SEPT 01

23:20 29/10/2001 -- Tomorrow never dies

Just watched the Bond film. Not bad, but as everyone says : Nobody does it better than Sean Connery. And did'nt Teri Hatcher look well ? Not much going on lately. Andy and i are looking into applying for a government arts grant for producing comics. Apparently they are not hard to get. Then again, i don't have a clue.

Bit short on cash recently. I had to employ a sniper to sit on my roof, and target Halloween rhymers. It's an annual thing. He's been up there for a week now. I sometimes go up and offer him a cup of tea, but he always declines : "I came prepared" Whatever that means

Luke Books screensaver may take a while : Gavin went and got hisself a girlfriend. Won't see him again for a while. I'm hoping to update tomorrow night on his machine. Fingers crossed.

Best of Pink Floyd cd is out this Friday, in case anyone out there gives a monkies.

I got the new Paul Weller acoustic album : Days of speed. It's quite good, theres some favourites on there, as well as some classic Jam tracks.

I'm feeling mentally energetic, that's why this entry is so long. Why not ? Everyone else's weblogs seem to go on longer than mine. But do they have something interesting to say ? Wait, yeah actually they do. Ah well

ps : HAPPY HALLOWEEN !

11:48 28/10/2001 -- Time travelling

Clocks went back, so i'm still reeling from the time travel experience. Got access to a scanner now. Um.......bye

12:14 26/10/2001 -- I AM SUPER COMPUTER, HERE ME ROAR ! Yay ! New computer !

I got a surprise update the other night for the site, so i'm ahead of schedule.

I was watching the local news the other night, and they were on talking about the conflict in this country. Most of the news was taken up by the terrorist attacks that have been going on. Pipe bombs, drugs, guns, kids finding explosives in estate playgrounds, that sort of stuff. Something my grandfather said to me a few years ago came to mind. He proposed that we gather up all the 'troublemakers' and put them in one big place to let them fight it out amongst themselves. He said, that would let the rest of us live in peace. To this day, that's better than any other solution i've heard on the news. Possible venues : The Oddyssey Arena, Belfast.

14:56 22/10/2001 -- Catching up

I finally caught up on all that sleep i missed, and now i'm feeling pretty good. My condition seems to be improving, at least from my perspective anyways. I've got hydrotherapy tomorrow, and then treatment on Wednesday.

Personal goals achieved for today : Got out of bed, completed South Park on the Playstation and updated weblog. Not bad, i've only been awake for about an hour.

It felt good to get out of the house last night. It's something i haven't done a lot of over the past few weeks, regardless of my illness. (do i sound like a broken record yet ?)

23:11 21/10/2001 -- American pie 2

One of the funniest films i have ever seen in my life. Brilliant, top notch.

I've recovered somewhat now. (the room stopped spinning) I'm in very good form at the moment. Today was a good day, my walking has improved, and i have more energy than usual. I'm dehydrated because of last nights escapades and the salty ass pop corn they got at the cinema.

13:59 21/10/2001 -- "......."

I went on a bit of a bender last night. Mr.Daniels and i sat up till 6. I'm feeling pretty wiped out, so don't be surprised if i screw up my spelling. I deserve to go nuts. It's been a while. I was celebrating winning those two awards for creativity and originality. I'm well chuffed.

The plus side to waking up hungover, is that i've found the perfect cure :

Lucazade sport pouches. Loads of them. And then fry some bacon, eggs, (sausage is optional) and put it inside a french stick spread with Primula cheese. I swear, no matter how bad you feel, it will sort you out for the day.

Super computer will be ready in about a week. I got a copy of the Afroman single, cos it's got the cdrom video on it. Jay and Silent Bob are in it.

I'm falling asleep, better go.

20:19 19/10/2001 -- Cream crackered

Very tired, but i'm in good form : The website won 2 awards !! "so that was quite nice..."

Andrew enjoyed my weblog about Rob Hawthorne so much that we sat up one night and resurrected him. He's down the pub with Andy right now.

13:52 18/10/2001 -- tired

Happy Birthday to my brother Gavin. His birthday's tomorrow, but i don't know if i'll be updating the weblog until after Friday so there you go bro.

Actually, as far as updates go, i manage at least one a week, which isn't too bad considering i don't have an internet connection, and i'm not very mobile.

20:13 17/10/2001 -- Todays update number 700

The boiler in our house is getting fixed, it's freezing, and i'm stuck upstairs. I'm starving !!! Send help, i need food. I'm so weak i have trouble tyyoping wjayt ik'm syayinnnnng.

Nah, "only joking". The cats (Jay and Brodie) don't look to happy with the present situation either. Brodie (the girl cat, and the nicer of the two) has decided that sleeping would be the best option, whereas Jay (the boy cat with the beer gut) seems to be looking for any opportunity to get under their feet.

Hey, remember that census they just had ? Remember the campaign that was launched to get everyone to put 'Jedi' down as their religion ? Remember they didn't except it as a religion because they knew about the campaign ? (confused yet ?) Well, they finally announced 'Jedi' as a religion ! Luke bothers inc. would like to set up the first 'Jedi' church. Obviously, we'd be the guys running the show and raking in the dough cos our names Luke, as in the great Luke Skywalker.

15:24 17/10/2001 -- Pictures

I discovered some pictures that i thought i'd share :
Here's a picture of Charlie, the stupid gay dog. He's quite dopey, and spends most of the day moping about my mum's house like Neil out of the 'Young Ones'. He likes west end shows, Brian from 'Big Brother' and the colour pink.

To the memory of John Lucas
This is where my Grandfathers ashes are scattered. I was able to attend his cremation, but due to my condition deteriorating, i was unable to attend the planting of this tree in his memory.

11:15 17/10/2001 -- new bg

I fought with the computer for most of last night. We disagreed on text/background relationships for this page. So, out came the HTML sourcebook (second edition) and the problem was fixed. What do you think ? i've updated all the sites updates !

The wife was snooping about the weblog last night in an attempt to find anything i'd written about her.

"Do you put stuff on about us when we have a fight ?!" she asked almost hysterical.

She gave up in the end. She's gone to work now, leaving me home alone to think of schoolgirls.

23:24 16/10/2001 -- crap tv

Just watched a film called 'Maybe Baby' (theme sung by my uncle Paul), it was okay. Brilliant performances by all. A whole cast of british comedians. One problem however was :

It was a chick flick.

Now i'm stuck watching the 'Hollyoaks : moving on' series (an excuse for Phil Redmond to write scripts about hard hitting social issues with swear words in the dialogue). Lewis has just died after a long term gambling/drinking problem, and true to form, none of the other characters can move on until they've mentioned him in every other sentence for the duration of a few episodes. Bring back super junkie Rob Hawthorne that's what i say. He was great. I saw one episode where he got all his enemies in an elaborate trap involving a dive tank. He was like one of the Bond villians. Marvellous

19:34 16/10/2001 -- Chocolate

Get this : there's chocolate, there's chocolate with fruit and nuts, there's choclate with just nuts, but where's the chocolate with just fruit ? It's a scandal ! I want a chocolate/fruit hybrid bar !

I'm quite mad. I think i'll write a letter to Cadbury's....

12:38 16/10/2001 -- Free beer

I just found 6 beers in my back garden, most likely from a social gathering i had last week. Their probably mine anyway.

"What's your favourite ride at the amusement parks ?" That's what me and the missus were talking about last night. She opted for the merry-go-round style. The incessant 'up and down' of horses trapped on a roundabout with poles sticking up through them did'nt appeal to me however. I like a ride that takes you somewhere, or to be more precise : somewhere else.

Drew and i are in the process of creating a LUKE BOOKS screensaver. Just for a laugh. So that will be up on the site within the next few months.

Big news is that we're moving ! Well, not us, the site ! www.lukebooks.8m.com is exactly the same as the Yahoo site. We'll keep them both open anyway.

16:09 14/10/01 -- So many updates, so little time !!

Everythings still going backwards as far as progress is concerned. I managed to kick Gav off his computer for this afternoon, so that's a bonus.

My parents took me swimming this morning, that was quite good. I've got physio tomorrow, then the rest of the week off. Yippee !

I got some three panel strips done (Finally !), involving RADIOHEAD, BOB THE BUILDER, and Kermit the frog. I'm using a laptop until super computer (mark 2) is ready in about 2 weeks.

10:55 12/10/01 -- best laid plans

We all know that nothing goes as planned. My super computer broke down. The web updates were on it. I couldn't find my backup disk, and i've no way of typing the stuff out. Why does nothing ever go smoothly ?

So, how's life ? I'm feeling good despite 101 setbacks. I had hydro therapy yesterday, so i'm pretty knackered. I did some art for the site which needs to be scanned in. I had some trouble with one of my inking pens. It was dispensing too much ink. Normally i'd be thrilled (more ink flow = less time to do large ink filled areas) but it wasn't what i needed at the time.

10:07 12/10/01- this is a copy of the article i wrote for Andy's weblog

Hi folks, Andy asked me to write a short article detailing my illness and my feelings towards it.

hmmm. Theres not much more i can write about.

At the beginning i was quite scared to think that i (or anybody) could just suddenly suffer from an illness like this. What makes my situation so frustrating is that i'm quite an active person. I used to walk EVERYWHERE, and i was constantly on the move no matter what i was doing. To think that i could be stopped in my tracks so dramatically is a frightening concept indeed.

Before it happenend -- I saw the world as a fast paced enviroment. Now -- Life has been slowed to a crawl. I've begun to notice the "little things" in life, such as how much effort goes into making a cup of tea when you've got no energy. It's these "little things" that most people take for granted. I've learned to appreciate them on a new level. Activities such as running and jumping are beyond me.

It's easy to get depressed about it, to say it isn't would be a lie - especially because my illness is so strange, and the exact details and duration is unknown. For all i know, i might never breakdance again !

However, i've learnt to deal with it, and constantly find myself saying :

"worrying about it won't make it better" (I'm a level headed person by default)

My days are spent working on comics or the website. That is providing i don't have hydro or physiotherapy. Some days i feel good and have a bit of energy. The majority of the time however, is that i have hardly any energy, and tire after maybe 5 mins of doing those "little things". I use my time off work productively, (it's far too easy to sit in bed all day) and i find that my mental attitude is more positive if i feel i've accomplished something, if even on the smaller scale.

Body and mind out of the way -- my soul is in top form. I've discovered meditation and the use of magic. It's quite strange because i never gave the thought of an eternal essence much interest, now i have an unshakable belief. I've even been thinking about trying yoga. (it's worth a go) Well. That's about it. Hope this finds you all well. Stu.

01/10/01 14:26- Howdy ppl

Got myself a new computer, so expect a slightly more professional approach. I just thought i'd start by telling y'all whats been going on in my life lately.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic. It all started in May. One morning i woke to find i couldn't walk properly. At the time, i assumed this was due to the dangerous amounts of alcohol i had consumed the night before- however as the week passed i ruled that explanation out. I went to see my doctor on three occasions. On the third, he admitted me to hospital. Originally he believed it was inflamation behind my knee caps, but the medication he prescribed had no effect. By this point i could barely support my own weight, and fell over every few steps.

So, i was admitted on the 3rd July. Which was great, considering it was my birthday ! I spent 2 weeks there. The only thing i'll say about the hospital is : Horrible place, nice people.

At present i'm going there twice a week for pysiotherapy, and once a month for treatment. In saying that, the doctors are treating me the best they can considering they don't know the exact details of my illness. All we know is that i have a myopathy, which to you and i basically means- a weakness of the muscles. They're not sure what caused it, but they do know my own immune system is attacking me.

Maybe it's a bit over the top, but phrases like "a prisoner of your own body" and "your body is rejecting you" keep springing into my mind, concocted only by my own self destructive personality. It's easy to get depressed about it, but on the whole i've been quite positive.

I can walk a few metres before i become weak, and like the Daleks, i have trouble with stairs. i'm permanently tired, but everyday i'm getting slightly stronger. Thanks go to the hospital staff, my friends, and family, who all put up with me for months.

Cheers go to Drew for giving me access to the net for this very site.

Well, enough of this melodrama....

'Just Suppose...' # 3 (Preacher Ted) is ready to go !!! As is 'Stuff' #4 !!! The problem is just finding the time money and energy to print them. The art on 'JS' is of a higher standard. As for 'Stuff', well, you know the score.

I'm gonna try and upload a diary every week. (best laid plans and all that !)
better go. See ya later kids.