Sometimes, it feels like the blog is being hounded by an abstract concept.
The land, maybe. Or mythical creatures. Or The Onion‘s conception of Joe Biden. Right now, though, it’s something else. Maybe you can guess what?
[Get more whimsy and free gin* at the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.]
A day after the result of the #EUref came in, Mrs Stroke Bloke and I hopped on a train to London. Like the narrator of this wee ditty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy8d1bQYvmM
“Smoke lingers ’round your fingers / Train, heave on to Euston…”
(Smiths sceptics might find the above performance surprisingly muscular)
It was, y’see, an opportunity to check out an exclave of the soon-to-be nation of #Scotlond. By this time, Scotland’s First Minister had already reached out to the Mayor of London to discuss how their remain-voting areas could ameliorate the impact of Brexit. Continue reading London
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:
In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.
— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) June 19, 2015
Continue reading This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours
Some years ago, Mrs Stroke Bloke and I noticed that – not much like J. Alfred Prufrock – our relationship could be measured out in international soccer tournaments.
Back in the summer of 2010, I was introducing my new American girlfriend to a Scottish pal in a Brooklyn bar as we watched (was it?) the USA v England in South Africa.
And as well as being beautiful and funny, she already understands the offside rule!
But as Scotland fail, yet again, to qualify for a major tournament at France 2016, how do I find a team to give me a rooting interest? Read on…
[Join the conversation at the Apoplexy Tiny Letter here.]
Continue reading Stroke Bloke at Euro 2016
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.
[Enjoy apoplectic.me? Get close and personal with the Apoplexy Tiny Letter here.]
Continue reading Vote Man Returns!
After My Name is Joe, Pts. 1 & 2, I realised that the conclusions to which I was coming about memory – and more importantly, group memory – were so grindingly prosaic that only prose fiction could do them justice.
But that, as they say, is another story about a young woman’s travels on the continent for another time.
Fortunately, last week we headed off to Ireland where I could think about both that and other stuff.
While Mrs Stroke Bloke was sitting an accountancy conversion exam in Belfast, I headed off to the Ulster Museum to see an exhibition of winners and short-listed entries for the 2015 BP Portrait Awards. Continue reading Portrait
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.
I wonder what a Philip K. Dick deep in his shroom cups would make of the #Eurovision pixelgasms pic.twitter.com/GHTtHz3Gd0
— Pat Kane (@thoughtland) May 14, 2016
Continue reading My Name is Joe 2 – Partial Recall
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.
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
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.)
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
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.
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.