Head Full Of Wrong

I don't much like hospitals. Of course, that's a sentiment so common that it approaches cliche, but I feel like I should mention it. I, and other members of my immediate family, have spent far more time in hospital than, wait for it, would seem healthy. Bad-dum tish.

Yesterday my father was admitted to hospital, and I couldn't be happier.

Even writing that now feels strange, like I've entirely missed the point of hospitals being a place where you go when things are going badly. But after weeks of watching my father's health spiral rapidly downwards, it's a relief to know that he's finally going to get some help.

The NHS gets a lot of grief. There seems to be a neverending stream of complaints, of newspapers packed with tragic stories of mistreatment and MRSA. Of course, that's because the loudest people are always those with complaints. People who are satisfied just go home and get on with the rest of their lives; they don't feel it necessary to contact the tabloids to say how well everything went. I know how they feel, because I shan't be contacting the newspapers with a glowing report of yesterdays events, but I feel like some record should exist of how things sometimes go exactly right. Hence, here I am.

So, yesterday afternoon I took my father to his GP to have his latest worrying development examined. After a brief - and, miraculously, early - session, the doctor recommended that we go to the hospital. While we waited he wrote a letter of admission, and while we were travelling to the A+E department he telephoned ahead to ensure that they knew we were coming and that we  wouldn't have to wait. We were taken virtually straight from reception through for examination, which was performed promptly and efficiently by an exceptionally friendly and helpful nurse. Within minutes of that examination he was getting treatment, and within two hours he was on a ward.

He's already perked up overnight, and while things are still bad and there are still numerous worries around his health, the response so far has been exceptional. And it's amazing what a knock-on effect this good experience has had; the rest of the family are far more at ease, and far more confident that we'll be able to get him through this.

He's not out of the woods by a long way, and he'll be in hospital for a week at a bare minimum, so I'm not counting my chickens just yet. All the same, to stretch the metaphor to breaking point, this is the first time in a long time that I've even acknowledged the existence of chickens, and even potential chickens are an improvement.

There's a big problem with making a commitment, even to yourself, that you're going to do something every day, and it's this: no matter how enthusiastic you are, or how good your intentions, you never know when something's going to come along and kick your face off.

That's been happening to me lately - unforeseen circumstances of least desirable kind, which have conspired to make my life a very unpleasant place to be, and which have leapt, jaguar-like, straight to the top of my list of priorities with an ease which reveals just how flimsy and unimportant everything else I was doing actually turned out to be. Thankfully, these circumstances have not affected my ability to construct long, overly complicated sentences which do not so much get to the point as meander nonchalently around it, casting longing glances in its direction, as I have now proven twice in a row.

I have had to make a hard decision, and the conclusion I've arrive at is this: I have to indulge myself more.

The dreadful circumstance I referred to before is the rapidly declining health of my father. I'll not go into details, but what started as a painful but relatively harmless injury has seen his health spiral out of control. It's been a genuinely harrowing time, and I don't know when it will end. My reaction has been to concern myself primarily with him: I have basically become a part-time carer, sharing the responsibilities with my mother, which has meant that I have set aside my own needs and desires in order to best look after my dad.

It was when my hair, which is generally collar-length, reached the base of my shoulder blades that I knew something had to change. I love my father, but I'm trying to rebuild my own life. Much of what little progress I'd made has been undone in the last few months. I have become housebound, not through depression but simply because I've needed to be around my dad; unfortunately, an obvious side effect of that has been, wait for it, a resurgence in my depression. I want to take care of my dad, but I also have to take care of myself.

So, I'm going to go back to doing some of the things I used to enjoy doing. Blogging is a small start, and represents more of a mental shift than anything else: for a while now I've been unable to concentrate on anything other than my father's illness, and returning here will hopefully mean that I'm able to start concentrating on other things. Next tuesday I shall have my first driving lesson. After that I shall have to look for a job. Hopefully these steps will lead to other things; having the ability to be more outgoing should lead to me actually being, well, more outgoing.

The trick, of course, is to try and find a balance between taking care of myself and taking care of my dad. I suppose that's the balance that all carers struggle to find, and I wonder how well I'll be able to do it. I will worry about my dad no matter what I do, and I want to help look after him, but at the same time I have to be slightly selfish and worry about my own life.

At the very least this marks my return to the world of blogging. Beware, internet, beware.

See? I told you that the Large Hadron Collider was going to be trouble.

The documentary evidence is right there, a couple of posts ago. I wrote that the meddling fools at Cern were meddling with forces that must not be meddled with. I predicted danger in the shape of alien overlords from another reality. I predicted no less than the end of civilisation as we know it. A touch melodramatic, perhaps, but bound-to-be-accurate nonetheless.

And now look what's happened. As predicted, the walls between dimensions are crumbling and terrifying things with claws and proboscides and attennae and gross wobbly bits are starting to come through. That's right folks, the aliens have arrived - and they've gone to Louth.

It turns out that Louth has become a hotbed of UFO activity. Weird glowy red lights have been spotted hovering over hills and in clouds. And the number of sightings is suddenly on the rise, by coincidence just after the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider - or, as I like to call it, the Large Alien Warm-Welcomer.

Some news services would be concerned at drawing a connecting line between vague glowy lights in Lincolnshire and what would appear to be a completely safe experiment conducted hundreds of miles away, but the Louth Leader has put themselves at the risk of almost certain ridicule/men-in-black-visitation by running this groundbreaking story. For this they should be applauded - unlike my own local newspaper, which insists on reporting on crime and local events and sports and NOT ADMITTING THE UNDENIABLE TRUTH!

There are probably some disbelievers amongst you. You might say that the weird, glowy lights could be pretty much anything. You might point out the this all started when the Louth Leader ran a story about recently released MOD documents which mention a UFO sighting at RAF Binbrook, and that the fact that people suddenly started seeing weird stuff in the sky after that smacks of mass hysteria. You might point out that even if aliens had been attracted by the experiments at Cern, a more sensible destination for them might be, well, Cern, rather than a town in Lincolnshire. These are all good points, which can lead us to only one inevitable conclusion: you're in league with the aliens.

So, step forward, brave people of Louth. Step blinking into the beaming, glowy light of truth! You have forced us to confront the alien threat amongst us. I applaud you.

Now run, people of Louth! Run for your lives! While there's still time!

My arch-rival in poker, that insufferable dandy Lord Tankington-Smythe, seems to have been intimidated by his previous decimation at my hands, because last night he didn't even bother turning up for what transpired to be my second win on the trot. He cried off citing some manner of stomach complaint, but his protests had a hint of cowardice about them. I shouldn't be surprised if he mysteriously develops some kind of muscle wasting disease, leaving him unable to properly grip a hand of cards ever again and therefore unable to face another drubbing.

Thankfully, there are all manner of gullible folk lining up to donate their money into my winnings fund, and last night another four of them fell to my quick-witted chip-play and unreadable bluffs. My own dear sister was a worthy opponent but was the first to fall. The Lawyer fell next, and then Arachnor, Master of Spiders. The dramatic heads-up play took place between myself and Anguilia, a woman with whom I have butted heads many a time, but her mathmatical skills and feminine wiles could not hope to stand before the onslaught of brilliance that at times threatened to overwhelm her like a tidalwave and sweep her clear of the gaming table. A noble victor, I quickly and quietly accepted both the plaudits of my defeated opponents and, more importantly, their money.

I might be worried by that old saying "lucky at cards, unlucky in love," except that my victorys have come not through luck but through skill, bravery and not a little application of charm. Watch out for me, for surely I shall soon be bestriding the world of poker like a muscular, firm-buttocked collossus. You'll see.

Tonight's post has been bought to you in the style of a boastful nineteenth century diarist, and by the number twelve.

So, it's Saturday and, thus far, the world remains remarkably untouched. Reality as we know it is not unravelling around our ears. Perhaps Stephen Hawking was right. Perhaps those scientist types at Cern actually know what they're doing.

But then again, perhaps not - especially since I have already proven beyond any shadow of doubt that Stephen Hawking is an emissary of our future alien overlords, busilly preparing the way for our future domination and enslavement at their hideously clawed hands, or suckers, or tentacles, or whatever apendages they might have. Hawking is not to be trusted, and therefore we must continue to regard the activities at Cern with the utmost suspicion.

And anyway, the actual proper testing at Cern won't begin for four years. That makes it 2012, which by weird coincidence is the date that the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar says is the end of the Fourth Age and the end of the world as we know it. So if you've got any desperately important things to do, best you get them over and done with before then.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no problems with the idea of scientific advancement. It's been pointed out that many of the things that we take for granted in our everyday lives have been created as a byproduct of seemingly risky experiments - the space race, for instance, led to developments in fields such as cat scans, running shoes and sports bras. It's just that landing a rocket on the moon seems significantly less risky than attempting to punch a hole in the fabric of reality. If that's what it takes to develop a more efficient new non-stick frying pan then I'm not sure it's worth it.

Still, any new discovery has an inherent element of risk about it. Perhaps the scientists at Cern will do as they've set out to and discover wondrous new things about the way the universe works. That will be some comfort - when I've been spaghettified into screaming atoms and sucked into a swirling vortex of uncompromising nothingness, it'll be nice to know why it's happening.

It's now five days since I last posted. My existential doubt has, to some extent, passed, and I'm back in the blogging mood.

Several things have been occupying my brain since my last visit to my own little corner of the interweb. These are they, in no particular order:

Poker - I have finally won a game of poker, beating three teachers, one a mathematician, and that insufferable dandy Lord Tankington-Smythe. I was, of course, gracious in victory, and certainly did not whoop or jump or pump my fist like a chromosome-deficient American fratboy.

Half Life 2 - I cannot tell a lie. I have been gaming a lot recently, but I have a good reason: it's Half Life Bloody 2. I bought The Orange Box from the excellent Steam online shop, and I've worked my way through Half Life 2 again. As an example of how highly I regard Half Life 2, it's the only commercial game I've completed more than once. It's just great.

Then I played Half Life 2: Episode One, which is the first expansion pack for Half Life 2 and is great, but not quite as great as Half Life 2 itself. Right now I'm half way through Half Life 2: Episode 2, which is abso-bloodly-lutely brilliant. It's all I can do to stop myself closing this webpage right now and start playing it again.

However, it's not my favourite game in the package. That honour goes to...

Portal - Portal is a first-person puzzle game that comes as part of The Orange Box and it is, in a word, amazing. You are a test subject in a series of lab experiments based around a portal gun which you can use to create interdimensional portals in solid concrete. Walk into one and you'll come out the other. It's such a simple idea but it creates a puzzle game or startling complexity; everytime you succesfully solve a puzzle you feel like the most intelligent person in the world, which is quite good for me since I don't normally believe myself to be the most intelligent person in the room, often even when I'm on my own. And once you're through the initial nineteen test levels the game takes a turn and goes off at a brilliant new tangent. Skillfully designed and packed full of genuinely laugh-out-loud moments from your A.I. companion GlaDOS, Portal is quite the best game I've played in a very long time.

The Paralympic Games - If I'm a fan of the Olympics, I'm an even bigger fan of the Paralympics. Partly that's out of respect for the athletes, but partly it's because it's so damned entertaining. I genuinely find wheelchair basketball to be a more enjoyable sport than able-bodied basketball. And I can't wait until the Murderball - sorry, we're calling it wheelchair rugby these days - gets going.

Fear - I don't know if it's because playing a lot of Half Life 2 recently has made me worried about the experiments of scientists whose aims are well-intentioned but who seem thoroughly unprepared for the possible consequences, but I'm getting concerned about those bods at Cern. I know Stephen Hawking says everything is going to be fine, but he's probably laying the foundations for our subjegation by interdimensional alien overlords as we speak.

What am I talking about? Well, think about it. A scientist. In a motorised wheelchair. With a robotic voice.

Stephen Hawking is Davros.

Anyway, I've been drawing up blueprints for some kind of bunker-like structure in my garden so that I can ride out the inevitable laser-powered holocaust at the hands of our future transreality masters. All I need to do now is kidnap Keely Hazell so that I can brick her in with me and, when we finally emerge from our wattle-and-daub safehaven, start repopulating humanity with beautiful, hairy babies.

You think I'm insane. But when the Zragians beam in from Dimension Twelve and proclaim me Overlord of Earth you won't be laughing.

The open mike night rolled around again on Tuesday. After my triumphant featured set at the last gig I was looking forward to playing again, even if it was only at the open mike section. I had three songs lined up and ready to go. At 8 PM I would head down to the Crown and rock the crowd once more.

At quarter past seven I got a phone call from my sister telling me to phone my good friend Lord Tankington-Smythe, one of the two organisers of the open mike night. And by the way, would I like a lift? Yes I would, says I, so we arranged for me to be picked up in fifteen minutes.

While I waited for my lift to arrive I gave Lord Tankington-Smyte a quick phonecall. He had some bad news: all of the featured acts for that night had dropped out one after the other, and he had noone to take their place. Would I mind doing a longer set?

Now I don't know if it was pity for a friend that made me say yes, or if it was some kind of idiotic hubris, some mis-placed belief that I could actually pull it off, but I agreed. I agreed to play a thirty minute set. In fact, I agreed to play the thirty minute headline set at the end of the night. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.

After getting off the phone I realised that I was being picked up in ten minutes. Ten minutes to gather my instrument, get my gear together and somehow expand a nine minute set into a thirty minute set with no way to work out which songs would flow well together and no way to practise. Suffice to say, I spent most of those ten minutes worrying about how I could never do all of the things I needed to do in ten minutes.

So, I arrive at the pub thoroughly unprepared and order a drink. And then, since I'm not on till last, I systematically order several more drinks. By the time I take to the stage I'm half-terrified, half-drunk and half-stupidly optimistic, which according to my maths makes one-and-a-half idiots. First I play two of the songs I'd originally planned for my three song set. Then I realise I've forgotten what the third song in the set was going to be, so I start making up the set list as I go along. I make it three quarters of the way through a cover before realising that somehow I've ended up in entirely the wrong key. I proudly announce that my next song is one of my own composing, play the opening chords and realise that I don't know the words. After that I realise that I've forgotten how to play all of the songs I'm supposed to know how to play, so in desperation I um and ah and then I ask the audience if they have any requests.

Thankfully crowds love a well-meaning idiot, so they don't do the obvious thing and kindly request that I get the hell off the stage.

And here's the problem: I was awful. I was too drunk and too scared and too unprepared to be good. But people were still telling me that they enjoyed it and that I was great. But I wasn't. I was bad.

So, if people said I was good when I know I was bad, how can I trust that they were being honest when they said I was good before? Have they just been patronising me all along? Or, by some miracle, did I actually manage to pull this gig out of the bag by sheer dint of admitting my mistakes and making a joke out of them?

Oh, how I love existential doubt.

...And the levee was absolutely soaking wet.

It's hurricane season in old New Orleans once again, almost exactly three years since the devestation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Large parts of the city have been evacuated, and fingers are crossed that the new flood defences will be strong enough. The expert opinion seems to be that Hurricane Gustav will not directly hit the city; that instead Gustav will hit somewhere to the west. The city is locked down as much as it can be; now it's just a question of waiting and seeing.

We had some floods of our own here in the Midlands last year. They were pretty bad, and some areas are still recovering from them, but in general the government response was pretty good, bearing in mind that it didn't happen in London and most government officials appear to believe that anything north of Watford is an uninhabitable, blasted wasteland right up until it turns into Scotland.

By comparison the US government's response to the destruction in New Orleans seemed naive at best and criminally neglectful at worst. Even now, three years on, the scheme to upgrade the levees around the city are only 25% complete. The earth and concrete levees are stronger and larger than they were in 2005, but even in their upgraded state they still wouldn't stand up to a hurricane of Katrina's strength.

There were lots of fingers pointed in the direct aftermath of the floods alledging that the government's response was slow because the majority of those left homeless in New Orleans were black. It was said that if that level of destruction had happened in a city where the majority of the populace were white then the government would have acted much more quickly. I dont know whether that's the case or not, but I'm certainly very interested to see what's going to happen in the aftermath of Gustav.

Good luck, New Orleans. I've got my fingers crossed for you.

Hey. It's been a while. I feel pretty bad about that, but I feel even worse about the fact that I return to you not with morsels of interesting opinion but instead with shameless self-promotion. Ah, such is life.

There's a little online gaming community that goes by the name of Kongregate. Kongregate hosts online flash games while also providing chat rooms and forums and challenges. I always felt a little bit bad about wasting time playing Flash minigames, but Kongregate's simple scheme of adding challenges to certain games, with a "badge" as a reward for completing said challenge, has dazzled me into submission. What can I say? I'm a magpie, I like shiny badges.

Anyhoo, I've contributed two pieces of art to an online card game hosted at Kongregate. The Necronomicon is based upon H P Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, and allows you to take on twenty levels of AI opponent in a tactical battle. It's a fun game - fun enough, in fact, to tempt me into digging out my dusty copy of Photoshop 7 and knocking up a couple of card images to help out the game'c creator. Fun times for all.

The game can be found right here, so give it a try. My artwork graces the cards Blessing of Hastur and From Beyond. What are you waiting for? Go check it out.

I suppose it was too much to expect that we'd stay in third place of the Olympic metal table forever, but it's been a good run. While the BBC was worried about the Australians creeping up and overtaking us, my personal fear was that the Russians would find their form and unfortunately that's exactly what happened.

It's a shame, but that shouldn't take the shine of what has been a remarkable performance and our best medal haul in goodness knows how long. It's important to remember that we're choosing from a much smaller pool when picking our olympic squad - the three nations currently above us are China, Russia and America, all of whom have significantly larger populations than our little country. With so many people to pick from, it's not surprising tha China have been able to find a few who are good at sports.

I doubt we'll win enough golds in the final events of the games to leapfrog the Russians again, but all the same this has been a brilliant games. Well done us.