Friday, January 04, 2008

Some things I want to Bring To Your Attention. And a meme. Thank you.

Yes, well. We're now four days into 2008, and what have I achieved? Nothing! This week has involved a simply fabulous flare-within-flare incident where first I had a serious attack of the nauseas (which are still keeping me running to the loo - a curse upon tramadol and all its minions), then there was a truly stunning migraine, and now I'm exhausted. I was due to go swimming with my PA this morning, but on waking it occurred to me that not being able to move wasn't a good omen for that, so I postponed her and went back to sleep. I have managed to move out of bed exactly three times today, twice for tea and once to make a cheese salad. It's at times like these that I'm very glad I still have the ability to open packets of leaves and spinach and mix them together to fall back on. It means I can pretend that I still know how to be independent. Isn't that nice. On the plus side, my pre-New-Year bad mood went away, thanks to a lovely, chilled NYE with two friends. At which I drank more than I really should have done, hence all the migraine-y stuff, but hey ho, I enjoyed it a lot. More socialising to be done in 2008, yes indeed. If I can just get out of bed for long enough. Hmm, that might be a New Year's Resolution. That, and making it to church on Sunday, and writing a sodding Ouch blog post, and watching the DVDs my friends have lent me, and eating less chocolate, and...

Onto serious matters. Since I have utterly failed to come up with the proper traditional New Year post, either of the 'review of the year' or the 'resolutions' type, largely because I've been busy throwing up, I thought I would highlight a few things I've found while I've been entertaining myself with posting boards and suchlike today.

1) If you have a mental health problem, or have a close connection with someone who does, take the 'Moving People' survey and make me a happy bunny. This is a consultation on behalf of Mind, Rethink and the Mental Health Alliance, who are planning an awareness campaign aimed at breaking down the stigma associated with mental illness. I would like to see a political, rights-focused campaign. While there have been some interesting ones in the past, they've all been a bit fluffy and 'one-in-four' - and although there's nothing wrong with that, I think it's time to shock and engage people with the facts of how appalling prejudice and discrimination against people with mental health problems still is. But the important thing is that service users have a voice in the campaign. So get surveying and get your views heard, people.

2) My lovely friend Linz has highlighted two petitions, which will soon be closing, relating to the research and treatment of M.E. and Fibromyalgia. Both of which are political/rights issues. These are hugely under-funded and under-resourced conditions, and NICE (an ironic name if there ever was one) is restricting and harming the ways in which people with these conditions receive treatment. This is the relevant post. Go sign the petitions, if you're in the UK (and if you agree with the premise of each, obviously). Cheers!

And talking of my lovely friend Linz, she has tagged me in something called the Meme Challenge. So here's that.

Here are the rules:

1-Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog
2-Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird
3-Tag 6 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs
4- Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 Facts About Me:

  1. Most of my life, I thought I was 5'3". Then a nurse measured me a couple of years ago and said "Sorry dear, you're 5' 2-and-a-half." I was devastated.
  2. My mother has 22 cousins. Between them they have so many children that we've lost count of the second cousins, but we know there are more than 40. She's Irish.
  3. I am one in 15,000. (Guess.)
  4. For the first twenty-two - or so - years of my life I was a seriously dedicated fundamentalist (and not among the least narrow-minded of those). And I thought being gay was a terrible sin. Ah, how things change. Thank God. Possibly literally...
  5. I have an overwhelming compulsion to name inanimate objects. You've met Marvin and Luna. My current laptop is Mr Crashy IV. His predecessors lived up to their names.
  6. For a couple of years I lived in a house with a swimming pool in the back garden. I went skinny-dipping once or twice. Well, you have to, don't you?
  7. I had about ten teeth removed in my teens, due to overcrowding (it was sort of a cull). Since I now have twenty-nine left, that means I once, theoretically, had a total of thirty-nine teeth. I'd love to get my hands on my dental records and find out exactly how many there were. As you can imagine, I was an odd-looking teenager.

I’m tagging: Jemma at Diary of a Monkey, Grace at Jesus Wept, Ellie at Life, Not Just Existence, Giraffe-a-licious at Ponderings and Ruminations, Batsgirl at This Is My Blog, sparklya at Trivial Pursuits, and my Girl at The Audioblog from Purgatory (mostly because I want to see how she copes with this through the power of rambling). I was going to tag Lisy Babe, but I think Linz already did. And if any of you don't like memes, you can threaten me with something nasty and I'll bug you to do it anyway.

That's it. I'm off back into hibernation. Wake me when Spring gets here...

11 comments:

Mary said...

*threatens with nasties*

Actually no, it's more a plea for mercy. Memes and me just never seem to get on. They end up as notepad files cluttering up my desktop and when I eventually open them, all they contain is a copy/paste of the rules, and the person who tagged me.

Right now, I don't think I can think of seven bloggers or seven facts. Work is mad, January sales, I just have this sort of recurring nightmare where great big stacks of CDs topple over at me.

Can has hibernations now plz?

Naomi J. said...

Fine, fine. I emerge from my hibernating state to post, but no one else can :P I'm kidding, of course. Yer fine mate. I hope work doesn't kill you before the end of the sales. I am now quite traumatised by the thought of being crushed by large piles of CDs. It's all going to turn into a particularly nasty horror-movie-style dream as soon as I close my eyes. Ah well, hibernation anyway.

stevethehydra said...

"We're now four days into 2008"... and yet this blog post is datestamped "December 29, 2007"...

I wanted to know who NICE is/are, but the link didn't mention it. The only NICE i know of (apart from the fictional one in That Hideous Strength... which has to be one of the oddest books i've ever read) is the National Institute for Conductive Education, which is based very near me in Birmingham and is a slightly weird medical-model take on educating physically impaired kids by... er, teaching them to move their limbs "better" by passive movement, and claiming that improves their educational performance, or... something...

Also, just how many queer ex-fundies are there in the disability movement???

Naomi J. said...

Shiva: NICE. They give 'guidelines' on treatment - which are then taken as law by the NHS. They are the reason some people can't get the cancer drugs they need... the reason my GP keeps asking me how much longer I'm going to be on the only medication that does anything for my pain, because it's expensive and not 'sanctioned' by NICE for my conditions... the reason people with certain conditions are put through appalling so-called treatments - cf. the way 'graded exercise' is forced onto people with M.E., even when those people become ill through it... Um. Yes. I have a problem with them. I like their site's claim that they're "independent". Of who - the government? Heh. Not as far as I've noticed.

The date thing was an error that has now been corrected. I could blame my dyspraxia for my inability to do anything with time measurements. I won't, though.

In answer to your final question, I have no idea, but I do seem to encounter quite a lot of them.

stevethehydra said...

You've actually corrected it to "December 4th, 2008". Sorry, it's my Aspie attention to detail...

(On my blog the date stamp seems to be automatic - i certainly don't enter a date for my posts, i just click "Publish" and it appears with the date and time of when i published it...)

The real NICE looks almost as sinister as the fictional one ;) (What did you think of Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy, btw?)

Naomi J. said...

Haha. This time I blame pain medication. And *pain*, now that I think about it. Although quite soon I will run out of impairment-related excuses and have to admit that I'm just a bit dizzy. (It's my life's ambition to avoid having to admit that. I'm doing quite well there.)

Yes, the date stamp is automatic. I started part of that entry back on the 29th and edited it without editing the date. Let this be a lesson to me.

Never read the Cosmic Trilogy - although I really should, given my literary studies interest in fantasy writing. What do you think of it - beyond that it's weird?

Never That Easy said...

Linz's petition is fabulous: those guidelines are atrocious.

Also fabulous? Your tagline! I LOVE IT!!!

Happy, heathier 2008, my friend.

Jemma Brown said...

ok i havnt quite got round to doing this yet but trust me i will, if i dont you have permission to nag me!

Elizabeth McClung said...

First response: "It is 2008?" - on our brief buying trip to seattle ended up with TV for short period of time which reminds us again why we don't have a TV but there was a commercial talking about 2009 - which confused me, "Is it 2009?" Linda said no, and I said I have a hard enough time getting the months right, why do they want to confuse me with years now?

As for the british, well, they probably have invented the majority of insulting words regarding those with mental illnesses - and continue to do so - though I have to admit writing on a resume, "I was away with the fairies" is much more...um...perversely enjoyable than "Bipolar II".

My response to your facts: 1) wear boots - since nurses were always shorter than me they just stuck the thing up there and peered up - so they shorter they were the 'taller' I got, like the one who said I was 6'8" - um, don't think so. 2) Be careful who you date, with your fundy background there is a lot of potential guilt with this one.

3) You have webbed feet?
4) Yeah, that's fun while it last, the problem leaving ultra fundy land is no one gets your jokes or references anymore. You could make some joke to a guy with long scraggly hair about "watch out you don't go like Absolom" and just get a nervous backing away.
5) I have only named my epee swords, the first was named by the guys at the club from the number of groin hits I gave them: "The eviserator (sic)", I have 4 white polar teddy bears - they all have names, they are called...."bear" Maybe you should visit and name my stuff since you have a knack for it.

6) Yes.

7) I have all my teeth, which seems to shock and suprise most dentists who say "You have a LOT of teeth in here" - and I say, "Um...the right number for humans though?" - I guess not in this modern age. What boggles me is that you don't remember each extraction - were they so mundane?

Naomi J. said...

Heh. They were all removed in one go, under general anaesthetic, which is why I can't remember exactly how many. I have resolved to ask a dentist - if I ever visit one again (starting to seem unlikely).

Re: your response to 2) - you think I should avoiding dating Irish people?? Well, I am now happily attached on what I hope is, and expect to be, a permanent basis. She does have an Irish passport, along with her other one, though...

stevethehydra said...

Sorry, should have responded to your question about Lewis's trilogy... they were all odd, but got progressively odder.

I really liked the first one, although it's probably the kind of thing that i like but don't expect anyone else to like. There's a brilliantly funny (in that very dry, very English way) satirical bit in it where the main character (a linguist, loosely based on Tolkien) has to translate a speech by an uber-capitalist imperialist about the wonderful achievements of the human race into the language of an "unfallen" race who basically live in a primitive-communist utopia ruled benevolently by a (literal) angel...

The second one involves the "Adam and Eve" of Venus, the Devil in a human body (who is effectively creepy), and the main protagonist having to prevent another "Fall". It's unfortunately marred by rather extreme and all-persuasive sexism. (I strongly suspect it was the "negative inspiration" for the main plot of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy.)

The third one is... a lot more difficult to describe. It's set on Earth, involves a sinister biotechnology institute with the initials NICE, an attempt at satire of the UK academic establishment which comes from a very strange position, and Merlin and Arthur Pendragon. The main protagonist of the first 2 books is reduced to a somewhat peripheral figure, but made to embody a heavily symbolism-laden (and only partially Christian) ideal of human perfection. Oh yeah, and there's a bit of it told from the perspective of a (normal, non-speaking, non-sentient) bear.

Like i said, odd... somehow, tho, i had you marked as someone who might be quite into them...