Avaunt

Hi everyone. I got out of the habit of going online, eh?.

Sorry to hear you have been unwell Christian. And that same shit with the government goes on here, they put every possible stumbling block up they can. If they spent as much time caring about looking after peoples best interests in the first place, as they do about the pieces of paper you MUST have in order to access the help, less help would be needed.

To me, one of the truly galling things is how the civil service pricks who WE ARE EMPLOYING, act as if they are protecting the State Funds THAT WE SUPPLY IN THE FIRST PLACE ! ! !

*fume, pant pant*

Your having a friend and constant companion now will be something at least. 

OK. I have been 90 days without one of the tiny strokes, or more specifically without the traces of them in blood samples. As far as I could tell it has been six months or more since an event, but previous blood samples were not conclusive. I still have not had any long term debilitation from any of the events. Few people are so lucky. I have even been off one of the medications for quite a few months, which is all to the good because one of its (rare, but I have always rolled low on spot-checks it seems )  side effects made coughing or sneezing "socially embarrassing"   lol. Have become accustomed to carrying a change of underwear.

I am also SUPER  fit. I have been going to the gym ( on foot too, 15 minute walk ! It is a highlight of my days, because I have about twenty dogs that I meet most mornings, for loves and pats, as I walk along the track ) four days a week without fail ( missed only six days since I started ) since January the fourth. This morning I did arm AND leg day, hour and a half, highlight was bench 12 reps 4 sets 50 kg, then two sets 5 reps 60 kg for polish then onto the heavy bag till I am reduced to patting it and wheezing.

I don't mean to flex   Look Over Here ! It is me, Flexing !. At 53 and a half, mind you. Be careful, I would put up a picture of my Pecs with very little provocation.

This Gym stuff was the Drs idea. It is the best thing I have ever done if only because it has rid me of my adult-life-long depression. I have had only one half day of the genuine bad-chemicals depression all year.

"Will it help?" I asks him.

"Yeah, sure. Pathologists find it much easier to do autopsies on fit people".

Genuine conversation I had with the mongrel. He has that sardonic Kiwi humour thing down pat. It is strangely reassuring.

Be happy and kind, Friends.

Well, planes fly into town all the days of the week, I see them do it !.

I may have been under the pursuasive influences of our friend John Barleycorn when I grabbed this yacht up and said "Super, I want it", and it was the evening light etc. However, even sober it isn't completely rough, and it even comes with a mooring in the river. I am getting it for virtually nothing, and the engine is going to cost $800, I can join that particular yacht club for $300, they have a slipway and a work berth free to the members. The mast and standing rigging is sound, may have to replace the boom. The main winch is in pieces in the cockpit, which I think is the point the old guy reached when he gave up on the boat.

I am going to get it slipped first, and check the hull fittings, look for pox, etc.

An average in-sailing-condition yacht of the marque is NZ$7000 on Trademe. As you see above, boat stands for bring along another thousand, but if I stop spending money on it at 6, I will be able to recoup it instantly . . .

(Hmm. There was a hollow cuffing sound from the direction of the sea, just then. Father Neptune laughing up his sleeve at me?.)

seventhcircle it would be an arsecheek 2000 kms long, mate. The specific chocolate starfish you refer to is almost ten whole degrees latitude further south, Invercargil, and I went there, I won't have anything bad said about the place, it is BONZER BEAUTY MATE, down there on the worlds ringpiece. In fact, stem to stern, clew to earing, truck to keelson * the average world would be quite proud of a date that was as fine as ours is.

Quite right, all chauvinists be damned to hell. Unfortunately I carelessly lump every "ist" in the list, because one thing I have found is they ALL think only they are justified, all have their list of excuses for why they ought to not be considered a chauvinist, why it is alright for THEM to collectively punish so . . . fuck sexists, certainly . . . feminists too !

Still with me?.

If someone starts their thinking from an "ist" , if they proudly belong to an "ist" , they are part of the problem. There was already a "ian" going that people could have joined, Humanitarian, to choose an "ist" is merely to join the ranks of chauvins. And fuck the sexists, says I

* keeping with the whole nautical theme, you understand

Waves. Going to work (boo. hiss. curse) this minute.

I do not know. "That which is not forbidden, is obligatory" was a saying about the governments crippling hold on innovation and fun, in my youth. Not helpful. Sorry.

On 8/12/2018 at 1:50 PM, St. Apathy said:

I went to NZ, got my first tattoo, tried booze, went bungy jumping.

What what ! Why you no ask me to take you fishing. I'm sad now, I have the sads. :'(

While on the topic, I just logged on to say I have been reordering my life. 52 is the new middle age, you know, so I have acquired a small yacht. I need to do a modicum of work on it, but this summer I am putting it in the tide*, if it is even slightly seaworthy. 25 foot Reactor, one careful owner (mumblewhoneverlookedafteritmumble) but they are fiberglass and extremely strongly built, an acquaintance of mine has one that spent a week on the bottom of Aucklands biggest river going in and out with the tide-flow, and it was undamaged in its structure.

Mine needs a new motor, and the running rigging will have to be replaced, but this, as the local expression goes, is a piece of piss. Another chap has a motor he took out of a damaged yacht, and will sell it to me reasonable cheap, the rigging I could do in my sleep, and Auckland abounds with all the newest sailing equipment, every season something new comes on the market, so getting previously perfectly satisfactory types of any bit of deck furniture is as simple as looking along the marina till you find a flash boat with the latest stuff being rove up. They will often just give you their old gear. My brother got two entire sets of deck furniture and stays and even a sail for his yacht, just for a box of beer.

It has two single, and one double berth, for medium to small values of people. If people turned up in Auckland, I hope they are kind enough to ask me to take them for a sail.

They are not really blue water vessels, but they are quite good for inshore waters, day trips or even an over night trip out to one of our closer islands and back. Which is why I got it, my niece brought its bigger cousin, a 29 foot Young 88. The idea is we can go for family trips in them . . . though as von Moltke said "No plan survives first contact with the enemy".

*My dad never got to sail his yacht, because he never decided it was ready, he always delayed, then he got too old.

I loved Weinscums perp walk. It made my schadenfreude gland swell up. Fuck him, I hope he chokes on self-pity and dies

Wow, Greg, seriously. :)

It has been a strange year for me. Year on Thursday since my dad died. I have really missed him in strange ways the whole time.

On the one hand I am (for the first time since my twenties) quite flush with cash and lots of work. On the other, I don't have anything I want to do, one day to the next. Can only read so many books.

I did go on two dates with a woman, first time in more than five years (not my instigation, her idea and first approach). First one was sort of entertaining/awkward, second one was derailed by some unsubtle questions from her about my financial situation. Why is that a question someone feels is theirs to ask, after only eight hours in your company?. Isn't it enough that I paid for the things, what was the calculation needed past that?. 

I find myself unmoved, one way or the other.

Been working with an elder brother. He is getting more and more forgetful, like our dad did. The third time in the week he filled his car in the morning, I was confused "Mate, where did all this fuel go, got a leak?".

He was getting siphoned by a neighbours shithead son, and literally didn't remember filling the car Monday then Wednesday mornings. It is a worry, as he is 64, has two kids in high school, and will need to work for at least another decade . . . 

Oh well, thought I would say hello and see how you all are. Hope it is good for everyone.

I read numbers two, three, four , five and the first one of the double entry on seven. Ms Clarkes book shits on all the others. Even if they came at her book in phalanx, they were merely making a delay and noise before their defeat.

1984 would be an Honourable opponent though. Certainly it made more of a dent in my mind than the others. Foundation was good for what it was, but eventually I got bored by it, not enough rocket ship gun battles for my taste at the time.

First Dave Cat photo "aha, I found a loose thread, I will unravel him".

Someone please 'shop a Kookaburra into replace the frog, then it will be even more perfecto.

Hey, I read that, like about thirty years ago ! Holy fuck I am old.

I don't remember my opinion about it, except frustration at the ending.

On 1/18/2018 at 6:08 AM, Lou K said:

That's crazy about your mom, bro. You should bring home a black, muslim man for the trifecta and just drive her right over the edge,

Great minds think alike, Brother. I had the sentence composed exactly as so to the word trifecta, was going to write " and flip her trolley " as the denouement, but that is mere localised cant for the same effect.

My William Low had ( so far as mum has understood just yet ) so many sons live to marry, five generations before us, that in all stark, statistical likelihood, "No, I am your Cousin, Ade "/Vadermisquote. I am going to for sure bore you guys with a dossier  on Mr Low when we get more detail.

I just today got a Christmas Card in the mail, posted quite timely on the 13th of December so some 9 or 10 weeks on the way. Thank you for the kind sentiment, Pooka and her lovelies. Yes, it found me very well, and made me feel the feels.

I have had every single test the system can think of throwing me at, spent most of a week sitting in waiting room after waiting room. The results have been through the hands of the two best circulation specialists in the Auckland hospital system because the first guy found no cause in the test results, of the  hemorrhage events, and asked permission to use my tests in a new study that studies ostensibly negative results looking for patterns this might reveal, being run by his trace-mate from the Auckland Uni School of Medicine. One result of which was in effect the researchers second opinion on my tests being sent to me.

Every measure of my vitals, heart, lungs, brain, arteries, literally came back as perfect. Reading it off to me, my GP said I am fitter than his thirty year old patients. The nice lady that mapped my neck circulation with the machine that goes "ping" waxed lyrical and told me in an uncreepy voice, the creepy idea she had that my "arteries could be opened up and laid flat and people would eat off them, they are that clean" . . . I know that seems like I took artistic license, but literally were her words, in the darkened room, with her hand resting lightly on my neck.  :O

The only thing they can think might be at the root, is the three operations I had in behind my kneecaps, damaged tissue might be making little blood clots as I walk about. Nothing to be done there.

I'm still alive ( Wait, what? That isn't a Joan Armatrading song? What is with my memories lately? )

My mum is still doing the family genealogy thing, and has found that my fathers mother ( The classic self-satisfied "harmless" racist, early 20th century New Zealand version ) had an actually African great great grand father, who was born and educated in "British" West Africa, changed his name to William Low, emigrated to SCOTLAND and married a Scottish lass, had at least 7 sons and lived quite at peace with his new countrymen as far as we have found out so far. By which I mean he paid taxes, did not get summoned before the assizes, paid at least two sons' apprentice fees, etc.

Is it wrong of me to be fascinated, and wish very much to know more of him, his life and times?.  Cause, if you GAVE me a book to read of the lives of the other ancestors of my family that were his contemporaries . . .  well, shit, no, of course I would read it, I read anything and everything, so of course I WOULD read it, and one of them WAS hung as a highwayman . . . However, William was born in Equatorial Africa, and moved to Snowyland Scotland . . . that is some unusually interesting shit right off the bat.

Nanna Mclaren woulda shit her britches, lolololol
"

Very much of his work has dated poorly compared to his contemporaries, imho, even the stuff written in the later half of his career. It was great at the time though, I loved Tool of the Trade, for instance. It is strange to think that I used to eagerly await a new novel from him, as long ago as the 1980s. I musta got old or something.

That is a lot of hair still. ( Do not cast "detect envy" if you wish not to know of my faults )

I got the most evocative and beautiful card from Ade, a striking work of art. I shall certainly frame it because it is both beautiful and of genuine sentimental value to me, I don't understand  what I did to deserve it, but I really liked the feels it gave me.

He also ( In an Egregiously British bit of delicacy I am suspecting, the dear ) did not "burden" me with an address I can reply to it with. As he did once before I seem to remember. Someone correct this for me please?. :)

I remain in perfectly sound health, though I am still under doctors orders, this hardly counts as much because one of them is "Oh, sure, you are perfectly able to go to work".  *grump*

Mark has baby AND house, wow ! You need a dog too, complete the set. :P

Congratulations, Malin, best wishes, hope for Twins for you, Twins are great fun !.

Dave, Harpers super casual wave 'n smile is exceedingly cute. You lucky fella

Ok guys, forgot to come back to you with "This is me, still breathing" post. I is doing the breath thing still. No sign of any little blood clots, back at work though not doing any lifting at all, going for a long walk every night if I didn't spend all day walking as I often do.

Went to see Thor movie. Funny, the Korg jokes are the essence of Kiwi or maybe Maori humour, you could hear the people watching it with me doing the "lol. this is funny on two levels, especially so because just imagine the John Foreigners laughing too" sounding laugh. Owed morethan somewhat to the late, great, Billy T. James. Movie was pretty good I thought.

On 10/24/2017 at 10:29 AM, A. Heathen said:

No way. This is a trick to sell you more drugs.
KEEP THE CHEESE, BROTHER

You got it. I mean, ultimately, why does one want to go on into some future if one has to leave behind ones childhood love to do it?. I mean, it isn't as if I was even promised it was sure to be successful anyway, more like a "You know, might help, might not, so why not?" sort of thing.

I am compromising. I do respect my Dr and admire him too, and would hate to dis-respect him to his face, so I am just lying to him instead. "Yes, Grant, I cut the cheese and milk right out when you told me, Tofu and almond juice is the new (non) fatty lipid for me!".

Hope you all got some fireworks ready to celebrate Parliament not being fireworked in 1605. Best wishes. Tigger

Oh my goodness, that is so cute Pooka. Tell Romana from me that the medicine really did make Tigger feel better.

Thanks for the kind thoughts, guys.

So, I slept pretty much all day yesterday, feel a lot better. Did some tests today, no obvious signs of damage in my eyes or brain.

my GP, who is a surgeon also, is pretty matter of fact when it comes to stuff in his trade. Points out I am 51, two of my grandparents and father had strokes, so it is kinda likely I will get them. I don't smoke, am quite fit, medium low cholesterol, not the least over weight in fact have lost 4 kgs from my lifelong "fighting weight", so there is nothing I can do to improve things really. Might have to cut out cheese from my diet, curses, and shouldn't sit around reading comics 'n books as much as I do.

Put me on baby aspirin from now on. He said given symptoms, and the family history, it was almost certainly a tiny blood clot in my eye blipping around 'n busting the capillaries. Taking it easy for a few more days, statistics basically say if you don't get another in 7 days, you might not get another in a subsequently significant time period. 

Me being me, I wormed at him about that phrase , just means "Patients at 50 are likely to have a stroke every X years, X less 1 if family history, X less 2 if also high cholesterol" so any stroke in next week is related to event, after that, is just likely to be stroke I was going to have anyway. :\  lol.  I mean to heed the wake up call. :)

Really nothing more than normal living life sort of event of course. I went to a party dressed as a pirate, got my photo took with my Nephews, trying to get one of them to email me a copy so I can show you guys.  Damned good looking Pirate I made :) Not the best pool-playing outfit though, lost every game.

Wow. Man, this certainly passes for Fame, bro, your character got Guest appearances in entirely other universes now?. *bows down* *takes off pirate hat* 

:) If only I had friends I could tell about your comic, but you beat me to it.

Hmm. Don't know what to do except be truthful, if I can't do that here with you guys, I guess I can't do it anywhere. Not to be worried you understand, as I have recovered quickly and entirely for the moment and after all we all know we are mortal, nothing has really changed, but I may have had a small stroke on Tuesday. Sort of did.  :\

It remains to be seen what happens further. Four blood vessels went in the back of my eye, it was super dramatic and accompanied by flashing lights and confusion, and a very curious shaped patchy vision in my left eye which in a moment went entirely blind :'( I was the scared soft toy at that point, let me assure you.

25% likelihood it was the transient stroke critter thing that my dad suffered (Which I suspect it is, if only because of the speed of my recovery, just like he did each time), 50% likely to be just the fact I was jumping about under stress, the Ophthalmologist* would not be pinned down. "Likely to happen again?" "Oh, certainly, quite likely given your family history" he says, suddenly animated and interested . . . then seeing my slightly worried, one eyed stare, reassuringly says " You might not get another for a decade, or even more !"

:(  Thanks, that is surprisingly less reassuring than you expected I suspect.

My sight has already come back to normal, I just feel a little tired and head-achy today.

HOWEVER. To put this ENTIRELY in prospective, just about as he was kissing me off and out the door, his computer rang him, an associate somewhere said, "help please, Kan" and sent live skype of a patient that had presented with both her eyes torn open in a car accident. He said to me "up, go away right now" and left me sitting there snatching up my stuff and saying thank you to an empty room. So, you know, I am in quite good shape really.

Chance I might drop dead of course, so I thought I might pre-empt the reaperman, say goodbye, thanks for all the arguments and friendliness and interesting opinions. Will get one of my nephews set up to let someone know if I snuff it. Love to you all, give the kids lots of hugs etc. Wow, this made me so tired, mostly the correcting spelling mistakes.

Tony, Tigger McLaren

* I know this is unkind, but I can not help it. I was in my optometrists office within 32 minutes of the stroke, they quickly checked me out with TWO of them tag teaming, all the tests taken, results printed out and an admission form in my hand 15 minutes later, called me a taxi, sent me to Auckland's public hospital that  specialises in eye surgery, where I was instantly resubmitted to tests smoothly and professionally done in even swifter time, sitting at the Specialists desk not much more than two hours after event.  Diagnosed, prescribed, and a promise of further testing regime co-ordinated with my own Dr, out the door by the three hour mark. Cost to me?. $60 at my Optometrists $50 taxi fee, hospital fee? Zero.

Socialism. It works, dear friends.

On 10/8/2017 at 11:18 PM, seventhcircle said:

sorry i was interpreting truism wrong. i pull the 'not my mothertongue' card.

 

No worries, sorry I took exception to it. I take such pains to (try to) be clear that sometimes when people don't understand my point I jump to the wrong conclusion. My bad.

I read another book by Ann Leckie, set in the same universe as her Trilogy, but nothing like as dignified, profound, or even entertaining. Quite good all though, but something like a teen fiction novel. Provenance it is called.

On 9/29/2017 at 10:38 PM, seventhcircle said:

Also: I disagree with the notion that the kapital is an evil book (if books can be evil is a different question...), or that you could compare it to mein kampf. one is the theoretical approach to the hows and whys of the working class getting shafted in a capitalist society, while the other is a long metaphorical explanation of a racist ideology. thats fundamentally different.

 

 Of COURSE I don't equate the two books, I didn't even offer an opinion myself on either.*  I said "It is a truism", not that it was true, It is perceived wisdom.

I wasn't even saying they were equally valuable from a historical point of view, though it would be hard to find two books that did so much to the flow of history in the last hundred years. My point was just to explicate the idea that the vast mass of people have firm, fixed opinions, about much of literature, and the vast majority are talking about stuff they have not ever read. In fact, those with the firmest opinions almost inevitably have not read the works. The only way you can be in the right, is to read them yourself. When the work in question was so important . . . some of us at least ought to have read it so we know what is really at stake, can say "Hey, don't be stupid, this topic is too important for spurious comparisons, of course dRumphs book is more sinister and dangerous than shicklegrubers".

Though I don't disagree with the idea that this or that book ought not be read because of the history it carries, the stronger, more repugnant the history, surely the more important the work?. And if you discount reading mein kampf because of the horrors the guy went on to commit, you can very well say the same for much of the historical record. Don't read Marco Polos voyages, because they burnt out a village, in the depth of winter, condemning its women and children to death, on their way back from Tartary, and from there onward, writing gets no better re its baggage. )

*( This happens too much to me here,  how people read what they want into things I VERY CAREFULLY word. Why would someone go to the trouble of using the specific word "truism" if I meant "my opinion" instead? )

On 9/26/2017 at 10:56 AM, seventhcircle said:

ok. and pardon my ignorance, but why do you read stuff like that?

One reason to read such things is, if you don't, the only thing you will ever "know" about them is what some "enthusiast" tells you "is so". Thinking for yourself is a habit, if you read things for yourself, then and only then, can you judge them.

Christian thinks one thing, he is widely'n'deeply read for sure, it would be foolish to  discount his firmly expressed opinion, but equally one can never forget the possibility that on some particular subject he (or anyone else) might be wrong, he would himself agree. The only way to know stuff with some hope of firmness, is to busy oneself with reading widely and deeply.

That said I am a pacific islander, Heyerdhal is super famous down here, Maori in particular love his early support of their (before his kon-tiki voyages) disputed oral histories of their voyages, and I never heard word one about him being racist. Does this mean Christian is wrong? no, of course not, I lean towards thinking he is right, in fact, knowing what I do of him, and of white assumptions of the early 20th century . . . but this just proves my point, if I had read more than "Voyage of the Kon-tiki" 40 years ago, why,  I would have no doubt, right?.

It is a truism that "mine kampf" and "Das Kapital" are wrong, and evil, but this is merely opinion of the status quo. If it suits you to go along, then by all means, don't read, and never know for yourself.

'

I will have to sell some stuff . . . like kidneys or lots n lots of blood, but . . .  I WILL DO IT !. It is really a no brainer,  I will be redeeming my red dead.

New console, tv, and the game . . . might be quicker (initially cheaper, eventual horrible costs) to join grinder, look for 'n old sheila that plays games?.

On 9/5/2017 at 12:01 AM, dogpoet said:

Not my point, Tigger: the steampunk lot write nostalgic fiction in a setting that has more to do with '60s retro kitsch than the Victorian era itself.

I do take your point at avant-gardeism and just what you could put in a book during the nineteenth century, though: just look how long it took to publish Paris In The Twentieth Century.

my entire post was written in excited drunkenness, I saw something very funny (remembering my . . . singular sense of humour . . . ) in the idea of them writing "steam punk" in Victorian times. Somewhat lost in translation, yet a'gin, my kryptionite.I did understand what you and Christian were talking about though.

I have re-read the three ancillary books by Ann Leckie. Superb. So very good indeed. Quite the most satisfying re-read I have done in years.