As Thanksgiving approaches, I guess I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Not least, being 0.5% of an American abroad, I get to attend a number of Thanksgiving Dinners in excess of one.
[For more personal news and occasional whimsy – and to join the conversation – check out the Apoplexy Newsletter.] Continue reading Thanksgiving
Last week’s post, The Man Don’t Give a ****, kicked off with a visit to the new James Bond movie, SPECTRE, before running off on a Brosnan-in-a-tank rampage through British foreign policy. But really, what I wanted to post was more in the vein of a classic, Moore-era romp.
So, let’s try this again, shall we…?
[More bite-sized whimsy and absurdité from Stroke Bloke here.]
Continue reading YOU are the next James Bond
Beth and I went to see the new James Bond movie, SPECTRE, last night. Long-suffering readers may recall that Bond has a cameo roll to play in the story of my massive haemorrhagic stroke. More about that in Being a Man Again: Strokes, Power Tools and James Bond.
It feels like seeing the stark, terrible beauty of Glencoe in Skyfall serves as easy reference for all of the parts of my life that were coming together to direct me back to Scotland. The Glen eventually served as a major character in a short story I wrote for the first issue of Brain of Forgetting.
Saw #SPECTRE tonight. Here’s the review. (Spoiler alert!) A lot of things happened. In no particular order. It was pretty. 2 stars.
— Ricky Brown (@ricky_ballboy) November 1, 2015
Continue reading The Man Don’t Give a ****
This weekend, Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth and I staged a wee karaoke party to celebrate, among other things, the first anniversary of my fortieth birthday.
Hat tip to @Pab_Roberts for drawing my attention to the lovely fact that the word karaoke is a bimoraic clipped compound of the Japanese kara 空 “empty” and ōkesutora オーケストラ “orchestra”. We had great fun, and were glad that, that night, the clocks went back in Edinburgh (and the rest of Scotland and the other countries that comprise the islands known as Britain, and Ireland, too – Ed.).
This brought my attention to the issue of sleep and fatigue, which I’m surprised to find has rarely been discussed on the blog…. Continue reading Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up
Over the past couple of weeks, life in Edinburgh has moved along at its usual break-neck (for a stroke survivor) pace. But the news cycle hasn’t stopped. In rUK, they’re in the midst of the party conference season.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Manchester look so nice! The wee fella in the picture above gets a look-in because, in 1933, he ordered a project that would produce a basic vehicle capable of transporting two adults and three children at 100 km/h. And this led to the creation of Volkswagen, which has been featuring in stroke news while I’ve been busy. Although you might not know it, cos no one’s suggested VW has been trying to give you a stroke, right? Continue reading Have a Scooby-Doo
In the wake of last week’s post about Post-Capitalism and cyberpunk (and sure, strokes) BBC Radio 4 embarked on its Digital Week. It seemed Britain’s talk station was forever teetering on the edge of a discussion about what the next generation of roboticisation would mean for us humans. But they never quite got there while I was listening. A bit like today’s news stories.
A good job, too. Because I don’t know about you, Dear Reader, but I’m not up to another socio-economic post today. However, Digital Week did throw up some gems….
[As always, you can catch the lighter flip-side of apoplectic.me in the apoplexy Tiny Letter here.]
J. Alfred Prufrock may have measured out his life in coffee spoons, but here in Edinburgh we use a different unit.
Incredibly, we’re already over a week into the 2015 Festival. This year Beth and I are centring our participation mostly around the book festival.
[For more of Ricky’s thoughts on this year’s Festival,
you can subscribe to the Apoplexy Tiny Letter here.] Continue reading Gerontocracy
Before my stroke, I hadn’t written any creative prose – other than short pieces for my girlfriend – for years. Decades, even. After writing a bunch of stroke-related stuff, the first post-stroke piece of fiction I wrote concerned a guy waking up in the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh with no memory. Quite fitting, I think, for someone who had spent his teenage years among the pubs of Auld Reekie recently woken up from a major brain injury unable to remember the President, the Prime Minister, or his age. As befits a first effort, Dunedin was a little overblown, but I liked it.
But we can get to that later. First….
[First? First, sign up for the apoplectic.me Tiny Letter here.
More stroke, more absurdité, fewer pictures of seagulls.] Continue reading Apoplocalypse!
Nerd Bait’s Prof Paul pointed me to an interesting article the other day. But before we get to that, here’s a track he wrote that has apparently been generating a lot of hits in Japan:
We’re not entirely sure whether this is because we’re getting hits from real people, or a Japanese robot. Nor are we quite sure which which would be cooler. (Spoiler: the answer’s at the bottom of the page….)
Anyway, about that article from The Atlantic… Continue reading Free Fries Here!
Last week‘s visit to Coda Music’s event for Record Store Day was a reminder of the late, lamented branch of Avalanche Records on West Nicholson Street. Not that I need much reminding, as regular readers will know (1, 2, 3).
[Interested in how recorded and composed music is created?
Check out the Prof’s new post at nerdbaitband.com] Continue reading Standard Deviation