Ravings of a Lunatic

  William Jobling - Last Man Gibbeted THE BARD APR 25, 2011 River Tyne The Tyne It was bitterly cold. It always was on the slake. The wind would whistle across the barren mud, where the earth melded into sludge towards the river. The river, the giver and taker of life, the source of existence. The artery that carried the ships between the damp, dingy docks and the wide, frightening North Sea. The ships. Since her earliest memory there were ships. Ships and coal. Black, dirty coal and black, dirty, browbeaten men who mined it. Jobling's Gibbet The Gibbet That morning was the same as every other. In the ramshackle home, the child struggled out of bed, shivered, wrapped herself in a flimsy gown and glanced at the empty hearth. She knew she needed coal. She found her mother at the window, staring out to the river, transfixed across the slake. Something different was there today, something sinister, something hideous. She followed her mother's gaze and recoiled. The black tarred bod...

  OMG!! The coolest comic shop ever tucked away in Blackhall Mill!!!!! Caught a glimpse of this gem during my first week in the Mill. Through the half closed security gate I could see just enough to know that I had to see what was inside. Kept trying to find it open but never could. Two nights before my departure I finally posted on a Blackhall Mill FB group inquiring of its opening hours. Within a short time the owner reached out to me and we made an appointment for me to visit the next morning. The wait was definitely worth it as the visit was fan-fucking-tastic!!! Imagine stumbling into a magical world full of treasures in every nook and cranny, as that is what entering this shop is like. I spent four hours there on my last full day in the UK. As well as the extremely HUGE selection of all things comic related, I had a splendid bit of crack with Jason, proprietor extraordinaire. This fine gentleman also will remind you a little of that British maestro of prose, Alan Moore, as ...

  My journey back to the farm began as we left the lovely little village of Blackhall Mill the afternoon of 14 June. Got to the airport and was amazed to see how my belongings had grown. I arrived on 4 May with a checked suitcase, a carry-on suitcase, a backpack laptop bag, a backpack for my meds, and a small cooler bag for meds requiring refrigeration. Arrived at airport in NCL on 14 Jun with large, medium and small bags to check, and to carry on with me the following: a backpack for laptop and meds, backpack for meds and other items, carry-on suitcase full of books, small cooler bag for meds. for return, I was lucky enough to have KLM arrange for assistance around airport, and boarding/deboarding planes. Worked great until arrival in ATL, where Delta dropped the ball and didn't have anyone waiting for me. This resulted in me waiting for assistance, then by time I got through Immigration & Customs, and was just beginning the recheck-in by TSA, my assistant realized I had miss...

Lung cancer When I departed for my long awaited trip to the UK, I did so with the knowledge that a lung nodule that my care team has been monitoring since 2017 had grown from 8mm in Nov. to 12mm in Apr, indicating that it was neoplastic. My radiation oncologist told me in early May that we were looking at a single dose of radiation to treat it. On Tuesday I had a biopsy of the nodule to determine if it is related to my previous laryngeal & oropharyngeal sarcomas, or if it is an unrelated lung cancer which decided to make an appearance. I will have that result on Monday. On Wednesday, I had a CT mapping session so we could proceed with the radiation treatment. During the mapping CT, it was found that the nodule had grown even larger, over 20mm, with one measurement showing up to 27mm. Radiation oncologist looked worried and said that I needed chest CT scans to check both size and extent of the growth of the nodule since the scans in April. Luckily my chemo Oncologist had ordered bot...

Legal drinking age and Me In 1983, in NC and most of the US, the legal age for drinking beer and wine was 18 years old. You still needed to be 21 to drink hard liquor. An exception:   Before 1982, active duty military personnel could consume alcohol on military bases regardless of the legal drinking age off base. Following the national concerns with the risks of adolescent drinking in 1982, Congress enacted a law which required military recruits to adhere to the same drinking age as the state in which the military base was located.  Thereafter, between 1982 and 1988, all military bases on U.S. soil transitioned to the 21-year  minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) . Now, if stationed overseas, a soldier had to abide by the legal drinking age of the country they were in, even if that age was under 21. I turned 18 in July, 1983. I was in the NC Army National Guard as well which I joined at 17 in Sept 1982. Ft Bragg had beer vending machines which had the coldest beer imagi...

  This is the story of The Great Stink of 1858. Within the Victorian City of London, the remnants of human poo became so bad that parliament was under siege; Queen Victoria herself went mad, and thousands died in unimaginable ways! When you live in an era so bad, that even contemporaries of the time dubbed the event “The Great Stink” and people living nearly two centuries later agree, you know that you are obviously living in a very disgusting period indeed. 18 Bizarre Facts About the 1858 Great Stink of London That is why I have taken it upon myself to use the word “disgusting” along with some other equally unpleasant names approximately a hundred times (or more, I lost count) throughout my answer so that one will appreciate how disgusting the situation truly was. I just hope that modern Londoners will forgive such usage in the same way that Londoners at the time have, for I am certain they had much dirtier words to describe their situation. The year was 1858, and the Thames River...