Decisions, decisions

I decided. A new blog it is.

Chapter 6

See you there.

Sunday Stumble

It's been a busy couple of days so I'm going to cheat and stumble tonight's offering.

A Truth:



A bit of WOW type fun:



Some Disney (It's a Small World...)


An interesting snippet about Serotonin (for all your SSRI poppers and PWMS):


and finally

something from the "What WERE they thinking" category:


and a sunrise pic of mine


Right, I'm off. I have a birthday party to plan...

Self-adjusted

Tigger rang me tonight, all the way from Queensland. She missed me and wanted to say hello. I haven't seen Tigger in the flesh for some years now, she's been gone an awfully long time.

There are times when a less well-adjusted PWMS than myself might conceivably feel a little cheated by cross with the limitations of doing things, especially traveling to places that are much warmer than their already-too-warm habitual abode.

Lucky I read all those self-help books and straightened out all the bendy bits, eh *nod*

KISS

Poor Flattie had a wee meltdown over the contents of that last post and he asked me when I'm going to publish something on my blog that he can understand. So I though I would use the KISS Principle and start with a dream I had last night that I am certain he can truly empathise with; I dreamt I had really hairy legs, red-hairy legs. I found it quite unnerving and had to check when I woke up that I did not, after all, have hairy, red-haired legs.

And they weren't red at all.

I was going to say something else, but the horror of recalling that nightmare has driven it completely from my mind. Bugger.

Mathematically speaking

Just carrying on the maths theme from last post (yes, yes, I know, I do carry on), the current rAnDOm randomness over there >>> is a site all about numbers called 'What's Special About This Number?'. It has some interesting stuff on it and I learnt something there today. Yes, even I am capable of squeezing in one more scrap of useless information.

Today I learnt that 6 is the smallest perfect number (personally I think 35 was a better year), 38 is the last Roman numeral when written lexicographically (I like watches with Roman numerals), 53 is the only two digit number that is reversed in hexadecimal ( I wasn't too bad with hex, but octet used to drive me nuts), 55 is the largest triangular number in the Fibonacci sequence (Da Vinci Code, anyone?); 220 is the smallest amicable number (so the rest up till now were unfriendly numbers?); 666 is the largest rep-digit triangular number (not to be confused with triangulating the Number of the Beast), and 9999 is a Kaprekar number (my kind of quirky).

That's it. Nothing else to see here. I've been barbecuing my left leg on High continuously for over 24 hours and I think I broke my glass. I gotta go look for another one. While you are waiting, Keifer Sutherland has discovered the unfortunate truth of spending 48 days in the slammer for being pissed behind the wheel - 48 is, of course, not only exactly 2 x 24, but is also the smallest number with 10 divisors. He's not really such a big number after all, is he...and he used to be so cute, too.

brb

Just like me.

Hypothetically speaking, just for argument's sake, if it was your birthday today, and if you were turning 42, and if, perchance, you believed in numerology and added 4+2 and came up with seven six and then realised that 6 (and 7!) was a divisor of 42 (God Bless advanced Maths), wouldn't you feel you were very, very special in a Douglas Adams sort of way?

I thought so. 7 1/2 million years of computing can't be wrong.

I was just having a conversation with the Birthday Boy about having a love affair with oneself (not that sort, you grub) and how much living sometimes scares me, and what I do to attempt to keep my glass half full and that the 4 years and $12,000 I invested in my pieces of paper called diplomas was nothing to do with computers and everything to do with acquiring the tools I needed to hold my ground against this pesky disease that wants to eat me for tiffin. And that to do it I had to learn to like me, because I'm the only person I have to like, and because we aren't usually afraid of the things we like.

It's like reverse psychology and guerrilla warfare all rolled into one, innit...

How many counselors does it take to change a light bulb?
One, but the light bulb has to want to change.

Are we not all light bulbs in this Great Counseling Session called Life?



PS - you can see how I could have had trouble with Boolean Algebra and Logic Gates, eh? God Bless 80% pass thresholds and skinny teeth. Oh, and Birthday Boy for being better than me at webdev in ASP. It was my fault we only got 90% and missed the "Stefan" Merit.

Heavy petting

What does any self respecting blogger do when they are just too tired to write a rivetingly rambunctious post?

That's right, they post pictures instead.

First - Monorail Cat



Thomas making the most of the grapevine's lack of growth yet this spring. It makes a change from walking all over my keyboard.

Next - Lap Dog


Matey, who is staying with us, having a little quality "bloke time" in the Railway Room.

Last - On the wrong side of the law


Matey and Nushie waiting for the Magic Door to miraculously open and let them in when Nush pats it.

I'd post a pic of the freaking big hole where the left front indicator lens on my car used to be, only, I haven't taken one.

No, I will not do it now, it's dark. And raining.

Joshua has left a new comment...

on your post "Good Quality Zen":

Dear Friend It's nice for me to have found this blogg of yours. I read
and saw what I could, my time is short. I sure hope and wish that you
take courage enough to pay me a visit in my PALAVROSSAVRVS REX!, and
plus get some surprise with my work there. My blogg is so cool! Don't
think for a minute that my invitation is spam and I'm a spammer. I
often come across with so good but lonely bloggs in my friendly random
search, my search for a public that may like or love what I POETRY
write and also CHRONICLE, among other types of Artistic Texts: we all
search HAPINESS and JOY, don't we? Well I'm realy happy to have found
YOU. I've learned and seen a lot after much more than 10.000 bloggs
I've visted in the late three months. And I will, like Titanic's Kate,
keep on and on and on and, like the song, feel that I 'Still haven't
found what I'm looking for'. When you come and visit me feel free to
comment as you wish and, TOGETHER, let's make blogguing universal,
realy universal, as well all the essential causes that bring us all
together by visiting, helping and loving one another this GENTLE way.
Let me tell you that some I visit feel invaded and ofended that I
present myself this way in their blogs and rudely insult me back or
post a mockery post on me.Some think I'm playing the smart guy who
wants to profit in some way from (and with) others curiosity and
benevolence.Some simply ignore me.Some aknowledge that It's most
important we all take notion that there's milions of us bloguing arownd
the world and thus vital any kind of awareness of eachother such as I
believe this my self-introduction card and insert apeal brings in. May
you be one of those open and friendly spirits. Don't feel obliged to
come and visit me. An invitation is not an intimation. Know that if you
FOR A SECOND click on one of my ADS I can earn a lot of money and so
can you and there's no shame in it. I would feel happy and rewarded if
you did click it FOR A SECOND because certainly I WOULD DO IT FOR YOU
in case you had them and asked me. I think that in the end it's to
UNITE MANKIND that we became bloggers! When in my blogg don't see
language as an obstacle but as a challenge (though you can use the
translater BabelFish at the bottom of my page!) and think for a minute
if I and the rest of the world are not expecting something like a broad
cumplicity that you're a part of. Remenber that pictures talk also and
I have de most delicious ones. I Hope this message of mine had helped
you in some way. See you soon, MY FRIEND. May the LORD bless our HEARTS
and fill them with PEACE AND MOTIVATION to endure our Lives the best
way we can. A FRIEND joshua (sic)

---

Can you say "FUCK OFF JOSHUA"?

**snort**

I don't publish spammer's links, numbnuts.

Good Quality Zen

I am reading a book. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's really weird and I'm half way through and still unable to decide what the fuck he's on about when he talks about the undefinable er, quality of Quality. Thirty-three years since it's first publication, has been described as "the most widely read philosophy book, ever."

I wouldn't go quite that far, because I don't fully agree with Robert M. Pirsig's hypothesised undefinability of Quality as a harmonious combination of rationality and mysticism, not if one considers that it is probably a dynamic comparative scale by which everyone can measure their own particular situation.

But the descriptions of the road trip are nice.

In more progressive news, this is the current world population.


(Click it to visit it's owner and cool buddies)

I'd like to think that the majority feel they live a high quality life, but somehow I don't think so.

I'll be finished it soon and then can go back to reading "Women Who Love To Much. At least that one only operates under the erroneous premise that all women in dysfunctional relationships come from abusive and alcoholic backgrounds.

After that lot, I think I'll read some Arthur C. Clarke - human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life will seem like child's play now.



Zen, anyone?

Planter boxes

Planting things usually grows some sort of crop - like fruit or veges or flowers.

I like flowers. I don't have enough of them.

But when you plant bodies, you don't reap any crop, you just lose a little more land. Sometimes a lot of land.

Check out the 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World


We saw these at the Auckland Art Gallery back in the late mid? late? 90s. Fabulous, they were.

What a shame I'm being cremated, eh?

On the road

Heather and Ian went to Auckland tonight to see Fall Out Boy. They ran into the rain by Matamata, while Auckland looked like this



Each dot represents a lightning strike, either cloud to cloud, or cloud to ground covering a period of one hour. And tonight, Nature gave a fabulous light show for hours, right over the top of where they were.

I think they probably missed it.

Anyway, Stumbling around tonight waiting for a txt to say they were on their way home, I found this site. I promise not to even think of attempting to replicate it when I win Lotto. I think one is just the right number.



Don't you?

We've run out of peanut butter and I only did this week's shopping tonight *rolls eyes*

Raking it in

I've been gardening *sigh* and I did too much. Again. And I got severely told off. Again. So I had today off, which meant playing taxi and cleaning up the house and doing the washing and cooking the dinner with time out for a meltdown and a few hours sleeping it off while the pills kicked in.

An ordinary day, in other words.

Maybe I will write that book, and call it MS ORDINARY - Tales of a Reluctant Traveler.

Sounds better than MRS - that implies marriage. One of those was probably enough, I think... not that anyone's asked me recently lol

Feeling groovy

I have been reading one of those books I heaped scorn on a week or two back, you know, MS books and when Deb gave this to me, I thought "oh another book about people with MS". But now I finally got around to reading it and it is not as I expected.

The book, When the Road Turns: Inspirational Stories About People with MS by Margot Russell is just exactly what it says it is. These people do stuff, they have full time careers, they travel and they climb mountains and go to the South Pole. They are, almost without exception educated, financially secure and seem super-human in the face of something that makes it hard for me to drive 4kms to town when it's warm.

I would that I could say this book was empowering for me, but I can't. I found it to be the opposite in my financially rocky, single parent of teenagers, struggling to get through each day unscathed existence. Until a little piece not far from the end, by a man called Mark Brennan called "Living Well", which, instead of chronicling the physical accomplishments of individuals on their travels, celebrated the travels a Soul encounters as it journeys inwards through life with Multiple Sclerosis.

But all through it I found vindication, validation for the things that I feel, and the way I think. I saw that while I may feel at great variance with most of the people I associate with in some rather fundamental aspects, my footsteps mimic those who walk a path parallel to mine, every day.

Sometimes I cannot walk
so I sit
Sometimes I cannot sit
so I lie
Sometimes I cannot stay awake
so I sleep
Sometimes I cannot sleep
so I stay awake
No need to hurry
no need to wait
Mark Brennan

And his piece had more empowerment in it than the rest of this still terrific book put together.

Burning, Grumpy Mole

What's moley and grumpy and burns hot?

No, not my left leg (well that, too)! The Grumpy Mole Saloon, scene of some of my more drunken misdemeanors like dancing pissed on tables during my student days. The place you could go to pick up a drink and a chick to screw over the road in the gardens and no, I was never picked up in the Mole, nor screwed in the gardens, but thanks for thinking of me. It was truly a hot place to be 7 years ago.

It was hot today, too. On fire even.



It seems they had a wee fire. What a hell of a way to call closing time, eh?

In other news, the Oldies and H traveled down-country today, past the mountain, but they couldn't see the sooty top for cloud cover. They had a safe and uneventful trip, unlike this poor bugger, hidden in his crashed car down a gully for God knows how long.

The remains of a body found in a car in bush in south Waikato today could have been there up to 20 years, police say.

Detective Sergeant Kevan Verry of Tokoroa police said police were advised this morning by a pig hunter that a car had been found in the bush with a body in it.

The bush was on the north-western side of State Highway 5, several kilometres east of Fitzgerald Glade on the edge of the Mamaku Rangers, Mr Verry said.

Police said the damaged car had the remains of one person in it. more...

UPDATED LINK

I hope someone out there now finally has some closure.

Bouncing puppies

Now, I don't know about you, but I tend usually to follow the "less is more" principle when it comes to attire. I don't have anything against nudity or semi-nudity if it's tasteful and appropriate, but I do draw the line at flashing my boobs in public just because I have a pair of rather large ones.

The Christchurch casino has apparently boobed big time with staff asking a punter guest to cover up or leave after she fronted up there with rather a large proportion of her sizable assets on display.

Helen Simpson, 33, from Nottingham, was wearing a low-cut, black evening dress when a woman staff member told her to cover up or leave.



"She said I was wearing too low a top, which people found offensive," Simpson said. "I was highly embarrassed – humiliated, absolutely humiliated.
more...

Hells teeth, that's some dress she was almost wearing, innit? And in public too. I've been keeping abreast of the news today and even though John Campbell got that silly Rankin bitch up there defending a woman's right to wear whatever the hell she likes in public on TV tonight, it really ain't gonna wash with anyone who actually has high standards of what looks good on a chick. Hell, Christine Rankin doesn't.

Now, seriously honey, when you are a big girl like you are, and like I am, it's a nice thing to take the feelings of others into consideration and leave the puppies under cover, ya know? I mean seriously, just because you got 'em and can't hide 'em doesn't mean you have to stuff them in everyone's face and make them choke on their poker chips, and that's before you bend over the table in front of them. And this big humiliation act? I reckon you're milking it for all it's worth, you chose to hang the girls out on display and make a bit of a tit of yourself, don't expect everyone to be sorry for you cos someone told you to put ya toys away.

OK? Sweet.

UPDATE:

Mt Ruapehu has gone out in sympathy and is erupting tonight, too, throwing all its toys out of the cot, and there was a 4.2 rock'n'roll off Matata tonight.