I’m going to have to go back on the betablockers – I’m seeing Doc G about it tomorrow.
My tachycardia attacks are getting more frequent and more disabling; they rarely last for less than five or six hours now. Any kind of stress seems to set them off now – travelling, having a late night, missing a meal…
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Daughter no2’s Big Wedding. Half an hour before we arrived, the tachycardia kicked in – and I’d forgotten to bring along my pills (not that taking one when an attack starts helps a great deal anyway). I managed to get through the ceremony without falling over or blacking out, but had to be driven away straight afterwards for a long lie down, missing the reception completely. I’d been so looking forward to it, meeting all those friends and rellies I hadn’t seen for years, catching up with news, seeing the grandkids, just having a good time…. So I was really really pigged off at getting so ill.
Then, yesterday morning, 6am, I was woken up by another attack, one that lasted until after 2pm. And all that I’d done was to stay up late watching TV. Even when my heart was back to normal, I was wiped out and exhausted, hardly able to do anything for the rest of the day.
So. Blah. Can’t go on like this. So. Hallo pills….
Why don’t multiple personalities ever develop multiple personality disorder?
So, the other week I joined an LJ community. People often post questions for debate there – abortion, politics, society etc. So today, I thought I’d post my own question for debate:
What use are pet animals?
I’m not talking about working animals; I mean pet animals that have no practical use at all. Sp why do you keep a pet? What are your feelings on pets?
That was less than four hours ago. So far, close to over a hundred comments have been posted* The huge majority of them along the lines of “Oh, I love my darling XXXXX – he/she/it loves me to bits, is always there when I want a cuddle and gets me out of bed every morning by crapping on my face, the little scamp!” (OK, I made up that last bit; but I can wish, can’t I……) And of course, they’ve posted their pet’s pictures, and told stories about their pets and cooed and gooed over everybody else’s pictures and stories.
Only about eight or nine have been considered, sensible replies of the sort I had been hoping to get, along with some that made me giggle. One of my favourite replies was “Pets are for people who have trouble with social interaction – which pretty much sums up 107.3% of LJ_UK members, hence the overwhelming support for animals in theis thread. If I want a pet, I’d adopt an Austrian child and keep them in my basement”
Tony, I want your babies! But, alas, I think you’re right about LJers, on this evidence. I’m disappointed – I really want to know why people like keeping pet animals. But I’ve ended up feeling like an alien anthropologist puzzling over some strange tribal custom. I just Don’t Get It.
Anyway, I’ll end with something that I replied to a poster with, and which sums up my position:
I like animals. But I also respect them, as fellow creatures. Which means that I don’t do them the indignity of projecting human traits onto them or treating them as substitute humans or comfort toys.
* Just gone 11, and the comment count is up to 113.
Alic Sebold’s The Lovely Bones was built around in interesting and (as far as I know) original concept of the afterlife: rather than there being a single one-size-fits-all Heaven where everybody goes, everyone gets their own individual Heaven – a place where they are truly happy. Although each heaven is specific to each individual, they are not alone; all the Heavens are 3D Venn diagrams and those with similar ideas of happiness find their Heavens intersecting to greater or lesser degrees.
In this cosmology, there is of course no Hell. Evil people (like the serial killer who raped, murdered and dismembered Sebold’s heroine) find themselves, like everyone else, in their personal idea of Heaven; which is presumably (although Sebold doesn’t explore this) populated with willing victims whose idea of heaven is to be tortured and killed. Though-provoking ideas, with a good story attached too.
Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead is built around another concept of the afterlife: that everybody goes to an afterlife and stays there only while there is somebody alive who remembers them; then they well and truly vanish. Brockmeier’s afterlife isn’t described as heaven; he makes it sound like any largish, quiet US town, with gardens and squares and sunshine and lots of pleasantness. People have jobs and go shopping and walking and make love and talk. There are orphanages for the children (who never grow up – nobody ages here). People don’t change from their pre-death selves – blind people are still blind, crazy people are still crazy, selfish people are still selfish. So presumably the evil people are here as well and still evil, but we see no sign of them and nothing really bad seems to happen.
However, I can forgive Brockmeier that particular inconsistency in his cosmology – the guy can write well enough for it not to matter. The story is set in the near future, when global catastrophe is occurring and international tensions and wars are increasing. The Afterlife is starting to get crowded. Then, suddenly, it starts emptying – somebody has released a devastating virus that is rapidly killing off every human. Eventually, the only people left in the Afterlife are those held in the memory of the last human alive – how long can it last?
Towards the end, the story got pretty meandering. Characters kept getting introduced only to do very little to advance the plot. But it was still worth reading right to the end.
An initial irritation for me was the constant and blatant use of the Coco-cola brand name in the narrative – the heroine works for the company, every soft drink is a Coke, every crushed soft drink can is a Coke can, and so on. But it rapidly becomes clear that Brockmeier is only doing this to give the company, and global corporations generally, a damm good kicking. He really, really doesn’t like them and they are the villains of the book. If this novel ever gets filmed, this is going to be one product-placement opportunity that won’t be taken up.
Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi went undercover at a US evangelical Christian “boot camp” for new converts. This is an extract from his book about it.
An Atheist Goes Undercover
Some of it is hugely hilarious, as the camp leaders exorcise the demons of astrology, anal fissures, philosophy, intellect and “disconnect” from their flock, or tell stories about banishing the demon of Harry Potter from their lives. But overall, it sounds frightening, a solid weekend of scientology-like brainwashing in which people expose their most private secrets and undergo group therapy techniques designed to break their psychological resistance.
Taibbi came away from his experience with worrying conclusions:
Afterward, a frightening thought shot through my head. It occurred to me that over the past decades, any number of our prominent political leaders (from Jimmy Carter to Chuck Colson to W himself) had boasted publicly of their born-again experiences, broadcasting to Middle America an understanding of their personal relationships with God. But whereas once these conversions were humble things — Billy Graham whispering and putting his hand on W’s shoulder in Kennebunkport, or even (in the case of Tom DeLay) a flash of recognition while watching a televangelist program — the modern version might very easily be this completely batshit holy-vomitus/demon-exorcism deal. The thought that any politician could claim this kind of experience and not be immediately disqualified from public service seemed utterly terrifying.
…that our government always kept in mind the things that really mattered to the British people.
Like how we would all still be able to enjoy a nice cup of tea after all-out nuclear war:
Government officials planning food supplies said the tea situation would be “very serious” after a nuclear war.
“It would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week could be ensured,” they stated.
From the comments thread on Slacktavist:
I’ve always asserted the great dividing line in religions is not between monotheism and polytheism, but between the attitude of “please god(s) go away and don’t hurt me” and “hi god(s) sit down next to me and have a beer.” – Hapax
Discuss.
….Got some time out on my own today. Yesterday, me & B went to Dumfries for shopping and stuff. Along the way, we popped into M&S and bought a pair of smart trousers for B for next month’s Big Wedding. Once we were home, B discovered he’d somehow got the wrong size. Since the return bus fare to Dumfries is cheaper (way cheaper at the moment) than driving there (and the bus picks up and drops right outside our house), I went on the bus this morning to exchange the pants, alone so that B could get on with some work of his own.
I like going shopping on my own. B hates shopping and always rushes me along. But I like strolling and browsing. This morning, I went looking in every charity shop along Friars Vennel, all five of them. Mainly, I was looking for something that I might be able to wear myself to the Big Wedding – my trusty old LBD that I keep for weddings, funerals and “smart casual please” is getting somewhat ancient. However, I refuse to spend a huge amount on something that I’ll wear perhaps once a year, and I always prefer to reuse and recycle anyway, which is why I went to the charity shops (though I must confess to lingering quite a while in the womenswear section of M&S…). I didn’t find a dress, but I seeing all the hats made me realise that I really need a hat as well – after all, I am the Bride’s Mother. I didn’t buy a hat either (though I will at some point), but I did find a good stout pair of walking shoes – I really have to get back into walking regularly these days; I’ll never be able to manage any five-mile hikes any more, but I really should be able to walk into the village and back without having to stop for a breather.
On the bus to Dumfries, me and the other oldies had been accompanied by a group of giggly young teenage girls; they were on the return journey as well. Having evidently spent the morning enjoyably mall-ratting, they were even more loud and giggly, screeching and singing at the back of the bus. They weren’t at all annoying – but they did prompt me to somewhat gloomy thoughts about my own distant youth. I felt like turning round and telling them to enjoy it while it lasted.
But instead, I gazed out over the fields, where the spring lambs were tumbling and running…..
The ever-dogged Richard Webster has come up with more news on the Jersey Childrens Home murder investigation; the skull fragment that was discovered buried under concrete flooring inside the building is, according to archaeologists, no later than Victorian. The evidence suggests it could even be Neolithic, as there is a Neolithic burial chamber close by. So the police are no longer interested in it.
Strangely, this news has not so far been reported in the media beyond Jersey. I wonder why?
So me & B were giving a lift to Son to get him to work. Driving along, Son told us about an old schoolmate of his who had got into a fight outside a Preston nightclub early on Saturday morning and was now in a coma, on life support and unlikely to pull through.
“Don’t know why I’m so upset, I didn’t know him that well.”
“When you’ve known the person involved, it’s always upsetting. Because you can put a face to the name. And, also, you know that it could have been you.”
Then Son told us that the taxi-driver who usually picked him up from work had been in Lockerbie at the time of the bombing and had helped to pick up parts of the aircraft from the streets.
“He saw some awful things, but he said that the worst thing was the smell – kerosene and burnt meat.”
“You can shut your eyes to bad sights, but you can’t shut off smell.”
We talked some more, about terrorism, bombings, politics; the road and the sky and the landscape slipped by.
B told about how he had been driving a truck home from Glasgow that night, his route taking him along the A74 past Lockerbie.
“If I hadn’t stopped for a meal first, I could have been caught in it.” As it was, he’d been less than an hour away when the plane fell from the sky; without a cab radio, his first inklings of disaster had been when the oncoming traffic evaporated, a dim red glow appeared on the horizon and dozens of ambulances from Glasgow raced past him. His first thought was that the Chapelcross nuke station had gone up; so he was almost relieved when he was stopped at an improvised roadblock set up by an AA patrolman and learned the truth.
“I don’t care” said B, as we pulled up at Son’s workplace “how bad the bastards leading the US are, there’s no excuse for killing civilians who have nothing to do with what the government does. No excuse. It’s like bombing your mother and me because you don’t like Gordon Brown.”
On the way back home, the sun came out. Along with the tourists, toodling along at their usual 40mph so that they could marvel at the landscape. B had just pulled past three carloads of them when a pheasant darted into the road in front.
Pheasants are hopeless at avoiding cars on the road; they seem to run in exactly the wrong direction, every time. This may be some sort of evolutionary trait designed to fool predators, but cars aren’t interested in chasing pheasants and will just keep on going in a straight line. Consequently, all the roads around here are littered with bright bloodied heaps of feathers.
We were going at well over 70, so there was no chance of avoiding it; it hit the front of the car with a bang.
“Stupid stupid birds…..”
“At least it must have died instantly…”
“At least it didn’t come through the windscreen…”
“Oh well, another meal for the crows….”
At that moment we passed by a crow-sized heap of black feathers in the middle of the road.
Crows 1, pheasants 1.