Category: Uncategorized

A ha! I recently posted about a migraine I’d had, and that prompted me to remember some correspondence with researcher Klaus Podoll about my experience. In that post I linked to the freaky migraine art, but said I didn’t think my experience had turned up anywhere in the site. Well, I was wrong, they did turn up there.
Here is the page with lots of freaky stories of deja vu in relation to migraine. Neat stuff. Classic migraine really goes to town on your brain chemistry, so its not surprising that its accompanied by some deeply strange subjective experiences. The one I wrote about in the “Flashy Halos of Death” entry reproduced on the site is the most unusual I’ve ever had, for sure.
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And in the complete opposite direction, the good Mr Oxbrow has notified all and sundry that part 2 of Sugarshock is up – this being the comic by Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon released free on the web by Dark Horse Comics. Go be entertained.

Back on August 9, I had a winning day and blogged about it.
Y’know what? That streak held. Every sporting contest I engaged in since then came out a win for my team. I was crossing fingers to make it a month-long streak, but it fell down four days short. Being out of the sports scene entirely for ten days managed to remove the juice from my golden run, and now, having lost netball tonight, I am back in ordinaryland. My winning spree is over.
Oh well, fun while it lasted. Let the losing spree begin…

Matt Mansell has been knocking it out of the park lately over on the Xenodochion. Recent posts continue Matt’s musing over his (Christian) faith and what that means. I’ve found them both fascinating and inspiring, even though (or because?) I don’t share Matt’s faith.
Matters of faith have been on my mind in recent months. Recent events have put me in church frequently, and despite being your typical lapsed-believer secular/agnostic, I’ve found that it all still speaks to me and has a wonderful and positive reality to it. That said, my religious/faith identity doesn’t seem to be shifting as a result, except to accommodate a more nuanced understanding of what I have moved away from and what “moved away from” might mean.
In any case, I recommend you go read some of the Xenodochion, whatever your view on matters of faith, particularly this piece on those controversial paintings in that Australian art award. (For comparison: The Fundy Post takes on the same issue.) Matt’s take on things might not be what you’d expect.

So if you’ve watched TV or been on the internets lately, you’ve seen the footage of Miss South Carolina give a rambling nonsensical answer to the question, “Why can’t so many Americans find the USA on a map?” Whole lotta people have jumped in to mock and ridicule. It’s become an “internet sensation”. Heck, do we still have beauty pageants? What a bunch of ditzes those girls are!
But I can’t join in on the mockery, because what I see isn’t a girl with a pea for a brain, but a girl completely blanking on a tricksy question in a high-pressure situation and just talking through it anyway. And I sympathise.
That question is a hard one to answer. Put yourself in her shoes. You’re a contestant in a beauty pageant. You have to formulate, with not more than a second’s thinking time, a response to a politically dangerous query. Your response must at all costs avoid offending anyone, because this is a beauty pageant. You go to your training – open with one of your stock phrases while you try and figure out what else to say and how to say it – and *blam*. Your mind just goes blank. I’ve been there. Haven’t you ever been there? Hey, you’re on international TV and its the biggest moment of your life, no pressure!
She blanks out. But she’s been training for this for years, and what does she do? She goes to her training. At all costs, keep talking. Do not shut up. Speak. Say something, anything at all. And so she does, and what comes out of her mouth is mostly nonsense, but hell, at least she went for it!
I mean, I’m not saying this girl is a genius and we must respect her enormous intelligence. All I’m saying is, cut her some slack, willya, mockers of the world? There were extenuating circumstances. (And heck, I for one think “Because many Americans don’t have maps” is actually a pretty savvy answer to the question.)
Her name’s Caitlin Upton, by the way, and she’s 17 years old.
So, what say you, blogosphere? Am I just an old soft-hearted fool? Does Miss South Carolina deserve everything that’s coming at her? Is this just a bit of harmless fun?
And am I a hypocrite for all the times I’ve made an “O for Awesome” crack?

Jim’s funeral was on Saturday morning, spilling into the afternoon. It was a hot and sunny day, first day of Spring, and the church was packed. Many firefighters in attendance, and I think four appliances. There was a movie played to start the service, the Lone Ranger theme and then Sinatra’s My Way over photos tracing the whole course of Jim’s life. Three eulogies were given, all of them incredible – funny, sincere, heartfelt. stronger_light shared one of the eulogies with one of her sisters and was amazing. The lead celebrant was an old, old friend of Jim’s, and his close connection and gave the ceremony a deeply personal tone. To close, we drove in cortege to the cemetery, led by the fire service, who had stationed officers to close off traffic as our train of cars went past. As the hearse carrying Jim went by, the men on traffic duty stopped paying attention to the traffic and stood at attention. At the cemetery in the centre of Hastings Jim was lowered into the ground, and then the grave was filled. Everyone took up a shovel to help, brothers, son and sons-in-law and me, cousins, firemen, workmates, friends. When the last of the rocky soil was deposited on the pile, the assembled people left. We went for cups of tea and conversation at the church hall.
It was the conclusion to a week in which everything was pointing toward this moment. The family was carried along minute to minute and hour to hour and day to day by a constant stream of actions, small decisions, arrangements and requirements. All of those little things somehow added up to a process, more than the sum of its parts, which prepared everyone to say goodbye.
I think it was the same with the months prior, as the whole family, Jim included, went through the multitude of actions that went into diagnosis, medical treatment, care at home. Somehow these also added up into a process of farewell.
I don’t think I’m remotely doing this justice, but it’s a fresh experience for me and I wanted to write something of it while I still can’t think about it properly. One thing I know for sure: for me, these months and this weekend have been life-changing.
I’m back in Wellington now, but my head and heart are lingering up in Hastings. Much love to all my family up there.

Don’t know when she’ll get to blog again, so let this put the word out: Cal’s dad Jim died very early this morning. It was the end of a difficult journey.
Fate dealt the cancer to Jim, and none of the family had any choice in that, but everyone could choose how to respond to it: with dignity and humour and love. (Along with frustration and sadness and anxiety, of course. When someone you love is leaving, it hurts like hell.)
I’ll be heading up to Hastings shortly to be with everyone, so expect radio silence here for a while.

Some additional linky from the weekend that I am compelled to share:
Maupuia Masala mediawatches coverage of the Hyderabad explosions.
Judge and Jury presents some extremely dubious evolutionary pop-psychology for your evaluation. EDIT: LINK FIXED.
Robert Fisk singlehandedly pushes 9/11 conspiracy questions a few rungs up the legitimacy meter.
The Tall Man musters a list of key sites for factchecking the environmental record of corporations.
And how the heck did I not know Aliens vs Predator – Requiem was coming? That’s a link to the IMDB page; a bit of searching will uncover the trailer, which in three and a half minutes features more gory onscreen deaths than you saw in all of the other Aliens and Predator movies combined. The premise: the titular monsters come to a contemporary town in the midwest of the USA and kill lots of people. So, yes, it will suck; but the question is, how much will it suck? And will I go and see it regardless like I did the last one?

I has srs linky: the indispensible Digby provides “It’s the Blacks”, a fantastic overview of the way the media played out the Hurricane Katrina story. Remember all those accounts of wild, looting gangs that were making people fear for their lives? The ones that led to the Red Cross being forbidden to go down there for safety reasons? Well, turns out these accounts were… less than accurate. Go read and find out just how much the story you know doesn’t match what really happened there.
Other linky:
An EC Shock Suspenstories called “The Monkey” about the perils of the reefer! Check it out and get your lingo up to date: “Hey Eddie, c’mon along! Me and some of the gang are going to blast a few of these!” “What are they, Sid?” “Pot grass butts, you square! Don’t you pop this stuff yet?” “MARIJUANA?!” “Cool it you jerk! You want to get me twisted? Some narc may be pinning us!”
Also on the comics tip, if you know that ROM was from Galador, you must not miss the ISB’s ROM-week.
Finally, via the other moose, I give you Giger Alien Salad.

I’m busy marking, so this will be short.
The Women / D&D post has fed into a bunch of useful discussion, particularly over at Iris. Of particular interest there is the arrival of one of D&D’s Associate Brand Managers, keen to tap into the wisdom found there. It cheered me up 🙂
Rumpus plans continue apace. I think the website is visible now to all but me. Damon’s computer took my computer’s lunch money.
Also, I has a moneys. The eager will find a description of my research if they follow the link and search around on the other side. Thanks, BRCSS, I’ve never been a recipient of any funding before and its kinda neat.

Rumpus 07 will be the party of the year.
Rumpus invitation with full details
The above link works, but as of this writing, there are some problems with getting to the party page itself – bear with us.
Rumpus 07 on Facebook
Roundup of last year’s Rumpus 06
In Achewood the Rumpletron is a Fiesta Wheel