After being shipped around from pillar to post by the powers that be I was finally granted a new home.

The Sekrit Lab, as my son calls it, is handily located only meters above Union Street. It has a concealed entrance, rooftop escape route and space for a helicopter to land. Presuming it’s a small and light one. Perhaps a model.

Why is this important? Because I have turned to the dark side and formed C.oO.K.I.E.S. the Conspiracy of Overconfident, Kleptomaniac, Intelligent Evil Societies.  I actually haven’t done anything evil yet but I have a skull shaped helmet I like to keep shiny and clean. I also have minions. Okay A Minion. I got her mail order. Well through twitter.

Look the reason I haven’t blogged for a long time is I’ve been busy moving, being a super villain, and editing last year’s NaNoWriMo novel.

This is the CoOKIE MASTER, ahem, sorry force of habit…

This is PlanetNiles signing off until next time. Byeeee…!

This is mostly addressed to her.

I know where you are. I’ve stood in the same place myself twice before, the last time barely five months ago. Hell I’m still there now, caught in a Sisyphean trap by an illness that wipes weeks of improvement away in a single moment of dis-cognizance. So when I saw that look, that I recognised from the mirror, in your eyes I held you tightly to stop you falling apart completely. I have stood by you despite what may cost me. I’ve always stood by you,  sacrificed things for you. I’ve never asked for anything in return other your hand in marriage. I’ve never been happier than the day you gave it to me.

I love you more than anything else in the whole world.  I’d sacrifice everything I have, ever will have and ever had, for you.

The fact of the matter is you are worth  it all and more.

The fact of the matter is that you are one of the strongest people I know. You have soldiered through more rough times than anyone I know. In fact it’s been pointed out to me that trying to keep up with you may be what pushed me past my breaking point.

While you may feel that you broke your father’s heart every time he looked at you, I think you might have missed his pride when he saw his grandchildren. Beneath his dour exterior there was a man who loved you with all his heart. It takes one to know one. He and I fought because there would never be a man worthy of his daughter. I could have been a multi-billionaire Presbyterian roughneck and I might have just scratched in the grade, and he’d have been suspicious of my motives. So when he welcomed me into his family, me a lazy guy with daydreams of being a writer, he did so because he respected you choice in partner. He respected you.  You do him a disservice every time you repeat the fallacy that he felt you were unworthy.

Sure you may have been a disappointment, but then that’s the lot of parents. I know that while my parents always said that they’d always stand by me whatever I chose to do with my life, they struggled until quite recently to live up to that ideal. I’m pretty sure we’ll feel our kids will let us down too. Sure it may appear that your dad went easier on your brothers, although I doubt he did. But perhaps he expected less of them.

We will get through this awful year, somehow, and we’ll come out the other side stronger and better people. You will get better, you just have to stop being so hard on yourself. Be yourself and not what you think other people want you to be.

“Cry ‘havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war.“

That’s Non Epileptic Attack Disorder.

I spent much of Monday and most of Tuesday in hospital, wired up to a box and on camera 24/7.  The box was some sort of mobile EEG meter and the camera was to catch me having a seizure. I wasn’t allowed to leave the ward, or indeed my room. But at least I was in a room by myself.

Pretty much nothing happened. I had a few minor ‘Outages and they didn’t show up on the EEG so I was given the diagnosis above.

Now it’s back to the waiting game.

Yay!

That is all, carry on.

Basically they had to wedge me in tightly, to the point I lost all feeling in my extremities.  After more than 8 minutes of this and facing another 8 I started to get a little claustrophobic. I asked for a break, enough time to get the feeling back in my limbs and while that helped when they tried to get me back in I suddenly no longer fitted.

So it was abandoned there, with the remaining 8 minute, High Density scan left undone.

An MRI scanner looks just like the CT scanner (Like the offspring of a polo mint and an iPod) only beefier and scarier.

I have a 24 hour EEG commencing from the first of February.

1. Chill the fuck out. Seriously I need to de-stress big time. I don’t know how I’m going to do it so it’s the resolution I’m less likely to succeed at. Currently I’m thinking of doing things that stress me less and doing the stuff that relaxes me more. Meditation and that sort of thing will probably be involved. Anyone know a decent rational meditation systems?
2. Exercise moar. More than just walking around a lot, actually doing proper exercise, cycling, swimming and that sort of stuff. I plan to reward myself; an hour’s exercising = an hour’s playtime in Second Life or something similar such as playing with the kids on the Wii, with playtime being taken from working/writing time.
3. Write moar. Other than being my wife’s primary carer I’m supposed to be a writer. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and it’s what I’m sort of good at. So 2010 is the year the wife and I send stuff off to agents and hopefully find one. I’m trying to think of the plan to encourage writing, other than itself. I suppose I could earn some sort of reward after writing so many words or writing for so many hours.  Suggestions welcomed.
4. Sell stuff in Second Life. Yeah Tarrah has been away for the most part since August but prior to that she’d been working hard on building stuff for selling. So when we can get back inworld she will and she might stay a while. We’ll see.
5. Work on this Website. Finally get something up for this website’s index page other than “Under Construction”. I’d really like for this blog to appear on the index but I have no idea how to manage that. Ideas, suggestions and help welcome on that front too.
6. I’m also tempted, what with OGL and stuff, to work on doing to the Dangerous Journeys RPG what OSRIC does for AD&D, entirely gratis and for my own benefit of course. I just need a name, and a few files. If anyone has the Unhallowed and Changeling (Chaos) files available I’d appreciate them.

Well that’s me done for now. Look for updates in the coming months and good luck with your own resolutions.

That scared me.

Look at it this way: You live in a house on a flood plain, thanks to global warming your home is flooded almost annually. Now you’re told that flood defences are being built and miraculously property prices are as yet unaffected. Plan A, the cheap and easy plan, would be to stay put and place your trust in the defences. Plan B? Surely you’d think of moving to a home on higher ground just to be sure. Or maybe as the flood season comes around again you put all your real valuables into storage where they’ll be safe and dry.

Either way you’d have a backup plan.

So, where’s the backup plan regarding climate change?

We’re told that sea levels will rise, unless we change our ways so why is all the focus on changing our ways? We should at the very least be considering the possibility that it’s too late or that we can’t change our ways quickly enough and plan accordingly. But apparently not.

My point is that there’s no fall back plan if, or since we’re as close to the wire as we’re told, when we cross over the brink.  There are solutions to rapidly shrinking landmasses but they appear to be being ignored by the powers that be.   I’m fond of the idea of Seasteading.  Seasteading is building living space above water, a process which leaves available land surface free for agriculture. It’s not a new idea, indeed Europe and notably Great Britain already have the foundations of a Seasteading industry and have been using it for industrial purposes for decades. Let me make it obvious for you:

This is a basic Seastead circa later 20th Century.

If you look at the link I provided you to the Seasteading Institute, you’ll see the current state of support  the idea is getting currently. Why aren’t governments all over the world pouring funds into this kind of thing? Yeah I know the Seasteading Institute has this whole “getting away from existing governments” thing going on but let’s be realistic.

Perhaps all the money is going into funding conferences about climate change? I mean these people fly around the world producing vast quantities of CO2 to meet  with other people who also have flown there producing vast quantities of CO2 to have vast conferences that generate huge amounts of CO2 to discuss just how CO2 is destroying the world. Have these people not heard of Skype? Have they considered meeting in a virtual space such as Second Life?

They’re not behaving like how I’d expect people trying to save the world from man-made climate change to behave.

Oh and they also don’t appear to have a plan B.

And that really really scares me.

I don’t know how long I’ll be in London, visiting with one half of my family, before heading up to Oxford to stay with the other half.  My wife and kids will be up in Oxford from the 19th so I intend to be there before they get there.  We’ll see.

So either I’m having “non-epileptic seizures” (read as “you’re crazy”) or their tests didn’t show anything because, as a cousin has pointed out, they only really work if you have a seizure during them.

So much for that then…

I’ve asked for an MRI, they’re giving me a 24 hour EEG and I’m being referred to a specialist unit near Glasgow that has an interest in these “non-epileptic seizures”. So the waiting game continues.

Tara – Still Dressed to Kill

Kadia had given Tara the address of a bar that was frequented by some of Budapest’s criminal classes. It was conveniently close to the entrance to under world she and Jones had exited from; Tara was sure that had they a dramaturge with them they’d have been wittering on about Authors Intent and other such bollocks. The bar occupied a modest corner of a building and much of the adjacent courtyard. Jones secreted himself into an a lonely corner table and watched as Tara mixed and mingled. She didn’t so much drape herself over any available man, with her height most men would have looked like jewelery against her, but she certainly made her presence known to her potential paramours. It didn’t take her long to find the biggest baddest bastard in the joint, a heavy it was said had blinded his girlfriend after beating her half to death during a drunken rage, nor was it too hard to wrap him around her little finger. Getting him to leave with her was hard, getting to leave with her alone was even harder. Jones followed at a safe distance as she dragged her victim towards the under world. Even a scum bag like that was reluctant to enter such an ill omened place but Tara teased him, or so Jones guessed from her tone, and for a moment he was worried the arse hole would hit her. But instead he diligently followed her into the darkened tunnels. Not enough blood to run both heads indeed, Jones mused with a sudden hot flash of lust. He hovered on the threshold, part of him eager to let Tara take her lover into the tunnels alone, while Jones returned to Kadia to reignite the evening’s passions. His greater head won out, willing him forward into the shadows.

Jones followed the couple deeper into the labyrinthine passages, keeping the light of their torch within sight as much as possible, his own light source used in such a way as to prevent Tara’s victim, Jones didn’t know what was going on but couldn’t help but think of the man as such, from realizing he was being followed. Jones could hear the rats scurrying in the shadows, just out of sight as he moved along. Soon he arrived at the entrance to the chamber that Tara had led him to earlier that night. He paused, not wanting to enter but a burning curiosity driving him to know more. he pressed his ear to the door.

Friar Gabriel heard Tara loudly proclaiming out side the door to the chamber and hurried away from the coffin to hide in the shadows. He had decorated the chamber appropriately for the deed; a lit candle at each corner of the open coffin lit its contents and threw flickering shadows against the bare stone walls.
“Just through here my sweet, my hidden boudoir in the tunnels, a real dungeon of debauchery to please the most wicked of tastes,” she said loudly in Hungarian. The door opened and a large, heavily set man entered, his eyes were wide as they took in the chamber’s contents. he swore, turning back towards the door and was struck with enough force to knocking to the floor and against the heavy stone plinth upon which Igor’s coffin rested. Tara followed, entering the room with her a face seemingly in its own shadow. She grabbed the man by his hair, eliciting a cry of pain as she dragged him around to the other far side of the coffin. He screamed as she raised his head up to the lip of the coffin and he saw the severed head of Igor resting before him. “Oh you don’t like it when a woman can fight back, eh?” Tara asked him, drawing Igor’s sword from its sheath. Gabriel went to move forward to stop her, to let him make the kill, but instead he let his hand drop and remained still, his features hidden beneath the hoods of his robes. The man saw the movement and cried out again pleading for mercy and at the horror of the death before him. Tara pressed the cold steel edge to the sword to his throat. “Any last words, you woman beating waste of breath, before I send your soul to hell?” she asked him. The man cried out again, babbling incoherently. Tara became aware of a spreading puddle at her feet. She gritted her teeth and tried to slice the sword across the man’s throat but her arm wouldn’t move. She tried again, desperate to end his worthless life and restore her beloved uncle to her.

Igor’s face swam before her “Too much blood has been spilled my dear, and no matter how much we hate and how much we hurt, spilling more it neither brings neither peace nor relief.” She remembered the cold spring morning so many years before when that they had buried two empty coffins. Grandad Q had cried then, tears spilling down the wrinkled lines of his face. Tara remembered standing between her grandfather and uncle as the empty coffins were entombed withing the family crypt, lowered side-by side into the ground, symbolic of lives lost. She remembered being confused, where had her parents gone, why wouldn’t they coming back, how could they live in such a small stone house and not with her and Igor. Grandad Quincy had died the following winter and soon lay in the crypt beside the bones of his parents and the empty space of his son ad daughter in law. Only then had she understood. Only then had she cried.

With a scream she hurled the man away. “GO!” She commanded, with a voice that seemed to shake the room. The man ran, hurrying through the nearest open door in fear and shame. Tara staggered from the coffin, her cheeks wet with tears. she collapsed at the foot of the coffin and let all the bottled up grief flood out in great gulping sobs.