Category Archives: US Elections

Judge Dread

Clearly, I was spoiled for news stories to cover last week. Even this week, and more specifically today, a lot of things I’m interested in have been cropping up.

Trump‘s been in the news a bunch, but I’m not going to spend any time on the details of that. I mean, who’s got the bandwidth to constantly maintain the rage?

Seriously. How has he not had a stroke?
A: This guy?

No, the most interesting thing I learned about Trump this week keyed into my interest in the amount of time we spent at work.

[Waste your time at work with the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.] Continue reading Judge Dread

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Kicking Boys

So, wow. Last week’s post was kinda prescient, wasn’t it?

It turns out Moz really is a bit of a monster.

But it's pretty easy to hate the things Moz says
“It takes guts to be gentle and kind”

I should have known he’d have something unhelpful to say on the subject. Devious, truculent, and unreliable, right enough.

[We don’t need to talk about Moz. Let’s career off in a different direction…] Continue reading Kicking Boys

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Twin Peaks

Mrs Stroke Bloke and I finished binge-watching the two original seasons of Twin Peaks last night. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get into the minutiae – you know, spoilers. you’ve either seen it or you haven’t.  And if you have, the odds are you probably got as far as we did back in the Nineties. i.e., not very far.

“Not very FAR?!?!”

[Killer BOB politely suggests that you plough on through this blog post, though.] Continue reading Twin Peaks

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Argo

Long-suffering readers of the blog may recall that I’m a sucker for a good airport.

Monet adore le William Gibson, innit?
Ceci n’est pas la Gare Saint-Lazare

Yes, Copenhagen is a good example. But this past weekend, as President Trump stuffed sachets of ketchup into his hand luggage before heading off on his whistle-stop tour of some of the world’s top religious sites, we were at Washington’s Dulles International Airport.

[Did you catch last week’s Apoplexy Tiny Letter? It’s a nice warm-up for this post.]
Continue reading Argo

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Pop!

It’s Trump -2 days until The Elephant’s Nelly (throwback: 1, 2) is anointed leader of that shining city on a hill.

How do you feel? Exultant? Depressed?

Normal?

[apoplectic.me’s been a little stroke-lite recently. Not today, though. And there’s a stroke special coming next week…]

Continue reading Pop!

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Dark Web

The other day, apropos of something, Prof Paul asked Mouthsounds Steph and I

How well 1-10 do you guys know Dark Side of the Moon? I’m about 12.

That's not a moon – that's a space station
Er, it’s this one, right?

[Read on – it’s not about conflict, greed, the passage of time, and mental illness. Promise!] Continue reading Dark Web

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The Partisan

Let’s just ignore the elephant in the room for a moment, shall we? Yes, for someone who has the ability to speak out against racism and misogyny and homophobia (dons Stroke Bloke hat – or ablism)  to choose to stay silent on these matters is the same as condoning them. So let’s be clear – I’m against these things here, in my life, and in my art.

Does that make me a phobophobe?

Help Ricky figure his shit out in the Apoplexy Tiny Letter. Continue reading The Partisan

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Trigger Happy

I was consulting with some experts in a hospital this morning.

And don't call me Shirley
But that’s not important right now.

That’s right, Leslie Nielsen. The details aren’t important right now. What’s important is that I wasn’t the Consultant. I feel like if you’re doing medicine stuff, it’s best that you be qualified to be doing the medicining.

[More of this sort of thing? Check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.] Continue reading Trigger Happy

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Thought For The Day

My love for BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, as hosted by Eddie Mair, is well-documented on this website (1, 2). During #indyref the first, I remember him conducting one of the better interviews I heard with Scotland’s First Minister.

You should see Blankety-Blank with Lilly Savage!
Eddie & Pals: Call My Bluff’s changed!

However, it’s becoming increasingly apparent – from, for example, the Today programme’s coverage of yesterday’s news that the Westminster government is mulling making substantial payments to the EU to retain financial services passporting rights for the City of London– that The Herald‘s chief reporter has captured a larger truth about the BBC’s output.

[Yes, somehow I’ll pivot this into strokes and art. Read on to find out how.] Continue reading Thought For The Day

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The Elephant’s Nelly – Pt 2

Before being distracted by something shiny last week, I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on with this Donald Trump thing. Why, over the past week, have presidential general election polls continued to see Trump bouncing along at 40%, when he’s indicated that a Trump presidency would look like this?

Hurrah for the Stuffed Shirt!
To be fair, The Daily Mail would take a more celebratory approach

That’s an actual [inside] page from this The Globe back in April, described as the front page we hope we never have to print. The accompanying editorial called Trump’s White House run “flippant and reckless” and “profoundly un-American”. But while this would all seem obvious from within The Globe‘s newsroom, or my Twitter feed, Trump easily won the Massachusetts Republican primary, collecting 22 delegates and nearly 50% of the vote. Meanwhile, over 50% of the voters in the recent EU referendum in these islands voted for an Out campaign fronted by Trump-like trolls.

So rather than dismissing this tendency out of hand, I’ve been trying to think a little about how we came to this pass. Continue reading The Elephant’s Nelly – Pt 2

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