25 Things That Won’t Really Piss Off Friends With OCD

The Dorm Stormer website has a photo spread of about 25 things it claims will piss off friends with OCD.

As someone who does have OCD, let me offer my two cents.

Mood music:

Straightaway, the photo spread strikes me as dumb: I don’t feel irritated or insulted. It lacks cleverness and real humor.

OCD humor done well is something I enjoy. If you can make me laugh about the condition I live with every day, then I salute you. But you have to do it well, and this article doesn’t. It falls back on the oldest clich&eactue;s in the book.

The misspelled words on the parking lot pavement? If I saw it in front of me I’d have a good laugh, take a picture and put it on Twitter and Facebook. But the sight of it would not yank my triggers.

Fire Misspelling

Same goes for the orange juice in the grocery section marked “eggs.”

The mismatched soda bottles and crooked pictures? That shit got old a long time ago.

pepsi bottle fail

The examples used barely scratch the surface of what true OCD suffering is about — the constant worry and paranoia, the sleepless nights, the stress-induced amplification of addictive behavior, the fear of leaving one’s house and having to talk to other people.

My friend, if you found imagery to lampoon that stuff, I’d me lapping it up.

Try again.

dormthumb

Downworthy: The Answer to All Those Stupid Headlines

I loathe the link-bait bullshit that’s taken over my Facebook newsfeed. Upworthy. Opposing Views. Even The Huffington Post. They’re all guilty to varying degrees.

Call me a snob, if you will. I was a journalist for 20 years, and I like my headlines straightforward and to the point. All I see these days is shit that goes something like, “Michael asked his mom for a Pepsi. What came next will blow your mind.”

Mood music:

My friend Alison Gianotto, chief technology officer at Noise, hates it too. Instead of merely rolling her eyes as I do, she built a free, highly amusing browser plug-in called Downworthy that’s currently available for Google Chrome. When you add it to your browser, a little icon of poop makes itself at home in your toolbar.

Turn it on and it’ll take all those hyperbolic headlines and replace them with something snarky that people like me consider more realistic. For example, “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make it Stop” is translated to “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make It Stop.”

A couple examples of the end result:

winter phenom

glacier lake

When you’re having a hard day and Upworthy throws all that annoying garbage your way, this plug-in will make you feel better.

Life is hard. Some days the challenges threaten to drown us. You certainly can’t blame the publishers of Upworthy for that. It’s simply how life is sometimes.

But if a toy like this can distract us from the darkness, if only for a few minutes, it will help us live to fight the next battle.

Depressed Web Servers and Other Amusing 404 Pages

I write a lot about my own episodes of depression and that of others. But I’ve never written about a web server suffering from it. That is, until the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) gave me reason to do so.

The students got creative with a 404 File Not Found page.

Instead of the usual 404, you get a depressed web server going on and on about how dismal it is to be a server that can’t deliver a simple web page. It then goes on to suggest that we users ask for too much. After all, it’s not like the server knows us.

A sample of what it says:

depressed server

Variations of this message have been kicking around for at least three years. It just so happens that I’m only now getting around to seeing it, thanks to a Facebook share from my friend Alex Howard.

As I was researching the background of the ACM’s work, I came across plenty more creative 404 pages. I’m finding them at the right time, as I’m in a bit of a snit today. The clever lightheartedness is just what the doctor ordered.

Mashable.com has an epic slideshow of “35 Entertaining 404 Messages.” A few of my favorites:
404 Spaghetti-Os

Broke the Internet

Star Wars 404

Mental Disorders on Sesame Street

The image below is a brilliant exercise in humor, an important coping tool for getting through all life’s difficulties. I’ve always believed the folks behind Sesame Street should be doing more to educate children on mental health, starting with some hard but necessary lessons in disorder. I share this meme for their benefit. Class is in session.

Sesame Street Disorders

Source: fodrizzle

Curse of the OCD Guitarist

For all it’s power as a tool for staying in the moment, there’s one thing about my guitar playing that’s set off a big OCD trigger.

Mood music:

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Is it the need to play constantly, every day? Nope.

Is it the nagging obsession to acquire a Gibson Les Paul? Nah. I have that obsession, but it’s not OCD. It’s the desire of many guitarists, except for those who already own one.

Here’s my problem, as told in three photos:

Crooked Music Man

As you can see, the Music Man guitar on the right is crooked. It makes me crazy.

Crooked Epiphone

I fix it, only to discover that the Epiphone Les Paul Junior on the left is crooked, too. It torments me.

Straightened Epiphone

That’s a little better. But I keep staring and wondering: Is the Music Man crooked again?

There’s only one remedy for this torment: picking up one of them and getting on with my practice.

But I Made All These End-of-the-World Plans

Here I sit at 6 a.m. on December 21. We’re all still here as I expected we would be, despite all the end-of-Mayan-calendar, end-of-the-world talk we’ve been listening to for what seems like an eternity. I’m actually a little disappointed, because there were a few things I was looking forward to, such as:

Mood music:

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  • Avoiding the age-old problem of two kids who refuse to get out of bed on time during the school week but who come running downstairs at 5:15 a.m. on their first day of Christmas vacation, hounding me to let them use their electronics.
  • Not having to see any more of those stupid zombie apocalypse memes that flood my Facebook feed.
  • Enjoying a few glasses of wine in the afterworld. Now I have to keep staying sober.
  • Not having to fold laundry or buy groceries.
  • Not having to wrap Christmas gifts.
  • Gaining the ability to levitate.
  • Getting out of jury duty.
  • Not having to get up and dressed.
  • Getting to meet Jim Morrison, Dimebag Darrell and John Belushi.

Truthfully, though, I’m happy to have some extra time to get life right. I’m not there yet.

Carry on.

Maybe-the-Maya-Love-Dilbert

People Who Talk About Themselves and Those They Torture

I admit I haven’t always been the best listener. God knows I try, but sometimes my dysfunctional brain shuts down after more than 15 minutes of someone telling me about everything happening in their lives.

I look like I’m listening, but I’m only quiet and staring at you because I’m numb.

Mood video:

I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into changing that. I took a class about ways to stay in the present moment. I’ve kept on top of my anti-depressant medication, getting adjustments as needed. That helps keep my OCD under control, which in turn makes me a better listener. Some days are better than others.

But there are still certain people out there that I’ll always have trouble listening to. That’s because they’ll talk about themselves for hours and show little interest in letting the other people around them talk. You know the type: a friend that bends your ear on the phone, going on about all their problems while you’re forced to sit there in silent torment. The person at a party who corners you and waxes poetic about all the important work they’re doing and how awesome they are. Or how awful everyone and everything is until you want to leave the party so badly that you’re willing to fake cardiac arrest.

Those people are so oblivious to the fact that they do this that they may read this post and not realize that it’s about them.

I admit straightaway that it’s hypocritical of me to point a finger, because I have a history of being a better talker than listener. I could tell you I’m not talking about myself and am instead gifting my victims with juicy historical facts and stories so funny they drop their glass from laughing so hard.

But that would be bullshit.

I’m like anyone else who talks more than he listens. I’ll tell you about what’s going on in my life and leave you little room to do the same.

Knowing that I can be that way has actually made me more tolerant of other over-talkers. I also try to remember what my therapist says every time this comes up: “There’s no greater gift you can give another person than your time and attention.”

I could end this by suggesting other over-talkers try doing the same. I could suggest they take a mindfulness class or go in a church and sit quietly for 30 minutes. But it’s not my place to do that.

All I can do is work on myself and be the better listener.

And if there are people that are too obnoxious to listen to, I can simply avoid them.

Yip Yip Martians

The Dumbest OCD Gag Gifts Ever

Those who know me understand that I’m not bothered by humor that pokes fun at OCD. As long as there’s plenty of education available for people to manage the more insidious parts of the disorder, I’m fine with having fun with the quirks. My only requirement is that the jokes be clever.

Some time ago, I wrote about clever OCD gag gifts. These gifts, though, I never want to find in my Christmas stocking. Not because they’d hurt my feelings, but because they’re not even remotely funny. Everything I’m about to pick on is available on CafePress. I have nothing against them, really. I just wouldn’t buy or wish to receive them.

Let’s start with this ornament, which plays on the long-accepted fallacy that people with OCD love to clean:

OCD Ornament

The fact is that we don’t like cleaning any more than the rest of the population. We’re just driven to do it because our brains get stuck on things that look unsanitary or out of place.

If you see this hanging off of someone’s tree, chances are they need their head examined for some other kind of disorder. Or maybe they just own a cleaning company.

Next we have a variety of signage playing around with the OCD acronym. You can order these on T-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, and the like:

OCFD

Obsessive Canning Disorder

Call me dimwitted, but I never knew a love of fishing and canning qualified as a disorder.

Here we have some poorly done wordplay that tries to have fun with the more stereotypical OCD quirks like hand washing:

OCD and You Know It

This particular design appears on a thong for sale in the online store. Finding this on underwear really should creep a person out.

I’ll end with one I actually included on the good list of gag gifts, but it just hasn’t stood the test of time for me. The problem, I suppose, is that this sort of thing has really been overdone:

Bother You?

It’s not that it bothers me. It just bores me.

If you want to buy a gift that makes light of a person’s disorder and think the recipient will enjoy it, go for it. Humor goes a long way in making a scary, frustrating thing seem smaller and more harmless.

Just try to know the difference between clever and stupid.

WebMD’s Symptom Checker: Crack for OCD Heads

WebMD has a fantastic thing called the Symptom Checker. Have a headache and numbness in the toes? Just punch it into the symptom checker and get a diagnosis.

Mood music:

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In the hands of an OCD patient, this thing can provide hours of obsessive-compulsive fun, as you pinpoint every ache and pain in your body and have the Symptom Checker tell you what’s the matter.

The first thing you do is point to parts of a human body displayed in the first column on the page. If the problem area is the abdomen, click there and a list of possible symptoms pop up. Click the different symptoms (bloating, lumps, etc.) to collect them in the second column. The third column gives you a list of possible ailments. Click bloody vomit or vomit that resembles coffee grounds, and a red box pops up telling you to get “emergency medical attention.” Given all the coffee I consume, it’s hard to imagine my vomit not looking like coffee grounds.

Occasionally you’ll get a diagnosis for something you’ve probably never heard of, like Mallory-Weiss Syndrome. This affliction is some pretty serious shit. WebMD describes it this way:

Mallory-Weiss syndrome occurs in the mucous membrane where the esophagus and stomach connect. Vomiting or coughing strongly or for a long period of time can cause the membrane to tear and possibly bleed. Seizures may also cause tearing. People in their 40s or 50s are most likely to have Mallory-Weiss tears, but children can have them, too. Pregnant women are also at risk due to vomiting in the first trimester. Mallory-Weiss tears often heal on their own in a few days. In rare cases, surgery is required. Blood loss is a concern, so get medical care right away.

I get a lot of headaches, so I played around with the Symptom Checker for a while. I already know my trouble stems from sinuses that refuse to drain properly, but WebMD offers a much wider list of possible ailments: brain tumor, brain bleed, and so on. Go back a decade, when I would feel a pain and instantly assume the worst, and this potential diagnosis would have catapulted me straight to the nearest emergency room.

It turns out that pulling whiskers from my beard is a sign of bone infection. I always thought I did it as a distraction when the kids ignore my commands to pick up the room or shut the TV.

Bottom line: This can be a useful tool, but if you’re an OCD case it can be the catalyst for endless worry and panic. Like any medical symptom tool to be found online, it lists everything from the slightest to most serious conditions. I can poke fun now, but back when my fear and anxiety were out of control I’d have played with this thing for hours, breaking into a cold sweat and assuming the worst.

If you’re in that situation now, my advice is to walk away. A tool like this is dangerous in the hands of an unstable mind. If you’re in a calmer state of mind, it’s nothing more than a time-sucking distraction.

It’s a lot like Facebook, actually.

Sympton Checker