Madmen, melancholy and MRIs...

Tags: MRI Keith Urban crazy guys

Well, it's been a frantic few days since I last updated. I have had other things to occupy my mind since Tuesday than my blog, my site, my writing.

Medical update first. I had my MRI scan on Friday afternoon, which was an interesting experience. Despite the MRI disasters portrayed on House the night before, I had no major problems, other than having to concentrate on lying perfectly still for 40 minutes whilst electromagnetic radiation was fired into my knee cap. I tend to have quite restless legs, and find sitting still difficult at times. Couple this with the fact that I was quite tired (and when I sleep, my legs tend to get a little twitchy) and was worried that I was going to end up jerking my leg all over the place, and ruining the scan. With the aid of a large leg clamp however I kept still, and now have a good set of scans of my knee, and am now intimately acquainted with the inner workings of the bones, ligaments and muscles in that area of the leg!

On Wednesday evening I went to see Keith Urban in concert. Damn, that man can put on a show. I don't think there's another artist out there who can sing pain, heartache and sheer unadulterated joy better than him. He played almost all of my favourites (You're Not My God being the only one I really missed) - but he blew me away with You'll Think of Me, Stupid Boy, I Told You So, Tonight I Wanna Cry and his interpretation of I Can't Stop Loving You.

I've always been attracted to the melancholy, the tragic, the gothic - be it in literature or in music I appreciate the beauty of regret, heartache and loss. I'd rather be under the bar, singing the blues, than on top of the bar dancing. I guess that's why I like the sad songs more than the happy ones, the sad stories more than the happy ones. I'll have more to say about this on my other blog, as this theme infuses my own writing, and last Thursday night concerned this very theme...

Waiting to get into the concert, we were approached by a number of beggars, and a crazy guy. The crazy guy decided I was the next James Bond, and that I was a very handsome man. Nice compliment, but why do I attract the crazies?

Anyway, it's late. Hope to see you around again soon.

Just in time to see House beforehand...

Do you watch "House", starring Hugh Laurie? If you do, then you'll know that in most episodes, when they send a patient for an MRI scan, then bad things happen to that patient. Usually they come close to death.

Guess what the first thing that popped into my head when the orthopaedic surgeon told me he was sending me for an MRI was? Yeah, you guessed it. And I'm going this Friday, so I'll have an episode of House, fresh in my mind!

To keep you updated, he suspects that I have damaged the cartilage on the interior side of my leg, and there may also be a slight tear to the cruciate ligament on the exterior side of my leg. So, we'll await the results of the MRI, I'll go see him again on Tuesday, and I may be getting booked in for some keyhole. Just in time for my birthday.

Good stuff.

Does this hurt? How about now?

Off to see the consultant orthopaedic surgeon this afternoon to get the verdict on my knee. It has been relatively well-behaved these past few weeks. The swelling is greatly reduced, I only get sporadic shooting pains, and I've even been able to maintain some (very gentle) running on it, albeit aided and abetted by an industrial strength knee brace. The only downside of the brace has been the spectacular bruising it causes around my knee...

Should I be worried by the sympathy pains that my left knee has begun to develop...?

Man with dress abolishes made up belief

Tags: Limbo abolished Catholic theology

Or, perhaps more sensitively, the Vatican has reversed the centuries old doctrine of Limbo.

Limbo was created to explain away a theological quandry - if man is born with original sin, then what happens to those who die before baptism? The standard answer was, they go to hell. Unbaptised babies, the "uncivilised heathens" who had not been evangelised - all consigned to a state of eternal torment. Oddly this did not square with the image of the all loving God that the Church wished to portray.

So, "limbo" was created. Not hell, as there was no torment, yet not heaven, as there was no grace in God's presence. Nor was it Purgatory, as there was no chance of getting out. Limbo is the First Circle of Hell in Dante's Divine Comedy - Inferno. Limbo is home to the virtuous pagans, the unbaptised children, and all those who did not accept Jesus through no fault of their own. Not very comforting, and Limbo is nothing more than guiltless damnation. Of all the doctrines of my at times unsteady and uncertain Catholicism, it is the one that caused me the most trouble to accept, and indeed I did not accept it, ever.

When I was in high school I had the opportunity to talk to a theologian from the Scot's College at Salamanca. He explained the current trends of thought in Catholic theology on the subjects of heaven and hell, defining the former as eternal life in the grace of God's presence, and the latter as eternal life outwith that grace, in the full knowledge that you rejected that grace. Therefore, eternal life, outwith God's grace, is hell. Limbo would fall within this definition, and therefore the denizens of Limbo are damned, except that they did not reject God's grace. If purposeful rejection of grace is the act that condemns you to hell, then the position is not reconcilable. Limbo had no place in this concept, and so it had to be rejected, and not before time.

Ultimately, the doctrine of Limbo was created by men, to explain a seeming contradiction in their theory of how the world worked, at that time. As the theory has become refined, Limbo is no longer needed. Not that it ever existed. I am not overly convinced by the "what you bind on earth is bound in heaven" argument - men are too fallible to be allowed to have that level of power.

Right, enough theology. I'll get back to nonsense and mockery soon, I promise.

Half the wages and an 800 mile commute...

I received an e-mail this morning from the employment agency Brook Street, asking me to contact them, as they had a few positions that may be of interest to me.

Now, I'm used to receiving the odd e-mail offer from agencies. The agencies I registered with when I was looking to leave my last job still contact me (at least the ones that didn't place me in my current job!) - the last time I worked for Brook Street was summer of 2005, and the last contact I had with them was when they sent my a P45 in early 2006. So one year on, they have positions for me?

It gets better than that though - I looked at the phone numbers. It's the Glasgow branch. That would be Glasgow, Scotland. Now, I used to work in Glasgow. And I even registered with Brook Street there. In March 2004. Three years on, you have positions that may interest me? Wow, where were they three years ago, when you had nothing for me?

As nice as it was of them to think of me, I don't think I'll trade in my current job for temp work at half the wages, and a round trip commute of close to 1000 miles...

One step closer to a brand new knee...

Just back in from seeing my GP - the results of my x-ray were "both helpful and unhelpful" - the x-ray showed nothing, so the bones and joint are not the problem (helpful), but since nothing else is evident (unhelpful) I do need to get referred to an orthopaedic surgeon. So, as suspected, it may be cartilage or ligament damage, which may mean surgery.

Is it bad that I'd quite like the surgery, as a pair of crutches might mean I stand a fighting chance of getting a seat on the Tube? Really, I just want an excuse to wander around with a cane, á la Greg House, and cultivate the attitude to match...

Number one with a bullet...

Oh my.

Do a Google search for Paul Anthony Anderson...

Nice not to have to have to wade through 50 pages to find myself. Now if only I could bump myself up for searches on just Paul Anderson...

... or indeed, if I could make my other website appear in the rankings...

Yes, I admit - I am very easily amused and entertained. But hey, it makes me a cheap date!

If you are what you eat, then I'm fast, cheap, and easy...

You can tell it's late - my posts cease to make any sense. Oh well, goodnight folks.

Where the hell is the coffee?

OK, I know that we've just come back from a long weekend. I know that no-one has been in the building since Thursday evening.

But seriously - where's the coffee? There is no coffee in the entire building.

Law firms run on coffee. I run on coffee.

Precious little chance of them getting any work out of me today...

Victory over the forces of darkness...

Tags: Boat Race Cambridge victory

The Light Blues today came storming back with a fantastic victory over the Dark Blues in the Boat Race.

Well done Cambridge! It's been a long wait since 2004...

All change...

They say that writing something down is the best way to ensure you stick to a goal. So I'm going to try it here.

Over the course of this weekend I'm going to finally get round to migrating my websites over to the domains, set up reasonable looking templates, and finally shut down the old ones. I hope. Fingers crossed.

And I'm also going to move over all the blog entries from the legal blog, and insert them into this blog. I reckon I'll lose some comments in the process, but given the source of those comments, I'm not going to be losing any sleep over it.

And the reason? The legal site is going to shut down. Or rather, it's going to move in a new direction. It's not going to be a legal site anymore. Law will always be something I will remain interested in, but I have to pursue what I truly want to do, and not what habit tells me to do. And so my other site will be focused on writing - the blog will be short pieces I'm working on, updates on how things are developing, and of course the podcasts.

That's the plan anyway. Let's see if I stick to it...

The knee bone's connected to the...

Had my knee x-rayed today, so spent the first part of the morning hanging around the waiting area of the Clinical Imaging Department at West Middlesex Hospital.

Got called, and brought into the room.

"Do you think you can roll your trouser leg up over your knee?"

Now, I don't have a medical degree, but given that the reason I'm having the knee x-rayed is due to the swelling in it, it may not be the best thing to ask me to try to roll my trouser leg up beyond the swelling. Give me a gown, let me get undressed - I honestly have no problem with dropping my trousers to let you examine my knee. I did it for my doctor, I'll do it for you.

But no, up the trouser leg went, just barely past the swollen knee. Several million high energy particles and two photographic plates later, and now I await the results...

Sacrilicious 2

Tags: chocolate Jesus outrage art again Catholic League victory shameful

Chocolate Jesus exhibit cancelled

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. So the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights have won this contest after all. I haven't felt this ashamed of being Catholic since, oh I don't know, last week when I found out Jeffrey Archer's latest work was not only written in collaboration with a Vatican theologian, but had official Vatican sanction!

But back to the Chocolate Jesus. Now that the exhibit has been cancelled, what is to be done with it? Eat it? Melt it? Smash it? How are any of these a better solution, one with less chance of offence to Christian sensibilities, than allowing the exhibit to go ahead? The major problem the Catholic League appears to have (apart from the chocolate) is that this Jesus is naked.

Can we have any authorities on Roman execution methods to let us know whether victims of crucifixion were crucified naked? This may be historically accurate? Or is it sacrilegious to suggest that the Son of God had a penis? If so, I suggest the Catholic League read up on some Catechism (you know, "How to Be a Catholic"?), some Papal Bulls, and the decision of the Council of Nicea - that Jesus was wholly man and wholly God, ergo he had a penis, he went to the toilet, he ate, he slept. Hell, there's an entire Christian festival celebrating the circumcision of Jesus - can't really get circumcised without a penis...

Anyway, rant over. I've just got myself a brand new iPod shuffle, so am happily geeked out on Apple goodness...