Category Archives: Podcasts

Modus Operandi

So, the last post here on apoplectic.me cast a pretty sneering eye over Public Health England’s Heart Age Calculator. And if you think that an eye can’t sneer, welcome to the stroke blog.

Nah, the boy did ok.
‘Aren’t you a bit young for this, sonny?’

That’s pretty much the modus operandi around here – bitter cynicism leavened with fun. Skip down to the bottom of this post if you just want to hear some of the best Scottish pop ever.

But it turns out that this time, I wasn’t alone in my cynicism.

[Maybe there’s actual upbeat stuff in the Apoplexy Tiny Letter – check it out] Continue reading Modus Operandi

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Bad Behaviour

For a couple of weeks now, after considering why people are working longer and later hours notwithstanding the deleterious effect on their health,  I’ve been wanting to consider the wider question of Why do companies do bad things?

But, I *want* to be a cowboy, Uncle Joe!
“Relax kids, it’s all cool. Here, have one of these.”

[Kick back with more whimsy and a blog soundtrack at the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.] Continue reading Bad Behaviour

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Fontanelle

So, this happened this week:

Well, not The Treacherous Brain live. Nor my own trepanning, trepanation, trephination, or trephining. Both of those events happened a while ago, now.

[You need this week’s Apoplexy Newsletter like a hole in the head.] Continue reading Fontanelle

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Clonidine For The Masses

When you’re a new parent, you find yourself thinking about sleep a lot.

Thanks, narrator Samuel L Jackson!
“I’ve had it with these MFing tigers on this MFing plain!”

As well as banging on about being a new parent all the time. But, yes. Sleep.

[Hey, you! Wake up & check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter. And read on for more sleep stuff.]
Continue reading Clonidine For The Masses

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Death Mettle

Death Mettle. That’s some Punderdome 3000 level shit right there! Amirite?!

Carcass are not amused
“Stop it. You’re killing us.” – Carcass

What I’m saying is, gird your loins, y’all.

Y’see, in the aftermath of last week’s laughfest about the movie Ghost and the experience of death, Paul pointed out that there’s a deep vein of pop culture death to be mined when it comes to the subject of death…

[This week’s Tiny Letter tuneage isn’t death metal, I promise. Probably.] Continue reading Death Mettle

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My Name is Joe 2 – Partial Recall

Last week’s post on the nature of memory ended with a scene from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – the (loose) inspiration for Blade Runner.

‘Does she know?’ Sometimes they didn’t; false memories had been tried various times, generally in the mistaken idea that through them reactions to testing would be altered.

Eldon Rosen said, ‘No. We programmed her completely. But I think towards the end she suspected.’

But that’s science fiction, of course.

Continue reading My Name is Joe 2 – Partial Recall

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My Name is Joe – Pt. 1

A search of apoplectic.me for the word “memory” comes up with 50 hits – almost a quarter of the posts on the blog. Hardly surprising, when one thinks that in the weeks following The Event, I couldn’t remember my age, where I was, who the person in the chair next to my hospital bed was, or whether or not I was the Vice President of the United States.

Needs to stay clear of D.C. till some shit blows over.
“I’m in Mexico, and if anyone asks, my name is Ricky Monahan Brown. If you catch my drift.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, memories come back. Even now, Beth notices that my memories of thirty or more years ago seem to be more readily accessible than those from this week. Maybe you find the same thing. Continue reading My Name is Joe – Pt. 1

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To a Tee

Interested in Nerd Bait? Before digging into this week’s post, find out how The Wee Mermannie got the girl – deleted scenes from our Book Festival Gig are part of the bonus materials included in the first issue of the fabulous FREAK Circus!

FREAK Circus: Issue 1 Available Now!

The beautiful paperback artefact is here. The electronic version that includes the unexpurgated prose version of The Tail of The Wee Mermannie is here.

Right. Now. Back to the blog.

Last Monday, I noted neuroscientist David Eagleman’s remark that the idea that we are unitary people over time is merely an illusion of continuity.

The people each of us individually are at 10, 30, 40, “share the same name and some of the same memories, but we are quite different as a person.”

During the intervening week, I wrote a short story about a man who may – or may not – have lived a succession of quite different lives. Yet there are common themes in those lives. For example, in each case, the character’s father disappears from the scene in his early years.

Really? My dad died when I was 11! And mine! And mine! And mine! And mine! And mine!

It wasn’t until I was reading a passage in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel All the King’s Men last night that I realised that my fiction had been taking a sideways look at Eagleman’s theme…. Continue reading To a Tee

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YOU are the next James Bond

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.

I got yer metaphor for British foreign policy right here.

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

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The Man Don’t Give a ****

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.

“So, Doctor, do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to divert resources from combating shadowy Eastern Europeans to fighting Daleks.”

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.

Continue reading The Man Don’t Give a ****

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