No! Yes! No! D’oh!

D’oh indeed. 

E@L’s  first work trip was proposed for Monday to Friday next week. The Victorian rep who would be supporting the Sydney apps lady is going to be at a conference in New Zillint. 

The work is in Bairnsdale, a 5hr drive away, across Victoria, and a decent hotel needs to be booked. Dr’s had OKed E@L’s travelling that far, so all good. However, until today he had not had confirmation of the demo going ahead… aaaaannnddd… so he presumed it was cancelled or something, so didn’t need to do anything. 

On Tuesday this week a letter came from the hospital Outpatients Dept with an appointment scheduled for next Wednesday, when, hmm, he MIGHT be in Bairnsdale! This would be the last Dr’s appointment to follow up on his recent surgery so he really wanted to get it out of the way and move on with life, the universe, everything [the novel?]. 

And on top of that, the district nurse had made his final  appointment with her/them for Thursday! 

Um… he again wonders if this trip is going ahead or not? He would might need to change all these appointments and it’s getting close to too late...

It’s Friday now, mid-afternoon. E@L is relaxed [a pint of lager and a burger, $20 special at Carwyn cellars, who could say No?] and reading a book… [Aqua Vita by Clarice Lispector — he’s not sure what is going on, indeed not sure IF anything is going on. She’s writes at a point where the Samuel Beckett of the trilogy and Fernando Pessoa cross paths.]  

A phone call: “Are you still OK for next week? Sorry for the last minute call. I’m still heading to NZ, so we will need you. I’ll confirm with the Big Boss!” 

“Yep, excellent!”  [Some good money coming with his exorbitant rates!]

E@L logs on to Booking-dot-com, tells them Bairnsdale and the dates, and selects some reasonably comfortable mid-range accommodation in this medium sized country town, but waits to press BOOK just in case.

5 mins later an email and Team mtg appointment from the Big Boss: “Demo is Tuesday to Friday next week. Please let’s have a meeting to discuss the demo on Monday.”

Oh shit, the appointments!!

It’s currently Friday afternoon still, but it’s 5 minutes before, if he remembers aright, the Outpatient clinic closes… E@L calls just in time and asks to change the appointment. There is nothing free until the end of the month. OK, whenever is possible, thanks. 

E@L hangs up. 

E@L’s finger is back to being poised over BOOK for his hotel… aaaaaaaanndd…

E@L’s phone rings: “Hi, mate [not Big Boss obviously], have you booked anything yet, because the demo has been pushed back! Don’t have a date yet…”

E@L sighs. He pulls his finger from his iPad…

It’s now 2 mins after OP has closed….

But E@L calls anyway, thinking for sure it’s too late — Friday, after 4, when he used to work there, phone? Fuggedabartit! — and for 7mins the phone keeps a ringing (not on hold, no robot messages so there is hope eternally and internally springing). Then a welcoming voice answers, springing (Hope fulfilled!) from a live human’s voice-box, yay! Outpatients is not closed after all! and Yes, she is able to change his appointment back to next week as previous.

E@L sighs.    

What a run around! 

Then a penny drops… If the demo is postponed, that means the local guy whom E@L would have been covering for is back in town and will be available after all.

E@L will not be required. 

No big money after all. 

Another sigh from

E@L

Speech, Free or Not? Subscribe to Find Out

[I drafted this ages ago, in May, but forgot to post. It’s looks Sam Harris is becoming my NYT as a source for blog post topics!]

Sam Harris, famous as being one the Four Horsemen of Atheistolypse, is sort of almost detested by the right, because he is not right wing, and because he rails against evil fuckwits like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, even Trump himself*, and, more recently, he is viewed suspiciously by the left (maybe as he has criticised the NYT and even the New Yorker), at least in America. 

At the risk of being cancelled myself, I admit I do subscribe (in order to get the full episodes) and listen to the occasional podcast from Making Sense. In my opinion he usually does exactly that, as he is prepared to listen to intelligent people with whom he might possibly disagree without losing his temper and at least he claims to be prepared to change his mind. Unlike Joe Rogan, he does not suffer fools gladly, and his guests are more than just other podcasters and influencers.

His current interview with Greg Lukianoff,  author of “The Cancel[l]ing Of The American Mind” (please buy), Substack writer, no subscription fees required (no-one blogs anymore: not true, he writes for the FIRE blog - see link below) is fascinating, as it covers most aspects and opinions about free speech; historically with the social medium of the time, the printing press under the Tudors, and also McCarthyism; mainly about free speech as a modern concept in general; what’s happening on university campuses now, and, duh, cancel culture, etc etc; predominantly the American experience, but also comparing the laws, and the variability in interpretation between countries  in Europe.

Usually I end totally confused about where my opinion should lie after listening to Making Sense, as everyone on his podcasts sounds so reasonable and rational, as does Mr Lukianoff. 

Not that I think I disagree with Lukianoff’s definition of Free Speech, which is basically that all opinions have the right to be heard, in order to make it possible to rationally discredit bad shit or support the good stuff with “the truth”. Inciting illegal actions, or even voicing opinions that trigger illegal actions (I think I got that right), should however be restricted. In other words controversial topics should be allowed to be heard otherwise these opinions will go underground and social media will amplify and intensify them. Not that doesn’t happen anyway, as influencers attack on the ideal of truth and trust in authorities/experts.

Here's a hypothetical they come up with. What if Alex Jones, while still saying the Sandyhook tragedy was a lie, DID NOT give out the details - addresses and names, which he did -  of the families of some of the victims, would he still be liable for prosecution?  

Ferkucked if I know! I would very much hope so though! He certainly should have been kicked of Twitter or Youtube or whatever, from his very first post on the topic.

~~~~~~~~

But I also remain concerned about Australia, which Wants to Dictate What The World Can Read online, and where Lachlan Murdoch** can sue a small Aussie independent online newspaper for offering an opinion in Lachie’s responsibility in the Dominion voter fraud case in the US.  He lost, and had to pay legal costs - do I get my contribution refunded? Libel has to cause “substantial harm” in Australia, so I doubt anything much less $785million would trouble NewsCorp.au. (I drafted this a while ago: Crickey settled.)

And as I’ve mentioned on FB before, I spent 16 years of living in Singapore where, as examples, in my first few years there, truckloads of riot police arrested four silent protestors from the Workers Party standing on the footpath with “More Transparency in Government” or WTTE, on their tee-shirts; where a foreign speaker at a public meeting on free speech was not granted permission to speak by MICA aka the Ministry of Truth; where blogger mrbrown lost his stint at a newspaper for a light hearted piece on the cost of living (“If you want to comment on politics, join a political party”, said the MiniTru - and that worked out well for those silent protestors, right?). At another public session on censorship in Singapore, this one at the 2006 (or was it 2007?) Writers Festival, hosted by mrbrown, I ventured to hope to be anonymous and safe from MiniTru as my sometimes contentious blog*** was hosted in San Francisco, but mrbrown was sceptical and said, “Everyone knows who you are Phillip!”

(Everyone knows mrbrown is Lee Kin Mun.)

 ~~~~~~~~~

Question is: Would people go to substack instead of here and pay to read, or even read for free, the inexpensive speech of  

Phillip aka E@L

*I still recall Harris’s  brilliant rant against Trump from a few years ago.

** News Corp eventually dropped the case in embarrassment: "A defamation battle being waged between media heir Lachlan Murdoch and the publisher of online news site Crikey appears to be driven by "ego and hubris", a judge has declared.” 

*** The historical posts are mostly gone now, cancelled by a software upgrade. The plan is to restore my back-up to a readable format, but the comments are all over the place in the ascii dump of the SQL database. There are about 250,000 words there, so not an insubstantial effort is required.

Is There Intelligent Life On Earth?

On my walk this morning I listened to very stimulating discussion about what (philosophically not chemically) it would take for complex life to develop. Sam Harris and guest Sara Irma Walker, also discussed the Fermi Paradox and likelihood of life on other planets, and what it would take to even measure that likelihood in a nearly infinite universe and within the limited time before either the sun goes red giant or Trump wins the coming US election, either of which would destroy all intelligent life on the planet. (In which case, after next week, there will be no-one left to read this near-defunct blog.)

Anyhows... When my eyes and brain weren’t glazed over with the abstract theories and physics jargon, I really enjoyed it.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/388-what-is-life/id733163012?i=1000673910025

According to Sam’s guest, the multiverse is crap (my word). The “block universe”, where the past present and future are all "now”, as with the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse Five, and the inky octopi in Arrival, is also crap.

However, she keeps flipping on Yes, there is life and No, no life.

My take on the Fermi Paradox, given that if the earth could be reset to its beginning, there would be way less than fuck-all chance of complex life developing again, and that this current time around, of all the planets in the brain-numbing extent of the universe, over the life of the universe from its the past, before there even was time, and into its future, our earth was the single typewriter where one of those infinite monkeys randomly typed the complete works of Shakespeare. (Prof Brian Cox, not the actor, would agree, I think.) Or then again maybe, like prime numbers, there will always be one more, we just haven’t conceived of it, or indeed constructed it (listen to discussion) yet.

Just we still haven’t constructed a timeless

E@L

OneDownManShip (™)

All too often, when E@L was telling a story to TBITP* about the outrageous things he, um, had heard about on his last trip to Pattaya, Bruce might cut in and say, "All very good and depraved sir, but let me tell you of my even more intriguing episode. I had taken to chatting up this dwarf, when two ladyboys and their baby elephant..." 

Etc... 

~~~~~~~

It's called Onedownmanship(™).

~~~~~~~

Getting used to being not quite the reprobate he thought he was is 

E@L

* Forgotten so soon? The Boys In The Pub.

Foundation And The Eleusian Mysteries.

From the Hmm, I Did Not Know That, and The No-one Who Reads My FB Feed Cares So This Goes To The Blog files comes this fascinating connection:

In Series 1 Epsisode 8, "The Missing Piece" of Asimov's Foundation on Apple+, "Brother Day embarks on a journey that no other Cleon has ever attempted." This is a religious ceremony that involves a long arduous walk in the sun without food or water that is deadly for many, called The Great Spiral. Br Day expects to reach a sacred cave, referred to as a womb by a priestess (note the rebirth motif) where salt in the water has some mind-altering property that may grant him a vision of the three goddesses (mother, maiden and ... cleaning lady?) and some enlightening message.

And hopefully some aloe vera for that sunburn.

~~~~~~~

It just so happens that The Eleusian Mysteries of ancient Greece bear a striking resemblance, at least part, to this fictional ritual journey. The Mysteries involved a once in a lifetime experience for the elite of the time and requiring them (people like Marcus Aurelius!) to oversome some harsh trials/tests/etc? and reach a certain underground temple or cave, ritualistically descend into hades and return with the goddesses Persephone and Demeter (daughter and mother).

References to re-birth from a seed (it obviously began as an an agricultural festival), visions, a revelation of spiritual and mental enlightenment, and eventually, as the mysteries evolved, eternal life and maybe even becoming a god. Magic mushrooms or some other psychedelic may very well have been involved, but we don't know as the rites were (the clue is in the name) a Mystery.

Anyone seen Marcus?

E@L couldn't find a correpsondence to this TV show's Great Spiral subplot in the books by polymath Isaac Asimov. Well, research, as in he did a search for "cave" and "goddess" in the seven Foundation ebooks he has, with no result. Maybe the scriptwriters' put it in? Seems unlikely. It must be there. Anyone here read them all?

~~~~~~~~

Anyway, it was an interesting (to E@L) parallel, even though he has probably misread the details in the Wikipedia entry completely as he was drinking a double negronic (negrotonic? Anyway, negroni topped up with tonic) as he drafted this.

~~~~~~~~

No doubt a dunk into reddit or somesuch chat area, even Google, would provide E@L with a wealth of discussion on this obvious, to many, association and several PhD theses have already been submitted on it and Stephen Fry probably explained it on Qi (even though he doesn't do it anymore) or in his latest book, and it is only because E@L lives in isolation from the cultured world (the bars of Bangkok and breweries in Singapore?) that he can claim to claim it as his own discovery.

To be totally honest, the correspondence hit E@L while he was doing his daily constitutional around said culturally isolated home village, sipping his barista-brewed flat white, and listening to a recent Sam Harris podcast on the use of psychedelics in religious ceremonies in the ancient western world, and the blindingly obvious pagan origin of many Christian rituals, natch. The guest describes the Mysteries in as much detail as, even more than, any brain could hold onto, least of all the exploding one of

E@L

From The SMW* Files Of E@L

E@L has just discovered an excellent book review podcast called Backlisted, where they pull out an overlooked or under-appreciated book from some time back and get experts to go over the tome’s inexplicable and unfortunate desuetude.

~~~~~~

The first one he listened to while he was doing his morning walk yesterday. The topic was M. R. James, the Eton don who wrote “weird” and ghostly tales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically his Ghost Stories of An Antiquary from 1904.

~~~~~~

The second episode he Iistened to while he was on the road back from No1 son’s place in Melbourne this afternoon. This episode was about Diane Johnson’s 1972 biography, The True History Of The First Mrs Meredith And Other Lesser Lives. George Meredith, the husband in question, being the early Victorian era novelist.

~~~~~~~

After the excellent discussions on the podcasts, E@L bought them both for his Kindle (0.99c for the James) and after dipping an eyeball into both he can heartily recommend them! Johnson’s book is brilliantly entertaining despite what you might think of as a dry topic. It was reissued by NYRB a few years ago, so obviously it is not all THAT overlooked.

Irrelevant. 

Look, listen, and learn. Here’s the point:

Kindle Loc 32 of Ghost Stories: “…of a more formidable prosecutor than a termagant wife.”

E@L had to look up termagant when he read it this morning in the first of M.R. James’ stories; easily done on the Kindle: “Harsh-tempered or over-bearing woman.” From the moon wandering (vagant) between three (tri = ter) places: heaven, earth, and hell. E@L can’t recall reading that word in the last few decades, but it was vaguely familiar. Such an obscure and extremely rare word, yeah?

After a spine-tingling (not really) jaunt through a few of James’ quite short spooky stories, E@L thought he should check on the Johnson biography this evening! He found it terrifically witty and clever, and then…

Kindle Loc 361 of The True History: “… was left by his wife, a termagant and too clever by half; she took their little boy Tom…”

~~~~~~
Jaw. Drop. Floor.
~~~~~~

WWWwwwwwwwhat is going on here? Seriously. we mean, WTAF? Guess who's afraid to pick up another book now? 

Looking anxiously over his shoulder for a spooky apparition of a possibly termagant Mary Ellen Meredith née Love Peacock creeping in from one of James’ eerie tales is

E@L!


*Spooky. Mystic Weird.

Angiograms Don't Show Demons!

It's round about the 50th anniversary of The Exorcist (cue Tubular Bells).

What a great movie! Scary etc etc. for sure, but such cinema verité as well! (Probably got that term wrong.) I mean as in superb naturalistic acting and non-intrusive directing, for the most part anyway, not counting, you know, the exorcism part..

However, a great source of amusement to me about this fillum, is that what freaked out my friends more than any guacamole, pea-soup, head-turning, bed-bouncing, etc, were the medical sequences.

As the radiologist stabbed Reagan's carotid artery directly and withdrew the stylet prior to putting in a guide wire, then attaching the tubing with a Luer lock connection to the angiomat injector, blood spurted out very realistically, and then went up the tube very realistically. Did they actually cannulate the poor girl? Probably not. But to my friends this was incredibly distressing and they thought it was most horrible thing they had ever seen! Worse that the rest of the movie, as it was so realistic and the rest was obviously, you know, a horror movie...

But not me, it was just another day at the office.

~~~~~~~~~

I was a young radiography student at the time we were all old enough to see the movie at the drive-in (around 1977? drinking Melbourne Bitter long-necks on the bonnet of the car), and when I was rostered into Room 2, the angiogram suite (hardly a suite! A cramped room full of antiquated public hospital equipment with jerry-built accoutrements to do the job despite that generous Govt funding - a bit like the battered and chipped equipment they used in the film GE I think) we used to perform two, three, four, six, of these procedures on our angiogram days. It also the room we used for barium enemas, etc. But the stabby, bloody bits were just part of the terrritory, as it were, for the brain (as in the movie), but also for the kidneys, the aorta and down the legs etc... (We didn't do cardiac.)

I would occasionally own that pair of hands that are holding Reagan's head still while the needle is being placed... The blood spurting out was a sign the radiologist hadn't missed (always good) so for me that gave a positive feeling, as we could get on with the radiography bit.

However! One issue that has really bugged me since I first saw the movie, and I can't get it out of my head or forgive them 46 years later, is that when they were actually taking the x-rays and the AOT film transport machines were banging away, moving a film up the intensifying screens, then moving it out and placing another one, (we had to load them in a pitch black darkroom, counting the metal slots for each film in the desired sequence) was that...

*Reagan moved her head in the middle of the bloody procedure...!!!*

We she opened her mouth here ^ for a silent scream, she lifted her head as well! I'm sure it was great acting, but it was terrrible patienting!

"Noooooo! You've blurred several of the most important images!! We'll have to do it all again! Oh my God. Open more contrast, Bruce. Sister Zoe, we'll need another guidewire... Now listen! Please! Keep! Your! Twisty-turny Green Vomity Head! Perfectly! Effing! Still! (You stupid demonic bitch!) Phillip, tighten those head straps (until her skull cracks)!"

Sigh. Verisimilitude collapses like Schrodinger's wave function, and the cat is dead after all.

~~~~~~~~~

As an aside, the mechanised display system they used to look at the array of processed films (kachunk, kachunk - the Film-o-matic, or something stupid like that - someone here will know) was a pain to load (it was often done by the - you guessed it - student radiographers i.e. me), and every now and then it broke down, or a film fell down underneath it and was a shit to retrieve...

An another anside: not long after this film was made, radiologists changed to a different approach to cerebral angiography, so that the needles were not longer stabbed into the neck (occasionally causing a dissection of the carotid - never saw one thankfully...).  It all moved down to the groin, using the Seldinger technique of placing the needle into the femoral artery (hopefully): remove the stylet: advance guideware up to the aorta: remove the needle: advance a shaped catheter over the guidewire to the root of the aorta: remove the guidewire: attach the Injectomat (hopefully a nice new one) and inject from there for the first bilateral run: put the guidewire  back in and reposition (replace?) the catheter into the appropriate carotid near the origin and off you go for the next run... Don't forget to stress the student radiographer out when he goes to processes the films after each run, refill the AOT of whatever the brand name was with the right number of films in the right sequence or Herbert will throw a film cassette at him...  

~~~~~~~~~

Ah, back to the movie: the crucifix scene was probably not quite as explicit in the version we first saw (or perhaps I had my hands over my eyes at the truly scary scenes)... but just as a suspense movie, great effects, great score, fantastic acting (the coffee scene with Lee J Cobb and Ellyn Burstyn, brilliantly understated - however Ellen in The Last Picture Show, OMFG, how good was she there?!), and not to forget the accurate medical sequences, The Exorcist is undoubtedly one of the top 10, maybe top 5, top 3? films of all time for

E@L

Absolutely Brillat!

Someone anticipated my blog many, many moons ago...

~~~~~~~~

"Another  reproach which might be levelled against me is that I sometimes let my pen run away with me, and tend to turn garrulous when I have a tale to tell. But is it my fault if I am old? Is it my fault if I am like Ulysses, who had seen the cities and ways of life of many peoples? Am I to be blamed if I include a little of my own biography?"

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (Physiologie du goût), 1825.

~~~~~~~~~~ 

E@L found a Folio Society edition from 2008, in mint condition, in a second-hand store in Geelong for a bargain AUD25.

How that last  quote, eh?

'I looked about me and took note of what I saw, and often at the most sumptuous banquets I have been saved from boredom by the pleasure I derived from my observations'

Brilliant Brillat. Worth the money right there.

We are talking (and observing pleasurably) about: recalcitrant toasters in hotel buffet breakfasts; komplex kopi concerns; restaurant capers and caprices.

Much of E@L's blog in an edible nutshell! 

~~~~~~~~~

Interesting also that "goût" is essentially, says arrogant anglophone, spelled the same as "gout" (at least you don't have to cut and past the latter from somewhere), so many may mistakenly think of this foody's treat as a treatise on the afflictions associated with improper uric acid metabolism! 

Ha! Nuh!

Fortunately, fingers and toes crossed, this is one of the few afflictions that has not (yet) brought low that gallavanting gourmand of the grand guignol that was his former expatriatdom, 

E@L