🎶 OWNER OF A HAMSTER HEART 🎶

Much better than the owner of a lonely heart...

Hi guys! Sorry about the unprecedented amount of time between posts. The Wi-Fi has been prohibitively slow since getting back from hospital. I've actually bought my own mobile broadband router and am waiting for a SIM card to arrive. If you're thinking of buying mobile broadband from an internet service provider, this seems a lot more affordable than essentially renting a hub or a dongle from your ISP, and you can pay as you go rather than locking into a contract. The only catch is that I don't get great signal on my regular phone hear, but it looks like the new provider should have me covered. I'm expecting the SIM tomorrow, so look forward to more regular updates!

I've been waiting to share an excerpt from the exchange I have going with my friend and online playmate Babycakes. We met through r/DirtyPenPals and she is a constant delight! The question was:

Imagine you were offered a deal, some time in your past, with no memory of having made it. A sacrifice for a boon. The sacrifice was your physical health and mobility, all the problems you know all too well.

What was the boon worth that sacrifice?

Heavy stuff! I answered as quickly and honestly as I could, and I want to share my answer here because it concerns you guys, the readers of my little blog! Here's what I came up with:

The knowledge that I could still be relatively happy and keep my sense of humour despite it all. As a kid I was terrified of anything going wrong medically. When I was a child I used to scurry out the room when the theme tune to Casualty started! I fainted after being given injections at school. I got so used to being pricked in hospital that I would basically sleep through it! I even jabbed myself in the stomach at home twice a day for a fortnight. The idea of being homeless terrified me so much I tried to kill myself rather than deal with it. Now it's just a technicality, I never had to rough it on the streets.

I know I complain a lot on my blog, but I like to think I mostly do it in a sardonic fashion. If you took everyone in the privileged first world and measured how well they responded to waking up bedbound with ants crawling on them I think I would handle it way better than most; like, in the top ten percent of reactions. Maybe a little too zen, now that I'm seeing an occupational therapist I'm going to have to insist the home help me out a bit more.

TWO SURPRISES, AND I DABBLE IN CYBERCRIME!

Hello Mal-Pals! I'm glad to report I'm doing a lot better than I have been recently. I'm still not feeling 100%, but I'm a damn sight better than I was when I was hospitalised. My hearing is back to normal in my right ear, which is excellent! My main bugbear is the Wi-Fi here, there are three networks and I only have access to one of them. My laptop simply isn't connecting to it, whilst my tablet finds it for a while and then loses it. It's very frustrating, the internet is basically the one place I'm truly free. I have no real privacy and can't set my own agenda. I have to ask for help with everything. There's a family Zoom call later, it'd be nice to be on it!

I spoke to the owner/manager of the home - I had my parents e-mail and ask for help, because I've consistently tried to see her about more pressing matters and have been ignored before. It turns out that of the three networks, she has no information about one of them, has a password that doesn't work for the second, and uses the one I can get on with my tablet herself. There's just no attempt at problem solving or improving things for the guests here, the staff seem so jaded and have way too much responsibility. The care home is divided into two floors and there are over sixty beds; I don't know how many are on each floor. I do know that on Monday overnight there was only one carer and one nurse looking out for the entire floor, from 8.30pm to 7.30am. This has happened a few times before, and seems to me to be pretty irresponsible. Granted, most of the residents will be sleeping, but it still seems dangerous; a nasty stomach bug or a fire would prove disastrous!

I have been playing on Reddit again with the usual suspects. I've genuinely missed carrying on my imaginary adventures and flirtations, but it seemed more polite to not play at all whilst I was feeling down than to knock out a couple of responses in between naps! My playmates know not to expect a swift response anyway, and I like trading a couple of dozen messages over the course of a day rather than fitting it all into a dedicated hour of chat.

I also set a prompt based on my new obsession, The Leprechaun's Game. I said I wanted to be the leprechaun, and that I was looking for someone to play Misha, trying to convince me to spare her husband after he stole my gold, and not to hurt her or her unborn baby. I had a response in less than an hour, because r/DirtyPenPals is mental and there are a ton of very specific and implausible situations posted every day. We chatted back and forth for a couple of hours in character; it was not particularly sexy! I did toy with the idea of staying true to the character and just demanding my gold and then killing her off, but decided against it. I might revisit the chat and decide on whether or not to post it. Maybe I'll ask the girl I played with first. Watch this space!

I was surprised by a visit from the physiotherapist, and she brought an occupational therapist along with her! I saw the physio for the first time back in February, and she told me she'd be back with the OT in the next couple of weeks. This is the first time seeing her since. For some reason the home manager had e-mailed my parents after they saw her in the corridors and asked her what progress was being made on my last visit, and my mum had told me. Nobody from the home had told me, and I'm still in isolation after my hospital visit, so I wasn't sure they'd be here. It's great that they were! Finally some progress!

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGETY-JIG! PLUS: ONLINE SHENANIGANS!

So I've been sent home again! How do I feel about that? Well, I've just bought, pretty much on a whim, the embodiment of sadness, paying €20 to have her shipped from France. That may give you some idea!

They only made these for Sadness and Rage! I guess they've done their market research. 

She's not a toy, she's a "soft sculpture." I am not a CHILD, thank you very much!

The hospital was kind of a waste of time. I spent a lot of time in the hospital between December 2018 and March 2020, when COVID hit. I've been in twice since. Beforehand I was occasionally kept in for little reasons. I spent a few extra days one visit because my temperature would flare up at night. I had no other symptoms and it would be normal during the day, but that one spike would keep me in for 24 hours extra. A few times I've spent an extra night because the ambulance crew were too busy to take me home! Sometimes I've been discharged by a doctor during Monday rounds - if there was a doctor working Saturday or Sunday I could have gone home then. And of course, I was well enough to go home for a couple of months in early 2019, I just didn't have a home to go to! A place in a care home opened up, and then after seven weeks (six in care, one back in hospital!) I moved into a "temporary" flat, and I've been living there since! All my staff's there now, though I spend my days in a care home in a different county.

Things are very different since COVID. There's no waiting in hospital on a stretcher until a bed's ready, instead they wait in the ambulance until the bed is available in the right place, and wheel you right there. No waiting in limbo for the right ward to admit you, and they'll send you out as soon as you can bear it! It's a very different experience.

On my last visit I had a room to myself in what used to be the room they used to knock kids out before surgery. It was now partly used for storage,, but you could see old paintings that I guess we're meant to relax the young'uns. I had suffered an SVT attack but was now fine, so they just stuck me in whatever ward had a spare isolated room overnight whilst they waited for transport. It was not the best night's sleep, but I left the next morning.

This time around I was transferred from Majors, which is where they assess you first, to another ward at twenty minutes to one in the night! They don't serve food or drink in the Majors, except with medicine, and by the time they moved me I was sleeping anyway, though eager for a drink!

A CHANGE OF SCENERY

I've just had a doctor pop over and see me, and I'm off to the hospital! He barely looked at me before deciding I needed to go and get some intravenous antibiotics and my ear wicked; the only thing that's unclear is which department I'll be admitted to first, the ear, nose & throat doctors or whoever deals with mastitis! I hate that I have to go but am glad to be getting help. It almost feels like a sick punchline; "I told you I was ill!" I have no idea how long I'll be there for.

I'm focusing on the positives; maybe I'll be able to get food delivered, my bed will probably be better, the Wi-Fi will probably be a lot smoother and I can download a bunch of games onto my laptop ready for when I come out!

I've had both my COVID shots, so I'm not as worried about that as I was when I went for an overnight stay in December. The hospital is pretty near to the care home, so hopefully it'll be a smooth trip there and back.

So yeah, swings and roundabouts! Hopefully I'll be feeling myself soon and this blog will get back to... well, as normal as it gets!

Peace!

✌   🌈💰🍀

HAIRCUT 💯, BUT NO FANTASTIC DAY

 Hello Malcontents! Another checking in article, I'm afraid!

Still sleeping a lot, still suffering from mastisis. I really don't mean to moan every time I come on here, I wish I had more good news, even something as daft as my new, unending love for The Leprechaun's Game! But over the weekend I've developed an ear infection, and that is occupying a lot of my mental bandwidth! I can hear the blood pulsing in my ear, and it's always full of fluid. Not great!

Unfortunately this happened when the worst nurse, Sue, is on shift. She's lazy to the point where it's borderline negligent. When it's not her shift I get all my morning tablets at around 7am. When she's working I get them at around 10am. I was taken to hospital in December with a case of supra ventricular tachycardia. The paramedics were complaining about her in the ambulance, one of them called her "obstructive!" One of them asked her for my medical notes and she told them "in a minute!" My heart was beating at around 265bpm, I needed drugs injected to get it beating normally. It's best not to keep the paramedics waiting!

I had another incident of SVT earlier in the year. The carers I reported it to went to find her on foot rather than ringing the emergency bell. It was twenty minutes after reporting it that she came to see me, at which point I had reset my pulse by raising my legs and controlling my breath; fortunately it was a mild attack. The worst attack I had didn't reset after being given the drugs and I was being prepared to have my heart reset electronically. I had to sign the paperwork acknowledging this could kill me, and the anesthetist came to measure my throat for a breathing tube. Fortunately my body reset itself just in time and I was able to shake the anesthetist's hand and that was all. So when it does hit I need it taken seriously, and when Sue did turn up and didn't even have an oximeter; I had to wait for her to finish her drug round and come back with one. It was genuinely terrible care. The head carer reported the carers I told for failing to uphold their duty of care when they didn't ring the emergency bell, but nothing ever came of it.

So yeah, Sue's not the one you want in your corner when things start breaking bad. Yesterday she took ten minutes out of my parents visitation time to explain that there was no progress getting hold of a physiotherapist. She said they were busy seeing other people, and I explained that I realised that, and that I have been waiting over eight months. She said that the physiotherapists wanted to see me losing weight, and I pointed out that I'd made some serious changes to my diet since arriving here but above nobody has weighed me since my arrival in October I don't know how much progress I've made. She said the GO said there were exercises I could do in bed, and I told her I've been moving my legs as much as possible, but it's different from having somebody help lift them, or putting their arm there to push against, or putting a slide sheet under the legs and monitoring the movement. I literally said that she was a nurse and I didn't understand why I had to explain this to her. In the end my parents just thanked her and sent her off and then told me how frustrating they found her behind her back. Anything to avoid a scene!

SINCERE APOLOGIES

Hi gang,

Just a brief post to let you know that I have cellulitis, and possibly mastitis, which is unpleasant and also a little embarassing, as mastitis usually happens to breastfeeding women. As we all remember from med school, "You can't spell 'mastitis' without 'tit.'" Fortunately it hasn't affected my nipple, it's more affecting the skin towards my armpit. I've had cellulitis before, but only affecting my feet, legs, abdomen and, on one memorable Christmas, my penis.

I saw the doctor today and he's hoping antibiotics will be enough to treat it, though apparently there's a black scab there and if that goes bad I'll have to go to hospital and have whatever's there sucked out of me. Here's to hoping that doesn't happen!

It doesn't really hurt but I keep getting really hot and I've been really tired for days now. I haven't been on Reddit for over a week, I think, and have been sleeping an inordinate amount. It's my favourite thing to do right now! I chalked it up to depression, and that's probably part of it too, but I'm glad there's an actual physical issue I can point at for feeling so tired all the time rather than just being all "I'm sad, leave me alone so I can shut my eyes and disengage from the world."

One of you beautiful Functionistas recently commented that I'm too hard on myself, and maybe you're right, if I read that someone else was tired all the time I wouldn't judge them for it, and if they told me they were depressed then I would be understanding. It feels like there's a part of me that's always ready to kick me when I fall, to dwell on my failures and inadequacies and make me feel worse about myself, to remind me that I'll always be the kid that would be picked last, or not told there was a game on to begin with. I imagine most people have that voice, but it must be louder for some than others. I guess that's what depression is.

Wow, this ended up being a lot bleaker than I intended! Just letting you know that it may not be quick, but when I'm feeling better I'll be back into The Leprechaun's Game! My friend Julie recently complimented my writing and suggested that I might have a future writing professionally! I was hugely flattered, and whilst I can't see myself making a living that way I was encouraged to reach out to ChampDog Films to see if they would let me write the novelization of The Leprechaun's Game. I do have another idea for a writing gig if they reject me, but I'm holding out hope!

Peace!

 ✌   🌈💰🍀

THERE ARE NO WINNERS IN THE LEPRECHAUN'S GAME

 Hello Mal-Pals! Those of you who familiar with my blog know that it has two primary functions: To showcase some of the dirty fiction I write to entertain myself and my friend Strict Julie, and as a dumping ground for whatever is taking up space in my noggin. Well, that's all about to change, as this blog is now a dedicated stan site for 2020's video nasty The Leprechaun's Game!

Scary! The leprechaun in the movie is actually blonde, which is less effective.

I watched this movie in the wee hours of this morning and found myself utterly delighted by it! Most modern horror is slow, generic and not worth your time. The few real stand outs of recent years are either weighed down with a horrible depressing backstory, usually involving the death of a kid, or are coated with a level of irony or silliness as if the makers need to reassure watchers that they're in on the joke and their film shouldn't be taken seriously. It's refreshing to see someone step up to the plate and swing for the fences, even if they do completely biff it!

I  never watch trailers as I find they always detract from my enjoyment of the film. I decided to watch this based purely on the misleading official synopsis, the intriguing poster, and a couple of details hinting that this film wouldn't be bad in the sense that it was a time wasting drudgery, but would hit that "so bad it's good" sweet spot where the film's flaws are entertaining enough to elevate the film above your average slasher or mediocre studio comedy. Plus, horror is a strange genre; even the lamest grindhouse flick can have a concept or special effect that stays with you after the credits roll.

The main thing that intrigued me was that the film has a running time of exactly eighty minutes. I don't know about you, but to me that screams "minimum viable product," someone determined to fulfil the necessary requirements for a feature length film without worrying too much about things like quality acting or realistic dialogue. "Servicable" seems to be the kindest adjective to describe most elements of this schlockfest! I was also tempted by the unheard actors that made up the British cast and the fact that the film was released elsewhere as "Vengeance of the Leprechaun" and "Vengeance of the Leprechaun's Gold." I honestly enjoyed every minute of it. The trailer gives you some idea of the gold you can find if you follow this particular rainbow:

The official synopsis doesn't really do the plot justice. Spoliers ahead! Here is the editorial review Amazon has for the film:

After a bunch of thieves are sent out to hunt urban legends, they steal the gold of a leprechaun, only to find there is a steep price to pay.

9 THINGS I'D POST ON TWITTER, IF I STILL USED TWITTER, VOLUME SIX

Six weeks since I got my second COVID vaccine and I'm doing fine! Please get yours too.P

Appearing on Chopped 420 to "tell your friends all over that ganja is medicinal and you can use it to enhance the quality of your life" is like appearing of Songs of Praise to let people know about our saviour, Jesus Christ.

I imagine Songs of Praise is one show that really had to switch it up when COVID happened!

I am learning a lot from Chopped 420 though; who'd have thought that Ron Funches smoked weed?

What are the odds on a kid called Laganja Estranja growing up to become a cannabis rights activist?

Can you get a contact high watching people cook with weed or am I feeling the effects of my whiskey and morphine? #AnswersOnAPostcardPlease!

Words, Santa, Moms, Grandpa, Moms Christmas, Parents, Education, Santa 2, Teacher - My ranking of the Bad comedies.

So there's a Time Lord named The Doctor and another named The Master. Does that imply there's another called The Bachelor? Or The Drop-Out? I like to think he'd have the coolest TARDIS.

In 33 years I've only had two people tell me they thought I might be autistic. One was my closest, most honest confidant and the other was a mental health doctor I was struggling to express myself to in hospital. Still, not enough data to form a pattern!

MY LIFE AS A BASKET CASE; MENTAL ILLNESS & THE WORST THING I EVER DID

I've been putting this off all week. Well, to be honest, I've been putting this off since I've started writing this blog. I've been treating this blog a little bit like a therapist; I just unload whatever I'm thinking and try and get things clear in my head. I'm not spiritual, I don't believe there's a will to the universe, or genuine karma, balance or justice. That said, we're all the stars of our own little stories, and from our perspective the events we experience are all connected purely because they all happened to us. So whenever life deals me a bad hand, and I crash the company van, or get taken to hospital with swollen, infected legs, or wake up to find ants crawling over me, there's always a voice in my head going "Well, there was that one time you fucked your entire life up. Maybe you deserve this."

Now that I've written this fucking thing, it occurs to me that people I like read this blog, and that friends I make in the future may read this too. I hope that the actions I write about here don't literally repulse you away from me, and that you can appreciate I am a different person now than I was over a decade ago. Maybe don't read this if you don't want to see me at my worst!

Before I get to that, I owe my friend Julie an apology. I didn't proof read my last post before submitting it and did not express myself as well as I am able. The story I last posted was the first one I ever wrote specifically for her, not intended as a comment to her blog. I talk to Julie and about Julie in a manner unique to her; it took a little pushing by her to get me comfortable referring to her using language that is derogatory or misogynist. It's language Julie uses to describe herself; I recall her referring to herself as "Queen Slut" in the comments of a recent post. Obviously language is a tricky thing and intent is everything; if a third party seriously called her that I would be most unhappy. If her husband called her that whilst she was blowing him I'd be most entertained.

Communicating with and about Julie is tricky; I know if I write about her here she'll read it, but this is essentially a public place. Writing on her comments page can be tricky; Julie almost responds to comments as if she is two different characters, with Strict Julie responding to comments on posts where she's mainly a domme, and Sub Julie responding to comments where she's mostly a femsub. Obviously there's a little blurring of the lines, but she'll let readers get away with more on comments to some posts than on others. Plus she can be very coarse and derogatory in the way she describes herself; it's something that Miss Chris picked her up on when visiting for the first time. Of course, she obviously has a role to fulfil herself. Obviously e-mailing Julie directly is when I can be the most honest or the most fake, writing something that will titillate her without worrying about how a third party will react. There are other times when I'll start to write her an e-mail but realise she'll get more of a kick discovering my words here and wondering who else has read them, or in the comments of her blog where her fans will appreciate them and join in the fun. It can be a little complicated!

In my last post I listed a bunch of terms I've used to excite her since she's given me the go ahead to talk dirty. I wasn't trying to offend, but when she quoted my own words back to me it's clear that listing such harsh, derogatory terms without context was an unkind thing to do. Furthermore, I realised my words could be interpreted to mean that I no longer care for her, which I hope is self-evidently untrue. I care for her a great deal. I just know she'd rather be shamed and humiliated a little rather than being treated like she might break. I sincerely apologise.