I spend too much time stressing about the stuff I've got to do and not enough actually doing. All this non-stuff-doing must stop forthwith. If I put my stuff on display here, then maybe I will find the motivation to actually do it. I can picture your eyes sliding across the text, your smirk as you find a particularly tough thing I have to do, perhaps chuckling a little when you see an exiting but demanding task, smug in the belief that I lack the will and the talent to complete it. I want to picture your annoyance when you come back in a few weeks and find that I've completed everything I said and then some.

So here, in no particular order, is some stuff I've got to do...

Uni stuff. (Can't bear to go into details. My brain will melt.)

House stuff. (Ditto.)

Writey stuff: The SF story I started yesterday. Poems. But most importantly I must find some new electronic thing and write an article about it; I must do this by the end of the week. For it has come to pass that your narrator has bitten the bullet and decided to head writing-wards. Hey, don't blame me. Sure, I experimented a little, back in my teens- who doesn't? Bad speculative fiction. Worse Goth poetry. Really terrible song lyrics. But I'd pretty much quit; just rolling the odd verse, y'know, when I needed to chill out. I could go months without even jotting down an idea. I was perfectly happy, chugging along in my little tech-geek groove, and then a few months ago, I fell in with a bad crowd.

Writers. Journalists. Poets. They all egged me on until, beaten down by the unbearable peer pressure, I caved in. Now I'm hooked again. I'm already planning articles for the trade journals, short horror stories, you name it. One of these day's I'll have made a start on a novel.

I know there's no hope for me now, but I pray that some young person reading this may profit from my example. To that young person I say: Run! Get out- while you still can!

"Story of find in Afghan cave 'was made up' to justify sending marines"

Britain was accused last night of falsely claiming that al-Qaeda terrorists had built a 'biological and chemical weapons' laboratory in Afghanistan to justify the deployment of 1,700 Royal Marines to fight there....


From the Guardian/Observer webpages, here.

God, this makes me angry.

God I'm wasted.

w00t!

Following the announcement below, my board got its first troll! I'm so chuffed. Ordinarily of course this would be cause for hot sweaty annoyance, but since I've only publicized the board in a couple of places other than here, I suspect that the angler in question is someone who's either read my blog or knows me from the Barbelith Underground. Which tends to imply that I've trip-trapped over somebody's bridge hard enough that they'd actually bother to come round and insult me publicly, rather than using my email like the rest of the world. Which, coupled with the general brainlessness of the message itself, gives me a lovely warm glow. I like pissing off morons.


Today's story idea: A horror author gets abducted by a bunch of teenage magickians, who think they can force the writer to summon a demon from one of their novels. (Yeah, it's crap. Maybe I could work on it...)

Today's mood:

"In case the laughing strangers call..."

I'm trying to drum up traffic for my message board, Thee Big Acidic Mudshow. I will have an online community! It must and shall be done! Go there NOW and post something- anything! (Except porn links, smartarse.)

"You want to know why I hate you/ Well I'll try and explain..."

Stuff you do that you don't have to do and which makes life just that little bit more unpleasant than it needs to be: part of an ongoing series where I elucidate just why I really, really, don't like you and why much of my waking life is spent in seething resentment of the waste of valuable resources which is YOU.

Chapter One: On the Underground.


Sitting down in front of the ticket barriers to rummage in your bag for your ticket. Yeah, that's right, you've lost your damn ticket so the rest of the world can grind to a halt for all you care.

Walking very slowly down the stairs because you've got your arms round each other, thus getting in my way so that I miss the last train before the signals at Arnos Grove go on the fritz again, thus making me wait 20 minutes for the next one, thus making me late for class.

Shoving past people who are trying to get off the train as you try to get on. A two-for-one slice of rudeness and terminal stupidity.

Walking backwards in front of your mate so you can keep talking to hir whilst waving your arms oblivious to the fact that you're in a crowded tunnel full of people who would dearly love to get out of your way but can't because the only clear space happens to be in the path of an oncoming train.

Assuming that your journey is more important than my journey purely because you're wearing a suit and I'm not.

Frottage. (Mark you, I get less of this than I used to. Must be the collar with 4" nails for spikes.)

Ignoring the two grown men who are harrassing that fourteen-year-old girl. So what if there's a whole carriage full of you and only two of them? So what if she's weeping and begging them to leave her alone? So what if all it takes to make them back off is for all 5'6" of me to give them a hard stare? You don't need this, right? If she wasn't wearing that school uniform they'd probably have ignored her, right? Look at her, snivelling away, making the atrophied remains of your conscience prickle uncomfortably. Hell, you're the victim here! Yeah! She deserves everything she gets, making you feel vaguely aware of the way that London is slowly sapping your humanity, leaving you a craven, loveless husk of a creature who won't lift a finger to help a distressed kid even when you've got 30-1 odds on your side. And after you've had a long day at work, too.


God, I hate you all.

Apparently.

What kith are you? Find out here.

"...And now his biggest fear is that someone's going to drink him!"

Finally finished my urban legend project last night. The idea was to cast a spell by encoding it into tropes and thus embedding it into an urban legend. Here is my completely made up untrue story....

The Anne Rice Lung Fetus

"I heard this from my cousin Josh. At the time it happened he was over in the states, working as a hospital porter. He got freindly with one of the anaesthetists there, and this guy told Josh the whole story.

A few years back, Anne Rice started suffering severe chest pains and was whisked into hospital for a chest x-ray, which revealed a shadow on her lung. Because it was right near her heart, they decided to give her a CAT scan to get a good look at it so that they could operate.

At first they thought the lump was a teratoma, but when they opened her up they found the malformed remains of a fetus- her twin- which had somehow implanted itself inside her ribcage.

The lack of space in the chest cavity meant that the twin had become curled in on itself so as to be unrecognizable at first. The legs were missing- it was just a head, torso and one arm. Apparently what had happened was that she'd partially absorbed the twin whilst in utero, a case of Fetus in Fetu. Somehow it had started growing again; this was put down to Rice's use of a dangerous and unproven anti-ageing treatment (a pituitarin/pinearin mixture derived from monkey-glands).

You know what the weirdest thing was? All this happened right after she published The Tale of the Body Thief!!!"

Open letter to a porn-link poster

Dear Porn Link Guy,


I'd like to congratulate you on your recent post, which included the URL for a porn site. I am sorry that your courageous act was greeted with such a negative response from my fellow posters. I myself found the information you provided both edifying and enlightening.

I second your accusation that those who complained about your post are censoring you, nothing more, nothing less. So what if the URL was not flagged with a warning? So what if you actually said it was an article by Noam Chomsky, or your homepage? So what if someone could click on it and get fired from their job, or kicked out of school? Is that your problem? The internet is a forum for free speech, goddammit! Your porn link is emblematic of that. Anyone who'd work for the kind of employer who'd fire them just for looking at porn during work hours doesn't deserve a job. And who needs school anyway? Anarchy in action, baby! Anarchy in action!

If it wasn't for fine exponants of free speech like you, we'd never garner certain important facts. For example, I now know that BARELY LEGAL TEENS WANT IT NOW!!! If it wasn't for porn links, how would I ever have found that out? I'd be walking around, utterly ignorant of the fact that BARELY LEGAL TEENS WANT IT NOW!!!!!! Let the elitist clique of feminazis and their quiche-eating male lackeys whine all they want. I'm sure you'll all agree that BARELY LEGAL TEENS WANT IT NOW!!! is vital information, which should be distributed as widely as possible.

Raise your glasses, people. Here's to Porn Link Guy! Long may he continue to fill our browser windows with nauseating pop-ups! Anyone who says different is a retarded, pinko, free-speech-hating, censorship-getting-off-on, intellectual elitist fagbitch. Just like Chomsky.

Missed class again today. Come midnight, I will have pursuaded myself to care; come 2am I will be obsessing beyond all hope of sleep, and come tomorrow I will be back to my usual no-motivation-having self. Why is it that my get up and go always gets up and goes just when I need it?

Today's mood:

Today's story idea: An alabaster statuette of a mythical creature, a scarlet feather and a piece of blue embroidered silk. They are each owned by a child: a boy owns the statuette, a tomboyish girl owns the feather, and a fair-haired girl owns the silk. They are important somehow.

Today's story idea: A series of six short stories based on the tapestry series, "the Lady and the Unicorn", one of which would posit the use of unicorn pelt in haute coture, and the consequenses of this.

"Courage to Refuse - Combatant Letter 2002"


From here. Please read this.


" • We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
• We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
• We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
• We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
• We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
• We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
• We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
• We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.
• The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them."


Yis'ga'dal v'yis'kadash sh'may ra'bbo, b'olmo dee'vro chir'usay v'yamlich malchu'say, b'chayaychon uv'yomay'chon uv'chayay d'chol bais Yisroel, ba'agolo u'viz'man koriv; v'imru Omein.
Y'hay shmay rabbo m'vorach l'olam ul'olmay olmayo.
Yisborach v'yishtabach v'yispoar v'yisromam v'yismasay, v'yishador v'yis'aleh v'yisalal, shmay d'kudsho, brich hu, l'aylo min kl birchoso v'sheeroso, tush'bechoso v'nechemoso, da,ameeran b'olmo; vimru Omein.
Y'hay shlomo rabbo min sh'mayo, v'chayim alaynu v'al kol Yisroel; v'imru Omein.
Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya'aseh sholom olaynu, v'al kol yisroel; vimru Omein.


The funeral prayer has a number of conditions and pillars. These must be strictly fulfilled. As regarding those who do not know how to perform a funeral prayer, I briefly state the following: First, Every one performing funeral prayer should maintain ablution, as is the case when performing any other prayer; Second, Every one should say four times Allahu Akbar. After the first one he should recite the Opening chapter of the Quran. After the second "Takbir" he should recite the second half of Ibrahim’s prayer (performed towards the end of each prayer). After the third Takbir he should pray for the dead one as well as for Muslims the following supplication or what is similar to it. According to Muslim Abu Abdul Rahman ibn ‘Awf ibn Malek (R ) quoted part of a prayer the Messenger of Allah p.b.u.h. At a funeral, Ibn ‘Awf memorizes the following: O Allah, forgive him and have mercy on him. Relief him of all evils and pardon him. Honour his status and widen the entrance of Paradise for his entry. Wash him with water and ice. Hail him and purify him of sins as you purify a white garment of filth. Grant him an abode better than his abode, a family better than his family, and a spouse better than his spouse. Let him enter paradise and protect him from the torment of the grave and the punishment of Hell. "Hearing this, I wished I had been that dead person", the reporter stated.

The worshipper then makes the fourth Takbir and prays the following supplication, which is one of the best supplications: O Allah, do not deprive us of his reward; Don’t exercise any trial on us after him, and forgive us and him. There are many traditions in this context. It is recommended, however, to make a lengthy prayer for the dead person, a prayer that seeks Allah forgiveness for the then dead person as well as for all other dead Muslims.



(You will, I hope, excuse any errors here, and take this as it is meant. I'm not religious myself, and these funery customs are not mine.)


Today's story idea:

#0: One day, there was peace.

Today's story ideas:

#1: A red room. Red walls, black "japanned" furniture. Who lives here? A woman lived here once. She was an actress; some called her a poseurse. Here she burned incence and wore out-of-style dresses, headbands, a long necklace made of paste diamonds. Here she smoked black cigarettes in a long holder between lips the colour of cranberries, wrinkled from smoking. The rouge bled into the wrinkles. She smelled of powder and the perfume that she kept in a Lalique glass bottle. She had a glimpse of something but she lost it. Now she's gone.

#2: A playing field. To one side is a large area of waste ground; there's an industrial estate in the distance. There's been a bonfire here, a big one, but it's burnt down now. It's a cold day, the sky hidden by low grey cloud. You've been walking a long time to get here. Why?

Today's mood:

"You're my only hope..."

I used to have this total obsession when I was younger with finding my wise old man/woman, my Gandalf or whatever. People seemed to latch onto it, use it as a way into my life where they'd (inevitably) wreak all manner of havoc before I'd (inevitably) rip off the pointy hat and false beard and reveal... well, some callow dipstick with a need to be needed, usually. Eventually I got wise to this and spent a lot of time jumping up and down on my Obi-Wan cravings with big boots on. Which seemed to work.

But I was thinking recently that I've become a kind of Obi-Wan figure for a few people in the last few years (yes, yes, I know, lucky them, ha bloody ha). Wise old dude, sort of thing. Not sure how that happened- some of them have even been older than me. I try not to let them invest too much in me, since I know damn well that I'm as big a moron as they are, I just have a different angle on things. Sometimes I'm able to help. Which is cool. I'm not saying it isn't cool.

But I don't want to be the wise old git without having had my wise old git. Where's my wise old git? I want my Obi-Wan Kenobi! Even the crappy Ewan McGregor one with the comedy accent.

I want a Wise Old Git!

"Novocaine for the soul..."

I can't do this. I seriously cannot do this.

The pills, man. They fuck me up like you wouldn't believe. Tegratol, 1200mg a day. I can tweak the times I take them, make sure I eat first. whatever- and it never gets any better than this. Like today: I had to miss class because I couldn't get out of the bloody bed. You think that's funny? Of course you do- you're a moron. Let me give you a run down of the side-effects, so you can have a really good laugh.

First, there's the way they make my eyes dry up so I keep getting infections. Then there's the way my mouth feels like it's been stuffed with cotton-wool half the time; I'm always thirsty. I can drink pint after pint of water and still be thirsty. But I could live with those. What bothers me is this: I'm tired.

I'm so tired I could just keel over. I wake up wanting nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep, but I know that even if I do it won't make any difference. Six hours, eight hours, half a day- it all feels the same. Sometimes I'll sit down with a book and five minutes later I'll just be spark out.

Conversely, when I do sleep, I don't sleep properly. Sometimes I'll see in two o'clock, or three, or four. I'll lie in bed and listen to the cars going by, the sirens, the growl of a double-decker bus. And the relentless tick-tick-tick of the poxy alarm clock by my bed, telling me that the night is slipping by me, unslept, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Stop taking them? Ha bloody ha. You don't know how many times I've wanted to do just that. Flush the whole lot down the loo and have done with it. But that would mean going back to how I was before I started taking them.

A lot of people think doctors overprescribe epilepsy drugs. They do. One survey tentatively put the number of wrongly-medicated folk at five times the rate of actual epileptics. Could be wrong, of course, but nobody's really counting. Epilepsy isn't sexy. Celebs who'll spill their guts all over the colour supplements about their drug dependancy or their diabetes, but they're loth to tell everyone "Oh, and by the way, I sometimes fall over and start twitching and frothing at the mouth."

No, the irony is that these pills weren't pushed on me. I begged for them. Begged as the fits got more frequent and worse, begged as my life slipped further and further into the mire, begged as I struggled to hold down my job. It took years. By the end I was ready to lick my GP's boots if he'd only help me to do something about the monster in my head that was chucking me to the floor three or four times a day.

In the end I got the meds. Didn't work. The dose had to be upped. Eventually the fits had stopped but I was stumbling round the house on rubber legs, eyes rolling in a head I lacked the strength to hold up. Tegretol suppresses the electrical signals in the brain, you see, but it also seems to do a number on the body.

The side-effects receded, and I could function again. Just. But I'm so fucking tired I could scream and my head feels full of fog and this is as good as it's going to get. This is as good as it'll ever get for me.

Why am I telling you this? Because nobody else will. Why should you care? Well, you probably don't. You are, after all, a moron.

And I hate you.