Ricky Monahan Brown's Blog, page 2

Good/Bad Hair Day

BONUS POST? I recently enjoyed doing an interview about my experience of stroke with the young people of Coppell HOSA (a chapter of HOSA-Future Health Professionals raising stroke awareness).

I’d like to think that it includes some accessible stroke info for laypeople and anyone interested in learning about one particular individual’s experience of stroke.

It’s a handy introduction to my book, Stroke: A 5% chance of survival, too.

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Eight Tracks IV

After I published the latest apoplectic.me post in August, Paul commented that

the new music in 2020 hasn’t caught my ear yet. Nothing like last years Jaime by Brittany Howard, which I loved. I also fear we are about to get some not very good quarantine inspired music coming our way.

Comments to Under Cover Under Wraps

Paul’s made Fiona Apple sad. Bad Paul.

Amid the huge static roar of distraction that was 2020, perhaps it’s unsurprising that there’s something out of time about my Eight Tracks of the year.

Join me, won’t you, on a journey to a place that isn’t here in a time that isn’t now. It’s gotta be better than this, right? Or, just hit up the Spotify playlist.

[ Check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter for a bonus track .]

Gotta start with a track from the album that came closest to soundtracking my year – RTJ4.

Someone saw these goofy guys at the top of my Spotify 2020 summary on Facebook and just went –

Under Cover Under Wraps

Hi! How you doing? Hello…?

Damn. The Daleks really did a number on this dump.

I hope that your home-administered haircut has left you still looking as hot as horribly-coiffed Cillian Murphy in 28 Days Later.

Check the Apoplexy Tiny Letter to chart the effects of
a highly infectious, rage-inducing virus on the Celtic male

Recently, I was introduced to writer, editor and writing blogger Roz Morris on the ol’ Tweetie Box by the fab Ceris at my publisher Sandstone Press. This led to me compiling an Undercover Soundtrack for one of Roz’s sites.

I’ll let Roz explain

The Undercover Soundtrack is a series where I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative life – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths.

Participants reflect on how music intersects with their creative process, creating a playlist accessible on the site along the way.

‘Ricky MB here, bringing you the top toons on the wheels of steel’

I’m grateful to Roz for the chance to spend some time with these thoughts, because it was a huge amount of fun. Basically, if someone ever offers me a chance to do a Proust Questionnaire too, I’ll have got everything I ever wanted out of a writing career.

‘That’s a big word for staring at a wall and daydreaming’

So, I’d love it if you’d pop over to Roz’s site and check it out. You can click the banner below if you’re so minded.

And, just for you, here’s a bonus track. The Delgados are a constant inspirational hum in the background of what I do, most evident in INTERROBANG‽ at it’s best. A band that created great stuff of and out of Scotland, got other folk heard, and tried to connect on grassroots and local levels.

Like, great stuff ––

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PORK PIES!

With thanks and apologies to Long-Suffering-Reader-Of-The-Blog-Paul.

Long-suffering readers of the blog will know I’m a huge fan of nineties British indie music. So, I was thrilled when a hot, skinny boy who looks good in an Adidas tracksuit came onto the stage this week.

Damon Albarn, yesterday

PORK PIES
(Dominic Cummings ft. Blur)

Confidence is a preference for the habitual teller of what is known as
PORK PIES!
And resignation can be avoided if you take a route straight through using what are known as
PORK PIES!
Johnson’s got brewer’s droop, he gets intimidated by my dead affectless eyes –
He loves a bit of it!
PORK PIES!
Who’s that gut lord marching?
You should get some manky athleisurewear, pretend to exercise!

Mother, I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere in a field in Teesdale

All the people
So many people
They can’t walk hand-in-hand
All because of your pork pies

[Affects northeast, I’m-one-of-you, accent]

YER KNA WHAT A MEAN?

“What about – I say, what about the Toon?
HOWAY THE LADS!”

I get up when I want, except when I’m ill when I don’t get up and am not ill and do get up
PORK PIES!
I put my lanyard on, have a cup of tea and I think about going for a drive
PORK PIES!
I walk about 10 to 15 metres from the car to the river bank nearby.
I sit there for about 15 minutes
PORK PIES!
And then I’m happy for the rest of the day
Safe in the knowledge that I can drive the 250 miles back to London

Have you ever had your eyes checked?
No, they’ve always been dead and affectless

All the people
So many people
They can’t walk hand-in-hand
All because of your pork pies

Pork pies
PORK PIES!
Pork pies
PORK PIES!

It’s got nothing to do with my wife’s birthday, yer kna?
PORK PIES!
PORK PIES!

And it’s not about you mugs in flats sitting around and around and around

PORK PIES!
PORK PIES!

When’s he coming out?
Dunno. I think it’s some kind of power play.

All the people
So many people
They can’t walk hand-in-hand
All because of your pork pies

All the people
So many people
They can’t walk hand-in-hand
All because of your pork pies

“DIE, PROLES!”


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Sloganeering

If you’ve been sitting at home for the past few weeks with the Netflix going, you may be aware that we’ve been living in a new Golden Age of Television for some time.

Are we also living in a new Golden Age of Sloganeering?

STAY HOME | PROTECT THE NHS | SAVE LIVES

[Check out YOUR SUPER SOARAWAY Apoplexy Tiny Letter]

Say what you like about the reckless negligence of the British government and its various recent offshoots and predecessors, they sure as hell know how to write a slogan.

TAKE BACK CONTROL
GET BREXIT DONE
STAY HOME | PROTECT THE NHS | SAVE LIVES

Actually, the Ministry of Truth may have outsmarted themselves with that last one. BBC Pravda and The Daily Torygraph have been fretting over recent days that the government’s messaging has been so effective that citizens may be reluctant to snotter all over Wales and the Highlands and Islands now that the lockdown has been eased in England.

HAHAHA! Well done!! That’s hilarious!!!

I even found myself saying to the Wee Man in the middle of the night the other day

STAY IN BED | EAT YOUR PASTA | SAVE LIVES

Me, the other day. Did I not just say that?

So, they’ve applied a handbrake turn. And, to give them their due, they’ve not gone with the blindingly obvious DO AS THOU WILT | SELL THE NHS | KILL THE PROLES. Instead, they’ve affected staggering incompetence to effectively have the English public carry out their instructions.

If you see the virus, don’t approach it | Narf! | The world need more lerts

This

Television/The Strokes

You know, I was just going to do one more post about COVID-19 and then move on. Something technical about its link to strokes.

Partly because, Do you want to read another hot take on the Coronavirus? Partly because I’m so angry about what’s going on, I figured if I did yet another one after a few more days had passed, I’d probably bust one of my brain aneurysms.

Then Boris Johnson did his thing on the telly.

Good of Johnson to give us a sense of normality by getting back in front of a camera and immediately lying as comfortably as he breathes. (More comfortably, in this case.) https://t.co/sZ5w7KwMjl

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) May 1, 2020

[Usually I’d suggest that you check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter for some light relief, but…]

Here’s a quick visual representation of the success that the immoral, lying scumbag of a Prime Minister imposed on us by a certain section of the populace of these islands describes –

The number of people who have died from coronavirus in each country – updated with the new UK figures including care homes. pic.twitter.com/CWOszApioq

— LBC (@LBC) April 30, 2020

Press play and… wait for it… wait…

What’s more, noted bastion of Marxist propaganda, The Morning Star Financial Times indicates that things are much worse that the figures released by the Westminster government suggest –

[T]he number of total deaths now is likely to be about 47,000

The Financial Times, 28/4/20

Now, this isn’t going to be some thinly-veiled boosting of the job the Scottish government is doing. I’m bloody furious with them, too.

Excuse me, may I have a quick word?

See, the Scottish government’s approach to the outbreak has done little more than tinker at the edges of Johnson’s homicidal approach in England. Defenders of this approach might say that this is because they don’t have sufficient powers. But surely when the lives of the people who live here in Scotland are not just at risk, but being lost in their thousands because of a wilfully negligent and ideologically-driven public health strategy, a radical approach is required.

Damn Scots. They ruined Scotland!

What’s the worst outcome? Having the residents of Scotland be expressly told that their lives are of no worth?

Citation? I’ll give ye a citation, sonny

Why so angry, Stroke Bloke? you might ask. Apart from the obvious? As I say, I was going to bow out of Coronavirus chat by noting its links to strokes. Then I read this article – Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes – and it’s absolutely horrifying. And I’ve read Derek Raymond’s I Was Dora Suarez.

“…a book full of coagulating disgust and compassion for the world’s contamination, disease and mutilation.”

Well, that’s fair enough. But seriously, don’t read or listen to Dora Suarez. Its author says writing it broke and changed him.

Here are a few lines from The Washington Post regarding one of the effects of what the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States have chosen to let run rampant among their populaces:

As [the doctor] used a needlelike device to pull out the clot [from the brain], he saw new clots forming in real-time around it Coronavirus patients are experiencing strokes that can obliterate large parts of the brain responsible for movement, speech and decision-making in one blow.“We have never seen so many [stroke patients] in their 50s, 40s and late 30s.”



“New York City deploys 45 mobile morgues”

And there was me wanting to talk to you about the Village Voice’s 50 Most NYC Albums Ever. Hey! Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces Of A Man was at #2!

“You will not be able to stay home, brother”

Mate. You gotta stay home. The Man said.

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What’s Going On

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that

I’ve noticed a lot of writers on my social media talking about how hard it is to get any writing done, what with everything that’s going on…

I know, not the worst problem to have right now. Still, what is going on?

[There’s more anomie and bonhomi e over in the  Apoplexy Tiny Letter.]

You more or less know what’s going on, of course.

The blue line is the number of people the govt says has died. The red line is the number who’ve actually died. New @ft analysis of ONS data finds 41,000 dead. More than double govt’s 17,337. https://t.co/rBxIMbJcki pic.twitter.com/wbjosYFJVx

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) April 22, 2020

More, if you seek out good info.
Less, if you rely on the state broadcaster.

And it kind of hurts to look too closely at what’s happening. At the end of March, I read an article in Wired about The brutal reality of dying under Italy’s coronavirus lockdown. It’s truly distressing reading.

I’ve only written one bit of fiction that features COVID-19, and that was I script that I punted into a very popular open call by the BBC Writersroom. It didn’t get picked up, of course. But as more advisers to governments and medical professionals start talking about how we’re going to have to live with the virus for another 2-3 years, it’s sure going to start infecting storytelling.

Sorry, that’s a typography professional – my bad!

It’s like, remember when folks worried about how the ubiquity of the cellphone would make all sorts of storytelling obsolete? Now, Mrs Stroke Bloke binge watches Save Me, and every time I pop my head in, the main character’s phone is welded to his face.

Are things going to snap back to normal, leaving social distancing fiction churned out in lockdown looking weird? Or are novels finally knocked out while the kids are dumped in front of virtual school going to look weird because they don’t account for the novel coronavirus and its aftermath?

Are any of you folks engaged in essential business?

What do you think? I’m inclined to agree with something I heard a writer say on the radio recently, to the effect that

When you’re deep into a project, you tend to see the world through the prism of that project, rather than the other way around

Michael Morpurgo, maybe? I dunno

Killing Time

Do you remember early April? Were you there?

Cast your mind back – it was the days leading up to Easter, and nobody knew what was next for us all…

As will become clear over the coming days and weeks, the narrative is being established. If Johnson pulls through his mild persistent illness, it’s because he’s gutsier than you and anyone you’ve ever loved who has died…

Staying Alive – apoplectic.me, 8 April 2020

Well, guess what…?

He hath riseneth!

[You know, the apoplectic.me Tiny Letter probably makes more sense…]

I suppose we should be glad.

The nation – Which one does she mean, I wonder? – may look fat, gout-ridden and syphilitic, but at least it’s not… dead?

It turned out that my prediction brushed up against something that has the ring of truth. I just didn’t go far enough. (Yes, that’s always your problem, Stroke Bloke – Ed.)

Yet another way in which I’m not the Tenth Doctor – *sob*

Some years ago, I reflected on here that

[a] mistake I’ve often made, is to take the admirable, humanist thought that “We’re all basically the same, aren’t we?” and pervert it into “Everyone’s a little bit like me.” Or, with less vanity, “I assume I’m a bit like everyone else.“

The Stroke Bloke AKA – apoplectic.me, 9 December 2013

Vanity, thy name is Self-reference. But regardless, that passage does seem to me to be describing a forgivable error arising from the – yes, vanity – and ignorance and inexperience of youth.

Forgiveable, but dangerous. You see, I’d noticed that a certain kind of man – and it is usually a man, I think – tends to ascribe his good fortune to some aspect of his own brilliance. And I’d come across this idea that Boris Johnson’s outlook on the world is that illness is for weak people.

No, you’re… OK, fair enough. I’m sorry.

And that seemed to be enough to terrify poor Joey Tribbiani, last week. But the secret of evil, if you will, is that

[t]he death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

Not Joseph Stalin, apparently

Which brings us neatly to the approach of the Johnson government to COVID-19.

The Westminster government’s handling of the epidemic, as it’s described in the linked article from The Atlantic immediately above is bad enough, but then I stumbled across the following tweet and its ensuing thread.

You can't understand what has happened in England without reading about the people in power believing illness and disability only happen to weak, lazy people.

— Ethel (@Ethelmonster) April 12, 2020

As an asthmatic stroke survivor with two brain aneurysms, I was feeling angry enough about the way COVID-19 is being handled here. But check out that thread. It was the last nail in the coffin of my old outlook.

Maybe next week, I’ll have something pithy to say about that. In the meantime, enjoy your moment of Zen…

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Staying Alive

Yeah, so…

I picked this gif because in the still image from right at the start of this loop, Joey looks terrified

I’ve noticed a lot of writers on my social media talking about how hard it is to get any writing done, what with everything that’s going on, and I thought that it might be an interesting exercise for me – and for me – to examine how that’s working out here in this household. And see what insights that might provide me about how I’m doin.

But let’s quickly get all that out of the road —

[There’s more anomie and bonhomi e over in the  Apoplexy Tiny Letter.]

The main thing preserving my sanity during #coronavirus #lockdown is that every time I try to put on the news, The Wee Man yells ‘BEE GEES!!!’https://t.co/qBIf0YgOjv

— Ricky Monahan Brown (@ricky_ballboy) April 1, 2020

Because yesterday, David Cameron emerged from his shed.

If the ham-face troll sees his shadow, we’ll have six more months of the end of the world

Cameron was talking about the Prime Minister of the Westminster government and his recent admission into intensive care with COVID-19.

Boris is very tough, very resilient, very fit person, I know that from facing him on the tennis court and I’m sure he’ll come through this.

David Cameron, Tuesday

It would’ve been cheaper to get this 10-year-old kid to say roughly the same thing

I don’t know about you, but whenever I look at the evolutionary dead-end of the Honey Monster (© Frankie Boyle), I always think That’s a very fit person. And if you’re familiar with his diet from his participation in The Observer’s What’s In Your Basket feature, you won’t be at all surprised by the specimen of manhood his frame and complexion describe.

According to Vice’s summary of the article, Johnson’s nutritional day tends to kick off with a slice of birthday cake.

An immediate question arises: why, and how, are there so many birthdays in the Johnson household?

Vice: I Ate Like The Prime Minister For A Week, And Deeply Regret It

That’s very generous, actually, because that’s the secondary question – a quick glance at Johnson’s Wiki entry shows that the immediate question that arises is How many birthdays are there in the Johnson household?

Don’t forget to wash your hands to two verses of Happy Birthday!

But I digress. The point is, the media machine has rolled into action to indicate that Johnson will pull through his medical trials because he’s some sort of Übermensch and A Fighter.

As will become clear over the coming days and weeks, the narrative is being established. If Johnson pulls through his mild persistent illness, it’s because he’s gutsier than you and anyone you’ve ever loved who has died. If doesn’t, well… Blame Canada China.

Basically everyone who died was “weak” then? You know this narrative is fucking awful – “brave strong people” stay alive and “weak people die” fucking quit it https://t.co/CE69YSZmkW

— Janey Godley (@JaneyGodley) April 8, 2020

Towards the end of my stroke survival memoir, I try to figure out who or what to credit for the quality of my recovery. This question was partly inspired by reading about Andrew Marr ascribing the quality of his stroke recovery to being a stubborn bugger, and wondering whether it might actually have had something to do with pure dumb luck – someone being present at the vital moment, the exact spot where the brain attack hit, how close the victim was to a hospital, etc, etc, etc.

Johnson himself, supposedly, doesn’t believe in illness. His biographer and former colleague at The Telegraph, Sonia Purnell describes his weird attitude to illness as follows

He was intolerant of anybody who was ill. Until now, he has had a very robust constitution. He has never been ill until now, and this will be a huge shock to him. His outlook on the world is that illness is for weak people.

Oh. Well. That explains a lot. Terrified much, Joey?

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Eight Tracks III

I’ve been seeing folks doing calls for – and offering up – playlists to offer some kind of respite from The Lockdown that’s gone into effect here in the nations of Britain and Northern Ireland. So, what better time to belatedly offer up some of my favourite tracks from the happy days of 2019?

Didn’t this jump the shark with your 2018 edition, Stroke Bloke?

As it happens, the apoplectic.me post of my favourite choons of 2018 began by noting that it was the death of David Bowie that had heralded planet Earth’s one-way trip to hell in a hand basket.

So, join me, won’t you, on a trip down memory lane to when things hadn’t yet gotten entirely out of hand? Or if you don’t like wurdz, just hit up the Spotify playlist.

[ The Apoplexy Tiny Letter is coming out of hiatus, too. With a bonus track, no doubt .]

OK, then. No messing. All killer, no filler.

Mrs Stroke Bloke has been glued to the updates coming out of New York from the Governor, Andrew Cuomo (Help, I Think My Wife’s In Love With Andrew Cuomo???). Of course, I’ve been thinking a lot about out old home in Brooklyn recently.

Aw, man. There’s one of those dancing guys on my train.

Cid Rim’s Control doesn’t sound like anything on Earth, which is nice right now. Also, the video is shot on our old New York Subway line and hits up some of our neighbourhood stations.

I love that track so much, we could stop there. But, while we’re on a Brooklyn nostalgia trip…

There’s nothing more 2020 than nostalgia for something you don’t remember

I missed Brooklyn’s Gang Starr the first time round, but their very posthumous album One Of The Best Yet has me primed to go back and check out the origins of their legend. I love the way Family and Loyalty sounds like some glitchy 1990s Warp Records electronica with some smooth flow laid over the top.

Right. Gear change.

Check out that landscape. Can’t imagine the Coronavirus getting out there, right? I suppose New Zealand has a decent chance of emerging from this better than many. From this distance, NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seems pretty awesome.

The awesome woman above is Aldous Harding. She’s been compare to Scott Walker and Kate Bush and Nico, she works with PJ Harvey associate John Parrish, and her latest album is called Designer, for goodness sake. Nuff said.

Perhaps in my mind, a character so untouched by the pain of heartbreak would also have huge mounds of luxurious hair? – Róisín Murphy

I get too caught up in the groove to intellectualise Incapable, so I’ll leave it to the folks at Pitchfork:

A hypnotic deep-house groove with slinky hints of disco – like the best dance music, it’s an invitation to get lost

OK. SNAP OUT OF IT!!!

Hi, Mom!

While Trump is suggesting we consign your family to death for the sake of The Economy, Idles’ Mercedes Marxist is music to headbutt yourself to death by, with a video like a bleaker version of Office Space.

I’m sorry, that’s the sort of thing I liked in the good times, too. NEXT!

House: music

Back into the groove. Baba Ali can cover this better than me.

In the house I was living at the time, there was a TV, the news was pretty much always on. It was a moment when there was this sense of that things were unravelling and the facades of society and order weren’t holding up anymore.

Oh, last year’s Baba Ali, you have no idea. But you’re right about your tune bring funky and urgent, with a hardened edge.

Right. Let’s finish with the big guns. Fontaines DC’s Dogrel was 6Music’s album of 2019, and Boys In The Better Land. To just about bring things full circle, here’s five lads from Dublin who bonded over a love of poetry sizing up the entire Tonight show audience for a square-go.

I think I’m in love…

And finally, to play us out (for now…?) here’s a track from a band that took their name from a BBC Radiophonic Workshop piece of the same name. This is The Comet Is Coming and Summon The Fire. Figures, really.

Be well, stay safe.

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