Hello, and welcome to the penultimate apoplectic.me post of the year. Maybe. I was thinking that the only post after this one would be some sort of end-of-year round up, but that’s not necessarily true. [It wasn’t – Ed.]
Either way, it’s time to pull together a couple of strands from recent posts, and tie them together in a nice big festive bow.
[Give yourself a wee Christmas present, and sign up for the Apoplexy Newsletter here.] Continue reading Lies, Lies, Lies – Pt. I
So, this happened this week.
Annual viewing of #LoveActually well advanced. Which, as every right-thinking person knows, is a [_______]* movie.
— Ricky Brown (@ricky_ballboy) December 13, 2015
Love Actually provokes quite heated opinions, I’ve found. True to form, my declaration elicited what passes for a shitstorm on my various social meed feeds.
Continue reading [________] Actually
Anyone who’s ever subscribed to the Apoplexy Newsletter, read this blog, or met me, will be unsurprised to read that The Fabulous Beth and I went to see Billy Bragg play Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall last week. And those sorts of people will probably also find it predictable that Billy brought along a quirky support act, made an obscure and humorous reference to Craig Gannon in his stage banter, and was playing in the aftermath of the United Kingdom’s (sic) decision to open a new campaign of war.
I was particularly taken by Duke Special – for it is he – because he has ridiculous/awesome hair, had covered half of the merch table with an eclectic range of different types of art, and he sang a song called Last Night I Nearly Died. (That’s enough rule of three – Ed.)
Hey! Last night about three years ago, I nearly died!
But that wasn’t all that went on last week…
Continue reading The Band of Möbius
Last Wednesday, I attended my class’s graduation ceremony from the Masters of Science programme in Creative Writing (?!) at the University of Edinburgh. As I wrote at the time…
We all had a lovely time. And I’m proud to be able to say that with the help of Beth and Paw Broon, I’m a post-stroke graduate! I have to say, though, that while it was nice to punctuate a wonderful year, it’s a bit concerning to be leaving the leafy groves of academe for a highly competitive world 18 years after I did it the first time.
Fortunately, Book Week Scotland was taking place out in the real world at the same time. And that helped ease the transition….
[In the Stroke Bloke privacy spectrum, get the good stuff and have a chat over here.]
As Thanksgiving approaches, I guess I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Not least, being 0.5% of an American abroad, I get to attend a number of Thanksgiving Dinners in excess of one.
[For more personal news and occasional whimsy – and to join the conversation – check out the Apoplexy Newsletter.] Continue reading Thanksgiving
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Saw #SPECTRE tonight. Here’s the review. (Spoiler alert!) A lot of things happened. In no particular order. It was pretty. 2 stars.
— Ricky Brown (@ricky_ballboy) November 1, 2015
Continue reading The Man Don’t Give a ****
This weekend, Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth and I staged a wee karaoke party to celebrate, among other things, the first anniversary of my fortieth birthday.
Hat tip to @Pab_Roberts for drawing my attention to the lovely fact that the word karaoke is a bimoraic clipped compound of the Japanese kara 空 “empty” and ōkesutora オーケストラ “orchestra”. We had great fun, and were glad that, that night, the clocks went back in Edinburgh (and the rest of Scotland and the other countries that comprise the islands known as Britain, and Ireland, too – Ed.).
This brought my attention to the issue of sleep and fatigue, which I’m surprised to find has rarely been discussed on the blog…. Continue reading Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up
People love making transatlantic comparisons. Think Sting’s Englishman in New York. Think Toby Young’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Think Jeremy Clarkson’s unfortunately abortive attempt to get himself shot in The South.
[Stroke Bloke’s back from holiday. To make up for missing last week, I commend to you this post that predated Ada Lovelace Day on 13 October.]
Continue reading Crosstown Traffic