“Mini Manic Moments” In reading my whittle I would page you'll see an actual mini manic moment as it unfolds. Before I discuss my inventions and the way bipolar disorder effected my creativity I'd like to share a little history with you just so you won't take me too seriously. Bipolar disorders on the other hand should always be taken seriously.

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You will fully understand the meaning of mini manic moment shortly and here to wit come to understand, as I have, the reason why my poetry is what it is, Mini Manic Moments!! I have spent days or even years going back to the same old poems trying to make them rhyme even though I know poetry doesn't need to. My theory is that if a poem has impact, a message that's heartfelt and is meaningful to someone if only to yourself, then the rhyming shouldn't matter at all. I am obsessed with trying to make things rhyme and for me there's no rhyme or reason I reason with rhyme, that is, until today.

I've come to find during the writing of this very first mini manic moment that my years of writing poetry has been a form of therapy for me without even knowing it. I wrote Common-law Copyrights yet only remember one poem from grade school, Abou Ben Adhem may his tribe increase, awoke one night from a deep dream of peace. That's all I had remembered of the poem, just its opening lines. Have you ever heard of the poem? - IBetUHave.com.

I looked it up on Google and found it. Did you read it? - IBetUWill.com. What I do remember is being an extremely poor reader and getting called on to read Abou Ben Adhem out loud to the class. It must have been in the fourth or fifth grade. The teacher made me start over about 10 times and a lifetime worth of embarrassment, for most, was focused into that 3 minute living nightmare for me.

When I was 12 I had a good friend who's parents died, Alec, and I talked my mom into becoming his legal guardian so he could live with us. I remember roughhousing with Alec one day and hitting my head on the concrete sidewalk in our side yard. When I came to I had amnesia and was scared to death even though I had only been knocked out for a few seconds. We were actually outside waiting to be picked up to go on a Boy Scout camping trip. I couldn't figure out why my camping gear was outside until Alec explained it to me.

Then I made a big mistake, I allowed Alec to talk me into going on the camping trip anyway and he would clued me in on everything in the tent with the Cliffs Note version of my friends and family. I think Alec was just as scared as I was thinking he might end up in an orphanage if held responsible for the accident after being repeatedly warned not to play so rough by my parents. I didn't want to see him end up in an orphanage either, and besides, he was the only person who could fill me in on the past. I knew some stuff about some things then nothing about others.

Later in life, the few people who knew about my amnesia would often ask me what I had forgotten and it seems stupid to have to tell them, - “how the hell would I know!” Needless to say back on that camping trip Alec spent hours coaching me. I would say, yeah yeah, I remember all that and then he'd go on to something else and I'd not have a clue as to what he was talking about. Sometimes I reflect on an old memory and wonder if it is a real memory or just a memory planted by Alec. It's hard to trust your memory if don't know if it's your own. Looking back, I now realize that this might be the subconscious reason I wrote the poem Plastic Essentials.

Maybe this is why I was a full blown alcoholic by age 15. I would inject vodka into oranges and take them to school with me, not to mention dozens of other ways. I turned to drugs shortly thereafter and it might have saved my life, at least for the moment but ultimately I always failing in my search for happiness. For the second time today I now realize this is the reason I wrote Poem For Sale. I have been answering subconscious questions through my poetry. This mini manic moment has tied the questions together and they now answer themselves.

Now I didn't write my first poem you realize until I started having strange dreams about 5 years ago. I tried to conditioned myself to wake up the moment a good dream ends and write it down before it's gone forever and on August 11, 2001 just one month before 911 I jumped out of bed and wrote this for you. It's now called Sooth Silent Song but was originally titled Jellyfish Angles. I still remember the dream and being totally asleep and telling myself “you gota get up” and I argued with myself in my sleep over how hard it would be and then I remember being told “but you promised,” I remember getting up and scribbling it down and going back to bed. The next morning it didn't even look like my handwriting. Now I didn't scribble down the whole poem but enough to inspire me to write the rest.

I have a substance abuse related poem called The Infinity Inn. Do you want to read it? - IBetUDo.com Now this was a poem that all I had was the rhyming last words for and no subject matter in mind at all, it became a mind twisting riddle trying to put it together. I don't think you will find any additional words in the english dictionary that will rhyme, I used them all. Maybe some therapist somewhere can use this kind of rhyming technique whereby the patient is given the rhyming end words and has to come back the next session with a completed poem, food for thought. Let's see, I think I will call this technique“Infinitem” association. Worked for me!! - but the domain name is already taken.

I remember how much my dad loved me and one of my earliest memories with him was when I was 6 or 7 years old. I use to sit by the pool with my father and wait for him to finnish his martini in hopes he would give me the little cocktail onion in the bottom of his glass. I could make that little onion last as long as his next martini which was about 30 seconds. There has got to be a better term for recovery because the fact is, you never recover. It makes as much sense as saying you've recovered from death just because you attended your own funeral. The things my father left me that I still have today are a solid silver flask with his and my initials on it, a gold plated money clip in the shape of a dollar sign and an old pair of suspenders with hand painted images depicting Egyptian pharos and the pyramids.

Not to change the subject, but after all this is a mini manic moment, I have just come down, I thought, from a 72 hour manic run on yet another new concept. Unfortunately my new concepts usually cost me money I don't have and yet when I believe in something I usually take it as far as I can as fast as I can. This time I bought 60 domain names (pdf complete list 84 names for sale) of which 45 are part of an advertising concept and betUdo is the brand name. Here again I'm back to rhyming, check it out. The concept, finding and purchasing all 44 co-brand names, writing the copy, creating the web site, linking all the domains back to the concept page was done in a single 72 hour period. Just for the record today is September 10, 2006. For some people 72 hours is just 3 days, but when you only sleep 2 hours every 36 hours it's like working 6 days and with 5 days being a normal work week, I can now take a 4 day weekend and not feel guilty about it considering I put in a full day of overtime to boot, see how it works.

Anyway here's the link again to my betUdo brand and co-brand internet advertising concept. Is it brilliant or manic? you decide, or perhaps it's just interactive manic web art. There would be another 20 names on the list but I'm down to 85 cents in my PayPal account and 48 cents in my checking account and because I only have $18 cash in my pocket to last 4 days I can't buy the domain name ManicMurmurs.com yet and it drives me crazy thinking the domain name will be gone if I have to wait. I'm not manic am I? - UBetIAm.com, besides, I've already created the logo above in Pixar Typestry, an old old application that still works great using the last beta MacRenderMan rendering engines before they stopped supporting the Mac. It took about 15 minutes while I watched the news. I love doing graphics, so much so that even though I was later able to buy ManicMurmurs.com I like the WhittleOnWood and WhittleIWould.com names much better, agreed? - beUdo.com

I've never owned a savings account except just one as a child and was forced to put my entire allowance into it every Saturday morning. This was suppose to teach me the benefits of saving money, a concept I soon abandoned. Now a dollar a week isn't allot I suppose but we are talking almost 47 years ago you know. Am I wrong or does having an allowance mean you can spend it? Anyway, my dad had me cash out my first and last savings account one frosty morning to buy my Christmas presents. I don't mean money for me to spend on presents for others but for him to buy my present from him. I would have rather gone without, now there's a concept I should have learned. So it was ho ho ho off to the bank we go and I can honestly say that was the last withdrawal I ever made from a savings account. I now spend it before someone else takes it and believe you me the IRS is pissed. I'm lucky they haven't taken my last possession which is this laptop. It's true, I have always been irresponsible when it comes to money, and you wonder why, so where was the FDIC when I needed them cause I sure don't need them now. It's just green paper until you have nothing to wipe with. I even owned the domain name ElusiveGreen.com at one time and I recently checked and it is still available if anybody likes it.

Many people tell me I'm a genus, mostly therapists and shrinks and I absolutely hate it. I think it's just a technique they use to help build your self-esteem, I still hate it. I barely graduated from the bottom tenth of my high school class yet developed the original TiVo concept 8 years later, yes TiVo back in 1977, back before VHS when there was only Sony Betamax. I've invented lots of things, received patents and was even invited to an exclusive trade show held inside the Patent Office in Arlington Virginia commemorating Thomas Edison's 140th birthday. Only 50 exhibitors were invited and I had booth number one. I remember the horrific hangover I had when I arrived to only then realized I didn't want to be there at all. I'll go into why at a later date. The guy next to me had a real invention, a scale of some sort that could weigh things in a weightless environment. It had been scheduled to go up on the next flight after what turned out to be Challenger's last, so you might say he was extremely bummed given what had happened just a month prior. When I found that out my hangover seemed inconsequent to the headache he must have had. Am I going to write more about my inventions and mentors later on down the line? - BetIDo.com.

Perhaps I'll tell you about some of my less famous new inventions like my 7 day paper plate concept back in 1979 or the self-monitoring electric steam iron I built back in 1982 that shut itself off when left unattended for 15 minutes. I took it to my patent attorney to get a patent search and he tried to discouraged me noting that I would be spreading myself too thin and then went on to tell me, - "it was a shrinking market with the advent of permanent press fabrics". I still remember how I felt when Sunbeam introduced it 3 years later as I prepared my first bankruptcy filing. Better yet, how about the flashing side view mirror for cars that uses a one way mirror containing a bulb behind it back in 1986 so drivers can see your turn signals in your side view mirror. How about the in camera posterization special effect technique I developed and received a experimental grant from CBS Sports to further develop it after I was written up in Parade Magazine back in 1975, or the use of stroboscopic flash tubes instead of high wattage bulbs in the rotating buckets on emergency vehicle light bars. Those old fashion light bars were a pain in the neck with their hot filaments constantly burning out. Maybe that's why our prisons are so over crowded today, the police had been conserving use of their old fashion light bars so they wouldn't get stuck change having to change burnt out bulbs in the snow and rain.

I'll cover some of the my more important inventions later. These were not just concepts, these were all working prototypes except for my 7 day paper plate, just drawings on that one. I'd love to see the 7 day paper plate before I die and believe you me I just might because I'm too lazy to die. The concept would use one good solid paper plate with 7 layers of plastic laminated to it with tabs you could grab to peel off layers directly into the trash can and then reuse the plate another day. Now it doesn't have to be 7 layers obviously, I just used that figure because of an old joke about 7 day underwear, although for the life of me I can't remember how it went. Stepping back a moment, that Too Lazy To Die line might work as a title for a poem or web site or even a movie title, oops too late, I now own it and its pointed right back to this page.

I invented the Stereo Phone Mute and manufactured it myself back in 1982 and in 1984 the patent was granted for it. It was also selected as one of the 100 most innovative new product of 1984 at the June Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Chicago where it received the prestigious Design and Engineering award. It was a simple device that connected to your stereo and also to a phone line. When you pick up the phone to make a call your stereo faded down and then back up when you hung up. Incoming calls would also mute the audio and you could even set a secondary sound level should you decide not to have the music fade out all the way. We're talking 1300 plus exhibitors with most of them having complete product lines. Not bad for working out of my garage. I had a tiny 10 foot by 10 foot booth on the concourse (nice term for basement) and sold it through Hammacher Schlemmer and The Sharper Image back when the The Sharper Image only had one retail outlet in San Francisco which was more of a product testing facility to see what might work well in their catalogs. I ended up loosing my shirt, not to mention my house with its 5 car brick garage. The product was absolutely fantastic but I knew virtually nothing about marketing back then. I call those my Sunbeam days. You would think one would stop inventing after that, but not me. Are you thinking I should have taken my own best advise? - IBetUR.com

I designed the TOOLBOX Trigger control System that is still being marketed through Kapture Group, Inc. and I was the director of marketing there for 5 years. This is a system I designed when I decided I had to specialize in one specific field of photography if I was going to make a name for myself. Inventors are stubborn and maybe not all that bright sometimes.

Example: I bought the The Black Book which was used by the big advertising agencies looking for the hottest new photographer, this was back in 1988, and saw these wonderful pour, spill and splash stop action high speed photographic shots. I decided I could do better so I started designing and building all kinds of black box stuff spending several years perfecting the system and technique. Then I come to find The Black Book photos weren't real pours, spills and splashes after all, but custom acrylic models that were hand crafted at great expense. Now that I could do it in real time I could knock that stuff out all day and I enjoyed doing just that until I was convinced to again go into production and do the marketing. If I had known then they were all fake shots I would have never pursued it. By the way, NASA bought several systems from us and we needed money so badly onetime that when they went 30 days past due I told them to send the units back. They didn't know how to respond and admitted nobody had ever posed that scenario to the accounts payable department before. We got our money quickly thereafter.

Wouldn't you know it, it turns out I was just plain manic depressive for all those years. Now they call it bipolar and it can work for you and even harder against you at times. I just want to create things, not go into production with them, that's not what I like to do, I'm a conceptual design engineer, nothing more, and again, nothing less. I won't use the words that best describe how it feels but needless to say the depression and extreme depressive episodes that sometimes follow a manic episode are enough to darken one's soul. Has the suicide hotline ever called you? - IBetNot.com. The worst thing you can do is to turn to drugs and alcohol. The best thing you can do if you suspect you might have a similar disorder is to talk to your doctor about it, he or she can help, but like alcoholism it never goes away and will probably only get worse as the years go by if left untreated. I'm not a doctor and I am only expressing my opinion based on my own personal experiences.

Currently I have ManicMurmurs.com, TooLazyToDie.com
BipolarBios.com and DayOfNewDawn.com pointer to my whittle I would web page. If you have any productive thoughts on a web site development concept for any of these names please let me know and I might consider donating them to a worthy cause.

I'm not looking for sympathy or anything like it, not even popularity, although a few new friends would be nice now that I've moved to Florida. I'm just writing for and by myself for the world to read if they care too. How people make blogs entries everyday is beyond me. Perhaps it's because I only peck at my keyboard having flunked typing back in junior high. Perhaps I hit my head on something, I can't remember but I know I could never learn to type and without spell-check you wouldn't be able to read this at all. My brain just doesn't work that way. Later they tried to tell me I was dyslexic or dyslectic but I don't really view the world backwards, do I? - IBetUDo.com

It seems we've come to the end of the first installment of what I now call “Mini Manic Moments”. I do have an unfinished poem by that name but it would make a far better short story. Maybe I'll tell you about it next time. Do you want to visit my personal web site? - UBetUDo.com

Do you think I'm wasting my time? - BetIAm.com

Would you like to read one last poem dedicated to my loving daughter Monica? - betUdo.com

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Email: peat@ipsna.com

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