Something, instead of Nothing........... :o)

Not much going on right now……. Hasn’t been for a while.

Just thought I’d say Something rather than Nothing, but I guess there’s not a lot of difference between the two which means I might as well not bother, but I am, so that’s Something I guess.

So here’s to Something.

Wrote to my buddy mad Eddie in the States today……… well, last night too actually. Today was in response to him answering right away. He’s been on a downer lately and the once long,-deep-and-regular emails have dropped off for a while now. Mainly my fault I guess; plodding and struggling through life’s thick mud as I’ve been doing for a while now kinda leads me to ‘not bothering’ with a load of things I really should be bothering with.

‘Not bothering’ is kinda misleading though……… it smacks of those things ‘not bothered’ with being unimportant to me. Couldn’t be further from the truth really. Depression kills your life. Kills everything within shouting distance of it too. Kills friendships. Kills passions. Kills your job. Even kills your doctor’s patience too, if you refuse the mind-and-dick-debilitating medication which fails to cheer-up seventy percent of those who swallow it.

Kills the fucking lot really.

Mine’s from my job, and it’s not bad enough to have me curled up in a ball, but it’s bad enough that I can’t be bothered, unless I have to on someone else’s behalf. Work mostly. Which keeps me topped up nicely, thanks.

It’s the bullshit that's increasing in a way that would’ve been unimaginable a few years ago. Actually, it’s still bleddy unimaginable. These son’bitch weenies, all sat in their cosy offices are pissing on us all down here. As if we didn’t have enough of it to clear up as it is. I am often overwhelmed with their ingenuity, and ability to treat the ridiculous as entirely reasonable and practicable.

Anyway……… enough. I’m on a day off, and if I don’t watch it I’ll spend it walking around here having a bleddy good row with the buggers.

So, there’s Something, instead of Nothing.

Now, I’m off to do Nothing.

Y’all have a good day doing Something.

Or Nothing.

Either way, don't feel bad doing it, ok? :o)

Kxxx :o)

The wonder of British Plod.........and the IOM Plod's money-crop on Mad Sunday. :o)

Hi Y’all,
Thursday, and another day of my weeks holiday grinds into life, and with some hope of it being a sunny day too. Here I am, reporting in at the writing station, and I must say it’s getting to be the first thing I want to do of a morning………. to write. that bodes well for November's Nanowrimo. :o)

Mostly it’s emails, mostly to prospective New Chicks. Spurred into productivity, I admit, by my having hit a rich and glinting seam over the last couple of months, it’s golden reflections illuminating the digging and hacking away in the candlelit gloom of Kevin’s Mine of Hope and Comfort Sometimes too, I’ve recently been hitting the blog with some thoughts, random and rambling though they may usually be. Occasionally I’ve written stuff no one will ever read. That’ll be the real Wild Stuff then. The stuff no one would most likely understand. The stuff Plod would love to read.

‘Plod’, being a quaint and old-fashioned term for out great police force, and I actually mean that. The last police force in the world you can tell to fuck off, and not get shot for the indiscretion.

Mind you, it’s been a long time since I expressed such an imaginative course of action for our enforcement officers, the last time being way back in ’98 for leaving a thirty-limit on the Isle of Man, at double the limit I must admit, but, in my feeble defence, just before being outside the limit. They had, quite accidentally I’m sure, set the speed trap up thirty feet inside the limit and with the Goforit, or Golf Lima Foxtrot de-restriction black-stripe-on-white plainly in sight. I was quite upset at what I saw as an unfair and dastardly reaping of a abundant crop, there being some 35,000 of we bikers over there for the TT races, and a fair percentage of us being Adrenaline Freaks on a rush of speed.

(Golf Lima Foxtrot??…… There was hell-up amongst the Politically Correct weenies (small ‘w’) a few years ago, when it was disclosed that it was a common police radio instruction amongst traffic cops when chasing speeders…….. and it stands for, if you haven’t worked it out, Go Like Fuck.)

Let me point out that the spot they picked, quite accidentally I now realise after the calming of the years, was at the bottom of a downhill left-handed sweep and in deep and high hedges in the countryside. The last of the village buildings had been passed, and it was "Whoopy-doo" time with the scent of the speed-unlimited roads opening up again.

On the Isle of Man, there are no speed limits outside of the villages and towns. Let me tell you, it is an Adrenalin Freak’s Paradise.

They pulled me over, and, being a man with a strong sense of what is Just and Fair, I was a bit upset at their apparent cunning. Actually, ..........I was fucking livid, and then some. I suggested, quite graphically, that they might explore the pleasures of inserting the hair dryer up their ass (hand-held speed gun), and that they’d missed their vocation by not seeking employment with the IOM Tourist Board. Throwing the skid-lid across the road (I kid you not. I was bleddy mad as hell), I doubted the authenticity of their parentage, and offered to wipe my bottom with the speeding ticket.

Why was I so upset about such a thing? Well, see, there were a few reasons. Being whacked out on antidepressants that weren’t working, being over there with no chick, and it having been the wettest TT in living memory all added up to my being mentally right down on the floor. It was also the third time I’d been so sneakily ‘had over’ by the cunning IOM Plod in the last three visits to the Island of Speed, and on every occasion it had cost in excess of £160 in fines. That’s each time, so we’re talking about £500 in total (each being in excess of £160), and I do freely admit I was in considerable excess of the limit, before you point it out. :o)

You see, not unsurprisingly I guess these days, they set these traps up all over the place, and one copper over there told me that on Mad Sunday they gather something like 200 of we poor unsuspecting, safety-conscious, Speed Freaks an hour over the whole island. When you go to pay the fine, you just pay the fine, no licence, insurance, or proof of identity is asked for………. Just pay here, (sir), and sign here, (sir), and thank you for your cooperation in the matter, (sir). :o)


And, whaddya mean you’ve never heard of Mad Sunday??? Where y’all been all your lives??? :o)

Briefly, Mad Sunday is a long-standing tradition of mayhem and an open day for we nutters. It’s one mental day, where the mountain Course of the Isle of Man TT circuit of public roads used for the racing are opened up to one way traffic, and so becoming a race-track as it is on race days. Then let loose to all who dare to ‘ride the mountain’ on Mad Sunday. Many don’t dare, and with good reason. Safety is not a word that goes with the day. It’s the single reason I go over there, and quite secondary to watching the fantastic racing, which makes mainstream track races look like a kindergarten tea party.


Have a look…….. have a taste…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRmNZlEXjQ0

Anyway………. the bottom line is, that our police force really is the best in the world. Mad and wild as I was, those two coppers just politely pointed out that maybe I might consider the pleasures of being arrested if I didn’t calm myself (sir). They just completed the paperwork, explaining that should I use it for the purpose I’d suggested, that more paper would not be provided to complete such an undertaking.

No gun was involved at any point, no handcuffs deemed as necessary, and no sudden appearance of any overwhelming ‘backup’ either.

Then they watched, as I cleared the thirty-limit sign a few yards away, and nailed the bike to 140 down the road away from them.

God bless them all. :o)

K.x :o)

Life, losing it........and on getting it back.

Just a few lines to at least add something to this blog. Completely blank mind, as per usual, but sometimes if I just start writing, something will happen across the synapses. Trouble is, not much has been happening to me lately, as per the usual, so that doesn’t help a whole lot. I’m someone who really needs to Get A Life, although I have to say it’s harder to do than most people seem to think. The trouble with a Life is that, once you’ve lost it, finding it again, or getting a new one isn't so easy, because they seem to be in damn short supply.

Like everything in life, Reality doesn’t hit until it hits you. Most bad things happen to someone else, and if you're anything like me, when they happen to you, you're always kinda surprised and so, like I said; ....Reality doesn’t hit until it hits you

If you've actually got a Life……… hey, what’s the problem, man?

If you haven’t got a life, you’ll soon be able to tell the asshole/smug bastard/sonofabitch/lucky blighter with a Life, what the problem is! ............. Once you get to be able to figure it out, that is.

Funny thing, life. Maybe it’s the Universal Law applying, that says it takes a lot or energy, power, whatever you want to call it, to move something when it’s stopped, and maybe that ‘law’ applies even to something as unambiguous as ‘Life’.

Yup, anything which is stopped takes far more of that precious energy to get it rolling again, than it takes to keep it rolling once it’s moving. What's more, you’d better have some momentum on board to allow the energy to overcome the bumps, slopes and hills, or you’ll grind to a halt when you hit them, which will need more of that energy, and so on and so on.

Pretty much most of my adult life, once I’d finally learnt some of life’s basic lessons as a late teenager/ early twenties, I’ve always kept a mind to that momentum and had some in reserve to cope with the hills. You have plenty of that energy to overcome the obstacles anyway when you’re young, unless you hit too many cliffs and sheer mountain faces.

I’d always take care of the smallish ho-de-hum daily stuff that can cause problems, or big trouble if enough stacks up on top of the other. Taking care of the money, keys, credit/charge cards, maintenance of my bikes and cars, paying the bills on time, keeping out of debt no matter what I had to go without, maintaining good(ish) health and fitness, keeping in work despite hating what I did most of the time; ………. y’know, standing on my own two feet, and doing all the stuff most people do to avoid their Life grinding to a halt. Or worse…….. breaking down, or crashing into bits.

If you keep on top of it all, it’s not so bad, or so hard to do, BUT if something knocks you off your perch, and if you don’t have the momentum or backup to lever yourself back up to speed, THEN it all becomes a whole new can of worms.

I hit depression as a result of pressures of work………. mostly the result of weenies (small 'w'), Bullshit and Political Correctness, and all the ammunition it gives people with no experience, talent or ability to step all over those who do have these things. With hindsight I realise I’d suffered from depression on and off since late childhood, but it didn’t last long; usually a day or so at the most and not especially debilitating even then. When it did hit me for a good solid length of time, grinding me down no matter how hard I tried to keep going until I finally just couldn’t crawl into work one day, it was a surprise. It wasn’t as bad as it can get by any means, but bad enough that I lost the energy to keep this life moving as smoothly(ish) as it was.

When I was off sick with it, and doped up on those fucking pills that seemed to help only by way of doping me up, then it was all I could do was keep Life going at a slowest crawl. I was on my own with it, and so only the very barest essentials were maintained. Sometimes I wouldn’t even wash for days on end, let alone bath or shower, and as for everything else, .........well forget it.

Although much better now, and back to work now for some three years part time, I have lost all that Vim I once had. Everything’s too much damn trouble home here. I'm doing ok, but only just in the eyes of many 'normal' people. I don't eat well, hardly ever clean the place, although that means as in dusting and hoovering. Nothing's rotting in a corner, or going mouldy in the kitchen. I go to work, and work hard there, but I come home and just grind to a halt as soon as I walk though the door. Like I said........ it's better than it was, and even then not as bad as it CAN get ........... I'm not by any means just sat here looking into space and crying into my beer (I don't drink anyway), …….. I read a lot, and spend time on the computer and Internet, not games and things, but as regards writing the blogs and reading about all the things I’m interested in.

Living alone with no Chick doesn’t help one bit, because if I’m prepared to put up with whatever needs to be done, eat bugger-all food, (as in a good diet), housework, etc etc, then I don’t have to do it. There’s only me here………. although there was Lomax, my kitten, here too, but he disappeared a month ago at seven months old, and I sure do miss the little chap. He was great company, and we were glued to the hip, me and him.

So, with not bothering with this, and not bothering with that, and having few friends who want to do much that involves me, slowly Life erodes and deteriorates until it’s as stripped-down a life as you can have and still resemble someone ‘normal’ with a life.

Don’t misunderstand me here……….. It could be far worse, but it could also be a fuck’s sake better too. ........ it's just bad enough that skies are never as blue, the rain and the cold feels that bit worse, and There is just never enough energy and inspiration to fire you up for much at all.
And, yes, thanks all you smug bastards out there,........... but I do realise it’s my fault, and that only I can get it all going again……… (and I WILL …..soon(ish)),.......... so bugger off back to your Ikea kitchen and your perfect life and do us all a favour.

(Hey! Don't get so pissed......... I was just (kinda) joking around, ok?) :o)

All it would take is the impetus, energy inspiration and initiative to make about 500% more effort, and I’d be back up there bouncing along with the best of them. I can’t explain it, but the nearest I can get to explaining it is by saying that it’s like an invisible wall you just can’t get over, under, around or through, and you just can’t see why not either.

Bit like a housefly on a hot day, hammering against a glass window and trying to get out. I often watch them and feel sorry for the little blighters. .............. (That'd be just before I kill them spectacularly dead with a Ikea magazine then!)

(Did you see what I did there, eh???) :o)

Still, what keeps me going, and moving towards cracking it, is the fact that you never know what’s around the corner, …….. as my dear old Daddy used to say.

That little hedgehog didn’t know someone was going to find him, did he? ………he’s one very lucky hedgehog, because she’s going to be the backup that gets him back up to speed again. I sure hope so anyway.

OK, that’s gotta be it, or I’ll be here all day……… I finally got the Muse, and got going, y’see?

If you’ve got a life, and especially if it’s a Good One, (Complete with that Ikea kitchen and the perfect kids) then take real good care of it.

The worst thing you can do is think it can never happen to you…………. falling off your Last Twig, that is. One minute you're surrounded by thick leafy branches, and the next all you can hear is that last twig breaking.................. and the echo of a sudden yell on the long way down.

If you're real lucky, the most precious thing you have is your Woman or your Man……….. Take THAT for granted at your peril.

I know……….. because I once did.

Bye, bye y'all

K.xxx :o)

Writing fixes it.......... :o)

Hi there,
No inspiration tonight. Lousy day at work, which always takes the wind, such as it is, out of my sails.

Lomax has just gone outside for the last adventure of the day, (10.00pm) and I guess it’s going to be at least an hour before he’ll want to come in again………… got a dog whistle that calls him in, as he’s wandering a fair way beyond the garden. He usually comes belting over the fence, or through the hedge, and across the garden when he hears it. Can’t be many cats that do that, eh? He retrieves paper balls, and some favourite ‘toys’, especially The Rat which Suzy made for him. It’s real easy to see the big-cat ancestry in him when he’s trotting towards you with it in his mouth. :o)

His poor sore little bollocks don’t seem sore and inflamed any more, so I’ve discontinued the Personally Administered Cool Air Soothing Sessions, (PACASS), otherwise known as Blowing on His Bollocks (BOHB), which will prolly relieve Suzy no end. :o)

Just been looking at the stars through the binoculars, those that were showing through the clouds anyway.

There’s a dusty area in Orion, which is a nebula; an area of gas cloud where stars are being ‘born’………… taking millions of years in the process. The Orion Nebula is about 1,600 (or perhaps 1,500) light-years away from us, and is some 30 light-years across. Huge, but small compared to some nebulae. You can see it faintly with a pair of 10x50 binoculars. Go have a look next time the stars are out....... best without a full, or fullish, moon to light-pollute the sky.

Find Orion......... look for a shortish diagonal line of three stars towards the south or south west. (see photo above) I think they can only be seen in the winter months, or at least they will be very low in the sky in the summer. look below the lower of the diagonal stars, the left one, and find a very faint dusty area of stars and 'mist'.

That's the Orion Nebula. Below are some pics taken through a very good telescope.


Remember......... you're watching new stars being formed in a gas cloud, and it's a long way off....... imagine travelling 670,616,629 miles every hour for at least 1,500 years!

And, when you get there, it would take you THIRTY YEARS to travel from one side of it to the other, travelling at the same speed........... the same speed that light flashes across the room at, when you flick the light switch on..........thirty years traveling THAT fast! :oI

Jees!!!!

Can you imagine that?

No, I didn't think so! :o)
Mind boggling stuff. Blows me away, it really does.

Sometimes I think to myself (And forgive me, but I’m pissed right off tonight) who gives a flying fuck if you steal, rape, murder, ……. if you’re good or bad?

Who really gives one fuck worth the mention, when this planet…………. I mean, the whole sodding planet, is smaller than a grain of the finest sand……….. hell, prolly smaller than a dust particle that can only be seen floating in the sun, in relation to all that we can see out there with even a hundred Hubble telescopes. There are huge gas clouds (Nebulae) out there where stars are being created, being slowly and painfully born over millions of years. Some of these nebulae are millions of light years across………… absolutely mind bogglingly enormous, but still appearing so small they cannot be seen by us as any size, and not at all with the naked eye........... Except for the Orion Nebula. (as far as I know, anyway)

So, how can it possibly be of any consequence what I, or you, or anyone else does here on this planet? Who really gives a shit?

God?

Maybe, but no one knows just what God is. (I don't think the word 'who' really applies, not literally anyway) Not for sure. 'God' is undoubtedly out there in some form or another, and prolly in a way we have no comprehension of so far, but what exactly, is anyone’s guess. As for God caring one way or another what we do, that is easily debatable.

I was on a long three week Care of the Dying course once, and a hospital Chaplin was giving us a talk one afternoon. I remember him saying that for all we know, Hitler sits at Gods right hand. I got him right away, although some were shocked.

The concept of justice, and of fairness is a human concept;………. It doesn’t exist outside of humanity as far as we know for certain. If it does exist in the animal world, it has more to do with the survival strategy of an individual, or a group, than it has to do with ‘decency’, and ‘fairness’, as we identify it.

There is plenty of evidence around us, that being a selfish bastard, or bitch, gets you on in life. I see little to prove the opposite. My father was living proof that playing a straight wicket gets you nowhere. The more I see of my fellow man, especially, literally, men, the less faith I have in our future. As long as two men will fight in a pub, (and plenty of women have taken that pastime up now too, no doubt in the good name of ‘equality’), then there will never, ever be World Peace.

Never.

It’s a pub fight, on a larger scale, that’s all.

Women, on the whole, are a far nicer group of humans than men, and I come to that conclusion at least in part from working with them for some thirty-six years. Mind you, maybe I get to rub up against the best of them (Don't even think it!!!) because I work with a grouping that choose the caring professions, and so by their natures would tend to have kind personalities.

Anyway, I know much of the God stuff prolly makes me sound like I’m well off my rocker, but I maintain it’s all worthy of valid argument……….. I'm not saying that it's necessarily definitely the way it is, but it sure fits in a logical sense. It often comes to me from just looking up there at it all hanging in the sky like a spangled shroud all around us, and feeling soooooo small and insignificant.

So minuscule and unimportant.

So very tiny.

You go out there and try it, ………….and then tell me what a big hot-shot you are.

And I'll tell you how full of shit you are. :o)

Still never mind all the stars out there, and all the bleddy philosophising………. Life has to be lived, insignificant though we all are, and we just have to make the best of it as we roll the dice every day.

Every new day, a fresh roll of the dice, and a fresh hope of something new, something different, something to light the fires up.

Speaking of which, I see there’s something like 25 million quid up for grabs on the lottery, or the euro-lottery, tomorrow night. (Friday)

Better have a go at it I guess, because, as my dear old daddy used to say,…….

“You never know, ……..you just never know”

A favourite thought that always makes me smile at it’s poignant truth, is to quote John Cleese from the excellent film, Clockwise (I think it was).

He’s a straight-laced, and very time conscious Headmaster of a comprehensive school, on his way across country to address a very big headmasters convention. A series of complete disasters, one mounting the other, until his well-ordered life, and successful career, is in complete and utter tatters.

Completely destroyed.

He is at a particular point of hopelessness, and is sat on a grass verge, his head in his hands, almost completely defeated after a valiant struggle against overwhelming odds. He’s alongside one of his attractive teenage girl pupils, with which he is in a hopelessly compromised and circumstantially entwined position.

As he sits there, momentarily utterly defeated, he says to her…………

“…….. it’s not the pain I can’t stand, Laura, it’s not the pain. It’s the HOPE I can’t bear!”

(Or words to that effect anyway)

How very true that is, eh? :o)

I think it’s brilliant.

Boy have I ever been tortured by some unbearable hopes along the way. As often as not, at the mercy of a female. (Sighs, and gazes wistfully at the past) :o)

Mid-teenage love was particularly unfulfilled, ………but endlessly hopeful. :o)))))

“Amanda” springs to mind. :o) Boy oh boy, does it ever. An unrealised hope, for something like five years. Never so much as held her hand.

It was worth every second, though, it really was. I wouldn’t have missed one second of that pain. It was bitter sweet all the way. One glimpse of her, one smile, one glance, one word, and I was fuelled to carry on for months :o)

Poor love-sick bastard that I was.

I've sure done my time howling at the moon. :o)

The sharpness of some things in life stay with you forever, don’t they? I can remember the emotions of those years as if they happened yesterday, if I simply focus on a few well-remembered moments………. Snapshots burned on my mind.

I’m sure it is the same for you.

I hope so.

If it was all soooooo easy, would it ‘stick’, and resist the abrasion of time's sand passing over it?

In my darkest moments, I’ve always still been illuminated by at least the faintest glimmer of Hope to sharpen the pain. :o)

Thank god for that. :o)

OK, …….Cheered up now. :o)

Writing is a wonderful way of clearing the crap outta your head y’know.
Sue, my lovely, lovely ex-wife calls it my Thinky Crap. Quite apt……… like I said before somewhere………. it’s the Thinking that does it every time y’know.

Writing fixes it………. Next time you’re pissed right off, y’all should try it sometime. :o)

Nite nite,
K.x :o)

P.S.

On the subject of telescopes........ if you get inspired enough to buy a telescope, NEVER, EVER get one from a supermarket, toy shop, bargain discount store, or the like, or one for around thirty to sixty quid (new). They are a complete waste of time, in every respect.

Another clue is that these rubbish 'scopes are often advertised by their magnification, and usually high magnifications too ...... 200-X to 600-X. Good telescopes are rated by their aperture, ........... their light-gathering capability, and never by their magnification.

NEVER.

Search some astronomical shops online, (Telescope Planet http://www.telescopeplanet.co.uk/ is a very good one) and maybe ring one or two for advice. Something half decent isn't THAT expensive, and prolly need to spend about at least £150. Best bang for your buck is a Dobsonian mounted reflector (NOT a refractor). Easier to use too. If I'd bought a Dob mount, I could've got an eight incher instead of the six inches ended up with. (Life's just not fair, is it?????) :o)

Size matters in astronomy, and you just can't beat a big Tube. :o)

Advice often given by experienced astronomers is to get a half decent pair of binoculars before a telescope........ a pair of 10x50's, and find your way around the stars with that first.

Naturally I didn't heed that advice, bought a medium reflector, and so am trying to swim before I can even walk to the beach!

K.x