I’m not one for emotional posts; frankly, I think there’d be extended wincing on both the side of the reader, and the side of the writer. But y’know, sometimes these things are unavoidable.

Back in 2007, my mum went into hospital for a routine check-up. When all the tests came back in, they called her back, saying that they’d found what may be a cancerous growth. Turns out that yes, it was colorectal cancer. So they got Mum into surgery, had it out, and had her on chemo/radiation to make sure. Eventually, she was given a clean bill of health, and we all thought that was that.

Late last year, we discovered that wasn’t that, as the cancer had returned. So Mum started treatments again. It took place over the course of winter, which was doubly-hard on her, as the treatments made her more susceptible to cold environments. But she took it all in stride, as she was never one to complain about things. Well, at least, not at length.
Round the beginning of 2009, the hospital said they were going to try out a new and experimental treatment with her, as the previous one wasn’t getting the immediate results. Thing is, there were a limited number of slots for treatment, as it was on this ‘you’ll have to wait in the queue when your turn comes up’ system. As she was waiting for her date to start treatment, the hospital discovered she was having liver problems, which would’ve prevented effective and safe treatment, so they had to get that sussed first. A couple of outpatient surgeries later, they attended to her liver issue (it was blockage) as well as they could. However, as she had to get that done — and that required scheduling, which is never immediate — Mum missed her slot for the new treatment, and so had to wait for another open slot. Of course, that meant the cancer was still progressing in the meantime.

I’d seen her in April, checking up on her and whatnot, and asked if she’d started proceedings. She replied no, as she was still having some liver-related issues. In between waiting on slots and waiting on surgeries, she’d actually developed jaundice, which again, postponed cancer treatment. She was annoyed, but still optimistic. She wasn’t a pessimist, but she tended to have a realistic outlook on things. In the case of something like this, however, optimism is what everyone aims for.
During another check-up call on Mum in mid-June, I spoke with her for only a couple of minutes, as she was in some amount of pain. The drugs she were taking were exhausting her, and making her tired and irritable. She told me that she wanted me to come round, as ‘we need to talk’, which is a phrase that, considering the context, I didn’t want to hear.

As she, my dad, and I sat in the basement watching coverage of the Iran election cavalcade, they laid it out for me: essentially, the doctors had told her that between the tag team of cancer and jaundice, things had gotten to a point that they were discontinuing treatment, as there was nothing more they could do. They estimated that she had about six months to live. Insert line about ‘you never think it’ll happen to you’ here.
Six months was a hugely optimistic estimate. Between her liver, the cancerous tumours on her liver, and her original colorectal cancer, she was in a very rapid decline. I promised to stop round on Mondays and Saturdays to see her, and over the course of two weeks, her health had degenerated in no time flat.

I stopped round after work yesterday, as we’d gotten off early, and Mum had been in bed all day, and was so weak that she couldn’t even really speak. Sitting with her was Gran, who’d flown in from Alabama on Wednesday. We chatted for a bit, and she went downstairs with Dad so I could be with Mum alone. I held her hand and talked to her — I told her how I was dragged to that hideous Transformers movie, and she managed a smile — but otherwise, she was barely lucid. I probably took off from there about two hours later, telling everyone that I’d be back Saturday morn.
As is our wont, on Friday eves, my good friend Marika stops round, and we watched the last two episodes of Ashes to ashes (hell of a show, it goes without saying), and she decided to crash here for the night, as her car was having problems. Whilst she was reading on the loveseat, I was scheduling about three posts to automatically post to ‘Shouting etc etc’, when Dad rang at a quarter to 5am. As you suspect, Mari and I spent a couple of hours crying after I hung up.

Although I’m an atheist, I can say without bias that she was an example of a perfect christian — never wished ill will upon others, always was there for practically anyone when they needed help, never smoked, drank… hell, she even quit swearing sometime in the mid-Eighties. She was someone who legitimately made a difference in society by being a good human being.
All of my friends knew that Mum had cancer, but I only got a chance to tell some of them. Part of me wanted to wait for the ‘right’ moment, and part of me was still in denial about everything. So now the world knows, and clichéd as it sounds, the world is dimmer for Mum no longer being in it.

I love you, Mum. Always have, always will.

Sdtrk: ‘Pencil skirt’ by Pulp

You know how it goes with these things — celery debts come in trees. Wait, that’s not right.

Ed McMahon (06 Mar 1923 – 23 Jun 2009): Back in highschool, I could usually be relied upon for a decent Ed McMahon impersonation. Let’s see if I can still pull it off… *clears throat*

‘Heyy-o!! That’s a good one Johnny, and topical, too!’

Yep, still got it

Farrah Fawcett (02 Feb 1947 – 25 June 2009): As my mind is firmly stuck several decades in the past ninety per cent of the time, I nearly typed ‘Farrah Fawcett-Majors’, there.
Singlehandedly responsible for the sexual awakening of many a young lad during the Seventies thanks to ‘Charlie’s Angels’ — with the exception of myself, as I always preferred Kate Jackson — Farrah never did any harm to anyone. And good on her

Michael Jackson (29 Aug 1958 – 25 June 2009): Hurrr. As the adage goes, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Mmm hm.
Let’s just say this: growing up during the years back when the mighty MTV walked the earth, I liked MJ. I can recall back in eighth grade, my homeroom class was herded into the school’s library, where we all watched the full-length version of the ‘Thriller’ video. For a while, I even had a cassette copy of that album. But as time passed and I got older, I began refining my musical tastes more. Sure, I used to like MJ, but then, I also used to like Wham! and Prince. I used to like eating flapjacks with catsup slathered all over them, but I grew out of all of those things. Also, for sure he was a bizarre individual, but eccentricity should be praised, not damned. But I would say that.
So I suppose ultimately I didn’t dislike him because his music didn’t appeal to me, or because of his strange behaviour, but really it comes down to the whole child-touching thing. You know.

See? I managed to not say anything that can’t be considered not nice about Wacko Jacko! O, wait

Epilogue (this happened today before my work shift began):
WOMAN AT WORK: I know you a Michael Jackson fan, right?
ME: No.
WOMAN AT WORK: Awww! Well, I’m devastated.
ME: Huh.

Sdtrk: ‘NCR’ by Ike Yard

James Graham Ballard, one of my favourite authors, has passed away today at the age of 78.

Cult author JG Ballard dies at 78
BBC News | Published Sunday, 19 April 2009

The author JG Ballard, famed for novels such as Crash and Empire of the Sun, has died aged 78 after a long illness.

His agent Margaret Hanbury said the author had been ill “for several years” and had died on Sunday morning.

Despite being referred to as a science fiction writer, Jim Ballard said his books were instead “picturing the psychology of the future”.
the rest of the article is here

My first encounter with Ballard was back in the Nineties: my best friend Sean and I were getting into Industrial music — the proper stuff, such as Throbbing gristle, SPK, and the like — and I’d picked up an issue of a counter-culture magazine with a very sporadic release schedule called RE/Search. The issue I’d bought was number 4/5, and dealt exclusively with Throbbing gristle, William S. Burroughs (another author I admire), and Brion Gysin. As there was no other publication out there that we knew of that covered the subjects and topics we liked, we figured RE/Search would be worth keeping an eye on. Issue 6/7 was the highly-influential Industrial Culture Handbook, whose interviews with luminaries of the scene such as Genesis P-Orridge, Boyd Rice, Monte Cazazza, and others, make it entirely invaluable. Now, there had been mentions of J.G Ballard in both of those aforementioned issues, as his erotic-yet-clinical style of writing was an inspiration to many in those circles, so our interest in him was piqued. So when we managed to find issue 8/9, which consisted entirely of interviews and articles concerning Ballard, it was a must-buy.

The thing I liked most about him is that he wasn’t a science fiction writer; he trafficked in speculative fiction. His earlier works were arguably more straightforward scifi, to which I admit I haven’t read them, but the works he’d written that really resonated with me were stories like Concrete island (a businessman is stranded on an abandoned section of land beneath a motorway overpass), High-rise (the micro-society within a penthouse apartment rapidly degenerates into chaos and warfare), The Atrocity exhibition (a series of experimental short stories that dealt with deviant medical professionals and pop culture icons), and one of his most infamous, Crash, which, in a nutshell, dealt with the sexualisation of automobile accidents, and was made into a reasonably-good film adaptation by David Cronenberg in 1996. The speculative fiction label comes from the fact that the events in aforementioned stories are something I could readily see happening if people in society were given that little extra push, the push that strips away all semblance of civility in a person and reverts them to an instinct-driven being that either has morals that are purely self-serving, or who no longer has any morals at all.

Apart from doing things such as writing fictional stories in the style of medical reports or biographical appendices, his stories were populated by characters who were extremely sexual, yet simultaneously incredibly detached. There’s a starkness to Ballard’s stories that appeals to me — Sean had once mentioned that after reading High-rise, he felt as if he’d been beaten with a baseball bat — and his style will always remain unique and undisputably original

Sdtrk: ‘Sur ta moto’ by Karo

Well, this is bollocks. I come home from work to find that not only has Ricardo Montalban passed away, but Patrick McGoohan, too??

Prisoner star McGoohan dies at 80
BBC News | Published Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Emmy-winning actor Patrick McGoohan, best known for starring in cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner, has died at the age of 80.

He died in Los Angeles after a short illness, his film producer son-in-law Cleve Landsberg told Associated Press.

McGoohan played the character Six in the surreal 1960s show, filmed in the north Wales village of Portmeirion.

He won two Emmy awards for his work on TV detective series Columbo, playing different characters.

The first came for an episode of the series in 1974, with another 16 years later.
the rest of the article is here

As I’ve often stated, being within broadcast distance of Windsor, Canada, I grew up watching a large amount of English television, and The Prisoner was one of my favourites even then. Sometimes the reception wasn’t exactly crystal-clear, but I do recall the very first episode I watched was ‘Free for all’, where Number Six believes he can instigate a revolt in the normally placid citizens of the Village by running for the office of Number Two, with predictable results. I’m fairly certain my reaction was pretty much the same as those who watched it when it first aired back in 1968 — one of delighted astonishment, that a television show could be revolutionary, surreal, and engaging all at once. In the hands of someone else, the series probably wouldn’t stand the test of time, but Patrick McGoohan made it happen.
Also: Rover still freaks me out to this day.

Fantasy Island’s Montalban dies
BBC News | Published Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Actor Ricardo Montalban, who starred in the popular US TV show Fantasy Island in the 1970s-80s, has died aged 88, a Los Angeles city official says.

The Mexican-born actor died at his home, the official said.

Fantasy Island ran for six years and centred on a magical island where guests could live out their dreams.

Montalban – who had a long career in entertainment – was also well-known for playing the villain in Star Trek, both on television and in a feature film.

Montalban’s death was announced by Eric Garcetti, who represents the LA district where the actor lived.

David Brokaw, the actor’s friend, described him as a “very courtly, modest, dignified individual,” the Associated Press news agency reports.

Montalban had been a film star in Mexico before moving to Hollywood in 1946.

Despite the fact that I find Star Trek to be a bland series overall, I will fully admit to enjoying ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’, as it goes without saying that Ricardo Montalban’s role pretty much makes the film. Once, I’d seen him on an episode of David Letterman; Letterman had asked him what exactly was the deal with the whole ‘reech Coreenthian layther’ that Montalban used to promote in old Chrysler adverts from the Seventies and Eighties, and Ricardo jokingly confessed that there wasn’t such a thing. Awesome.

RIP Patrick McGoohan, RIP Ricardo Montalban. Both of you will be sorely missed

Technorati tags: Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner, The Village, Ricardo Montalban, Fantasy Island, Corinthian leather, KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN

Sdtrk: ‘I’m in love with a German film star (long mix)’ by the Passions

‘Shouting etc etc’ is down to DEFCON level 5, as yesterday, I successfully upgraded my WordPress version to 2.7. I didn’t have to sacrifice any goats or children or anything! Well, just one child, but he was a spotty little bastard, so I actually did the neighbourhood a favour. How did I manage to pull that off, you axe? The WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. Unzip it, upload it, activate it, click a couple of buttons, honk the horn, ring the bell, and voila! New version acquired! As I backed up some unneccesary stats, the backup process, and therefore, the entire upgrade process, took a wee bit longer than it normally should’ve, but nothing on ‘Shouting etc etc’ shattered like glass when it finished up, so I’ll call it a success. Not one hundred per cent success, mind you — I don’t think the Plugins list plugin (how very meta) that I’m using works properly with WP 2.7, as it doesn’t list all the plugins I’m using as links, but still. (FUTURE EDIT: Plugins list plugin updated 27 Dec)
All hail the Automatic Upgrade plugin! Making life easier for lazy unattentive tossers like myself. Well done!

And while I was at my parents’ house for Crimbo, I learned that Eartha Kitt, Catwoman and cabaret star, unexpectedly passed away.

US singer Eartha Kitt dies at 81
BBC News | Thursday, 25 December 2008

American singer, dancer and actress Eartha Kitt has died at the age 81, her friend and publicist has said.

Kitt died of colon cancer on Thursday, Andrew Freedman said.

She was one of the few artists to be nominated in the Tony, Grammy and Emmy award categories and was a stalwart of the Manhattan cabaret scene.

She famously played Catwoman in the Batman television series in the 1960s and was known for her distinctive, feline drawl.

She also had a number of hit songs, including Old Fashioned Girl, C’est Si Bon and Santa Baby.

Kitt was blacklisted in the US in the late 1960s after speaking out against the Vietnam War at a White House function.
the rest of the article is here

First Bettie Page, and now Eartha? I’m not liking this

We won’t forget you, though in violence you go,
As the wheels turned in the theatres below,
An escape from the ends never met,
In apartments with the lives not formed yet