As long-suffering readers of the blog may know, one of the potential changes a stroke survivor might go through, is an increase in the frequency of anger. The UK Stroke Association suggests meditation to ameliorate the negative emotional changes that a patient go through.
[Maybe a jaunty ditty from the Apoplexy Newsletter might help?]
At this stage of my recovery, some of the potential triggers for post-stroke anger – fatigue, frustration – are less of a problem than they might have been previously. Or, to be more accurate, maybe the new normal accommodates coping techniques or adjusted expectations to navigate them. But the news and current affairs I’ve been subject to here in Scotland this week have been just too much.
A lot of people I know and respect have been going on social media breaks over the past year or two. Unfortunately, I feel obliged to stay aware of the broadest range of developments from the broadest range of viewpoints and have come to the conclusion that the best way to do that for now appears to be… Twitter?!
Also unfortunately, even the news stories which might seem superficially positive this week have been pretty terrible.
Tories claim @ricky_ballboy is part of The Yoof, in desperate attempt to distract from #SyriaStrikes, #Windrush scandal, UK govt legal challenge to Holyrood EU continuity bill, etc, etc, etc.
Might just work. (pic via @joejglenton) pic.twitter.com/W5La9yqhzT
— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) April 16, 2018
Had the pleasure of spending an afternoon in the company of a young David Lammy approx 1MM yrs ago. Pleased to see he’s more or less the same bloke.
About time someone held institutions like the UK govt and the BBC to account for their increasingly brazen racist attitudes. https://t.co/3VXxpuchcc
— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) April 16, 2018
Yeah. It’s not great. Maybe Morrissey, the Pope of Mope and Tiny Ricky’s hero, can help me get through the week…?
Was meditating a while back on what it takes to abandon an artist’s work. Just saw #Morrissey trending on the Tweetie Box, and it turns out he’s been kind enough to help me out. No mas. pic.twitter.com/gi5tloexTw
— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) April 17, 2018
Yeah, after his latest hateful outburst Moz and I are through. I’m not even going to link to a report on it. I’ll leave the dissemination of right-wing hate speech to Aunty Beeb.
So rather than latch onto the negative, I’m going to accentuate the positive. No regular post this week. Instead, here are a few links to prior meditations on where we are and where we might have been. Next week, back to Walt Whitman, I think…
Goodnight. And please, don’t have nightmares.
I replaced twitter with a once or twice a day read of washpo slashdot and politico and am much happier for it, despite the news they report. You don’t need real-time politics. It makes you sad.
So even though I may miss the next amazing tweet, I will note that my favorite tweet ever https://mobile.twitter.com/tricialockwood/status/289148349003730947?lang=en is a few years old… so if there’s another one that good I’ll hear about it in due course.
Oh, ca c’est magnifique!
I’m glad that your stripped-back regime is working out. But it feels like it would be difficult to maintain here and now. I remember, as a Scotsman abroad, being quite taken aback by the quality American broadsheets’ approach to news, where it seemed that there was at least an attempt to report The News in the majority of the main section, with opinion and comment separated onto their own specific pages.
This, of course, is not the British tradition. The Scottish newspapers are dead on their feet, despite the open goal of the most newsworthy years in the country during my lifetime. The Grauniad, for all my complaining, has at least retained an interest in quality investigative journalism – in partnership with the NYT and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. But that seems quite separate from the paper’s general reporting. A once or twice daily visit to what I guess would be The G’s equivalent to the kind of sites you mention – their Daily Politics blog – is like having a stroke brain: you kind of check out what it says, and simultaneously watch it to see if it’s leading you astray. Which is exhausting.
It’s a blog, with the apparent invitation to participation and democracy, but I once came across a remark on it which was quite simply an obvious lie, or so wilfully careless to make no difference. I politely pointed it out to the folks with the bylines, and never heard a thing. The lie stayed in place.
So, endless fury and vigilance it is. That can’t be bad for a stroke survivor, right?