end up alone?

Will anybody ever love me?


And we all know how I turned out... See you next time!  Again, join me on Twitter at PaulWorre

Thursday 22 September 2011

Just some old music and random thoughts

My feet were jerking keeping me up. By the time the jerking stopped but not before my OCD ran into overdrive. I had to talk to my OCD voice to stay in reality.


These two songs have special meaning for me so I'm going to share them with you. The first one is by Bob Seger. Early in my dating career I chose, knowing I had a 50/50 shot of geting HD, to avoid long term relationships. The only one I had ended up with dishes being thrown when I refused to be tested after my leg jerks had begun. So this song reminds me that its okay to just have tonight. It doesn't mean I am selfish, but only that I don't want someone to fall for me and then be stuck cleaning the droll out of my mouth. That's just not fair.


The second song I came across was an old classic. I feel a lot like Brandi's sailor lover today. Right now I'm honestly more interested in places than people. HD can do that to you with depression and anxiety among other psychological disorders. Scary stuff I don't want to put on other people, you know?
Well that's about it for today, thanks for reading my first post. I am looking forward to blogging in the future. I'm even on Twitter now as well! PaulWorre @ Twitter