Category Archives: Stroke

This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

Urgh. What a horrible week or so it’s been. I survived a massive haemorrhagic stroke for this?!

At around 2am on the morning of Sunday 12 June, a man walked into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. By the time two hours had passed, 49 people who had been in the club had been killed, and 43 injured. To highlight the disproportionate risk of violence people in the LGBT community face, it’s worth mentioning that Pulse is one of Orlando’s most popular gay clubs.

When even a Mail on Sunday commentator is saying this, it’s hard to imagine that America’s incredible rates of gun violence will ease any time soon:

1,600 kids aged 0-17 killed in gun violence so far this year

Continue reading This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

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Vote Man Returns!

I’ve been trying to tell myself that it’s too early for an #EURef post. But even now, still two-and-a-half weeks out, the media coverage is suffocating. It’s hard to focus on anything else. Europe touches so much that goes on in the blog.

Last week, Mrs Stroke Bloke and I had just returned from our trip to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. One thing that really caught our eyes – other than the crazy number of Deloreans on the ferry from Cairnryan to Belfast – was the ease of crossing the border.

“Are you sure this is the Cairnryan ferry, Stroke Bloke?” Pic by Mat Moura at DeviantArt

[Enjoy apoplectic.me? Get close and personal with the Apoplexy Tiny Letter here.]

Continue reading Vote Man Returns!

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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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Something Changed

Hi.

If you’ve been here before, you may have noticed that Mrs Stroke Bloke recently made me Mr Mrs Stroke Bloke. (You’ve made that “gag” before – Ed.)

Is that much testosterone in a marriage healthy? Yes, apparently. (Photo credit: @chrisdonia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now we’ve been married for as long as the three-and-a-half weeks I was in Brooklyn’s Methodist Hospital before my transfer to the Rusk Institute, I thought it might be time to scribble down some thoughts about what just happened – figure out what it was all about….

[Interact some more with Mr Mrs Stroke Bloke and read the Apoplexy Tiny Letter here.] Continue reading Something Changed

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May Day

It’s the Early May Bank Holiday in Scotland today. Ian Wiki confirms that May Day is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival.

The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times, with the Floralia, festival of Flora.

Flora: the Roman goddess of partially hydrogenated sunflower oil-based spread

In explaining the origins of May Day, Ian comes up with all sort of specifics, but kind of slides over the idea that – as Longsufferingreaderoftheblogpaul wrote in a comment to a particularly off-the-wall post – time is social. Harvests. Day and night. Diurnal clocks. Biorhythms and cycles. All that mushy wetware bio stuff I never learned but is real.

Cornwall in England definitely gets into that side of things:

[On May Day,] Padstow holds its annual Hobby Horse day of festivities, believed to be one of the oldest fertility rites in the UK.

Continue reading May Day

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The Hofstadter-Moebius Loop

The last two posts on the #EUreferendum weren’t really what I wanted to write about. But the things that are really exciting me right now needed to be put off a bit because they don’t happen for another month or so. And I didn’t really want to bang on about them for a full two months.

“Dude, you’ve been at this for two months…”

Finally, though, I can get some release. With respect to one of these events, at least.

[More banging on in the Apoplexy Tiny Letter, here.] Continue reading The Hofstadter-Moebius Loop

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Digesta Plaga #8

Hello, and welcome to apoplectic.me’s occasional round-up of strokes in the news. It’s been quite a week….

Awards Pour In!

[More stroke blog inanity and whimsy here.] Continue reading Digesta Plaga #8

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Survival

There are a lot of potential things to write about on the stroke blog this week. The Fabulous Beth and I went to see the National Theatre of Scotland put on the first two of Rona Munro’s James plays. And I’ve been reading about the translation of the Christian Bible conceived by James I’s and II’s descendant James VI of Scotland. So I suppose you could say I’ve been thinking about Survival in  its many forms.

[For more apoplectic.me off-cuts, check out my Tiny Letter.] Continue reading Survival

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2016 AD – Welcome to the Future

Each year, The Fabulous Beth reaches five time zones across the ocean on Hogmanay to wish folks a Happy New Year from the future. You’re all here in the future now, right?

Wait, haven’t I been to 2000 before? (cover artist, Ian Kennedy)

Well, welcome. Come on in. Have a cigar. Or don’t. There are resolutions to think of. Or not. Continue reading 2016 AD – Welcome to the Future

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