Enough of this simulation

Sir, this earth simulation has malfunctioned

What? They've invented a what? An internet? What type of thing is that?

Well sir, that's where all the information in their world is available on their palmtop devices in an instant.

Sounds marvellous. And the problem is what?

Well sir, facts and misinformation are served up on the same platter as you will, and the residents find it very difficult to ascertain the truth from the lies.

Anyway, I thought they were dealing with climate change? What are they doing?

Er. Well some people  - the scientific community - are all for solving it, The others, aren't. 

The others? Who are they?

Well, mainly oil sponsors, the misinformed, billionaire plutocrats - that type of thing,

Ah. I see. So what's happened?

Well, while they had liberal democracies who were accountable all over the planet, they're now electing bigoted idiots instead, who appeal to the worst instincts of the mob and who are bankrolled by the billionaires with their vested interests. It's got to the stage where it's beyond saving.

Ah well...obliterate earth 10056/QQQQX9 and pull up another one. The experiment must succeed!

Yes sir.

Sir, we're running out of them...

Time

When you're 50 a decade is one 5th of your life. 

When you're 5 a year is one fifth of your life.

You're always looking backwards on your life which is why our perception of it is that it speeds up exponentially.

Our brains also dismiss the things we've done many times, whereas a toddler experiences everything for the first time and records it. We should try and do new things all the time, but having FTD, I only seek familiarity and routine. 

https://drdavidhamilton.com/why-time-speeds-up-as-you-age/

2 for 1 sale at the hospital

Parents were ill recently. I won't go into details, you'll be pleased to know, but they synchronised maladies so when one went in the other followed: different illnesses but at the same time.

So Thursday to Monday was taken up with going back and forth to Yeovil. It's about 30 miles, and takes thankfully only 45 minutes as the road is quite fast.

The standard of driving is so bad these days, with both type of idiots on the road: ditherers and boy racers. 

Boy racers, often in an older BMW M-series, over-take like nutters and disappear in a roar into the horizon.

20 miles later you're right behind them at a junction.

And the ditherers....Jesus.

It's enough to make you demented.

Get stopped by the police much?

The doctor found out Dad had pneumonia in one lung. Now he's taken 2 day's worth of antibiotics and he's already back at Tescos talking loudly about how the fish counter isn't what it was.

That's progress, though on Monday we're at Taunton checking out the dodgy pacemaker.

Antique humans.

Thursday D&D group

D&D group wanted me to name-check them. Well tough. Matt, Katy, Luke, Hannah and Simon can all do one.

I'm not in the business of cheap publicity.

Except for myself.

Having had a cancelled session due to ill parents, the last session we had went really well. It all takes place in the eerie, perpetually dark and frozen Icewind Dale. Lots of sinister things are happening as the party travel from town to town, sorting things out, but then discovering more intrigue and twists and plots as they go. They're now third level which means they are starting to get tougher - more resilient and potent. 

I'm feeling more confident running this adventure but it's all still very cloudy in my mind in comparison to previous adventures - some of which I've known inside-out. 

Now I know the bare minimum and have my notes to remind me. I still need to précis the rest of the adventure. Getting round to doing it is another thing entirely.

I guess that's just the way things are from now on. I cancelled my newspaper subscription for the same reason - assimilating the information is still doable, but retaining it is very difficult.

Bad Habits

Been drinking way too much. Feel like a kettle that is badly in need of descaling. 2-3 bottles of strong beer every night.

Well last night I didn't, and I need to keep that going for a while. I love the taste of the stuff but then don't know when to stop. Last night I had some Yogi tea and watched some TV. I didn't crave beer. It was easy.

Weird relationship with alcohol. 

I dreamt I could levitate. It was really nice, but people weren't that impressed. I contacted a post-grad researcher at a London university in order to prove scientifically that I wasn't a fraud. He was the only one genuinely intrigued and amazed at my super-power. 

Cut to a few months later and everyone in the world could levitate too. 

Story of my life, that.

Good Habits

I've been watching 2 new YouTube channels. One is Mr Frog. This guys has a bunch of amphibians and a bearded lizard, and they stand around while he feeds them [warning] live cockroaches and worms. He puts in weird little sound effects. I find it hilarious.

The second is a guy called Ari who is a polyglot - he has an amazing ear for languages and can learn conversational anything within 2-3 weeks. It's a bit showy-offy but...the joy he brings to everyone when he speaks their language is palpable. I think it's great. 

I'm watching fewer videos about Trump as they're clickbait and all the same, and instead more music and sports videos. I've enjoyed walking Tomos too, and I've been looking after the old folks a bit more while they get back on their feet. The chores give me more get up and go as I would just sit on my arse all day otherwise, and once you're up and about you see more stuff that needs to be done.

Brains of the Rich and Famous

I'm a Fashion, me

Bruce Willis brought it to the Hollywood A-list, now some US talk-show host called Wendy Williams has it. I looked her up and she is 59. 

Looks like it's the in-dementia for the glitterati, the cognoscenti - the in-crowd. 

I look down my nose at those with Lewy Bodies. 

Alzheimers? Dreadfully common.

Funny how no one seemed to have heard of FTD and now it's known by many. 

I first heard of it in an article David Baddiel wrote about his Dad, who by the sounds of it was always (rather like me) amazingly inappropriate, but who at Baddiel's mother's funeral outdid himself by asking 6 different women if they fancied a shag.

Even by his standards that was extreme behaviour. It was later diagnosed as Pick's Disease.

Baddiel is a patron of RDS.

That was the first time I learned of Pick's Disease. I was also aware that Terry Jones had had problems with his Frontal Lobe. 

It always seems even more tragic when someone clever has a disease that affects thought and communication or an athlete a disease affecting their motor functions. 

It seems twice as cruel.

For the best part - and here I'm very superstitious about tempting fate - I do seem to have stabilised in my decline.  Which I'm really thankful for. 

Small mercies and all that.

Still conversing with dog walkers, still running complex daft games, still reading the papers and watching sport and not getting any more (or less) than 8 out of 15 on The Times quiz.

Next week the weather forecast is good so I will do some jobs. I have been as inert as a particular gas for 2 weeks. This always happens after a period of activity: I put my feet up, and they remain there.

But I must do a Baron Munchausen and rise from my throne of atrophy, shake off the dust once more and commence battle!

First, I'll have a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Satan's Snot

Battling a cold which I told to stay away. A bit like Kenneth Copeland did to Covid 19, I demanded judgment on colds. 

"COLDS BEGONE!" I shouted.

I'm on a war-footing against colds. Vitamin C with zinc, Vitamin Bs, Vitamin D and a green smoothie for even more Bs. Lots of water. No alcohol. Yep - still not drinking alcohol but still my gut has yet to recede to its required girth.

Optimum Girths should be a title for a future blogpost on slimming, but I digress...

I am keeping the cold at arm's length  - I wake up with a sore throat but that's it. Getting plenty of rest and mild exercise.

Always difficult to separate the tiredness from the cold from that of the dementia!

Spring?

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” Not me, but Great Expectations by a bloke called Dickens.

At last it’s ceased raining. The floods around here have been awful. Some people's houses now can’t be insured because flooding is considered an inevitability.

New housing estates built in fields push the rainwater off leaving it nowhere to go, so rather like ancient isles in the Somerset levels, they too are surrounded by floodwater, but this being the 21st century, sewage and other ghastliness.

And as I write this, I look out of the large window of The Sheep and Penguin. The Equinox is almost upon us. The light is golden and blinding, illuminating buildings and trees and giving me hope.

The familiar comforting smell of log fires and diesel fumes waft up my hooter as I hop along Chamberlain Street.

Ah yes, Spring is about to er, spring, but it doesn't half leave you hanging, with plenty of false starts and all. 

Magnolia, daffodils, buds on the trees. Such a mild wet winter. Barely a frost.

Should be a dry, bright week - a crack of light in the darkness.

What I’m watching/listening to

Rewatching Archive 81 and listening to the podcast that inspired it.

The podcast must have been really popular in order to have inspired Netflix execs to put money behind it, but the cowards never commissioned season 2. It was the most popular programme on Netflix at the time. 

I love its Lovecraftian horror and its homage to The Order of the Golden Dawn and Crowley. The sound design is incredible; lots of droning and static and strange dissonant music. Inspired no doubt by Delia Derbyshire. 

Bob Todd's dad, Aleister Crowley

The direction really accentuates the cultish Egyptian-inspired Art Deco and the creepy, dehumanising aspect of the Brutalism. 

Best watched in a dark room with good headphones on. God it's good! Made on a tight budget too.

The podcast sounds like it was done on a very meagre budget indeed. Some of the actors in Season 1 are poor. 

Interesting as ever to see the changes they made when transferring it to screen.

There are very few other things I'm interested in on any of the streaming networks.

Moving about a bit

No physical activity for a couple of weeks. Maybe longer. I don't know. But, the weather is good for next week. That means I can go out and mow the grass and do some odd jobs for people. That's really good for me.

I shall reinstate my sister's window sills and mow the grass, and even use the new strimmer for the first time. Oh yes, life has its compensations. 

No, actually I'm going to hunker down here for a bit and watch more YouTube stuff. But I must finsih reading the paper and my adventures - less binary, more analogue.

Hypersensitivity of the wife

I was just on a chat with my other FTD buddies, and one was saying how his wife kicks him under the table whenever he says anything 'inappropriate', which as we know is symptomatic of Frontotemporal Dementia.

Not the kicking that is, but the faux pas. 

Me and my dangling modifiers!

The last year or so of being with J was very stressful for all of us. I felt like I was under watch the whole time. Anything I did or said there could potentially be an eruption. 

I was shouting out while they were working from home in meetings. I realise it was intrusive and at times aggressive sounding.

My indiscretions had become a THING. The elephant in the room. It was a pressure-cooker situation. 

I no longer feel that anymore. 

I guess when someone has something they can't help that we should try and laugh it off.

'Oh that's just X's condition! Ignore him.'

Easier said than done of course.

This shouldn't put your self-censorship offline, and I realise it's difficult to laugh or shrug something off, but I think rather than waiting for the next faux-pas to happen - and it will - building the expectation up just makes it worse for everyone. 

If you're waiting and waiting and waiting then the stress of it all just snowballs.

After all, we forgive the Tourette's Sufferer.