…was not a good day for me. B has put his back out, very seriously; for the past few days, he’s been barely able to walk. So I’ve been rushing around doing all the stuff that he usually does – cooking, heavy housework, carrying coalbuckets – as well as trying to get on with my own work on the computer.
Yesterday morning, I woke up with a tachycardia attack. I’ve been having these for close on thirty years and, apart from knowing that they’re linked to tiredness and stress and usually come on when I’m resting, I’ve never been able to predict when one will hit. It’s like having an attack of hiccups, except that the ‘hicupping’ is going on in the heart muscles instead of in the diaphragm. The result is that my heart bangs along at twice normal speed, pumping along my circulation far too fast; I get dizzy and light-headed.
Nine times out of ten, I can end an attack within minutes by relaxing and holding my breath or breathing into a paper bag (something to do with raising the carbon dioxide level of the blood, apprently). But, yesterday was one of the one times out of ten. I just had to ride it out until it finished by itself.
All my doctors have reassured me that it’s not doing any lasting harm, but it’s hard not to get worried. I got up out of bed (didn’t want to wake B when the pain from his back had given him so little sleep), went downstairs, lay on the sofa, went through my relaxation and calming routine, held my breath, breathed into my paper bag, relaxed again, tried not to imagine my heart bursting…
After an hour, I admitted defeat. It was time to wake B anyway, so I came back up to bed and crawled in beside him, told him what was happening.
And it suddenly stopped. “Didn’t you always know I could work magic?” said B.

But it left me feeling pretty ill. The tachycardia didn’t use to leave me with any after-effects. But that was back in the days when I was healthy. Nowadays, I’m left feeling weak, floppy and breathless for most of the day.

So there the two of us were – him crippled by his back, me with hardly any energy. It wouldn’t have mattered too much, but one of us needed to get to a shop sometime that day – we’d run out of bacon and milk. The village shop is less than half a mile away, but I didn’t think I’d manage to walk even that distance; B couldn’t even walk to the car. When I still wasn’t feeling any better by lunchtime, I went next door to John and Pauline, asked them if they were going out at all. As it happened, John had to pop to the shop for a couple of things as well, so he offered me a lift in his car.
Getting to the village, we found that the shop was unexpectedly shut. “It’s Marie’s day off and the first sunny day of spring” Said John, “”Bet he’s out on the golf course.” So we drove on to the next village. which boasts two shops. One of them was shut for lunch; the other was open. This shop is a bit of an oddity – an upmarket little delicattessen-type place that would look perfectly at home in Covent Garden or Hampstead, plonked as if by mistake into the middle of a small Scottish village. But it looked like it would have what we wanted.
The delightfully fey young man behind the counter was overjoyed that he could sell me a copy of the Guardian, pulling it out from beneath a pile of Scottish Records and Scottish Mirrors and Scottish Suns; he was instantly downcast when I asked for bacon. The shop had no bacon – they were awaiting a delivery. Oh dear, B would have nothing for his breakfast on the morrow. But – wait! “Sausages!” he cried, his face lighting up with inspiration. “How about sausages?” I agreed that sausages could and would do very well do for my beloved’s breakfast, and the young man delved deep into the cool cabinet. I was expecting him to produce a packet of Walls or somesuch; instead, he emerged clutching something shrink-wrapped in gold foil.
“Lamb sausages! Organic lamb, locally produced, flavoured with rosemary and garlic. They’re delicious! Do try them!” He held them out to me, beaming like sunshine.
I blanched at the price, but could not bring myself to cast this wonderful young thing back into despair by refusing. Instead, I bought the sausages and went away knowing that I had made somebody terribly, terribly happy. And that’s about the best anyone can do.

B had a couple of the sausages this morning. He said they were tasteless rubbish, and not to buy them again.

MediaWatchWatch was set up in January 2005 in reaction to the religious campaign against the BBC’s broadcasting of Jerry Springer: the Opera.
We keep an eye on those groups and individuals who, in order to protect their beliefs from offence, seek to limit freedom of expression. And we make fun of them.

They have a good post here pointing out that quite a lot of the protesters who are picketing performances of Jerry Springer: The Opera seem to be the same people who turn out at BNP rallies.

(Thanks to this post on Bartholomew’s blog.)

…so I’venot been writing much. We both have to work on the 2007 Elfin Diary and we still have only one computer between us.
I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong with my machine, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the mobo is borked.
Bother. We can’t afford a new one for weeks yet. Bother. BOTHER.

And our neighbour Trevor has died. It wasn’t entirely unexpected – he was a chronic alcoholic, with a failing liver. But it was sudden and shocking all the same. Yesterday, John and Pauline, his immediate neighbours, realised they’d not seen him for days and his car was still parked in its usual place. They have a key to his flat, so they went in and found him collapsed and comatose on his sofa. He had obviously been like that for two or three days – both he and the flat were in a terrible state. An ambulance was called, he went into hosital; we expected that he would be OK for at least a while, once he was geting medical treatment. But he slipped away at four this morning – his body simply gave up.
He had no family but his mother, who is dying from cancer. He has several ex-wives, none of whom would apparently be upset at his passing. His cat died six weeks ago, and he declined from then on. His flat was filled with bottles and empty beer cans, but no food.
He gave up.

I’m pretty upset about it. And there is too much work to be getting on with.

So there’ll be silence from me for a bit.

How will our world end? Will it be an asteroid strike? Planet X? Global warming? All-out nuke/biowar? Will we be turned to toast as the Sun goes nova? Or maybe the technological singularity that’s due to arrive by 2030?
All these possibilities, and many more, are offered for your delectation at Exit Mundi!

——————————

A random collection of quotes from Christian/far-right forums, gathered by Fundies Say The Darndest Things!:
“Heaven is a planet, approximately 4 1/2 light years from the Earth. Hell is 30 miles below the surface of the Earth, under England, the channel and France.”
“Let’s make this loud and clear… I am a bigot and intolerant when it comes to the perversion of homosexuality. Is that clear?”
“…..Arab astronauts were first into space in the year 1344. This history is rarely found in American textbooks.”
“If you compare the Mein Kampf to the Qur’an, you’ll discover they’re nearly identical”

——————————–

Become a Galactic Diplomat!

——————————-
Caution! Do not try this at home!
How to Build Your Own Nuclear Reactor

…That’s what I’m feeling.
I didn’t go to see Doc G after all. Instead, I took a look at the leaflet that comes with my angina medication, the bit that lists all the side-effects. Tiredness – yup, excessive sleepiness – yup, breathlessness – yup, easy bruising – yup; aha, what’s this: “depletion of red blood cells has been observed”? Yes,I could tick off pretty much all the listed side-effects.
So, I’ve stopped taking it. That was a week ago, and I’m feeling a whole lot better. I don’t get exhausted from doing simple housework tasks, I can get up the stairs all in one go, I can breathe deeply and feel the oxygen rushing down to my toes! And I’m feeling a whole lot brighter mentally; I can think faster and my memory isn’t letting me down any more. My personal test of mental acuity is to see how fast I can do a suduko puzzle; before, I was struggling to even complete one a day. Now, I whizz through three or four of WebSudoku‘s Evil puzzles daily.
So – let’s hope it lasts.

As some of you may know, The US cartoon series South Park has had it’s latest episode dropped fom US broadcast because it (allegedly) criticises Scientology.
So South park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have issued this press release:

“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!”
s(igned)Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu.”

Each week, I get an email letter from www.schnews.org.uk, giving the latest news of political campaigns and activism; often it carries nuggets of news that never make their way into mainstream media. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed how I usually post excerpts from this newsletter; I’m in general agreement with much of what they say.
Every now and then, however, the SchNEWS team come out with some breathtaking bit of stupidity. Here’s the latest, about the botched drug trial (my bolding):

The drug trial volunteers were given 1/500th of the dose which had previously been administered to animals (including primates) and yet it produced a toxic shock which nearly killed them. The results of the animal trials have not yet been made public- but either the drug failed to have any significant effects in animals and was passed for humans or it caused toxic effects and was passed for use anyway. Either way it demonstrates that the vivisectors themselves know that animal testing is an utterly useless method of determining the reaction a drug will have on human physiology. The scientific director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, one of the biggest drug and product testing labs in the world has estimated that the accuracy of using animals to predict the human effect is “between 5%-25%”.
Adverse drug reactions now account for between a fifth and a quarter of hospital admissions in the UK. An estimated 70,000 people in England each year are killed or seriously disabled by medical drugs, yet all of these pass animal tests. The scale is undeniably massive. Those who do suffer extreme adverse effects have been bought off with compensation with the proviso that they don’t talk to the press. SchNEWS has learned of one man who has been offered £100,000 after suffering an extreme reaction to a drugs manufactured by major British pharmaceutical company – The catch? He doesn’t get the cash unless it stays out of the papers for five years. (Don’t worry Bob, we won’t tell ’em).

So this one botched trial shows that animal testing is useless? There are thousands of such clinical and preclinical trials on humans going on each year – if animal testing doesn’t work, why is this one ‘bad’ trial making headline news everywhere? Why aren’t we hearing about the deaths of hundreds of trial volunteers?

As for the story about “Bob” – that got my BS-meter clanging straight away. If “Bob” really had suffered undeniable damge from a drug, to the extent that the pharma company involved is bribing him to stay quiet – what is to stop him from openly suing?
Where are all the other patients/trial volunteers who have presumably suffered similar bad reactions from this drug?
What about the doctors who are treating “Bob”? Why aren’t they issuing warnings about this potentially hazardous drug?
In any case, how can the company actually stop the story from getting out? All “Bob” has to do is to tell the story to a friend, and this friend can – without “Bob” knowing anything about it, naturally – put the entire story out on the internet, hiding “Bob”‘s identity but with all the details of the drug and the name of the drug company. (Hey, there’s this really great site called SchNEWS, they love stories like this…) Once that happens, the company will find it utterly impossible to sit on the story. And then “Bob” can go ahead and sue them for all they’re worth.

Considering that the SchNEWS people spend a lot of time showing us all the holes in stories emanating from goverment and other official bodies, you’d think their critical facilities would be more than up to the job of checking “Bob”‘s story. But, of course, “Bob” isn’t part of the government, he’s not one of the ruling oppressers, he’s not a member of the capitalist classes. So he must be telling the truth, right?

I had today all planned out. I’dtake the bus into Dumfries, have a long lesiurely ride, spend lots of time browsing the the library, go around the shops and pick up a few things and have a long lesiurely ride back.
The bus comes past my house; like all rural buses, it stops wherever the passengers want to get on or get off. That’s what makes it so convenient – I don’t have to drag a bag of shopping half a mile home from the village.
Every Saturday morning, it trundles by at around 9.35 or maybe 9.36; sometimes it’s as late as 9.40. This morning, I stepped out of the house at 9.32. Just in time to see it roaring by.
I waved frantically, but it didn’t even slow down. It must have been a different driver this morning – the usual driver knows me and always slows down at my house, in case I’m waiting.
Anyway, I suppose I’ll go into Castle Douglas instead – means walking to and from the village, and there isn’t anything like the variety of shops. And the library’s much smaller.
But at least it will get me out of the house!

I had wanted to take some photos, too, while I wa around Dumfries. As i haven’t yet been able to find a picture gallery plugin for WordPress that doesn’t involve adding code to the page template (which i hate having to do), I’ve decided to start a photo-blog for my pictures. It’s currently at www.valdobson.wordpress.com. I’m not sure I’ll stick with it – there’s only 25meg allocated for each blog, which would probably hold about 100 of pictures and thumbnails, I reckon. Plus, WordPress.com don’t allow Adsense or JS-coded affliate advertising. Which is fair enough – they obviously down’t want to follow Blogger down the path of splogdom. But it would have been a little bit of extra revenue for me.
And I do mean little. I had my first affiliate payment from Amazon last month – a whole £10.99. And this was the sum total from two years of affliate advertising! My Google Adsense program seems to be doing a little better, but I have to accumulate $100 before they pay me anything. At the present rate, I might just get my first payment in time for next Chrimbo.

And, talking about my photos, there are one or two that I think are very good. I may even upload them to MorgueFile.