Category Archives: Miffed

Jun 2 2013

The less of me for May


The less of me for May- A moth where it ended in abruptly and in tragedy

Lessof Me May

  • 8Runs – that’s half of what I expected
  • 42.06 kms kms in total
  • 5.2kms average per walk-out
  • Fastest 5km improves all the time 32:53  - remembering back that it was 44:03 in December when I really started to go for it.
  • Weight  dropping slowly – now at 94 kg, but only because I ate to comfort myself in the last two weeks.
  • New shoes – I brought some more New Balance shoes M1010, They’re still in the box unworn.

NB1

So to recap then.

I hurt myself.

I’d got to 498 kms and wanted to get to 500 (in total), and I went out in the morning. I had a “tight” right calf, but stretching seemed to ease it, in my head. I’d got less than 500 meters where I stopped to stretch it again, and nearly gave up, but mistaking the pain as being similar to the pain that shins sometimes give me I pushed ahead.

Then at the furthest point from home I’d stopped to walk a bit, the calf was quite “knotted” and I thought I’d walk it off, but I came to a junction and then the gentle downhill bit that I really enjoy. So I ran accross the road, in the way you do to beat the truck that’s coming up. and that’s when the tears started :-(

calfrupt_2

gastroc-soleus

The burning stabbing that indicates some part of your body has given up.  For those of you that know this is both painful, embarrassing and confusing.

So there I was in comparative agony  by the side of the road, unable to walk, and some kind passerby stopped and offered me a lift home, I was sweaty and grimacing but still they stopped. It was incredibly kind and thoughtful and I hope that i’d be as charitable if ever I had the chance.

Cold pads and hot water bottle’s for a few hours, compress bandage and rest.

Oddly I had no problems standing on top toes had a full range of foot motion but I couldn’t walk in any coherent way, and getting down stairs was pretty impossible for the first day.

In the week since, it’s calmed down a lot, only aches if I’ve been sitting for a while, and doesn’t like being cold. I massage it daily and use deep heat (you know that stuff that smells like locker rooms, the opposite of chick-magnet”

I’m really itching to get back and exercise, and will have a gentle walk tomorrow.

And there you have it – May done and dusted, some wins, a few set backs, a few compliments about how less fat I am becoming. It’s all good.

May 19 2013

Star Trek – Into the darkness – oh dear.


Star Trek – Into the darkness

I just saw the movie.

There are a few things that I have questions about.

Underwater ?
Can fly in an atmosphere?
‘short’ distance from Earth, well known planet and situation, (they have a debrief about it) and yet un-exploited (by characters like Mudd?)

Tribbles ?
Mudds Spacecraft still in dock and ready to go?

He cries?

The all new Dreadnought class can go faster than Warp?

And can transport people through shields? – “What are you doing there?” and apparently despite shields being up,  you can enquire if the “beam” can be blocked, and it’s only a lack of power that prevents you?

Quick phone call to a reclusive and looking a bit worse for wear ‘Old Spock‘ to ask how it ends?

No way of blocking communicator traffic, and they work from one end of space to the other – Can you hear me Scotty ?

Re-animation using a newly extracted “serum” from blood, takes 2 weeks in a human, hour or less in a troublesome tribble.

Carol Marcus – random character – like the mirror of the man in red in the landing party – gratuitous underwear shot, has managed to defeat many security checks and walks onto a spaceship – just like that, oh and how important?

Many and varied ‘alien’ species, already in contact and employed in Star Fleet.

And Earth has no missile defence system ?

and we finish with a  5 year mission to explore and discover new civilisations  ?

But it’s a  jolly good roller coaster of a ride. Khan is great, the new play on the old plot is fantastic and I’d watch it again. For those who remember the Star Trek series the first time around, this play well to the nostalgic and doesn’t stray too far away from comfortable. I do hope however that the next film doesn’t have a bald woman, whales, and a satellite that’s gone all Wal-E, but a Genesis project might go well, if only they could figure out how “old spock” didn’t do that bit.

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Apr 29 2013

Paleo Diet – The Flaws Of The ‘Caveman’ Diet


I read this and it makes more sense than the fad diet.

Living like cave men, or at least eating like them, is being hailed by some as an ideal lifestyle. The paleo diet, based on the idea that our bodies have not adapted sufficiently to eat foods that weren’t available 10,000 years ago, focuses on eating meat, fruits and vegetables and avoiding grains and dairy.

But evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk says that idea is flawed.

Paleo Diet | The Flaws Of The ‘Caveman’ Diet | Stuff.co.nz.

Particulalry this bit :

Q. How much do we know about early human diets?

A. We don’t really know what they were eating. It’s turning out that they may have eaten more starch and carbohydrates than we had realised. They also ate different things in different parts of the world. …

I think we mostly agree that less “processed” food would be desirable, and more in season vegetables would be nice.  But better nutrition and health care have allowed us to live to 70, 80, 90 years old.

What the paleo types want is to have a fad diet that picks and chooses from a whole worlds worth of choices. You don’t want to go the winter months with no  Salad greens (assuming they had  salad greens) or fruits, and exist only on nuts and whatever you managed to dry and store.

As an aside I wonder what a paleo banana looks like? (nothing at all like the yellow bendy fruit we have today)

You want product A that was from North America, with Product B from Middle Europe, and a Fish that comes from the coast of Iceland. Or something like that, just like Paleo man did.

Oh and paleo man lived to be a ripe old age of about 30.

Go for it if you’ve really  thought it through, it’s a cake and eat it diet.

Mar 14 2013

A Letter to Murray McCully


I expect a form letter asnwer.

 

Mr.McCully,

I understand that you’re voted in for your opinions and preferences, but I can’t let it pass without comment that you changed your vote to change your support of Marriage Equality to be opposed to it.

As the National MP in the ECB you’ve secured my vote for the previous elections. Mostly because you’re inoffensive and are in a party that by and large suits my own thinking. By and large.

Being the intelligent, well travelled, and well rounded man that you are I can’t begin to understand how you can vote against something that I’ve enjoyed for coming up to 25 years this year, that of being married.

I can’t begin to understand how you could support it one day and be against it the next. You’re now one of only 4 people who’ve been swayed, cajoled, or harangued into taking a contrary position to one which you came to on your own.

I’d lay Dollars to Cents that you’ve been lobbied by the religious element in this. Modern marriage is a construct of religion, religion that does all it can to deny minorities the status that they themselves confer upon themselves.

The world will not end, churches will not crumble, men will not start eyeing me up lustily in the streets, people will go about their lives. Traditional marriage, and denial of it to all people, is about religious dogma. Traditional Marriage isn’t for life, as the number of divorces will attest. Marriage isn’t for everyone, else everyone would be married.

At a time when Atheism or non-religion becomes more prevalent and religious dogma and teaching become less relevant you find yourself in a position where you are in danger of becoming a dinosaur of a past age.

Mr. MCully I ask you, if you could travel back in time would you yourself would have voted for women’s suffrage? And whilst not comparable in moving society forward, I ask you why you would vote against Marriage Equality, something that clearly brings equity to everyone?

I’d ask that you do me the service of not sending me a stock/form reply, because that’s just avoidance, and my one vote might not make a difference, but then again it might.

Philip Walter

Nov 11 2012

Robbie Williams – ‘Take the Crown’ takes the cake


Tragically today for my exercise companion  I listened to the latest Robbie Williams CD –  Take the Crown.

Take the biscuit more like.

It’s a set of 3 -6 word “chants” with a background of “anthem” style 80′s pop synthesiser music, all with the aim of giving gravitas to lyrics from the secret diary of a pre-pubescent teen.

This really feels like this is music that you do to  fill in time in a contract that demands a new album ever year , or something. there is no heart soul or reason for this, it’s floundering nonsense.

Even the worst of albums has a redeeming lyric, or track, or melody that casts light on an otherwise gloomy thing. I failed to find it on this.

That said I’m not really the target audience. But that just adds weight to the idea that this is about the money, it isn’t about craft, or skill, it isn’t about life experience, or a journey through a linked story, it’s a series of 3 minute sound-bites that should appeal to the x-factor-got talent audience who appreciate a poor song to overly wrought backing track sung in the chanty pop style.

So awful I had to share it with you.

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Oct 22 2012

When Sci-Fi loses the plot – Revolution


Revolution - our entire way of life depends on electricity. So what would happen if it just stopped working…..  15 years later, life is back to what it once was long before the industrial revolution

I’ve only watched a couple of episodes and I have a couple of questions, and an observation.

1. No electricity means no “lots of things”, including combustion engines, and jet engines. So… back to horse and buggy then.

There have been a couple of scenes set around train tracks, so I get no diesel trains, but clearly “electricity also means that you can’t have “steam trains“, nor those amusing manual bogey cart things with the handle that goes up and down.

In town you can’t have steam driving anything, and forgive me for a being a  naive but aren’t bicycles pedal power? Yet to see one of those?

And there are scenes that have a clock in them, I probably need to include “clockwork” into “depends on electricity”

No windmills either. the ubiquitous electricity thing again.

No hang-gliders, dirigibles, kites either. It’s really harsh having no electricity

2. Unfeasibly pretty people , and the chubby guy from Google.  All the female parts appear to be tick the box stereo-type not unattractive people. The men, well in a rehash of so many  plot devices we have to have the pretty-yet-needy-in-some-way boy, the (still) overweight chap, the dark recluse and the bad-man.

3. Shaving, did I mention that, seems that you can still forge knives and swords, and have a shave. No electricity needed there, if only they could remember how to harness the power of the flames to make steam……

4. Everything is in ruins, cities have crumbled. Concrete will do that without regular electricity.

5. The “Government” and the “Rebels” – somehow you have to stretch that there is a ruling government Thiefdom in some way, and they’re all about crushing the “rebels”  by marching small groups of “militia” around taking taxes.

6. Guns. In 15 years guns are outlawed and illegal to own, says the militia, and everyone but everyone has a crossbow. Mostly. It’s like either all the gunpowder ran out, or that all the manual bullet press machines broke, or something. Makes no sense. Crossbows make no sense.  At one point the Militia turn up with Muiskets!

Finally though. Electricity. Switched off, somehow, over the everywhere. But not so that it has any effect on the electrical impulses of the brain and body.  Perhaps they mean “mechanical electricity”, the sort that keeps bridges from collapsing and buildings from crumbling and batteries. But not brain or body electricity, that’d be no story though, not even zombies

Finally finally… Which reminds me that they do have a fishing community but haven’t yet figured out paddle steamers. Clean clothes appear to be in endless supply, they’ve invented the “everpress” technology to make them look crisp and new in the 15 years since they’ve not been able to manufacture “the everything”

Oct 5 2012

Two Funerals and a wondering


To be honest it’s been a few funerals,  but specifically I’m thrown off by axis by one of which was this week, the other from 1988.

This week the funeral of a friend, Des Tierney, a good bastard by any measure. If I end up half a good a bastard then I’ll be spectacular. No one exemplified the meaning of community than Des. There won’t be a million words or books written about Des, and that’s a pity in some regards, but he’ll be an oral legend, around these and other parts.

The other funeral, my Father. The one I didn’t go to because I just moved to New Zealand, in 1987.

The thing that links them? Well in the sadness of things they both died before they were 60.

And why then would I be thrown into the funk that I have. Well I’m not getting any younger, and I’m now contemplating, as I did with some incredulity at 16, as being as old as my dad. Except now that the words “when he died” are added on the end.

So why should I panic about the age my father died? He was a heavy smoker with a sedentary lifestyle, it’s not the way I am. And how does the passing of a friend conflate a story to make it a doom.

In a normal thinking they don’t. But as your own mortality, and your own perception of that mortality changes you begin to fret. I spoke to a couple of of me friends about this, and they get it, what I’m feeling, they didn’t laugh, they just compared theirs to mine, and we all agreed that it was a nothing. It is what it is, there is no binary thing going on, that event A does not meant that it will equal a similar event  A for me, or them.

So now here I am wondering why it is that I never owned a Lotus Elite Turbo, and E-Type Jaguar. A 1967 Mustang fastback , or a V8 anything, and it’s not like that would define me in anyway. It might bring me immediate pleasure, and the added angst of maintaining and paying for it.

I’m now wondering why I never went home to England and abandoned almost everything to a new country, like no one ever did that, but I’ve not been home, not am I likely to go home, and I left in 1987. And yes it’s still home. Go figure.

Do I think people will tell grand stories about me when I die? You’re having a laugh, the most heroic I’ve been was when never.  Should I worry about that?

So a life just as ordinary. A fear and doubt. A surprise? There are many things in my head, and a weight on my shoulder that has descended for no reason other than self.

But if I had a motto to live by it would be “this too shall pass”, and it will. Might get that as a tattoo.

Aug 5 2012

The Drama of Home Theatre….


 

I also learnt today that Home Theatre is something I no longer grasp. Although I’ve yet to be convinced that a $20 HDMI cable is worse than a $90 cable I’ve learnt that the number of cable variants and where they go present a challenge to my old man mind.  The emphasis should be on Theatre, or perhaps they could rename it Minor Drama.

 

LaserDisk Recorder

LaserDisk Recorder (Photo credit: Joachim S. Müller)

 

I miss the ikea style of how to do things, and to be presented not only an A, B or C choice but also an a,b or c choice did nothing but confuse me.

 

That and the unhelpful owners manual, which appeared to be thrown together in the style of one of those chose you own adventure books, if you chose option A got to page 48, if you chose option B got to page 63, where it tells you to refer to page 38.

 

It’s not hard, mostly it’s just pass-though wiring, plug in an input get an output, but 3 hours and I gave up on the accessory that was just designed to torment.

 

However the old Betamax collection gets a new lease of life, and I might crack out the Philips Videodisc player , as reward for my endeavours.

 

Jul 28 2012

Faith, Same sex marriage, and Children.


New Zealand is on track to remove barriers to same sex marriages. We have Civil Union legislation, but this is a sort of half-way house thing. Removing an arbitrary sex based barrier to marriage is of it’s time.

However those of the faith and the religiosity have got their collective underpants all bunched and they’re going to come out swinging on a number of ‘points’.

And they are all nonsense. And they are all nonsense because there is not one logical argument that could be put forward that would or could justify their position. Not a one.

“Marriage is between a man and women” Since when? Since a when the ‘church’ decided to Ponce up some ceremony and add some bells and whistles is a when. The church is big on dogma and protocol. But I can’t find any evidence that before the church decided to dress up a ceremony that marriage wasn’t a thing. I can’t find any evidence that before the church decided to restrict it’s ‘blessing’ that all marriages were between men and women.

In different ancient cultures, marriage was more of a business arrangement, joining families together for mutual benefit. Under Roman law in the first centuries of the Common Era, there were proper opportunities for divorce and the dissolution of a marital union for both parties. However, as the Christian church grew, marriage became more ecclesiastically governed; the church dictated the rules of marriage.

Historically then a marriage was a means to ensure a continuance. That is all. If you had not confirmed or announced partner then you had no estate to pass. Marriage brought with it some assurances.The churches brought with it dogma, and protocol and restriction.

Same-sex marriage is rejected as un-Christian and immoral on the basis of a myopic reading of a very few Biblical texts. And the texts in question are scant indeed.

The most referenced texts are Genesis 19; the holiness codes of Leviticus 17-26, and in the New Testament, Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 6:9 and his Letter to the Romans 1:26-27.

Not only does one have to “hunt” for references to same-sex practices, but there are no gospel texts that treat the matter.

There is nothing attributed to Jesus of Nazareth that has anything to do with same-sex orientation. According to the gospels, Jesus never commented on same-sex practices; that fact certainly bears repeating to anyone criticizing the gay community on Christian grounds.

Largely, same-sex practice is a topic of little interest to the Biblical authors.

It beggars belief that you would refer to an ancient book of myth and stories to cherry pick what your faith is. Sure the Bible might say “husband” and “wife” but it doesn’t as far as I know define the gender of either in terms of what constitutes a “marriage”.

The restriction or constriction is therefore one made up by the church and religion as a method of control.

Children

In New Zealand we have out share of conservative doom-sayers

Conservative Party leader Colin Craig said he was planning a “research-based” campaign on the advantages of heterosexual relationships and traditional family structures.

 ”I’m keen to be part of a campaign to get out there on this issue. It would look intelligently at the differences between homosexual parenting and a Mum and a Dad. Does gender matter, does role-modelling matter?

I don’t mind having it on record that the idea of two men having responsibility for a child is a little beyond me. I couldn’t do it. I assisted with a more maternal and capable mother in raising our children from birth. But I am talking about baby children, not toddlers, or schoolers, or teens.  I don’t have the same doubt about females raising children. Call me a bigot if you like, but I have first hand experience of a woman raising our child and she did a great job. I’d hire her again :-)

I have no idea what feeling or compulsions you have a person in relation to children and your level of altruism in wanting to look after, nurture and care for a child. I just don’t.

I have my understanding. I have an idea of what is acceptable and required from my experience, and I have the insight from a number of people who I’ve associated with who’ve raised children. I have experience.

Just because I don’t think I could does not mean I don’t think you should. It might make you shudder, cringe and gasp. It doesn’t mean that you can’t raise a child as a parent.  To have any other position on this indicates you live your life in a cave. There are lots of children raised by single parents. There are heaps raised by same sex parents, mostly female I’d wager.

The world did not stop when Elton John and David Furness adopted a child. Money makes it better or acceptable? Get a grip.

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