A brilliant article on how overprotective hysterical parents damage their children: “In addition to denying them rich, meaningful relationships as well as a sense of independence and self-worth among other things, our hysteria and unfounded fears mean we are actually putting our children in harm’s way. Even though children have never been safer, child abduction and pedophilia fear mongering have reached such a state that we are endangering our children precisely because we are being too careful.”
What is there to celebrate on Canada Day?
A historian attempts to explain that the Apartheid wasn’t that bad.
A doctor’s license is taken away for not forcing a 10-year-old girl to have her rapist’s baby. The so-called pro-lifers are the most disgusting, vile creatures ever. They have no heart, no brain, no human entrails.
“To credit sexual violence with the creation of heroes robs them of their agency. And, worse yet, it gives the credit to rapists.” Hear, hear! The “she was raped and that made her turn into a hero” trope is very offensive to victims of sexual violence.
That’s not the only reason to feel proud of Argentina today. Here is another major one.
A link for my Russian-speaking readers. Schools in Russia teach that Stalin was a great leader and here are the results of that system of teaching history. How fast they forget, eh?
“Researchers examined data from more than 34,000 adults and found that being spanked significantly increased the risk of developing mental health issues as adults. According to their results, corporal punishment is associated with mood disorders, including depression and anxiety, as well as personality disorders and alcohol and drug abuse. They estimate that as much as 7 percent of adult mental illness may be attributable to childhood physical punishment, including slapping, shoving, grabbing, and hitting. The study reports that spanking ups the risk of major depression by 41 percent, alcohol and drug abuse by 59 percent, and mania by 93 percent, among other findings.” I especially like this coy language of “spanking.” Beating is the right term. Beating children who are completely dependent on you and can’t respond. And if you do that for whatever reason, you are a horrible, vile creature.
Roasted red pepper pasta recipe. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks beautiful.
“Every article I’ve read on the student loan debate seems to be missing one very crucial, simple way to completely eliminate student loan debt. It’s so painfully obvious that it flabbergasts me that no one, I mean no one, has pointed this out. Many ideas are put forward. Lower tuition. Let students discharge their student loans in bankruptcy. Offer more Pell Grants, don’t cut them. Limit the amount of aid that goes to for-profit colleges. Push for more disclosure of student loans and the cost of college. None of those are the best solution to this problem. The real answer is simple and unpopular. It lies not with Congress, or the president, or the colleges and universities, but with the students. Students have to stop borrowing money to pay for college.”
Traveling makes you smart and not traveling makes you reactionary and stupid: “Lack of experience with the world seems to track pretty closely with strong opinions about how to deal with the rest of the world. It also tracks with socially reactionary views.”
The concept of software training is dead. Yay!
The hypocrisy of Texas Republicans. I know that nobody is surprised but the more we hear about this, the better.
“As men who wish to be called men, you have no role in the abortion debate other than to unquestioningly support women in whatever choice they might choose to make. ” That’s all anybody needs to say about abortion. I’d never have any sort of a relationship with a man who took a position different from this one.
The children who are “spanked” (which is a hypocritical term for beating) become mentally damaged, have lower IQs, a higher incidence of mental disorders, etc. Those who refuse to believe this should get beaten, sorry, “spanked” at least once a day by somebody three times bigger than they are.
People in this puritanical culture are so ignorant about sexuality that it’s scary: “Sex is the only one of the basic drives that a person can go without for a whole lifetime and not die.” Erm, how would this unintelligent creature know that since nobody can possible arrange things in such a way as to go through life without sexual release? You can impose celibacy on yourself, yet the body will find sexual release in dreams. The only way to avoid that is never to sleep, and how possible is that? Or does this strange person fail to understand that a sexual release one experiences alone is still sex?
Some people know how to sell their science to the general public. Now we need something like this in Hispanic Studies and we are set for the next few decades, at least.
Clarissa's Blog 
I wrote a letter to clothing retailers on shopping for plus-size clothing.
And one on running, PE class, and crappy teachers. (Well, one crappy teacher.)
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I wrote film reviews on:
The French Film ‘Goodbye First Love:’ http://film-nut.tumblr.com/post/26567033119/goodbye-first-love-review-aka-un-amour-de-jeunesse
and
Almodovar’s ‘The Skin I Live In:’ http://film-nut.tumblr.com/post/26701945657/the-skin-i-live-in-aka-la-piel-que-habito-2011
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“Lifeguard fired for saving life of drowning man. See, the corporation had a contract to patrol one specific beach, not the next beach over, and the man was drowning 100 yards on the wrong side of the line.
…
This is the first incident I’ve heard of where the company explicitly has a policy of “watch them die, because money is more important than human lives.” “
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Let’s not buy into the unhealthy drama created by irresponsible bloggers. This is what the original piece said:
“The Florida town of Hallandale Beach is rethinking its decision to outsource its lifeguarding duties after an incident in which Tomas Lopez, a lifeguard, was fired on the spot for leaving his “zone” to rescue a drowning man. . .By the time he sprinted to the scene, other beachgoers were dragging a drowning man to shore.”
The guard was fired for leaving his zone unattended. This was wrong of him because anything could have happened in his absence. His job is not to leave this specific area unprotected. Just like it would be wrong for em to leave my classroom and go to the one next door because that class’s teacher did not arrive.
Note that this guard ran away from his duties for nothing. The drowning person had already been saved. So he abandoned his duties for no particular reason.
I find it annoying when people bellyache about the “evil corporations” when those same people would be more than happy to sue said corporation for leaving their part of the beach unattended for 3 seconds.
There is nothing more difficult than providing services to tourists who whine and moan about every little thing. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
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Re travel: I think it depends on where you are traveling and why you are going there. For example, if you are visiting another country with the intention of opening your mind and learning something, that’s one thing. But if you are, say, with a missionary group going to a “Third World” country with the purpose of “helping” the people there (which means attempting to convert them to your religion under the pretext of “helping” them build houses or something), nine times out of ten all you come back with are shocking stories of the recalcitrant “natives,” horrible weather, bugs, etc. So to just say “travel broadens the mind” isn’t really sufficient. On the other hand I do agree that people who never leave their small towns in their whole lives do have stunted imaginations.
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” But if you are, say, with a missionary group going to a “Third World” country with the purpose of “helping” the people there (which means attempting to convert them to your religion under the pretext of “helping” them build houses or something), nine times out of ten all you come back with are shocking stories of the recalcitrant “natives,” horrible weather, bugs, etc. So to just say “travel broadens the mind” isn’t really sufficient.”
– Very true! I have students who travel for these purposes and they come back as ignorant and close-minded as ever.
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I read the reaction to your post on demi-sexuals. Could you, please, react to it and say if you see any logical mistakes? If you disagree with him (and, I guess, you do), why? Logically.
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He also replied to your other post on your definition of patriarchy, but this isn’t worth reaction imo:
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Yes, I’ve seen this post. It’s hilarious. 🙂
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On the food, I am convinced it is what causes bloating and obesity and just de-conditioning. I always lose weight and gain muscles within a few days of getting abroad — it is too soon for it to be because of cutting calories / increasing exercise (which I don’t think I do, anyway), I am convinced it is because I stop ingesting so many toxins and so much produce that only appears to be non-plastic. That picture I published, of me and the statue when I first got to Mexico? I didn’t look too bad, but 10 days later … by comparison it was rippling abs (I am exagerrating, but you get the idea) and once again I am sure it was just from not eating so much poison!!!
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” I didn’t look too bad, but 10 days later … by comparison it was rippling abs (I am exagerrating, but you get the idea) and once again I am sure it was just from not eating so much poison!!!”
– This is exactly what I’ve been saying for ages! Whenever I travel, this happens to me. The bloating melts off and my energy level soars. Every single time!
And I don’t even eat fast food or anything like that in the US.
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I saw lots of strange links on his blog, but somehow found an interesting one (in a good way):
http://www.youth-suicide.com/gay-bisexual/homosexuality-violence/11-male-sexual-violence.htm
Just 1 of good quotes:
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I was spanked sporadically but very heavily as a child. It’s given me an extreme degree of intolerance for any kind of “spanking”, especially the metaphoric sort. I’ve had all too many people who read what I say, or respond to what I do by metaphorically attempting to “spank” me. They have no idea how quickly that switches me off emotionally. I also have contempt for people who cannot communicate with me at the same level I’m trying to communicate with them, but instead resort to telling me off. They reveal the huge extent of their lack of intellectual wisdom and prowess. They must think the world is very much simpler than it is to feel that spanking another person can easily resolve any existing problems.
There are also those who preemptively spank, because they want me to do a good job and they think I won’t do one unless I’m given a lot of warnings about falling short. They walk on thin ice, because each time they threaten me preemptively, I develop a stronger impression that they cannot communicate and that they are insane.
People just need to be able to speak freely with each other, without this need to establish protocols in the relationship, through spanking.
Really, I think the majority of people are insane, although Eastern people I’m in contact with do not spank each other figuratively, though everyday conversations. I think this tendency is predicated on notions of original sin, which are Judeo-Christian.
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I find it very curious how bullies arrive at my blog, try to shut me up, expecting me to be some sort of a victim and then act completely shocked when I push back and turn on them in aggression. I hope this teaches them an important lesson: if you act with aggression, expect to get the same treatment in return.
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Yes, I’ve taught quite a few people that lesson. I will treat them exactly as they treat me. The thing is I have the capacity to emotionally switch off faster than a split second in a situation that I read a violent.
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http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/search?q=beatings
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And of course, with regard to psychoanalysis, I once thought it may have been a freeing philosophy, but there are all sorts of notions of sinfulness entailed in it, but dressed up in psychiatric terms. For example female “hysteria” is sexual sinfulness: If women weren’t so driven to seduce others, they would be calm and not “hysterical”. Furthermore, Lacan and the Object Relations schools of psychoanalysis view early childhood states as being denotative of “psychosis”.
In both cases, only patriarchal discipline and conformity can straighten out the crazies (women and children) so that they behave normally and “rationally”.
The structure of much of psychoanalysis leads to the logic that women and children could benefit from punishment. This is because “female” and “childlike” states are denotes as both “immature” AND “irrational”.
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Let’s try to avoid the confusion between psychoanalysis as a healing practice and the load of garbage a repressed woman -hating prick like Lacan was selling to silly grad students. Psychoanalysis is not supposed to be a philosophy. It’s a method people can use to change their lives for the better. If somebody uses a computer to beat a person over the head, would you blame the computer?
I’m very familiar with Lacan’s stupidities but why should that prevent me from getting better?
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Many of the same patriarchal stupidities are also present in Freud. That said, I do believe in getting better, it’s just that you can’t have patriarchal practitioners trying to guide you in the process. What they’ll end up doing is projecting all the failed protests about injustice from millenia onto you and giving it a psychiatric diagnosis. Why did Freud misunderstand the direction of projection, when it concerned women. Women are not projecting their desires onto men and thereby becoming hysterical because they can’t face the fact that they have desires. Freud’s society was patriarchal and ours are largely the same. The manipulation of female perceptions that happens AS A RULE under patriarchy is to blame for the states of distress.
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“Many of the same patriarchal stupidities are also present in Freud. ”
– I don’t really see the point of discussing Freud when there were so many later analysts who transformed psychoanalysis and improved greatly upon his initial findings. Would you criticize modern medicine based on the mistakes Avicenna and Galen made?
Jung, who was Freud’s follower, completely rejected Freud’s theory of gender relations. Nobody in their right mind works in a strictly Freudian model nowadays. Just like no hospital administers Paracelsus’s remedies unchanged. Which, of course, in no way diminishes the importance of what Paracelsus was doing all those centuries ago.
“Why did Freud misunderstand the direction of projection”
– Try creating a whole new field of knowledge and not making any mistakes.
Seriously, how come I never see people denounce, say, photography based on how clunky and difficult to use the very first cameras were. Or let’s criticize literature. Medieval writers couldn’t even create a convincing plot most of the time! So let’s stop reading literature altogether. Or take chemistry. It came out of the insanely stupid ideas of the alchemists. Yet nobody rejects chemistry on the basis of that.
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I think the advances on Freud’s perspectives are very slow in coming, due to the domination of patriarchal ideas in broader culture. What should be very obvious — that people suffer from trauma when they are manipulated — has been turned into a dogma that people suffer because they are afraid of their own sex drives or in some other way “afraid to face reality”.
But, the origins of trauma are much more simple and straightforward. Freud is to some degree an antidote to patriarchal attitudes of sexual repression, but he also reproduces these attitudes because he could not see what was in front of him.
I think a lot can be gained from a kind of wilderness analysis of oneself, so long as patriarchal practitioners are not involved. But if they are, they will reinforce the necessity of the trauma, making it essential for participation in society.
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“What should be very obvious — that people suffer from trauma when they are manipulated — has been turned into a dogma that people suffer because they are afraid of their own sex drives or in some other way “afraid to face reality”.”
– This is a gross simplification of a very complex theory and a rich practice. I don’t see what useful purpose such generalizations might serve.
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You misunderstand me. I’m not simplifying anything in an ideological way. This is not an ideological attack on Freudianism, but just pointing to its limitations. And, unless I have misunderstood, the underlying principles of psychoanalysis are to give people the fortitude to face reality. Only, (and this is where I am pointing out the source of the problem), reality happens to be patriarchal reality, most of the time.
So it works out like this: “Here are the resources you need to face patriarchal reality, which is true reality, the only reality. You need to embrace the necessity of your trauma. You need to lie to yourself as necessary in order to fit in. You must just accept things as they are, without trying to change them.”
I’m not saying that this is what psychoanalysts, or Freud himself, intended. But if patriarchal power itself does not come under scrutiny through psychoanalysis, then psychoanalysis is worse than useless.
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“But if patriarchal power itself does not come under scrutiny through psychoanalysis”
– Of course, it does. The very point of analysis is to give back to an individual the right to her own life, body, mind, desires, wishes, thoughts and rescue all that from the clutches of her patriarchal family. I should know since that’s exactly what I do in analysis twice a week. It’s all about taking myself back from the patriarchal family that has been keeping me captive and devouring me piece by piece.
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Well that is good. The books I’ve read on psychoanalysis, even the most liberal ones, take very gingerly steps toward the possibility of patriarchal values being wrong. Dorpat, for instance, who speaks of “gaslighting” in therapy (i.e. telling the client that they haven’t really experienced what they have), still maintains that most therapists don’t intend to abuse their clients, but that such abuse is ubiquitous by virtue of the therapists making mistakes.
The mistake is, of course, that the therapists have internalized patriarchal values which depict women as “just silly” or “too sensitive’ or “making it up”.
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On the issue of home schooling, my female cousin is a fundamentalist Christian who home schools her children. I’ve talked about her here before. She’s an extraordinarily cold but dutiful person. In essence, she has an old-fashioned colonial personality, but without any of the anti-authoritarian irreverence that belonging to the older days of Rhodesia. She lives in a mansion with electrified wiring around the walls of her property. She sticks compulsively to Christianity, in my view, because she had tried living in a relationship that wasn’t defined by Christian mores. She was beaten by her husband whilst pregnant, and consequently her eldest daughter is deaf. My cousin’s current husband became converted to Christianity after his father committed suicide with a gun. They both seem to think that sticking rigidly by the rules will prevent them from experiencing further trauma in life.
The three children are being “educated” with material that is shipped over from America in boxes. They live in a kind of gated community, where their experiences are circumscribed by what the parents feel would be wholesome for them. A certain amount of racism is encouraged, although this is implicit rather than communicated directly. For instance, their dogs constantly bare their teeth at the gardeners they have hired to work there full time. The one primary school aged kid told me, “The dogs are trying to please us by doing that.”
I see these children as potential victims of their parents’ traumas and the false solution to trauma, which is religiosity.
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“They both seem to think that sticking rigidly by the rules will prevent them from experiencing further trauma in life.”
Aha – that would explain a lot of people I know where I live, and to some degree, myself.
Also, I think it explains, among academics, the hunger for advice and rules to follow that will get one through the degree, get one a job, get one tenure. Which, in turn, is indicative of the traumatic nature of the academic structure. Hmmmmm.
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“Which, in turn, is indicative of the traumatic nature of the academic structure.”
– Do you believe that it is more traumatic than any other job environment?
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I don’t live that way. Actually, it is traumatic for me to follow rules because that creates an emotional shut-down — in extreme cases, it leads to emotional numbing. I come from such a rule-following society, originally. We had to walk in single file everywhere and have various inspections. I can maintain this way of living very easily if I have some outlets, but I can’t maintain it easily where there are alien cultural influences, which I have to dive through mental hoops in order to try to understand them. Then I’m doing too much at once — and in an emotionally shut-down state, that’s never easy. Operating within the system means I shut off, whilst operating outside of it I can remain turned on. If I shut off, I can handle almost anything so long as it’s kept simple. If I have to deal with subtle relationship issues, I cannot do that. My form of adaptation to stress is not suitable for anything but the most extreme situations. That stands to reason since I was brought up surrounded by extreme situations and adapted to them very effectively. I don’t understand subtle emotional needs, though — and that means, if I put himself within the system for a prolonged duration, I will also not be paying attention to my own needs. That bodes badly for my psychological and physical health.
But, like I say, I can nonetheless deal extremely effectively with a genuine crisis. That’s when my capacity for emotionally switching off saves the day.
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I remember being taught this: life is incredibly dangerous, but if you follow certain rules exactly, you can survive. Like walking on a tightrope, really, and the goal was to survive, not thrive (that last was not even imagined).
Around me, I notice people who are only happy in very, very structured environments, e.g. military job + active church membership + lots of advice and guidance on just about everything. Hearing of any kind of independent decision making really unnerves them.
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“Around me, I notice people who are only happy in very, very structured environments, e.g. military job + active church membership + lots of advice and guidance on just about everything. Hearing of any kind of independent decision making really unnerves them.”
– I can say for myself that I had my decision-making process and my motivational apparatus destroyed so thoroughly by my family that I now can’t decide when to go to sleep or when to eat on my own. This is why so many structuring routines needed to deal with any aspect of life. I’m working to change that. For example, I have learned to choose what to read. Now, I’m learning to make choices in other areas.
But that’s just my experience. Possibly other people have different reasons.
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The idea that software training should become unnecessary is yet another extreme manifestation of antiintellectualism. Soon, we will no doubt hear that children need not learn to talk or walk and that the world needs to make everything easy and straightforward. This is the most ridiculous thing I have read in a long time. Well, OK, I am not counting the utterances of assorted Repubenron politicians.
But software should certainly have paper documantation so that you can figure out how to do things. It should not have taken me years to learn how to copy and paste in Windows when it is so easy in Linux. A paper manual that I could thumb through would have solved this.
(David Bellamy again still unable to figure out how to enter my email from a Spanish language keyboard, since a shifted 2 is not an at sign.)
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David — alt-64, with the 64 typed on the numbers pad.
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– Do you believe that it is more traumatic than any other job environment?
Yes, or differently so. It is very, very hierarchical, and it is hard to first finish the degree, then get a job, then get tenure, let alone really make it. People drop out or are dropped at every stage. And you do not choose where you live, so it involves doing it by yourself and in isolation from your support systems, etc.
There are some possible parallels: the military, medicine, law, but the first two have more guarantees and the third requires less of an investment of time/self (I know law students will disagree, but I have done a PhD). When people in regular jobs — corporate America or public service, etc. — ask me for serious advice on how to get into graduate school, and look at what good programs require, and ask for serious answers about guarantees of jobs later, they are blown away by the answers … and particularly by the degree of academic expertise and intellectual commitment you have to have.
My point with that second paragraph is that academia is demanding without guarantees in a way few professions are. That isn’t the main point in this comment, though, or in my original one … my main point is the way things are structured, the way people do fall out and the way one always knows one can fall out, while simultaneously being trained to feel there is nothing outside it.
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“My point with that second paragraph is that academia is demanding without guarantees in a way few professions are.”
– I don’t know. My husband has a PhD, as well, but he chose to work for a company. He has 10 free days per year and that includes sick days. And he lives under a constant threat that he can be fired on the spot. That can’t happen in academia because, at the every least, you know you will finish out the semester. Just imagine living your entire work life, every single day, knowing that you can be fired any minute. And he knows it will be this way until he retires. It’s taking a huge toll on him.
Which professions in this country offer any guarantees? People in sales live their lives under the constant threat of “the board” where their sales are marked every day. I’ve seen the terror they experience on a daily basis and I can’t find it in myself to claim there is anything even remotely similar in academia. And I’m talking about highly educated people here. The degree of daily humiliation is intense.
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That’s market driven forces. Academia still retains some respect for fealty.
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“That’s market driven forces. Academia still retains some respect for fealty.”
– The guy is really suffering. And I have no idea what to suggest to him because I don’t know how people normally deal with this constant state of insecurity. He isn’t religious, so that way of addressing the issue is out.
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I’ve no idea. I can’t deal with that kind of situation by any means.
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Of course, he’ll have to figure it out on his own. I’m just venting.
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Your guy sounds a bit like me. We need extra reassurance because we’ve had too much insecurity in our lives. I’ve managed to cure myself just a bit of that by realizing that we cannot use our rational minds to try to understand something as irrational as “market forces”. There is no morality involved in market forces. Just do you best and if you fail, it has no meaning.
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Well, of course absolute statements are never accurate, and my original thought on this — following rules so as not to fall off the edge of the earth — was about academics, and wasn’t meant comparatively.
So perhaps the most interesting point is not, which profession is better/worse, etc. or has more uncertainty, etc., but the obsessive following of rules as insurance against disaster (which may come anyway — my point being that rule following as insurance may not actually ward off disaster).
As regards careers etc. – yes, sales is awful, and so on, but I wasn’t talking about job security or employed status, but about the funnel upward and the way people fall out of it, yet know they must not, because one is expected to continue to rise in a certain way and along a certain kind of path.
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“because one is expected to continue to rise in a certain way and along a certain kind of path”
– Yes, I know what you mean. I see a lot of unhappiness in people around me (at my school) because they feel like if they didn’t follow that golden path, they must be somehow damaged. It sometimes gets very daunting to witness this self-deprecation and this sadness.
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Re husband: issues have got to be partly that he is foreign and so feels more precarious, and I do not know how old he is but if he has lived in USSR or Europe much as it once was then it is hard to get used to job instability of US.
I do not mean here is more insecure or has more disasters but that identity and job or profession go together less for many people (academia is an exception here, and I think that is one of the hard things about it — you are not supposed to leave because it is said that if you do, you will not be you; many people in other professions also feel that way in Europe, I have noticed).
So the yoga of the highly paid US professional with PhD but not working in academia is sort of this: I am trained/expert/experienced in X, I work for companies that do Y and Z, I am working for this one now, I have my consulting business on the side, and, important: they keep a fair amount of money in the bank, which helps with anxiety the same way your food hoarding eases famine anxiety.
(But that is just a comment on his situation — not a side point or even a footnote to my original comment, still, which wasn’t about security of employment.)
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He’s my age, we were both 15 in 1991, so we’ve known instability all our lives. I think it’s more HOW the firing is done. People told they are fired and get escorted from the premises like criminals. They aren’t allowed to say good-bye to anybody or get the stuff from their desks. It’s such a total humiliation.
I think I’m spamming my own thread here. 🙂 🙂 Sorry, I just needed to vent. It’s been a very long day.
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Yes. I do not understand why they do that. A friend of mine from elementary school’s husband was just fired that way, from a job he had had for a couple of decades. It was layoffs due to downsizing, and also because if he reached the 20 year mark they would owe him a pension. Cheaper to get someone else. But they locked down his computer within 10 minutes, got all freakish on him, and he is really traumatized.
I think that is why it is important to have the consulting business and put one’s identity there. I think it is also a reason US people so value working for themselves.
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And, oh yes — my daughter has one of those high pressure sales jobs, with a board, checking of statistics, and all of that. The company is “progressive” so offers Zen meditation to help people deal with it. It is very paradoxical, I find (she thinks it is so wonderful that they offer that, etc.).
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Both my posts on Collegiate Feminist in the past week or so are about gender and cultural norms in Colombia.
“Mi Linda”
http://www.collegiatefeminist.com/1/post/2012/06/mi-linda.html
A reaction to the “plastic” Colombian women and my own struggles dealing with my body image following my recent breast reduction surgery. Switching back and forth from Spanish and English in a free writing form…
“The Trail of a Lost Feminist in Colombia”
http://www.collegiatefeminist.com/1/post/2012/07/the-trail-of-a-lost-feminist-in-colombia.html
Recounting my experiences/observations being a “gringa” and a women in Medellín and my reaction to the traditional gender norms, beauty standards, hypersexualization, machismo, etc… Also trying to reconcile my feminist identity with my current outsider “otherness”…
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I read and this seems real:
“In April 2012, the CDC warned the state of Florida that they were in the midst of the worst TB epidemic in the past twenty years, and urged vigorous action to contain and eliminate it.
The response of Florida’s state government? Cover up the epidemic and close the state’s only TB hospital. “
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Yes, Florida seems to be going completely nuts-o. 😦
Used to be a very good state but now it’s gone to the dogs.
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