Currently Nova Tunes, Vol. 3 By Various Artists Zero 7 feat. Sia - Distractions see related

The symptoms felt by the patient with TLE and the signs observable by others during seizures depend upon the specific areas of the temporal lobes and neighboring brain areas affected by the seizure. The Classification of Epileptic Seizures published in 1981 by the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) recognizes three types of seizures which persons with TLE may experience.

1. Simple Partial Seizures (SPS) involve small areas of the temporal lobe and do not affect consciousness. These are seizures which primarily cause sensations. These sensations may be mnestic such as déjà vu (a feeling of familiarity), jamais vu (a feeling of unfamiliarity), a specific single or set of memories, or amnesia. The sensations may be auditory such as a sound or tune, or gustatory such as a taste, or olfactory such as a smell that is not truly present. Sensations can also be visual or involve feelings on the skin or in the internal organs. The latter feelings may seem to move over the body. Dysphoric or euphoric feelings, fear, anger, and other sensations can also occur during SPS. Often, it is hard for persons with SPS of TLE to describe the feeling. SPS are often called "auras," and are sometimes thought to be preludes to more severe seizures.

While awake some common symptoms of simple partial seizures are:

• preserved consciousness
• sudden and inexplainable feelings of fear, anger, sadness, happiness or nausea
• experiencing of unusual feelings or sensations
• altered sense of hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing, and tactile perception (sensory illusions and/or hallucinations), or feeling as though the environment is not real or detachment from the environment (depersonalization)
• a sense of spatial distortion--things close by may appear to be at a distance.
• déjà vu (familiarity) or jamais vu (infamiliarity)
• laboured speech or inability to speak at all
• usually the event is remembered in detail

um, so wow.  apperently there is a scientific name for people who are extremely clingy ("stickiness", thats what that means), hyper-religous, write compulsively, have mood swings, see and hear things, and have feelings of energy rushing across their body.  I may very well have temporal lobe epilepsy...which would explain the twitching altered-state-of-consciousness stuff that goes on when I write sometimes (SO interesting that that's a common symptom)  interesting...that would explain why my mom's family has way more than its fair share of writers, monks, spiritualists, and the like.  my brother had grand mal seizures as an infant, too.

lol I tried to find more information on it and the result was a documentary on Amma Ma (a hindu woman who channels the goddess 24/7 and has for years, an unusual but not unheard of thing in India, they tend to form large followings, she has a charity and I think she's the real deal.  there's a creepier guy who claims to be shiva incarnate who I totally don't believe, but Amma Ma is the shit)...apparently she had the syndrome too, though hers was rather more pronounced than mine if I have it...though it seems likely I do, waaay too many random symptoms for it to be a coincidence, plus someone who was formally diagnosed with it noticed I write like someone who has it and asked if I did, which is what prompted me to check it out.  its kind of awesome that all the times I have freaked out and wanted to vomit over the moral complexities of driving or grocery shopping or not being a plant have a recognizable anatomic locus in the brain and that all my other quirks seem to go with it.  apparently when they stimulate the part of the brain this is in (left temporal lobe) people start seeing white light and being at peace and feeling like they have seen god.  doesn't make the experience less real (because we can look at an eye and tell you *how* you see a tree doesn't mean the tree isn't real)...but it does give me a fun name for whats happening.  this totally makes me feel better about seeing things and makes what happens when I write make SOOOOOOOO much more sense.  a lot of those seizure symptoms, like depersonalization and spatial distortion and inability to speak and general "unusual feelings or sensations", hell, pretty much all of them, happen when I get into a certain frame of mind and usually involve me writing like crazy on a mystically themed topic, and rapid head jerks or shivering or something like that when I get to that stage is not at all uncommon (thank god this doesn't happen in public much, people "getting into my aura" aside).  jesus christ this makes so much sense.  wow, I'm impressed.  thank you, q-folk, for the question!

awesomeness.  I'm somewhat amused that people consider this a disease, though.  doesn't bother me in the slightest (well, perpetual moral crises, paranoia, and guilt aside)...why do people want to be things they aren't?

also: fuck designer babies.  not literally.  I hate that people would chose to get rid of all these interesting things about humanity because they are aberations.  fuck fuck FUCK people who want to clean up the genome.  I am fine.

Currently Beyond Skin By Nitin Sawhney Anthem Without a Nation see related

HIV prevalence among gay and bisexual men in Bangkok rose to 30.7 percent in 2007 from 17.3 percent in 2003. In Jakarta, it increased to 8.1 percent from 2 percent within the same period.

Some countries in Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia and those in South Asia still have in place anti-sodomy laws, which are formidable barriers to people getting treatment and help, and they frustrate efforts at disease prevention, experts said.

"A young (gay) man went to a clinic for treatment and was slapped by a doctor and scolded for being a bad person. The doctor refused to treat him and he was thrown out," said Shivananda Khan of the help group Naz Foundation International.

"It is not uncommon, it happens in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar," Khan told Reuters.

while planning to be a psychologist, I kind of intended to do glbtq counseling.  then, as a social work major, I wanted to work with immigrants in particular, but possibly also queers.  then I discovered the idea of epidemology and public health and related fields, and decided that gay men's health makes perfect sense and that I could work in prevention.  now I'm doing nursing, and when I asked what area of specialization was most useful for nurses who wanted to do volunteer work abroad, tropical diseases and HIV were listed as major.  I want to do HIV/AIDS nursing.  and I want to do it in India long enough to get a real sense of the culture, not to mention make a real difference.  it makes complete sense because it's pretty much everything I'm passionate about or interested in combined, with the possible exception of ecology...it would also be a completely perfect lead-in to an anthropology career, which would let me transition smoothly into academics if/when I decided I didn't want to do nursing anymore.

if I could do it in Bangalore it would be amazing...if I could get Quaker congregations in the US to partner with Lingayat groups in Karnataka, it would be fucking fantastic.  I received a polite, rather vague reply from a lingayat group based in Bangalore I emailed once, asking about gay rights.  his basic response was that Lingayats have pushed the envelope on human rights since the middle ages, marrying princesses to untouchables and letting women lead on a very regular basis, but that they haven't really talked much about gay people, despite the fact they really don't have anything against them...officially having nothing against anyone.  It actually sounds rather like the position the Quakers were in last century, with a fantastic human rights record that hadn't let extended to the queer community simply because of a lack of awareness.  Lingayats also already have a strong infrastructure with lots of connections in social work and public health things in India.  hmmmmm.  this could be very cool.  I should probably review for anatomy now, though.