Posted on 11/07/2004 7:14:51 AM PST by ambrose
Posted on Sun, Nov. 07, 2004
BUSH'S WIN ADDS TO SEATTLE'S GLOOM
MOOD-CRUSHING WINTERTIME ARRIVES, AND JOLT OF COFFEE MAY NOT HELP
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post
SEATTLE - It has been a SAD week in Seattle, city of rain, darkness, caffeine, secularism and an 82 percent majority that voted in vain to fire President Bush.
SAD, as just about everybody here knows, is an acronym for seasonal affective disorder, the mood-crushing curse of wintertime existence in the northernmost major U.S. city in the Lower 48. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of residents experience some degree of the disorder, which researchers believe is triggered by the body's reaction to reduced natural light. Symptoms include sadness, irritability, gluttony, weight gain, menstrual difficulties and interpersonal strain.
As expected, suffering began last Sunday, with the end of daylight-saving time. Like a guillotine blade, darkness fell at 5 in the afternoon. It was the pitiless annual reminder that by midwinter, there would barely be eight hours of daylight, almost all of it sponged up by thick blankets of concrete-colored clouds that, on average, squat over Seattle 226 days a year.
The next day, election eve, it rained hard. The wind blew, roofs leaked, basements flooded and Seattle seemed to slip irretrievably into the dank funk that has given birth to the SAD resistance movement, otherwise known as excessive caffeine consumption. That movement gave birth to Starbucks and scores of other, lesser-known local purveyors of overpriced coffee.
-snip-
As election returns sank in, the city's seasonal slough of despond seemed to deepen. A local public radio talk show kicked off a lugubrious afternoon of post-election whining with a saxophone solo of ``Am I Blue?'' Several callers said they would be moving to nearby British Columbia.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
"SORELOSERS..."
Now they're SOROSLOSERS!
It's beautiful. My wife and I went through "tree withdrawal" -- our own name for wishing we had stayed -- after moving back to So.Cal. But the kids don't like it as much (too cold, I guess). The article comment about "mood-crushing weather" is not liberal malingering and sympathy mongering. There really is a weather-related mood disorder. In Seattle, in addition to the lower number of sunlight hours and longer sunlight paths through the atmosphere at that latitude, there is a third factor: the higher rain and cloudiness. The area of land where this weather pattern happens in Puget Sound -- which I now remembered -- is the "convergence zone".
" O Schadenfreude"
ROFLOL...we need that recorded for the freeper holiday season!
No, I think the rave up there is that addictive drug that is just above hydrocodone. Dang! I can't kick-start my brain for the chemical name. It starts with an "M" and is a sort of opiate. Not morphine. Terminal cancer patients use it. Mental block- sheesh.
Humans are absolutely incredible beings. Our mental and physical health is damn near entirely built upon the choices we make. Do you eat right, live right, sleep right? Do you work productively and build or create? Or do you stifle, meddle and regulate? Do you love and give or do you take and hate? etc etc etc. When a human puts the power of the sum of their choices to work their physical, and mental, "immune systems" are so bleeping resilent and strong the Marine Corps would be impressed. The notion a gay ass fungus in a sidewalk crack, or the angle or amount of sunlight, is actually gonna have measurable bearing on the life of a well disciplined and regulated, properly living homo sapien is, IMHO, a bunch of soft headed, new school, been dumbed down by too god-damned many studies, madness.
Okay, next time I guess I'll have to say what I really feel. Grin.
All I can say is: 1) people really do vary in how they react to the environment. 2) There are four, not three, reasons why sunlight is lower in Seattle than in So.Cal. :)
I'm here to tell you that this article is propaganda: it isn't a blanket of gray sadness and depression that fills the city right now, it's wide-open, venomous, spittle-filled, vitriolic hatred.
I'd honestly be scared to wear any sort of "Bush" or "GOP" T-shirt downtown because I would be verbally attacked.
True story: My employer - a private club downtown - provides lunch to the entire staff of the company and we all eat in a common dining area. On Wednesday morning I went down and ate as early as possible because I knew things were going to get ugly in that room and I didn't want to be there. As the TV was announcing that Kerry was conceding the election, a man whom I normally respect walked in and said "Well, now the military coup is starting".
I just picked up my tray and left.
About an hour later a couple Bush voters were down eating with the room full of raving Kerry supporters who where clearly spoiling for a fight - this was the group of liberals I was going out of my way to avoid. These two Bush supporters came to my office right after eating and were visibly shaken - they had actually been verbally abused by their co-workers.
A little while after that, some of the Kerry supporters filed a complaint with Human Resources against the two Bush people for - I sh!t you not - "Voting for Bush". Believe me, I'm in a position to know these things.
I know a lot of FReepers are taking delight in Kerry's loss but for those of us living in Blue Strongholds all the elation of Bush's re-election has been short-lived and replaced by a low internal din of general nervousness: Bush voters are actually having to whisper to one another and make sure that their words aren't being overheard by someone who might be a Kerry voter.
Any sympathy I may have had for liberals and their loss in this election is gone. They can go to hell.
That is very true. I live in the north end facing Puget Sound, and I have been pleasantly surprised at the growing numbers of Republican neighbors that I have.
I live in Seattle and have always lived in the Northwesst. I agree with you about the fungus. The allergy doctors tell people here that if you aren't born in the Northwest you will often have an allergy to tree mold. Since it is an impossible allergy to avoid, being in the air, eventually many sufferers develop asthma from long exposure to these molds.
OK, here's a hint on how to overcome this disorder. Start voting republican so you won't have to be alined with the losers all the time.
I think you're wrong on that. I've been visiting my mom at the hospital (she's alright) and they had some liberal in there in really bad shape. He/She had a major heart attack when the election was called for Bush on Tuesday.
Any word on the Rossi situation yet?
Then maybe I should change my wording some about the Media's part concering the Gloom in Seattle. Maybe the way the Media reported the election, with fear mongering and gloom, created a stressful situation for this woman causing her heartattack.
Proud member of the 18% of Seattle who voted for Bush. There are three others in my building I know of as well.
Maybe had they tempered their own emotions and not given in to such a pathological hatred of President Bush, they would not now be suffering from such a mood swing. The hatred is disgusting out here. I try not to gloat, but the one thought that kept me from returning their hatred was, "It will be such a good feeling when Bush wins again and proves your hatred irrelevant and you have to wallow in your own decrepit mire for another four years."
The mistake Seattle is making is fighting the gloom with coffee.
Rainy City Ping!
SADattle
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