Trust Tommy

Someone with Huntington’s once said, when asked if she’d find out if she tested positive for the disease (you have a 50% chance if you mother had it, and her mother did):

“You have as much chance as me of dying at any time – you could be knocked down by a bus tomorrow. Why should I have to know when I die?”

This got me thinking.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were our Huntington’s patient. Would you take the test? Find out? There’s an equal chance you have it as you don’t.

I have a list (a mental one, I’d never write or publish the full one), that contains everything I want to get done before I die. I do it mentally because you have to draw the line between personal stuff and public stuff. Some people know some of the items, but like the Mafia Don and the members, I’m the only one who knows them all.

One of the things is climb Mt. Everest. I want to prove it to myself that I can. Now, if I knew there was even a 50% chance I could be dead within, say, 10 years, it’d make me get my skates on. I’d do the research, I’d get the fitness, I’d generally mentally and physically prepare myself for it, and I’d do it.

Photo owned by gaab22 (cc)

There are, of course, arguments against finding out. I think it’s safe to say that everyone would act differently if they knew when they’d die. It’s just such an unnatural thing that no-one could know that fact and continue living normally. Their mentality toward life in general would be completely different.

**

Death, in all its uncertainty, is life’s one great certainty. From the moment you’re born, except for death (okay, and paying taxes), everything in life is just for now. Death is always there. Death is and always has been the great unknown.

It’s not unnatural to be scared of death. Not wanting it is a perfectly natural response. I think anyone who nonchalantly says ‘I don’t fear death’ is just kidding. That joking is more often than not hiding some deeper uncertainty. Fear is a natural human reaction, don’t forget.

Death is uncertainty. Uncertainty is blackness. Blackness is Nothingness. Nothingness is scary.

We invent ‘heavens’ and ‘paradises’ to make us more comfortable with the thought of death. We find solace in the thought that dead relatives are waiting for us in some place.

As the picture shows, our life is just a section on top of the universe. It existed before we were born, and it’ll continue after we’re gone. Our life is nothing but a section of a song. A chapter of a book or an act of a play. That song, book and play are gonna keep on going after our exit, too.

As we walk through life, we sometimes allow our consciousness to wander off and think about death. For most people, the thought that our life is just superimposed on the rest of the universe is just mind blowing. For us, life begins when we’re born (consciousness, remember, not being conceived) and ends when we die. It’s obviously hard to get our heads around the fact that there’s only this. This is the only shot at life you get.

A man once said that ‘every day you wake up could be your last’. This is the typical self-help bullshit people come out with, and people pay for it. Sure, give it a thought but don’t print it off in big letters and pin it to your wall so that it’s the first thing you see when you wake up.

Despite this post, I think it’s something we should think about it, maybe even go as far as dwelling on it, but no fixations.

**

It’s a certainty
It’s going to happen.
It’s all around us.

Get over it. Live your life. Sure, death’s not ‘a companion’, as the Church teaches, but there’s no day but today.

**

Let’s end this post on something happy. This song is lovely and summery. Go on, take it with you this weekend. Hopefully it’ll be summer. Enjoy life.

Today, I got an MRI done on my hip and knee, to try and find the cause of my knee pain.

This was the first one I’d had, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Well, okay, wasn’t technically my first; I had one when I was two, but I don’t remember that one, so it’s not counted.

John called from, well, I don’t actually know, somewhere in mainland Europe, I think, as we pulled into the hospital, so I went on ahead while Mom chatted with him. I went inside and navigated the ( albeit well sign-posted) rat’s maze that is Cappagh Hospital.

I eventually found the MRI department, and they handed me a form to fill out. Was I currently the bionic man? Had I ever had open heart surgery? Is there a chance I could be pregnant? These were questions that made me look deep into my soul, and discover something new and wonderful about myself.

OK, that sounded a lot more poignant in my head.

After convincing them that I was whole, heart-ful, and that I didn’t have little people inside me, I was ushered into a cubicle to change into their distinctly-second-hand-feeling gown. From there, I was escorted into the room that was the source of the throbbing I heard from outside.

The MRI itself is smaller than I imagined. That’s what I thought at first. There was a tray alongside it that you’re meant to plop yourself on, as you’re wheeled into the belly of the beast. I can tell you I felt a bit like a gingerbread man hopping into an oven.

The nurse told me that the MRI was loud, and handed me a pair of headphones to listen to the radio. When asked if I had any station preference, I tried to think if I’d seen any tweets from a specific Cork blogger mentioning any radio appearances today. When I couldn’t think of any, I just said any. On came Spin 103.

Photo owned by KOMUnews (cc)

“Oh great, “quality” talk radio“, I thought, wondering what they were discussing.

You know the way you’re not meant to move during an MRI?

Yeah, trust me to have an MRI at the same time they’re discussing boob jobs, and ask listeners to text in their favourite words for breasts.

No joke. So there I was, in an MRI, trying to stay still, and funbags and “kazonkas” were being discussed through headphones.

I couldn’t stop giggling like a school girl. Yes, that’s me. Any hint of maturity goes out the window when “gazoombas” are brought into the conversation.

The worst part came when I accidently pressed the emergency buzzer they gave me while chortling. Oh how embarrassing.

* grows up a little bit *

A few minutes later, the MRI fired up and the real noise began. Incessant pulsing, beating and hammering. It sounds like an army of drummers pounding off the sides, which would usually appease me, but when you’re quite literally neck deep in an MRI, can get uncomfortable. I used to just be getting used to one noise when it’d suddenly change and I’d jolt, which would make me feel guilty for moving. For some reason, whenever I try to stay still, especially when lying on my back, I can’t, and parts of my body, especially legs, will twitch. Not helpful.

Despite the talk of meshugganas on the radio, I did begin to get claustrophobic, and welcomed the 30 second freedom when they took me out to put my knee into a space suit head cage thing, to keep it still.

Overall, I was in the MRI machine itself for roughly 20 minutes. Not even the Winnie the Pooh stickers that my nose was three inches away from could entertain me and I (excuse the pun) tuned out of the boob radio show.

Ah well. It’s over now, and I’m still alive.

I should have the results, and maybe even a cause to the pain, within a few days. We live and wait.

There was a fantastic article from the BBC magazine yesterday, entitled “Giving up my iPod for a Walkman”, in which 13-year-old Scott Campbell swaps his iPod for a Walkman for a week.

This brought back nostalgic memories of the tape player I had when I was 9 or 10, that I used to listen to audiobooks on when going to sleep. I had a really cool bed back then that my Dad made for me. It was a bunk bed, but without a bottom bunk. It was just like the one in the picture, except mine was made of wood.

There was a little space between the mattress and the edge, and I used to slot the tape recorder in there, with a fresh tape from the library. I was an audiobook freak back then. Still am, kinda.

I don’t know where I discovered them, actually. I loved them.

However, it got to the stage when I needed them for sleep. My brain thought: ‘oh, there’s an audiobook on, I best get to slee…zzz’

So that when I didn’t have it on, like if a cousin was staying, or I’d simply run out of tapes, I wouldn’t get to sleep for ages.

This isn’t a good situation.

So, like a chain smoker, like a Facebook addict, like, well, someone-who-can’t-go-to-sleep-unless-they’re-listening-to-audiobooks, I went cold turkey.

I had a few nights were it took me about two hours to get to sleep, but within a week my brain learned that you can’t always get what you want.

But then, I began thinking. Well, what if I listened to them, but didn’t need them to get to sleep. A kind of but if you try sometimes, you get what you need affair. Enjoy them, but don’t need them.

This was when I was about 10. This game of cat and mouse continued, me getting addicted to audiobooks, me going cold turkey. Me starting to listen to them again after a while, me getting addicted.

Now, though, I just listen to audiobooks, consequences be damned.

I’m hardly ever sharing a room with people these days, and if I ever didn’t have my laptop, I have audiobooks on my iPhone, that I can play through speakers. I can get round the battery draining issue by setting up a countdown timer in Clocks to ’sleep iPod’ after a length of time. 10 minutes usually does it. I’m either asleep, or two almost-asleep to care about it going off too earlier. Plus, it’s easy to just set it again, and if ever I’m still awake after 10 minutes, I’ve yet to still be awake after 20.

So, reading that little anecdote from the BBC about Walkmans (men?) brought back memories of old tape audiobooks. See, now it’s all in iTunes. I can’t remember which had the better sound quality, but tapes were always through headphones, while these days it’s done from either laptop or iPhone speaker. Can’t compare really.

Firstly, okay guys, the House jokes were funny at the start, but c’mon, give them a rest, will ya?

Last night I had between 3.5 and 4.5 hours sleep.

Knee pain, which is chronic at this stage, was worst it’d been in a long time, so sleep just wouldn’t come. I finally drifted off some time between 01:30 and 3, finally.

At 4:30, I was woken by the pain. No, this wasn’t me waking naturally, or by some bird calling outside, this was the pain waking me.

I tried to get back to sleep, but eventually resigning myself to staying awake somewhere around 5.

I listened to a mix of audiobooks and music through headphones for a while, until about 8am, when I decided I probably shouldn’t fall asleep during physio, so I tried one last time to fall asleep.

I think my sleep soldiers found a vulnerable weakness in the knee pain’s relentless machine-gunning, as I fell asleep until 09:45.

That was the knee pain interfering in my normal workings. I never took anything for my knee because I said I’d just work through it. It wasn’t stopping me doing anything, so I ignored it. However, if it’s stopping me doing something like sleep, then I’m going to take something for it.

And now of course, despite what I said up top, you’re all comparing me to House with his Vicodin. Two things. I’m not on these full time. This morning was exceptional, because the pain was incredibly bad, stopping me functioning, and secondly, the meds aren’t a solution. They’re keeping me at a tolerable level of pain while we find out what’s causing it.

That’s what I find frustrating about all this. No one seems to have any idea what’s causing this. I’m getting an MRI on Wednesday in Dublin which *should* tell us the cause, and that should give us a treatment.

So, reiterating, the pain meds aren’t permanent. They are for the time being, as I continue to strengthen up the muscle, which should ease the pain. A natural painkiller.

**

I finished writing this at 20:47 on Monday night, but I’m publishing it at 3am on Tuesday as a little nod. I wonder if I’ll be awake when this goes out..

One of my birthday presents was a skin from GelaSkins, for my MacBook Air. I’ve integrated lover boy here into as many places as possible.

My desktop:

My iPhone wallpaper:

And of course, the back of my laptop!

Last Friday’s The Ticket (supplementary magazine all about the arts in The Irish Times) had a really cool article on the back cover about a competition Surfjan Stevens ran, where members of the public sent in self composed Christmas songs and Stevens gave a special secret prize to the winner.

He eventually chose 33 year old Alec Duffy as the winner, and the prize turned out to be full legal ownership of an unreleased Stevens song called The Lonely Man of Winter. There were no conditions to the price, the song could be used/distributed as the winner saw fit.

Duffy had several possible revenue avenues. He could sell it to some company to use in a commercial, or simply sell off the rights again for a good bit of money. If money was not what he wished, he could simply put it up on his website for people to hear.

He ended up doing none of these things. He opted for a social experiment. He wanted to recapture an era when ‘to get one’s hands on a particular album or song was a particular experience’. He decided to hold once- or twice-weekly “listening sessions” in his Brooklyn apartment. He’d arrange tea and biscuits, while the listener would listen to the song through headphones (a preemptive measure against anyone recording it), and, depending on how many showed up, there’d usually be a talk/discussion afterwards. The listening sessions were free of charge.

Over the past year or so, people have travelled from all over the world to Duffy’s Brooklyn apartment. He’s not sure of the exact number of people but estimated it’s somewhere in the region of 100 so far.

For many of those who travelled, the attraction wasn’t only the hearing of a song there were unlikely ever to hear again, but also the fact that they were taking part in something so anti-Web 2.0. It was something so contradictory to the incontinent rush of information and abundance of music and songs. It was an ode to the times when music represented something special, not just something thrown out free in a newspaper to encourage it’s purchase.

Although not everyone is in agreement with what Duffy did (I’m looking at you, music bloggers), with some people going as far as to call him ‘a bastard’, I think it was quite cool.

I mean, he could have simply sold it to McDonalds for a few thousand (at least) for use in a TV ad, but instead he went for the non-profit (albeit cooler) option of these listening sessions.

Rock on.

More info here

Although Mum says this about her sons:

… are as I write ‘cycling around San Francisco’ (Eldest Mouse) or ‘interrailing around Europe’ (Middle Mouse)…

I prefer to think of them as actual human beings, you know what I mean? :)

John is currently touring Europe with two school friends, soon after which he’s leaving for Harvard. Patrick? Well, he hasn’t exactly lived here since 2007.

So that means I’ll be the only son left at home.

I miss my brothers

Who’s going to update Wordpress for me now ?

So, now that my week long acting course is finished, myself and Den15, aka, my dad, got down to getting the internet all fixed up.

That sounds so much more badass than it actually was. We basically just created a new network and fiddled around with some settings.

Having said that, we have working internet now, so no complaints here.

The internet had been down since Wednesday, so all posts since then were posted using the Wordpress for iPhone app, which is quite good, despite the image support being awful.

Normal service, and all that malarkey…

Makeup for my show last night

I saw this term somewhere in my feed reader this morning but I can’t find where. It got me thinking about the subject.

Guest posting, for non techie people, is basically where someone who isn’t the author of the blog writes a post. Say if I let my dad publish a few paragraphs on golfing here on TT.

I’m not sure what I think of it. I’ve done it before, but I’ve never let anyone do it here. I’m not sure about it. Should you keep your blog for your (hopefully) intellectual ramblings, or should we get a break from the author’s writing style once in a while?

I think that if it is indeed once in a while, it’s good.

And that’s why I’m doing it.

From the 11th to the 26th of July, I’ll be in France, camping. Because of this, strong and dependable WiFi will be hard to come by. Which is why I’m taking a blogging break.

Instead, I let 14 of you write something for me, if you so wish. 14 entries of medium (150+ words) length will be published (1 daily) over my holiday, which means I can actually do that thing normal folks do, relax.

Want to contribute? Leave me a comment or email me at tommy@nospamCollisonie (remove the ‘nospam’ and fix the to a .)

Any subject matter (within reason though, my parents read this!) is welcomed.

I hate thinking of this as an ‘oppertunity’, you’re doing me a favour more than anything else.