Is Your Mood a Result of Where You Live? 364
Ed writes "Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control released a study indicating that geography can have a significant impact on mood. You may not be surprised to learn that Kentucky is more depressing than Hawaii. However, ranking up there with Hawaii are Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin. Frustratingly, they have not yet published the study on the web, so it is left as an exercise for the reader to find the original study and post a link for the rest of us."
Hmmm ... (Score:4, Funny)
Live in a crappy neighborhood makes for crappy moods? Lemme be the first to tell the CDC: DUUUH!
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Funny)
Since crappy neighborhood probably mean you are there for a reason, such as unemployed / low income and such, yes.
Personally I live in Sweden and the lack of light and low d-vitamine levels probably don't help much either.
That and virgin at 30.
I live in the United States of America... (Score:3, Funny)
and I'm in a shitty mood. Whats your point?
My wife lives in the same place I do (Score:5, Funny)
...not in post natal PMS Hells-ville, so I don't think the article quite holds.
If you're reading this honey, just kidding! Love you! Let's go shopping for an eternity ring... ;-)
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:3, Funny)
So you're saying that the new place makes you cranky?
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Funny)
Still, even in what the popular consensus holds to be the happiest of places, the following quotation could still apply:
Ursa Minor is almost certainly the most appalling place in the universe. Though it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of the magazine Play-Being headlined an article with the words "When You Are Tired of Ursa Minor You Are Tired of Life" the suicide rate in the constellation quadrupled overnight.
Missing from survey (Score:3, Funny)
I'm from the Internet. How do I fare in this survey?
Re:I live in the United States of America... (Score:4, Funny)
Parents' basement (Score:4, Funny)
If you live in your parents's basement you will have a crappy mood.
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Funny)
Personally I live in Sweden and ... virgin at 30.
But Anheuser-Busch says that all Swedish babes are hot and will jump in bed with you if you drink Bud-wei-ser?
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:2, Funny)
Wisconsin is a great place to live. Even the auto dealers get in the spirit: http://www.budweiserbeloit.com/ [budweiserbeloit.com]
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:4, Funny)
Nah, they must have got that wrong, you let them drink beer, and then they may have sex with you.
And the ones that will look like Mimi Bobeck. [tvacres.com]
Re:My mood? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Funny)
Hehe ... you should've seen me before!
How living in Portland affects your mode (Score:2, Funny)
The Three R's of Portland
or
Why Portland Sucks
"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity. In a series of articles I will attempt to breakdown and explain these subtle distinctions between the various factions of lily white, latte people that make Portland what it is.
The Artist-Intellectual
The visitor or newcomer to Portland is bound to be struck by the sheer numbers that belong to this group. They seem to be everywhere and are in fact everywhere. They are the reason that all the coffee shops have tables and chairs. The artist-intellectual fancies himself as a poet, a writer, a musician, a filmmaker, etc. You get the drift. They spend most of their days idling around the coffee establishments that one finds every 10 feet. They are usually equipped with a notebook that they use for their poems, journals or their artwork. No one ever gets to see the contents of these notebooks. More often than not they have a beaten and weathered paper back copy of some book authored by Kafka or William S. Boroughs. They love to discuss their favorite subject, themselves. Given the opportunity they will prattle on for hours about their poems, art work or the film they are making. You never get to actually see any of their work but you do get to hear about it. Their lives are like one never ending semester in grad school. Initially I believed these losers but then got to thinking. What would an aspiring actor, artist, musician, filmmaker being doing in Portland Oregon, a latte town? Why wouldn't they be in NYC or LA? Because they're phonies, that's why. Here's how it works with these clowns. They flunk out of college in New Jersey so their parents send them to Reed College in Portland in hopes that they will get their act together. They drop out of Reed but stay in Portland while still on Daddy's tab or some trust find. One Saturday Josh or Seth drifts down to one of the hundreds of hippie craft markets downtown. Some hippie is selling didgeridoos that he made I between bong reps. Josh buy one and takes it home where he proceeds to get baked after which he blows a few sour notes into the didgeridoo. The next day he's a musician. Not really but that's what he's telling everyone at the coffee house and pretending is good enough for a Portland artist-intellectual, in fact it's everything. In three months he will switch his designation from musician to filmmaker and then onto to something else 3 months later. As long as it sounds cool he will keep this charade up and no one in his circles will call him on it because they are doing the same thing.
The Activist
This group is usually comprised of people that used to be part of the artist-intellectual group in Portland. They have gotten a little older and may have finally, after 12 years, obtained a liberal arts degree from Portlan
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:1, Funny)
Well, moving out of your mom's basement will help fix problems with the lack of light and the low vitamin d levels.
Come to think of it, it will probably help that whole "virgin at 30" thing too.
Re:Hm, I dunno. (Score:3, Funny)
That summarises my experience with many people in the US. They are convinced that their country, their way of doing things, their existence is the ultimate mode of being. Having come here from Australia, I can tell you that there is plenty of room for improvement; it seems that they believe they have/are the best of everything simply because they've never looked (let alone lived) outside of their own backyard.
The way you describe Americans sounds a lot like one of the Australians who posts here on Slashdot.
Re:My mood? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dakotas? (Score:3, Funny)
I spent a week there one day
TheOne5 (Score:1, Funny)
I live in Detroit, How does that affect my mood?
Re:My mood? (Score:5, Funny)
Jesus. Sounds like you win the "most depressed" award in a thread about depression.
Re:Sounds about right (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:3, Funny)
Or the fact that when you go to the local store you are surrounded by redneck slack jaws. Around here, rolling out of bed and going shopping in your P.J.'s and slippers is normal, dragging along you 27 kids that have not been bathed in 3 weeks.
They all pile in the pickup truck and drive on down to the store to wander around. Even sams club has them. I feel like I'm living in Alabama, but with snow... even the rich people around here are stupid. At least in Ann-Arbor I could know that the kid at Mc-donalds making me a coffee had a masters degree, sure it's political science, and she cant make a coffee right, but she's at least educated!