More Oooh.

Or possibly just Hmm. We'll see.

How to Create a Language

Reasons for abandoning this whole twisted scheme before I expend any more time or energy on it:

1) It's not like I don't have other stuff to do. Including learning a real language.
2) This whole thing is, quite possibly, just an attack of toxic perfectionism. I'm probably just being anal-retentive about this whole language thing as a stalling technique; the longer I spend writing the damn thing, the longer it is before I have to show it to anyone. Fear of faliure/rejection, et hoc genus omnes.
3) Let's face it, my English grammar could do with a wash and brush-up before I go giving myself glossopoietic* airs.


Reasons for seeing twisted scheme through to the bitter, bitter end:

1) I always have other stuff to do. Big central project that I really graft away at (currently learning Spanish) plus three or four little side-projects that I ditch and come back to as and when, thus keeping BRANE from seizing up with panic if the Big Central Project stalls. That's how I work. That's how I work best. This would mean less screwing-around time, but there you go.
2) I really and truly belive this is a necessary part of the novel. The more I flesh out my imaginary culture, the more detail I put into my backstory, the richer and more beliveable the finished article will be. And I've been doing much better with the avoidy/not-finishy/got-to-be-perfect thing. That last article I punted out? Chock full o'typos.
3) This will probably help with my English grammar rather than hindering it, since checking out grammar and language resources is an intrinsic part of said plan. In fact, it'll probably do my language studies in general a bit of good.
4) Language is very important to me, and the thought of creating a new one makes me all tingly with Nerd Joy.
5) There are already half-baked, bitty, dashed-off-on-the-back-of-an-envelopey, weak, derivative, and downright shoddy fantasy books enough and to spare in the world. Why the hell would I want to add to the heap?

Okay. Glossopoiesis wins. At my current rate of progress I can expect to finish my novel in, ooh, a little under 40 years.

It really had better not suck.


*Yes, I know that's probably not a real word.

Oooh.

Ooh, would it be bad and wrong of me to use this handy Alphabet Synthesis Machine to help things along a bit? Oooh.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Dan has contrived five ways to improve X-Men 2. (The permalink is buggered so you'll have to scroll down.) Contains spoilers, and the term "veiny bangstick". May cause liquids to be ejected through nose.

Oh, for the love of Mike.

I seriously need to hurt whovever came up with this idea. Where do I start? Where do I even start? Whoo, filing your nails, wehey, pink shirt, 's a bit, uhh, camp innit? Cor, you want to watch it, mate! They'll think you're batting for the other team!

Killkillkillkillkill.

(Via plasticbag.)

*Sob*

Finally fixed the almighty mess I made of my sidebar the other night. My looker-uppers are back. Yeerrrs. At least Solonor made my site his aortal thing of the whenever before I knackered half my links, which was nice. Ahhh... ego-stroking...

The thought occurs that I should really dust off my writey blog, which I've allowed to languish in limbo for months on end. All that stuff last year (dropping out of the University of Fishpacking, sucky jobs, mad packing scheduals, etc) was no good for my noggin at all.

An update on the progress of That Novel, for anyone who's still even remotely interested.

To Beelzebub with backstory! Vaya al Diablo, research! Screw you with a large vegetable marrow, linguistic invention!

Why? Why am I doing this? Why can't I concentrate on churning out some unassuming little potboiler? Why did I have to get all fatbeardy and start drawing maps? Oh, sure, that's where it starts. Let's just have a cute little pointy pointy map to go in the front of the book, shall we? There, isn't that nice? But wouldn't it look even better with a few runes? Only we can't use runes, really, because they're so old hat. So we have to invent our own alphabet. Only we can't just invent our own alphabet, can we; we have to make it convincing. Which means looking at lots and lots of other people's alphabets, taking carfeful notes in our special shiny Novel Notes book. And then there's the actual language! Don't forget that. You can't just shove in any old mumbo-jumbo, oh no. You've got to sit down and devise a passable grammatical structure and about a thousand words of vocab. I'm a huge, huge nerd, aren't I? I'm a collosal and irredeemable geek. A stunningly handsome, charismatic and edgy geek, but a geek nontheless.

Oh, and I've lost all faith in my grasp of English grammar and puctuation and of course I've always spelled for shite and my dialogue still bites; everyone talks like an instuction manual. I've been writing up lab reports for too bloody long. And I know, I just know, that after all this I'm probably just going to end up with some gawdawful sub-Mercedes Lackey drivel that'll just rot on my hard drive forever and ever, Amen.

I loathe writing. Writing sucks. Books suck. All written matter is corrupt and evil and foul foul foul.

Goats.

Damn, I love the veiw from my living-room. I mean, I hate to gloat but... what am I on about? I love to gloat! I could run the 600 Yard Gloat. I could Gloat for my country. I could be the Girl Who Won The Gloating Match Despite Her Broken Leg.

So anyway, the sky is a hazy perlescent blue, and there are just scads of swifts swooping and gliding through the air. There is enough birdsong for 53 standard dawn choruses. Also, there are lots of really dolly yellow light aeroplanes flying around for some reason. No goats this morning, sadly, but they were here yesterday. I dig the goats. Some guy herds them in the field down the ways; I can watch them grazing from my window.

Been a bit under the weather the past couple of days. Some viral thing, not quite worthy of the 'flu title but yecchy enough to keep me indoors with my Spanish lessons. Since I haven't been able to enroll on a course yet, these still consist of doing the excercises from Spanish for Dummies, watching Spanish telly, and translating H***y P***er back into English with the aid of a dictionary. Have you any idea how fed up it's possible to get with H***y P***er? And I haven't even worked my way through the first book yet (groan). I got a Barbara Vine novel in Spanish the other day, but it's a complete non-starter. My vocabulary just isn't wide enough to lift me from the vale of Kid Lit. yet. Gahh. I feel like I'm stewing in juvenility, y'know? Today I was slogging away at H***y P***er and I found my eyes straying towards the Noam Chomsky books. I'm sitting there thinking, "Oooh! I'll just finish this chapter and then I can go and re-read Manufacturing Consent!" What is this-- Bizzaro World?

The only really ungloatworthy thing in my life at present is a slight dearth of Lurid Archive, who has beetled off on one of his maths-related jaunts and won't be back for a few weeks. Blah. Oh, well-- at least I'll have the internet connection to myself. My messageboard has been looking decidedly more healthy since I did away with the Gawdawful popups but it really deserves more time than I spend on it.

BAMF!

Okay, further to my X-Men triggered return to psi excercises: In order to overcome my ingrained scepticism and self-doubt I have been searching for the maddest, most out-there New Age nutsack psi sites I can find. This looks like just the thing: Wingmakers, the Official Site of the 21st Century. If you dig your looney fluff, this is a primo slice thereof. They have helpful hints on everything from levitation to invisibility. Should be interesting. I'm going to start working through their site; I'll keep y'all posted as to what happens (or maybe just BAMF! on over and fill you in in person).

This is what happens when you neglect your stalking duties.

I admit it, people. I haven't been reading your weblogs with my usual sticky mouth-breathing compulsiveness. So I missed the news that Mr Coates is Between Jobs again, and accordingly strapped for cash with which to maintain the 'Lith.

See, this is why I need to sell more stories. My Paypal account has about US 50c in it at present. Bleph.

Sidebarred

For those of you who can actually read my sidebar, I've added a new section for mental health type stuff: suicide prevention, eating disorder support and self-injury support. I know that some of my regulars have ishoos with this kind of thing. There are a few links there now and I'll add more as I get around to it.

If you have any links you think would be helpful, tag me or leave a comment.

Edited to say: If you know a support group for people who are daft enough to try to update their sidebar at 12:30 am after a couple of shots of Jim Beam, pleeeaaase contact me. I need help.

Light is poison.

The rain in Spain has played a low-down, dirty trick upon yours truly. Yesterday I was in town having a brewski at Cafe Zurich, and it started to chuck down in that special vertical ocean way. So today when I woke up and it was a bit cloudy, I assumed that more rain might be on the cards. I went out sans sunblock, sans shades, sans everything but a knockoff Cure tee, jeans and army boots. Mistake. For it was all sunny by the time I got into town, and it just kept getting sunnier. Reeeeallly sunny, y'all. Yep, this is one sunny old part of the world, alright. And just because I know that many of you are reading this from London and other wet soggy places where they see the sun so rarely that its appearance can trigger mass hysteria and human sacrifices to the Fire In The Sky, I'm going to bitch about how I got wayyy too much sun today and it's made me feel a bit foggy-headed and my eyes sting.

I did mention that I'm here till August next year, right? Not just on my hols here, oh no. You can't comfort yourselves with the notion that in a few short days I'll be back and soaking in the drizzle, just like you only more miserable because one long weekend every year-and-a-half is just enough to let you see what you're missing without taking the edge off the SAD. Nuh-uh! I'm here for another 17 months, baby. Choke on it.

Oh, no.

Oh, no no no. After everything I've said, everything I've done-- you're back. Why? I thought I'd finally weened you off reading this thing. What's it going to take to make you get over this FREAKISH OBSESSION? You are a sad, sad person who repeatedly comes back to read the online diary of an unemployed failed electronics engineer whose last job but one was cleaning toilets.

Look out of the window. Do you see all those people walking by, those teeming multitudes? Don't you ever get the urge to go and join them, instead of frittering away your precious life like this? Think of the time and resources you've expended to get where you are today. Think of the new and wonderful experiences-- eye-opening, mind-expanding, life-changing experiences that await you if you'd only STOP READING THE UNEMPLOYED CLEANING LADY'S DIARY AND GET A LIFE! Museums, parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, sights you may never have the opportunity to see again. Look, there's a guy over the road selling banana pancakes! Wouldn't you just love a banana pancake?

No?

Okidoo.

Anyway, job-hunting. On Wednesday I managed to meet up with the friend of a friend of a friend who might possibly know something about getting an English teahing job. On the down-side, she told me that as it's summer I probably won't be able to get anything like that for a few months. On the upside, she was really cool and very keen to socialize, which I could do with right now. Going stir-crazy. On Friday I went and tried my luck at a temp agency, with predictable results. Didn't quite get everything that the pink fluffy creature behind the desk said, but the basic thrust was that they couldn't take me on because I don't have a work permit. I pointed out to her that I didn't need a work permit as I'm an EU citizen. All I need is my NIE. But she wasn't having any of it. Not sure if this was one of those "make something up to get rid of the no-hoper" situations, or if she genuinely didn't know the employment legislation. No reason she should, of course, except that IT'S HER GODDAMN JOB. Left feeling deeply discouraged and fed up with things, especially little blonde people who wear fluffy pink cardies and pearly-pink nail varnish and pearly-pink lippy without any shred of irony. (I'm sorry, and I know that as a pointy pointy goth I'm in a sartorial glass house here, but if you're going to wear that kind of ensemble in public you'd better be RuPaul.)

Weekend rocked, though. Had dozing panther over for a few days, which was great. Went out for a picnic, went to the beach, saw X-Men 2 again, went to the Parc de la Ciutadella , went up in the cable-car, ate out, did loadsa fun stuff.

Games.

Spent most of Saturday trying to get to grips with Flash, with patchy success. I've gone through all the tutorials, but they're not that great: there's all this basic stuff that you have to do and it's just not covered properly. The books I've got are a bit too advanced, really. Also had a bash at the Heros IV campaign editor, but I can't make the quest huts work properly. Gahh.

Went out for a meal on Sunday, to this cracking little veg/vegan restaraunt/juice bar called Juicy Jones. Had a mean thali, then went off to the flicks again to see No Good Deed, which is based on Dashell Hammet's The House On Turk Street. It was okay, but... Look, it's a Hammet story, okay? And I know how things work in the Hammetverse. I realise that you have to suspend disbelief a little. But the whole premise of the film seemed to be that there's this woman whose sex appeal is so intoxicating that any guy within a five mile radius falls under her spell and will do all manner of dangerous/unpleasant/foolish things if he can only bump the lala with her. All she has to do is flash some thigh and they'll risk their lives, their fortunes, their careers to get on her good side. And this is a completely instinctive thing for her to be doing, BTW. She doesn't appear to think much about what she's doing or what the consequences of her actions might be, she just does it.

Not buying it. Sexual manipulation of men by women does happen, of course, but not in the ham-fisted way portrayed by the film. Unless you belive that all women are weak, manipulative, irrational succubi intent only on reducing the male brain to sago pudding and sucking it out along with the contents of their wallets and that men are powerless to prevent said suckage occuring, but I don't think Dave Sim reads my blog so we're probably okay on that score.

Glorious weekend, weatherwise. Gone a bit cloudy now though.

Money.

I think you should just buy $75 theremin kits and assemble them, then sell them for $150 on eBay. -- grant b.

Not a bad idea. But I had this dream about selling vandalized zombie dolls imbued with dangerous and unpleasant magick on e-bay, so I might do that instead. I don't know how to sell things on e-bay though. I shall have to find out more.

Beltane aftershocks.

Couldn't handle a demonstration yesterday (asthma) so went to el cine instead. Saw X-Men 2 (and yes, I am aware of the irony, trading real part in possible change for change-flavoured corporate bromide. I couldn't bloody breath. Really not up to marching. Okay?)

Anyhow, X-Men 2: I wannabeamutant. Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! Iwannabeamutant! IwannabeaMUUUUTAAAAANT! I'm going to be on Ian McKellan's team and we're going to titter at you and bitch about your hair! MUTANT!

Don't know if it was the oxygen debt, but somehow the film got my magickal muscles all-of-a-doodah. I felt all juiced and evolvey (and yes, I do know that's not how proper evolution works. I read Dawkins and Pinker, me. It's as good a metaphor as any). I sat in the cinema and made myself a little energy tent, like a wire-frame model made of beams of light coming out of my hands. I really opened myself up to the feeling. I could visualise universal energy pouring into my crown chakra which got all tingly (it hasn't done that in a while). It's strange but fun when a piece of featherlight entertainment can have an effect like that. I know I was definately meant to be in that cinema watching that film at that time. I needed a bit of a boost, you see; I'd been a bit slack on the old magick, what with the move and having a crisis of faith and stuff, and so I asked my (guides? Angels? Those spooky dudes that have been hanging around since my attunements, anyway) to Give Me A Sign. And Lo, the was a Sign.

I think they know me a bit to well.

Anyhow, I came out feeling like doing something impressive. Have decided to re-start my aborted psi excercizes. The attunements really shook me up in all kinds of ways: my tolerance for drugs like alcohol and caffine has dropped through the floor, my dreams have become more vivid, my memory attacks more frequent and more uncomfortable, my synasthesic experiences more pronounced. Oh, and I've only had the one fit since, which is some kind of record. It feels like things have started to settle down a bit now, though, and I'm ready to get back on the psi. I doubt very much I'll be floating pencils, you understand, but when I was doing the excercizes before I was having all sorts of interesting little experiences. I don't care if it doesn't do what it says on the tin, it does something, and that's the whole point. Trouble is, the work is all very repetative and you have to keep doing it every day, like sit-ups. And I'm already doing so many little bits and pieces every day that it's easy to conveniently "forget" some. It bugs me, though: my lack of sticking power, the way I get discouraged and let the rot set in. What I would like is someone who's already good at that stuff to poke me along, badger me to keep on with the exercises when I get slack. However that's unlikely to happen. Certain incidents over the course of the last year and a half have made me extremely distrustful of magickal alliances, especially over the internet.

A big prob is the restrictions I place on my own mental processes. "Oh, you can't write/think/say/do that! I doesn't look like the things that everyone else is write/think/say/doing! Do what that guy's doing, over there! Quick, before someone sees you!" No more of that. If it's the same as the other guys, fine. If it looks like a turnip, fine. If it's a fetching shade of lemon yellow, fine. If it goes CLUNK boink .vwzzzzzz SPROINGGGG then that's fine too. Everything is fine.

I'm definately an October-December person but I love the way that something shift-y generally happens to me around this time of year. Last year it was deciding to be a writer, and things are gradually shaping up in that department. This year it's been deciding to go full-on magickal freak.

Tentacles.

Okay, much better now. Needed that.

Finished translating the CV; even found a typeface that lets me do enyaes. I'll get it printed out and start agency hassling. I also plan to try and make a few inroads into the local fet. scene. There's a new club starting up and I'm thinking of emailing them, see if they need an aware and symathetic janitor. Hargh. And a freind of a freind of a freind who I approached weeks back about teaching work has been making encouraging noises and wants me to phone her. Things are looking uppish.

Had an interesting day on Sunday. Took a walk (along with LA) in the woods'n'fields bit that I can see from my living-room window. Close to it was all surprisingly woodsy and picnic-spottish. Sun was shining, birds were singing, little brown lizards were scuttling around at my feet, mozzies were biting seven kinds of hell out of me, etc. I was surprised by how swiftly the Flower Nerd within was awakened. I noticed a lot of familiar species: broom, hop-trefoil, cinquefoil, poppies, coltsfoot and stuff, but there were plenty that I couldn't name. I particularly noticed a variety of thistle with really pretty varigated leaves, and something very similar to vetch but lacking the usual creeping habit and having little red flowers. Kept thinking about how great it would be to have a copy of Rev. Kebel Martin to hand, then going all culture-shocky because-- duh! "Concise British Flora In Colour", remember? I would really love a good book on local plant species. I could go for walks and stuff, and then write about the things I see... ex-pats like to read that kind of thing, don't they?

Anyway. Having had a good ol' fractal fix, we then grabbed a towel, hopped on the train and hit the beach. While we had a couple of possible secondary targets (maybe get a cozzie and, should a cozzie hove into view, go for a quick dip), we had one very clear mission: Lunch On Beach.

We wandered up and down the seafront for a while, and finally found a restaurant that wasn't crammed to the gunnels with other red-faced Brits. Despite the assurances of the nice young lass who was touting for business outside, the was no menu del dia, so we picked our way through a menu that was written in about six different languages, none of them Spanish.

Now, I'm a big green veggie, but before coming to Spain I'd decided to relax the rules a bit and allow myself seafood I was eating out. No Quorn casseroles out here, y'know. You know what the man said: it's okay to eat fish, coz they don't have any feelings. (Mind you, the same man also filled his viens with shite and blew his head off with a shotgun.) When it came down to it, though, I chickened out. Until Sunday I'd been looking for the vegetablest thing on the menu, and then laboriously quizzing the poor waitress as to its ingredients.

"Umm... [pointing at menu] el insalata-- es sin carne, si?"
"Si."
"Es sin, umm, pesca?"
"Si. Es sin pesca."
"Es sin jamon?"
"Si! Es sin carne! Es sin carne, es sin pesca, es sin jamon! Si, si, si!"

And then the salad arrives and it's loaded with tuna anyway. So, I decided to just bite the bullet and break my fish abstention thing altogether. I ask for the seafood paella. Lurid Archive goes for the same.

So they bring this thing and I declare it's the size of Gondawaland. Massive prawns lie curled on top, like something from a '50s radiation pic. I watch Lurid dig in as I nibble the last of my pa amb tomaquet starter.


I take up the big metal spoon, and pile some of the paella onto my own plate. It smells... well, fishy. I'd forgotten that fishy-smelling things could be food. I start with one of the prawns; they were one of the last things I gave up. King Prawn Ceylon, prawn crackers. The way I see it, it's no different to eating an arachnid or an insect. (I've wanted to eat a spider for years; not one of the little ones, a big one, like a Goliath spider or something. Maybe boiled, with some sweetcorn. However, I digress.)

I've totally forgotten how you peel these guys. I've got the sketchiest idea that you start with the legs, or something. I give them an experimental tug and one or two of them break off at the knees. I turn the big pink sea-bug over in my fingers, examining it. I pull at the head and it snaps off, taking most of the legs with it but leaving a thick smear of green goo. I flick it off with my knife, smear it on the side of the plate. The meat looks juicy and appetising, but there's this long line of charcoal-coloured stuff inside. It's not a spine; is it a nerve? Is it prawn crap? I'm not sure it's good to eat but I eat it anyway, along with the rest of the prawn. It's nice, sweet and chewy. I poke around in the rice a bit more.

"Dude," I say, "are those tentacles?"
"Mmm, hmm."
"Squid? Or what, octopus, or..."
"Dunno."

I stick my fork in and fetch up this sad little appendage, with teeny tiny suckers. Really delicate. I have a lot of respect for cephalopods. One day there'll be bod-mods so we'll be able to change colour, like they do. Mood tatts. Squid are living fossils. I read where you can teach octopuses to count, but I don't know how true that is.

Lurid chuckles.
"I'm not used to having my lunch wave at me," I say.
"I think that's a British thing," he says. "Everywhere else, they eat this sort of thing without worrying about it."
"I'm not worried. It's just that I've never eaten tentacles before."
"It's just that the British really seem to have a problem with meat that actually looks like meat."
"I think that's an industrial revolution thing, dude. You know, preserving things to transport them and stuff."
"Maybe."
"Like Spam. Or tripe or whatever. And there's not a huge tradition of eating meat amongst the skint, it was a rich people thing. The whole Sunday roast thing... I thinks that's quite new. Poor people just ate all the bits no-one else wanted."

We discuss the subject. I tell Lurid about whole roast peacocks, which was a big thing in Elizabethan (?) times. First you skinned the peacock, then you roasted the peacock, then you put the skin back on, then you served the peacock at a huge rich people's banquet. Salmonella city.

I tackle another prawn. Lurid helps himself to more paella. We chat. I'm cutting up my tentacles really small, but they still look like tentacles. They're not bad: chewy, but not rubbery. I get why people like them. I run my tongue over the suckers, little grains. Fascinating.

"I'm not doing this again," I tell Lurid as I finish off a few more appendages. "I'm still a veggie. This just isn't working."

I'm glad I had my little experiment. I'm especially glad that I went for something that looked like a once-living animal, rather than an amorphous nugget of protein. Like Lurid said at the time: more honest that way. But I'm back on the wagon now, big time.

Bust.

Gosh, it's fun being unemployed. I love waking up in the morning, knowing that my life currently has no purpose beyond re-reading Spanish for Dummies for the umpteenth time, or slogging my dictionary-assisted way, word by tedious word, through H.P. in the hopes that J.K.R.'s repetative prose will help some of it to stick. And the funnest part? Knowing that my partener is now Roof Guy! Yes, he's supporting us both! Because I'm too crap at Spanish to get a job yet! Isn't that fun?

Nope, tell a lie. The funnest part has been translating my CV. Gosh, it's great to reflect on how well the years of studying electronic engineering have prepared me for the fast-paced worlds of retail and sanitation! What? No! Those are happy tears. Happy tears. Ah, ha. Ah, ha ha ha. Ah, hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa.

This cannot last.

It's all your fault. All of you. You and your smug little smiles, your snide little digs. "Well, Ms. Carnival, I'm afraid we don't have anything at your skills level at the moment, but if you clean out the staff toilets with a toothbrush for a week or two I'm sure we can find you some thing." "Only the one diploma in electronics and computer technology at A-level equivalent? Gosh, I guess you were just to individual to study, hmm? Hey, could you mend, say, a Walkman?"

Eroding me. Eating away at my confidence, hypnotising me, digging your perfectly laquered fingernails into my very SOUL until everything I am or should be is lying in a crumpled, bleeding heap in one corner of my life! Turning me into a dead-eyed, inadiquate duplacate of YOU! I ought to poison every temp co-ordinator on the face of the planet! Then maybe, just maybe, I could wrest my HEART back from you CAREERIST ZOMBIES and actually have some kind of life.

This must end. I wanna be me. Me. Cracked black nail varnish, permanantly cheesed-off, one-woman renaissance fair. Not-- and this is important-- a fake you. Take your skills level, and stick it up your perfectly made-up right nostril.

Have I mentioned recently that pin rocks like a washing-machine on a cobbled street? And we all like him a strange and disturbing amount?

Easy questions for easy people.

1) I was cleaning my floor today and the blue gunk I was using seems to have taken the gloss off the tiles. Which is a bit annoying, really. It says not to use it on marble and stuff, but I thought it would be okay on my floor. Which isn´t marble. Obviously. Anyway it´s looking a bit the worse for wear and I don´t know how to fix it.

2a) What´s Spanish for Goth? Apart from just "Goth".

2b) Where is a good mixed age Goth dive, such as might look kindly on a couple of fogeygoths without being utterly dead?

I´m bored. Entertain me, Goths of Barcelona.

Good Friday.

Well, this is nice, isn´t it? Just the two of us. Nothing like losing your internet connection to get rid of those pesky blog-readers. Bunch of bloody weirdos-- wouldn´t give you tuppence for the lot of 'em.

Been busy. Think I've got the last of the paperwork sorted out. Got my NIE number sorted out on Tues. Thank gawwwd our Spanish is coming on a bit now, otherwise we'd've been standing in the police station doing bad Python impressions all day ("We are the expats who say NIE!").

It´s Easter week here, which is a huuuge deal. Everything´s closed except the bars and the caffs. I´m torn between thinking: "Rah! A country that respects the individual´s need for free time! None of this making you work 61 hr week nonsense here!" and thinking: "But I´ve run out of milk..."

Less of the sightseeing this week. Been busy snooping around town and caning the Castillian Spanish. We got a telly the other day, which should help a bit. I was hoping the´'d have some educational programmes for children, or at least the Spanish equivalent of Sesame street, but Spanish kid's telly seems to be all badly-dubbed Japanese cartoons. Mind you, it´s all grist to the mill, the more Spanish I hear the more I'll understand. Which means that badly-dubbed Japanese cartoons are educational! ROCK!

Bought a ton of books the other day. I'd already got a small Spanish/English dictionary, but I needed something a bit more meaty so I got this breeezeblock sized thing. I found an English-Castillian-Catalan phrasebook which I snapped up, along with a little English-Catalan dictionary. I´m going to get my Castillian down a bit more before I start on the Catalan, but in a couple of months I'm going to start learning that as well. I also bought the first H***y P*tt*r book in Spanish, and I'm ploughing through it with the help of my anglocastillian dictionary. It's slow going, belive me. I'm starting to wish I'd got something a bit less advanced than HP and oh my God, I really just wrote that, didn't I?

I miss London. Not as much as I thought I might, but I miss it. This is a truly awesome place and I´m digging it in all manner of ways, but the language barrier is starting to bite down hard. I need a bloody social life. I´m all bored and things. My phrasebook´s no help at all, it´s all going to restauraunts and exchanging money. They should make a phrasebook for people like me. "¿Tiene el snakebite y los amphetaminas de baño ? ¿Gustas La Hermanas de Mercy?"

This whole cutting a swath across Europe isn't as easy as it looks.

If Man is Five...

Oh booooy, I´m shagged out. Wotta day. Went to La Sagrada Familia earlier that afternoon, and I´m still blown away. Might write up the experience more fully at a later date, but my feelings can be briefly summed up as a kind of religious awe. It was really moving-- stunningly lovely, awe-inspiring, heart-wrenching and joyous by turns. Gaudi, of course, presses all my buttons. It´s as if he´s somehow found a way of using those organic forms to drive a highway from the visual cortex to the God Spot. Must think more about this. Maybe later in the year when I´ve seen more of his work in the flesh I can work out a more coherent piece of writing.

After La Sagrada Familia we (that is, me and Lurid Archive) went to the zoo. It was utterly depressing. Okay, most of the enclosures seemed alright, but some of them... ugh. You should have seen the way they were keeping some of the monkeys, all cooped up in tiny little class-fronted boxes. And they were stressed, man. You could see it. A couple of them had lost half their tails, and others sported bare patches of fur. They paced back and forth obsessively, or sat with their backs to the glass and just looked disconsolate. They were being presented as exhibits, funny toys to be gawked at, rather than as living creatures deserving of our respect. There was this big lowland gorilla on his own on this sort of island, and folks were crowding round to chuck food at him despite all the notices everywhere in language a fucking brick could understand telling them not to chuck food at the goddamn animals. They carried on doing this until the gorilla, predictably enough, started to puke and couldn´t stop. Then they got all fastidious and wandered off. Prats. Got all hulk-smashy and had trouble calming down. Tried to beam Reiki and Seikim energy at the most ragged of the beasties, but it was difficult to get past the anger. I hate people. Did I mention that I really, really hate people?

After the zoo, we walked along the beach. Bit disappointed with the beach. It´s almost all man-made, which is a remarkable acheivement. Only trouble is, it looks man-made too. I like my coastlines wild.

Like I say, shagged out. Will write more when I get a chance. (Looks like an internet connection might be on the cards in the next few weeks.)

HA!

Weep, my tiny foes! Wring your hands! Rail at the plate of sushi you´re venerating as a god this week! For your dark prayers were as nought. My plane did not crash and my ears did not explode and now I´m in Spain! And you´re NOT!

Haven´t had much time for sightseeing, what with trying to sort out the living-in-foriegn-abroad paperwork and unpacking and stuff, but I´ve tentatively explored my new neighbourhood (a stundent hive outside of the main city.) My new flat rocks like a bastard. It´s rilly cute, and has a humungous window in the living room with a super veiw of woods and grassy bits and mountains. Proper mountains. With trees on.

Unfortunately we doesn´t have an internet connection yet, so I´m updating from a cybercaff near La Ramblas. Bloody hell! I can´t belive I´ve just written that sentence-- I´m updating from a cybercaff near La Ramblas. It´s like I´ve accidently landed in someone else´s life. It´s not so long ago that I belived I´d never get outside the UK, let alone pop off on foriegn hols, let alone be spending 18 months in Barcelona. I keep thinking some dude´s going to turn up at my door with a clipboard and demand that I swap with the person who´s supposed to be here.

"Party name of Carnival?"
"Uh... yeah?"
"Seems there´s been a bit of a cock up back at the depot. I´ve been instructed to reposess your life."
"Come again?"
"Yerrs. Seems that you´ve ended up in the wrong existance. I´ve got your proper life right here."
"Urrrgh! Yuck! Take it away!"
"Can´t do that, I´m afraid. You´re supposed to be living in Dartford with a salesman called Neville, pouring Barcardi on your cornflakes and taking out your bitter, bitter frustration on your bedwetting stepchildren. Sorry."
"ARRRRGHHHH!"

He´ll never take me alive.

Anyway, this place is wicked. They hate the war here. And they hate the Government, which is usually a good sign. Everywhere you go there´s graffiti comparing Aznul to terrrorists, facists and Monica Lewinsky. And I found where I can get free Catalan lessons whenever I want, and this keyboard does upside-down question marks and everything is just fan-bloody-tastic. Wheeeeeee!

Hullo. I'm in London.

Saturday rocked. Loads of cool folks (mostly Barbeloids, but one or two non-imaginary people came too) hit the Princess Louise for bevvy and the sort of conversations you always end up having with that crowd. It was a riot. Hope everyone's vision has returned. Everyone I was begging to come and see me in the PL on Sat.-- I wasn't just drunk, I really, really do want you to come and share in my Spainy good fortune.

This is my last day as a non-living-in-Barca-type chick. Tomorrow, barring anything apocalyptically crappy happening, the Bearded One and myself will be flying out. We should be in the capital of Catalunya before 7:00. I'm still having the mild-to-moderate wiggins, but once actually there the wiggins situation should stabilize.

See ya. (Wouldn't wanna be ya.)

So farewell then...

So much for the forced fast. I just looove cybercafes.

Okayyy. The removal guys turned up today, finally. Yes, I know I shouldn't make too much fuss but I've been stuck in-bloody-doors with no telly, no vids, no DVDs, no 'puter and ridiculously few books, jumping up and running to the door every five minutes because the flat upstairs is being renovated and there is much building overhead and I keep thinking the hammering is someone at the door. There's the tax to be sorted out at the other end, there's my own bank to be convinced that I am who I say I am and that I'm going to be living where I say I'm going to be living. And then there's the cleaning. Oh yes. There's the cleaning. How am I supposed to cope with all this without my Blake's 7 videos, eh? Eh?

Anyway all the stuff is on its way to fresh woods and pastures new*; it only remains for me to scrub the gaff down, phone the leccy people, cut off the telephone, etc. Roll on Saturday.

*No, I haven't got the quote wrong. That is how the quote is s'posed to go. It's everyone else that gets it wrong. So there.

Later than you think.

This will prolly be my last entry for a while; I've got to pack up the 'puter tomorrow coz the removal guys come on Tues. so my internet access is going to be a bit erratic. Which might be a good thing; I've been hanging on the news sites a bit too much. Staring at it all day won't make The War go away, and the desire to gouge my own brain out with a fucking spatula gets more overwhelming with every fresh story.

I'm all packed (at last). Going to be living out of a suitcase for the net couple of weeks. The move proper happens Saturday week. I'm sort of... panicking, really. I'm over the moon to be going to Barcelona, natch, but every so often I find myself thinking stuff like "Oh no! I don't know how to order a pizza in Spanish!"

So I'm not going to be around much for a couple of weeks. And after I get I may well be too busy loafing around on the beach and drinking horxata to bother my pretty bald head about you sorry creatures. Nyahhh.

New "Get Your War On". Don't say I never give you nuffink.

Body of Evidence

Here's the thing. I'm looking up this word, right? This one word. A word that means "A body of work". I know it looks sort of like "over", but it's a bit French.

So I type "Ouver" and that looks wrong.
So I type "Ovuer" and that looks wrong.
So I type "Ouveur" and that looks wrong.
So I type "Ouver" and that looks wrong.
So I type "Ouevuer" and that looks wrong.
So I type "Oeuver" and that looks wrong.

So then I type it into Google and the best I get is "over". Gee. Thanks.

So then I fire up a dictionary site, and I thrash my way through a dozen misspellings till I get to oeuvre.

The next time someone asks me what some bloody word means or how to spell some bloody word, I'm going to hit them over the head. Not hard, you understand, but repeatedly. This is how you learn stuff, morons. You look it up until you get bored. Really fucking bored. Then just when you know it and you use it and you start to feel okay, someone else comes along and relives their middle-class guilt by using it to whack you over the head.

Gosh, it feels so good to share.

Couldn't face it.

Couldn't make it to any of the protests. Well done, Bush. Let's hope the Iraqis like Saddam II, and we don't have to repeat all this in ten years time.

Yes.
Let's.

Because it wouldn't at all be completely at odds with history for that to happen.

At all.
Ever.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush: tomorrow is decision day for UN

Nothing to say, really. I'm beyond hope, and I've no-one to pray to. But I wish...

"I'm not perky."

I know I should be all happyhappyjoyjoy about the whole moving to Spain deal, and for the most part I am all happyhappyjoyjoy. It's all celebrations here, I promise. And yet, and yet...

I'm still gonna be in minimum-wageville. Sure, at least I get to be broke somewhere hot but I hate the fact that I'm just not going anywhere workwise. It's going to take a while to get my Spanish up to snuff, and my degree will probably take another 4 years or so to complete. And I hate that I have to make so many ethical compromises at work.

And there's this feeling... like it's all too good to be true, like something's going to go Horribly Wrong at the last moment. Like the universe is just dangling this in front of my face so it can jerk it away again and scream "APRIL FOOL!!!"

Oh, yeah: My arrival date for Barcelona? April the 1st.

Sometimes I worry about the poor quality of my writing on this weblog.

Even though it was always meant to be a disposable brain-dump rather than an advertisment for my journalistic prowess, I sometimes worry that people will get all confused between my blog persona and my writing persona and that I will be dismissed as a writer because I can't be bothered to spellcheck my blog entries.

So I was hugely relived to read this: Guardian Unlimited Sport | Special reports | India v New Zealand

Thanks, Mr. Coates. *thumbs up*

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Serbian PM shot dead

Fuck. I don't know what to say...

Crud.

Dagnabbit, I hate re-reading stuff I've written a few weeks after I've written it. All the crud floats to the surface, obscuring anything of worth: the typos, the poor sentence construction, the plot holes, all the bits and pieces you didn't notice when you were writing the damn thing leap up from the page and caper around before your eyes. They all hold hands and sing the You're Crap And You're Never Going To Published song. And all you can do is clean your glasses, pinch the bridge of your nose and get down to taking the little horrors out. One at a time you shoot them down, but they just keep on coming. Superfluous adjectives. Cliches. Unconvincing dialogue. Shoddy research. More cliches.

Maybe I could learn to love accountancy.

OooOooh, look-- the Bloggies are in.

I didn't win anything or get nominated, so obviously this is a huge conspiracy. Blah blah blah back in high school, blah blah popular kids, blah head cheerleader blah top jock blah blah, Royal Family of Blogdom, blah blah blah Heathers reference, blah blah blah Mafia blah, blah ignoring me because woman/epo/chaote/non-graduate/strike out word which do not apply blah blah and nothing at all to do with the fact that all I do here is gripe endlessly about my past, present or future jobs, I'm too tight to spring for an ads-free site and half my readers can't see my sidebar because of the clunky HTML.

Congrats to the winners.

brainsluice >Oh the nostalgia. Good old London Underground. *snff*

The human genome project welcomes your submissions.

velvetvandal has got hir rant on, re: rights which are compulsory, specifically the right to an education.

The paradox is an interesting one. The spirit of the law-- in the affluent West-- is indeed that you must excercise your right to an education. However, I'm here to tell you that this particular compulsory right is at present unenforceable.

Thing.

You know having a public weblog, yeah? You know that thing where there's this thing and you would really like to write about it but you really can't, because a) it's too personal even for the kind of person who has a public weblog and b) it's completely irrelevent to everyone else, so you can't even use the self-as-microcosm excuse?

I hate that.

Hands.

Hey up, you deep-as-a-puddle, know-nothing, self-obsessed jackasses, it's that time again! Yep-- the time when I remind you that I'm a chaos magickian on a cheapshit 8-week Reiki course, and I'm still more spiritual than you sorry lot. Sell all your worldy goods and go and live on a commune, quick.

So anyway, some interestingish stuff happened on Thursday night. (You got the usual rant'n'whine because I was tired and still processing.) We covered scanning, whereby the Reiki person moves their hands over the recumbent client and plays Spot The Manky Bit. In their aura. Stop laughing.

It was my go first. I was pretty zonked out, what with the hot room, the weapons-grade joss-sticks and the jingly new-age muzak that my teacher likes to put on (bless her heart). And the scanning took place with the client (in this case moi) lying on their back on a massage table. I'm prepered to accept the idea that this first bit was all a figment of my dozing brain. After the scanning, I recieved a Sekim Reiki healing, which was when things went a bit peculiar. A healing sesh starts with the healer placing their hands on your head, over the crown. They hold that for a while and them move down the body, chastely switiching from hands-on to hands in the 'aura' over your naughty bits to avoid embarassment and/or litigation. The woman I was working with had got as far as my shoulders when she took her hands away. I had my eyes closed, and I could feel the warmth of her hands over my face. I assumed that she'd gone into hands-off mode (either because her hands were chilly or because it seemed like the thing to do). This went on for a while, and then suddenly I felt another pair of hands on my knees. So I opened my eyes and my classmate was down the other end of the table, with her hands on my knees. Nobody else was near me. Yet I had been absolutely sure that someone had their hands over my face.

So anyhow, we swopped places so I was working on her. I was scanning away, going "Auras, yerright, pfftt" as I got further and further along without anything happening. Then suddenly my hand stopped, and was pulled over to the client's right. (My eyes were closed, so I couldn't see exactly which bit of her my hand was hovering over.) "There you are," said an inner voice that sounded exactly like mine, but wasn't. I opened my eyes and moved my hand up and down in the air over the spot where it had halted. The teacher came over. "Have you found something?" she said.

"Yeah," I said. "I mean, I think so."
"If you think you have, then you have," she told me. She put her own hand over the spot. "Yes," she said. "Now find where it starts."

I moved my hand up and down in the air, about a foot above the woman's right abdomen. And I swear, I felt, physically felt, where it stopped. I'm holding out my hand, palm down, in thin air, and here it's warm and here, a fraction of an inch upwards, it's not. It wasn't body-heat because my hand was too far away. It wasn't some trick of blood circulation or pressure on the nerves. It wasn't something to do with currents of air in the room. I thought of all that. It was a perceptible temprature difference that I can't explain in any ordinary way. Afterwards she told us that she'd been suffering from a viral infection which had originated at that exact point on her body.

I'm not a stranger to this kind of thing, of course, having been a ritual magickian (on and off) since forever, and on the grand scheme of things I guess it's not "VOOP! Lazarus! Come on dooowwwwwn!" or anything. But it was thought-provoking, nonetheless. I'm starting to wonder about some stuff. For instance, my teacher's always banging on about angels, how there are angels with us when we're healing and angels find her parking spaces and blah-blah-blah. And of course I'm all Yerright, angels, pfft. But now I'm thinking that maybe there are things around us while we're doing this stuff... which begs the question, who or what might they be and what are they after?

Fragments of ourselves, perhaps. Outer Entities. Fractal elves. Hell, maybe they just like cheap incence and whalesong tapes. Who knows.

Stop reading this blog.

To save you the effort of reading through the archives for the next three-and-a-half-hours, here's some helpful information:

No, I haven't stopped writing.
No, I haven't stopped writing about stuff that I know is going to piss some of you off.
No, I haven't started caring that I'm pissing you off.
No, I haven't stopped being an uppity bitch.
No, I haven't said anything about you (or you or you or you) specifically.
No, I'm not going to.
No, really.
No, really really.
No, you're really not that important.
No, sorry.
No, you're just not.
No, not even if you've threatened me with a Bowie knife. You can't fit a Bowie knife down a modem cable. We both know this.
No, threatening to not read my weblog anymore is not a bad scary thing.
No, threatening to tell your friends not to read my weblog anymore is not a bad scary thing.
No, you just wish I was talking about you.
No, you are not going to sue me.
No, God is not going to strike me down.
No, I don't know where you live, where your friends/family/partener/co-workers live, or where you work. Nor do I care. Any threat you may infer is therfore your own problem.
No, I still haven't stopped writing.

wherever you go, there you are.

Packing. Man, I just hate packing. It's not as bad this time as when I moved from London; at least I'm dealing with a humane amount of clobber, and there's far less chucking out that wants doing. I reckon I'll have the bulk of it done within a week.

Which is good, because I'm going to need the time and the space for some serious magick. See, travelling is all well and good but there's this eentsy problem: You carry all your old mental baggage with you, whether you realise it or not. How much you take away from all your new experiences depends to a large extent on how much you're prepared to leave behind. If all you do is import the same old obsessions and behavioural tics then you haven't really gone anywhere. All you've done is spend a lot of time and money to stand still. (Oh, and then you come home and bang on ad fucking nauseum for the next fifteen years about how those two months in Goa changed your life, preferably to someone who can't afford a day-trip to fucking Calais-- but I digress.)

I really can't afford that sort of dead weight anymore. There's this agglomeration of old crud that I'm just dying to excise from my personality.

There's the tendency to go into avoid mode when I'm anxious about something, rather than face up to it. Since one of the things that makes me anxious is meeting new people, this is a bad trait to carry to a new country. I'll be meeting a lot of new people and trying to get to grips with a new language and a new culture; locking myself in the flat won't be terribly helpful.

Then there's the whole job business. In the past, I've tended to accept unpleasant dead-end work situations because I'd convinced myself that there was no choice in the matter. This must cease forthwith.

Then there's the lack of motivation. Focus isn't the problem. Time isn't the problem. Ambition isn't the problem. Ability isn't the problem. The problem is that when faced with the necessity of actually doing some work, be it a piece of writing or an exercize in circuit design or whatever, I tend to panic. It's like: "I might not be able to complete this satisfactorily, so what's the point of even getting started. Blaah."

All this must and shall change, not just because it's uncomfortable and boring but because it's completely fucking pathetic. Fuck it. I know I can do better than this.

You think I like being this petty? You think I like being 29 years old and feeling like a pickled adolescent? Goddamn it, where's my maturity? There was supposed to be maturity! They promised! And yet here I am, still stuck in the bloody moebius-strip Bildungsroman that is my life.

Trouble is, knowing your problems and being able to solve them are two different things. I've made a lot of progress over the last few months but something tells me that to get further, Magick needs to happen. Big magick. Regulation-length sigils just aren't going to cut it.

Poets for the War

Words fail me. This sort of thing is exactly why I hate people.

(Via Venusberg.Munich-style.)

End of the line.

The flat's sorted. I've even seen a floor-plan.
The removal's sorted. They're coming for our stuff on the 25th.
The flight's booked. Heading for London on the 29th, and hanging around till the following Tuesday. Then it's on to Barcelona.

Holy modernist architecure, Batman-- this is really happening!

Doubt.

It had to happen. I've got an attack of self-doubt on. Every aspiring evil overlord gets them once in a while. They should make an anti-self-doubt inhaler like Ventolin only for, y'know, self-doubt.

It started as I was coming out of Spanish class. I'm liking Spanish, but although its mostly "New toy! New toy! WEEEEEEEEE!" there's a teensy pinch of "Argh. Learning. It's all hard and stuff, argh." And I was reflecting on how I'm going to be unable to dazzle, conversationally speaking, for quite some time after I move out there. This is not a new topic of reflection. In fact, I thought I had made my peace with the whole "Oh crap, I'm going to look utterly gormless for months" thang. However, after going three falls and a submission with some tricky transitive verbs it reared its ugly head.

Every so often, the stress of living with your unconscionably petty and confusing species gets too much for me and I find it hard to get out and be around you. You bother me. You get all shirty for no reason, you get drunk before noon and come and slur at me incomprehensibly, you try to talk to me about soap operas that I don't watch and then you get all hurt when I tell you I don't watch them. You make me all confused and headachey. Now I have to be all confused and headachey and foriegn. The prospect does not please. (Yes, I know I don't need transitive verbs to mop the goddamn floor. That's not the point.)

Maybe I won't seem gormless. Maybe I'll seem... mysterious. Enigmatic. Sphinxlike. Yeah! That's me-- Sphinxlike.


Anyhoo. You know what? Back in the day, when I was a teeny weeny homeschooled freak, I taught myself a fairly respectable chunk of Latin. Of course since my education at this point was a purely voluntary and unsupervised deal, I eventually got discouraged and dropped it. And forgot everything. Like you do. But now large chunks of it are coming back to me, hauled from deep within the scrapheap of my mind, to aid me in my hour of need and confusing verbyness. You'd have laughed at me, an eleven-year-old Latin learner. You would have mocked me, and quite possibly kicked sand in my face. "Geek!" you would have cried. "Nerd! Spanner!" But my oh-so-quaint home-ed Latin studies are bearing fruit in my Spanish night-class, years after I put aside my amo amat etc.

So who wins, eh? Who wins?

The Unstoppable Snot Machine

Huddo. I'b god a cod.

It was sort of okay the first day (Wednesday) because it kicked in about an hour before my last ever shift at the local shop finished, and I was able to go home and collapse and go "Blahh! Collapse! Sick! I win!" The next day was okay too, because No work + oozy viral thang = snuggly duvet action. Until aThursday morning, when I got bored. I missed Reiki. Can you belive I missed my Reiki class because I was too sick? And it was my turn to have a go of Seikim, too *sulks*.

Then I stocked up on Solpadine and Sudafed (over-the-counter speedballs, j0!) and it's been sort of nice. I've been sorting stuff out prepatory to packing it away, and working on a short peice with all aliens and things. Not together enough to do novel in an actual writing type way, but I've dreampt a few crrrrucial and very sexy scences and a large chunk of lingustic stuff. (My novel not only has bumpy mountains but a language. Oh yes.)

I'm fixing the officialy unfixable coat. It's going to work too. I'll tell you the trick of it sometime. (Oh, alright, I just got all my stuff together and sung the "We will fix it" song from Bagpuss. Yes, I did the voice.)

Dog thumbs.

No, really. "Dog thumbs." I just love incomprehensible search referrals.

Are you selling something!?

See the thing on the sidebar saying "pop down the shops"? See how it has but a scanty couple of links? Want yours there too? Go on, t-shirt making folk-- sp am me. Now's your chance.

Yay! Stoatie got the all-clear! :)

Cunning Plans.

I've been trying to formulate a sensible plan for when I get to Spain, but I can't be bothered. I'm sick of making sensible plans for the future. I've spent the last ten years making sensible plans for the future. They always go pear-shaped on me.

I think that when I commenced this blog I was up to Plan Q, having exhausted the rest of the alphabet. Plan Q was to complete a foundation year in electronics and then move on to a degree in electronics and music technology. What actually happened was the closure of the entire department, technicians who so busy listening to the footie and surfing the net that they would only come out and actually do their jobs if you threatened them with physical violence (okay if you're a strapping six-footer with muscles on your muscles, not so easy if you're 5'5" and just want to get your work done) lecturers who didn't give a tinker's cuss because they were all retiring or looking for new jobs, and my going partially deaf in one ear (not helpful when half your course relates to sound engineering). Also much amusing falling over and twitching, oh so funny.

Plan R related to my getting some kind of technical journalist type thing whilst picking up the missing credits part-time, but then the whole leaving the country thing came up.

So now I'm on Plan S. Plan S is as follows: Get some shitey wee job out in Barca, and be learning the Spanish whilst finishing off my degree via the OU. I will have this degree. Oh yes. Furthermore the writeyness will be large and unstoppable, for my novel is still trickling out in dribs and drabs and I shall soon be punting out another short for a certain webzine (fingers crossed).

In the abscence of anyone jumping up and down and begging to pay me to write for them, I'm hoping that I can find some really freaky job this time. Then I could write about my freaky job. They still make those schlock-horrors in Spain, right? I could go and be a gopher. I could write about being a gopher. That would be a Thing.

Ignore me. I'm all flu-ey and probably delirious.

(PS: Kernow, we all miss you at the Mudshow. We're sorry. Pleaaase come back!)

Epilepsy Action: The Mozart Effect I'll belive it when the pretty coloulours tel meee it's 302€vt1Z;;@LLs, *thunk* *twitch*

(Via bagpusscoffeeshop.)

Okayyyy...

Being as how years of overindulgence, years of mental atrophy, and years of... well, just years of years have left me with a leaky collander where my BRANE should be, I'm terrible with b/days and stuff. Over the last few weeks, a number of excellent and hate-exempted folk have had a happy return, and I'd just like to wish them all a good'un.

Also one of my buddies is going in for a cancer test today :( . It sounds foul. Any magickal readers want to send Stoatie some good vibes? Ta!

Monkey does bunk from biodefence lab

The tiny rhesus macaque monkey was "being used for breeding purposes" and wasn't carring any diseases. %So that's all right then.%

What's in YOUR police file, kiddies?

Nothing? You sure?

(Via Happy Coconut)

Become an academic, young man.

Another annoying autobiographical abeyance

So like I said the other day, I'm stopping working at the end of the month; next Wednesday, to be precice. I have mixed feelings about this. Mad sickness cover and lousy pay aside, my current job hasn't been so bad. It's relatively varied compared to assembly-line work*, and has a minimal gross-out factor compared to fishing used condoms out of bushes* or scrubbing dried-on shit out of toilets in a bail hostel.* My co-workers are fun to be around and my boss is, as bosses go, a joy to work for. On a scale of zero to ten, where zero is the hinge factory** and ten is writing my 15th bestselling novel while Nicholas Brendon gives me a neckrub, Alan Rickman pours me shots of cognac and my personal shopper, Eddie Izzard, picks up my latest tailor-made outfit from House of Harlot, it's about a three-and-a-half.

See, I really do need to take a month off to sort out the packing and the bills and liase with the removal guys and learn Spanish and so on, but I hate being out of work for any reason. I know I complain about the kind of jobs I have to do but deep down I'm very grateful to be in work at all.

Once you've experienced long-term unemployment, you fear it. Even a brief spell of enforced joblessness can be an utterly crushing experience, and I was on the jam roll for nearly three years (interspersed with periods of sick-ticket when my health packed up). That's three years of sending out as many as thirty applications in a week, only to get rejected or completely ignored. Three years of working through phone books, cold-calling potential employers. Three years of never having quite enough money. Three years of going up the job centre and finding out that every other card in the window is actually out of date. Three years of being told that I was too young, too old, too underqualified, too overqualified, or-- surprise!-- too inexperienced. Of waiting on tenterhooks for a giro that didn't come because someone lost a box of sign-on tickets, of pointless re-training for mickeymouse certificates that meant nothing, of getting my application forms sent back crossed through with red pen or torn into pieces, of boredom, of eating the same cheap crap every day, of insomnia, of ill-health, of crappy, insecure accomodation, of being told every day in a hundred small but important ways that I was lazy, stupid, and worthless. Oh yeah, and of being called Clive by electronics firms. Funnily enough, anything that reminds me of that time in my life depresses the hell out of me.

I still consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. I'm childless, so I never had to watch my kids go through that. I was young, so I never entirely lost hope. And I was able to make the move to London, where I finally found work and lived happily ever after cheers cheers cheers.

Hence the nagging discomfort at the thought of taking this time off; hence the increasing trepidation at the thought of trying to find work in Spain. It's natural that a person would be having those feelings. What it isn't is rational.

I can always get money. Got plenty of experience under my belt, and I'm not all niminy-piminy about doing dull or messy jobs. Barcalona is a big and vibrant city, with plentymuch opportunity for pint-pulling or floor-mopping. Ergo, no joblessness, and in the fullness of time I bet I can find something really fun and memorable to do for my dough. Even if I fetch up in the usual minimum-wage grind, it won't be a total loss as any job I do will present me with more opportunities to learn and practice my Spanish.

The other thing to bear in mind is this: Why, given that I was stuck on the dole, did I not do something exiting like sign up with the VSO? Because the bloke at the youth advice place said I couldn't. Why didn't I get my arse down the local uni and sign up for a foundation year? Because the people at my old tech said I couldn't. Why didn't I try and get an apprenticeship with a local firm? Because the people at the dole centre said I couldn't. Now, I can either sit around and go "Oh, those bad bad people who crushed my youthful ambitions! How thoughtless and rotten they were!" or I can look at the common factor here, which would be moi. Sure, I've been given cruddy advise by a number of egregious wankers in my life but I was the one who took that advice-- I was the one who sat and listened and did exactly what they said.

So I'm going to treat moving to Barca like being 17 all over again, and I'm going to try all the things I never tried back then, see if I can't wrangle myself that really cool job I've been hankering after. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't; the important thing is giving it a fair shot.

Why am I telling you all this? So that whatever age you are and whatever you want to do, you never just take someone's word for it when they tell you you can't do something. So that you give it a fair shot, so that you don't miss out on an opportunity by giving up before you've even started.

I hate you, but not even I hate you that much.



*Yes, I really do have to do stuff like that for a living. Incidentally, I had probably just come home from doing one of those things the last time one of you twerps accused me of browbeating you with my superior education. You accused the cleaning lady of intellectual elitism. You are funny and I laugh at you. Loud and long.

**It's been brought to my attention that when I talk about the whole hinge factory thing, some people assume that it's a Schindler's List reference and that I'm comparing my situation to that of a Holocaust survivor, leading them to the inevitable conclusion that I'm a really big fuckwit. The truth is that I worked in a hinge factory. When I talk about the hinge factory it's not a metaphor. It's a factory. That makes hinges. Where I worked.

If I was comparing myself to a Holocaust survivor, I would indeed be the biggest fuckwit in the entire known universe.

Fixer-upper.

I have a problem: my favourite coat is getting really manky. I mean, really really manky, mankier than even I can put up with.

Thing is: it's a full length PVC trenchcoat. I just love the way those words roll off the tongue, don't you? Full. Length. PVC. Trenchcoat. I got my Full. Length. PVC. Trenchcoat. at a thrift store for five quid. No, I'm just telling you that to torment you-- it's relevant! Really! Sort of. A bit relevant. Well, okay, it's completely irrelevant, I just enjoy tormenting you all.

I suck at ordinary shopping, but I rock at op-shopping. The trouble with buying stuff from thrift stores, even really cool stuff at prices that make people hugely and disgustingly envious, is that someone else has already had a lot of the wear out of them. The coat in question needed a lot of work when I bought it: bare patches had to be disguised with acrylic paint, buttons had to be sewn on, the lining had to be replaced with an old purple satin dressing-gown. Since I wear it all the time, it's now looking distinctly threadbare. I don't think the acrylic paint trick is going to work this time. I should really chuck it out and replace it, but there's just no way I am ever going to afford anything nearly as groovy. Gaffertape isn't really durable enough for outerware, and patching with PVC or leather is likely to give me librarian elbows (not the look I was going for).

So... I dunno. I'm thinking of sewing a textured fabric over the bald patches, like lace or this fine crochet-type stuff I've got lying around, and then maybe going over that with the acrylic to give it durability. I could just ditch the coat altogether and go back to my trusty BLJ, but I'd feel bereft.

So...

So there's this bloke, right? And this bloke used to be on this BB quite a lot. He gave Your Humble Narratrix some much-needed advice and general encouragement with the writey stuff. Which was, y'know, cool, even though he's probably come to regret it. Then this bloke went through a rough patch, and there was some out-of-character spikeyness, followed by a prolonged abscence from said BB. So I send him a PM; no response. Which might mean nothing because hey, not always very good at responding to PMs myself.

Now, this bloke's abscence has been noticed and remarked upon by others, but nobody has said anything to indicate that they know what, if anything, is going on. And I don't want to make a big fuss, because there might be a stroppy feudy Thing going on, and you know what happens if you go poking a Thing.

In the unlikely event that this guy is reading this, it would be nice to get a Yo. Even if it's accompanied by a "leave me the hell alone, I've gone to a remote desert island to paint rocks!"

You're staring.

You know you shouldn't be doing this.

Openly, amongst freinds, you mock me. You've flamed me in cyberspace, dissed me in meatsville. You complain about my oversensitivity, my PC gone maaaad Feminazi politics; you speculate hilariously on the state of my lovelife. You tell your mates (and yourselves) how worthless my opinions are; how many typos and HTML glitches you counted in the last entry.

Yet you still come back, don't you? You've tried to stop. You've told yourselves, over and over again, that you really don't care what I think, what I say. You've told yourselves you won't spare me another minute of your time, won't give me the satisfaction of one more hit on my counter. You've erased me from your bookmarks time and again. It doesn't help. The URL is graven into your tiny, rancid minds in letters of flame. No matter how hard you try you can't quite prevent yourselves from taking just one more tiny peek.

Your mouth is hanging open ju-ust a little; there's a glazed quality to your eyes. You don't realise it, but your breath is coming in short, silent hitches. Your muscles tense up and the sound of a door opening somewhere else in the building makes you leap out of your skin. You twitch guiltily at the thought that someone might catch you reading this. You couldn't be any more strung out if you were actually choking your chickens.

But that's what this is, isn't it? That's what you come here for.

Hate porn.

I'm becoming increasingly fucked off with the idea that because I'm anti-war, I must be pro-Saddam and pro-Ba'athist. However, it's obvious that if you're anti-war, you ought to be offering some sort of reasonable alternative to invading Iraq. So have some linkage. More as I read it. Feel free to bung your suggestions in the comments box.

openDemocracy
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Jonathan Freedland: What would you suggest?

Word.

As you may or may not have noticed, I've been increasing the linkage in my sidebar. There are lots of nice little looker-uppers there now, so you dog-oglers have even less of an excuse than usual to not sod off and do something more useful instead of wallowing in the bile.

Among other things, I've included a couple of Word of the Day sites. I like Word of the Day sites. They are fun. I don't expect everyone around me to have huge ginormous vocabularies leaking out of their ears but having heard some people who (I think) read this blog lamenting their lack of word power, I thought that some of you might fancy a way to give your onboard dictionary a quick boost. When you've found a word you like, get the pronunciation and sp. down and start using it as soon as possible so that it sticks.

There's a high probability that some git will turn round and be all "huh, that was Word of the Day on whenever, and you read Word of the Day sites!" The implication here is that the git has the word for everso long and is way cleverer than you; that furthermore you're a thicko to not have known that word in the first place and your attempts to better yourself are a huge doomed joke. Because you're so thick, see? A big thicky thicko, that's you!

Ignore them. They are gits. Spill coffee on them or something.

Lines.

I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.
I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.
I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.
I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.
I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.
I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.
I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.
I will stop using mediocrity as a yardstick.

Seperated at birth: Dobby off of Harry Potter, and Vladimir Putin

(Viaminor 9th.)

Okay. What sad bastard was Googling for this?

Day after day

I have got to get back into updating this thing regularly. This once-a-week business is getting pathetic. And my sidebar is stale; I've had pretty much the same fiddling little handful of news links in place for almost a year now. Keep meaning to add some more, but I never get round to it. Plus I ought to include some general reference links for you chattering zanies in the vain hope that you might one day bother to fill the vacuum in between your pink'n'shell-likes; Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, that kind of thing. Got to sort that out. I'm jacking the job in at the end of the month, so maybe I'll find time in between all the packing to fix dog carcass up a bit.

So what have I been doing? Okay, on Thursday I got a Seichim attunement to go with my standard-issue Reiki. I don't know that much about it, but from what I can worlk out it's basically the same sort of deal as the basic Reiki (big mysterious healing energy thing uses you as an interdimensional extension cord) only based on this, uhhh, ancient Egyptian wisdom that someone "channelled" *cough*. (I'm not saying it's all made up and fake and worthless, far from it; just that I don't think the people who get these things get them from where they think they're getting them.)

The Seichim attunement was a bit weird. The room we use for the class is always overheated but I got really cold, a bone-deep chill that made me feel like I'd never get warm again. It was as if I was submerged in running water. Apparently this is a good thing. It means that something you don't need anymore is leaving you, some energy is being banished. (Damn, I always choke when I use the e-word in this kind of context. I'm trying to see it as a model that we're using to visualize something that we don't properly understand.) The healing went well; my hands were drawn to my client's upper chest (I was working on the teacher) and she informent me afterwards that she had indeed been coming down with a chest infection and had felt the area warm up. One of the other clients dropped off to sleep during his sesh and woke up from a falling dream with such a start that he scared the hell out of his healer-- not to mention the rest of the class.

On Friday myself and Lurid travelled down to Dublin, as planned. The coach journey took about 5 hours, but it wasn't too bad. I went over my Spanish homework, then just dozed off for a while. We stayed over with an old mate from London who I haven't seen in ages. It was great to catch up. She finds herself in a similar position as me; same age, stuck in a crappy minimum-wage shop-job, trying to scrape a living and build a career at the same time. It was great just getting pissed together and griping about our respective stores-- I feel like much less of a loser now. And fuck, she's just such a cool and amazing person to hang out with anyhow.

On Saturday there was the anti-war demo. I was expecting to be part of a gathering of a couple of thousand people; the actual turnout was more like 50 or 60,000. At first it was a bit crappy, because there were all these passionate, determined people, many of whom obviously dedicated their lives to this kind of thing, and I was all why-bothery and apathetic. I felt like a walking corpse surrounded by the living.

"No to Oil War!"
"Bush go home!"
"Give peace a chance!"
"One, two, three, four-- we don't want your fucking war!"
"Braaaaiiiiiinnnnnnnnssssss... waaaaannnt braaaaiiiiiiinnnnnssss!"

As time wore on though, the scale of the protest became clear. All sorts of people, many of them obvious march virgins, had turned out. The centre of Dublin was at a virtual standstill. Myself and L.A. shuffled along for a few hours, eventually calling it a day and going to check out some news sites in an internet caff. My apathy took a much-deserved kicking as I read the about the sheer number of people who'd turned out against the war. I grabbed a few tracts, even got some bumf about forthcoming demonstrations; I'm keen to take part in a demo at Shannon airport in a couple of weeks, but I want to find out more about the organizers first.

March.

Going to Dublin tomorrow (well, today, strictly speaking, since it's after midnight). Originally I was just going there to hook up with a mate of mine, but as luck would have it the anti-war demo is on the Saturday.

I'm going on the march, I am. Maybe fix up a placard. Meet up with the crowd, become part of it, show my face, make a stand. I just can't recall why. It doesn't matter what I say, what I do; the futility of it all feels like a lead weight nestling in my gut, but somehow this is a gesture I'm compelled to perfom.

I want peace.

This has been making me chuckle.

Stop reading this blog.

Are you back again? Can't bloody leave it alone, can you? Can't just take a deep breath, delete the URL from your bookmarks, and read something less upsetting to your delicate artistic sensibilities, can you? Oh, no. That would be too healthy. No, you've got to come back here, day after day. Get lives! All of you! 99% of all Weblogs are crap anyway! This one doesn't even have any comedy drug anecdotes in it! If you really can't stand the thought of dragging your collective backside out into the world then at least go and read something different for once. Go and read a news site, find a new hobby, or look at pictures of bloody fluffy kittens-- anything.

Puppies are cute. You could look at some puppies.

I see you're still here.

Wankers.

Doctor brands his university's initials on woman's uterus.

No, really. I don't know what's worse: the fact that he burned initials onto someone's internal organ, or the fact that he did this knowing full well that the whole ghastly prank was being commited to video, or that he then went ahead and gave the video to the woman and her husband to watch. What the hell did he think they were going to do?

"Oh, look, sweetie-- that must be a heated surgical instument being applied to the wall of your soon-to-be-removed womb."
"Hey, yeah! What's he doing now?"
"Looks almost like he's... ha, ha! Look, darling, he's writing on your uterus!"
"Tee, hee! He is! He's monogramming it! That is so COOL!"
"Yes. That's really lightened the whole procedure up for us, hasn't it?"
"Yeah! Who knew that having a risky and life-altering surgical procedure could be so funny? Let's put him on our Christmas card list!"

Arrogant git.

Circle

Went for a drive today with a couple of mates, out into the wilds of west Cork. First we stopped to check out Drombeg stone circle It was interesting, very powerful atmos.

From the link above: "About 40m (44yds) to the west of the circle are the remains of two stone-built prehistoric huts joined by a common doorway. The smaller has a cooking place 1.5 x 1.1m (5ft x 3ft 6in) on its eastern side; this was still in use in the 5th century AD. This prehistoric kitchen had a flagged trough in which water was boiled by dropping red-hot stones into it... 70 or more gallons of water could be boiled for almost three hours."

Call me arrogant, but I'm not at all convinced by the idea that the nearby structures were built as dwellings. For a start, they seem a bit too close to the circle itself; from what I know about this kind of thing (admittedly not a huge amount), people didn't live in very close proximity to sacred sites like this and I've got a feeling that people in this neck of the woods still pretty much nomadic and hunter-gatherery 5000 years ago. Besides which, one of the huts is built round a natural spring. For my money, natural spring + nearby stone circle = sacred well. I'm thinking these buildings would have been places of communal worship. The kitchen might have been a steamhouse, or have been used for cooking ritual meals. (All this is just the noodley theorising of someone with only a sketchy knowledge of the subject, I hasten to add.)

I like visiting these sites. There's something eerie about being in a place like that, looking at things that were created by men and women living thousands of years ago. I'm planning to look into prehistoric sites in Spain before I go out there.

Anyhow, it was a grand day out. We stopped off in Leap (pronounced Lep) and sort of commandeered a veggie'n'wholefood shop that served snacks. We had a nice spread of goat's cheese, soda-bread, oatcakes, olives and various bits and bobs, then we drove on to the coast. It was raining and cold, and I'd neglected to bring a hat, but it was still great to stand and look out over the sea. Got to admit, County Cork has some lovely veiws.

I need to do this kind of thing more. Living in London, I sort of bought into the mindset that you have to be being entertained all the time to be happy; that you have to be pubbing'n'clubbing every spare second, that somewhere a better time is being had than you're having and you have to chase after it NOW! FASTER! FASTER! And I really don't. I never have. Not planning to give up the social whirl and become a hermit just yet, y'know, but aware of the need to strike some kind of balance.

Wonder if there's a Spanish equivalent to Caeder Idris? I always wanted to do that "spend the night up there and wake up mad or a poet" thing, but I never got around to it while I was still in the UK. Hmmm.

Jer-RY! Jer-RY! Jer-RY!


Ah, there's only one thing better than making your very own Jerry Springer show, and that's making your very own Jerry Springer show using characters from an obscure British science fiction programme.

JERRY: Tonight on the Jerry Springer show we have a particularly interesting episode! Kerr Avon is here to finally confess something to a long-time friend of his Roj Blake. So everyone please put your hands together for Kerr Avon!

Jerry: Okay, now Kerr Avon you're here to talk about someone aren't you?

You: Yes.

Jerry: And what is this other persons name?

You: Servelan.

The crowd SQUEALS with delight.

Jerry: Okay, okay, well Servelan, is actually here tonight...

The crowd SQUEALS once more.

Jerry: But first we have a surprise for you Kerr Avon, because as it happens there is someone else here to see YOU! So let's bring out... Orac!

You: What the HELL!!!

Out of nowhere you pull out a Hoffel's radiation. Orac reaches for the bulkhead. Out of the shadows Jenna appears.

Jenna: Wait everybody wait!

Jerry: Yes, everybody let's just calm down for a moment here. First tell us why you're here Orac.

Orac: Because I saw Kerr Avon and Jenna making out at deck of the Liberator!

The crowd goes absolutely INSANE.

Jenna: That's a lie! I was home watching Gardener's World!

Jerry: (raising his hands) Hold on, hold on, I'm missing the problem here...what exactly IS the problem Orac?

Orac: Because I've recently been taking part in a sexual relationship with Roj Blake who has recently become engaged to Jenna.

The crowd hollers, screams and whoops in an orchestra of orgasmic excitement.

Jerry: Okay, okay. Well why don't we bring Roj Blake out here because Kerr Avon had something that they needed to tell them anyway about... Servelan that's right!

Roj Blake: (enters onto stage and saunters over towards you) What's the deal? I saw you outside getting it on with Servelan! You know I'm how I feel about Servelan!.

Jenna: (screams) What? Why the hell did you ask me to marry you if you're in love with Servelan!

Roj Blake: Because I knew that I could never have Servelan. But Kerr Avon promised me that they'd never hook up out of respect for my feelings!

Jenna: What about respect for MY feelings!

Orac walks suddenly across the stage, embracing Roj Blake.

Orac: Don't worry baby, you don't need any of them now that you have me.

Again the crowd SQUEALS.

Jenna: Oh my God! Are you SICK!

Jenna runs across the room and wraps their arms around you tightly.

Jenna: Kerr Avon take me away from all of this!

You: You see? That's the thing...I'm...well, I'm married...

The crowd does its bit.

Jenna: Married?

You nod.

Jenna: Who the hell are you married to? When...when did this happen? I don't understand!

You: The other day. In Vegas. I'm married to Servelan.

Roj Blake: (screaming) WHAT!!!

Jerry: (grinning widely, makes an enquiry) So...did you have a nice wedding night?

Servelan: (stepping back out onto center stage) Well we had sex thirteen times if that's what you mean.

The crowd squeals.

Jerry: Okay, okay. So let me get this all straight... Kerr Avon is married to Servelan who Roj Blake has secretly been in love with for years and years. Now Roj Blake has recently become engaged to Jenna who was recently spotted kissing Kerr Avon in the deck of the Liberator. Now on top of this Orac has just admitted to being in a sexual relationship with Roj Blake.

Servelan: That's right Jerry.

Jerry: (looking sternly into the camera) It is times like these that one has to wonder, whether or not these people are aware that they are quite clinically insane. Perhaps we should be spending more on psychiatric health funds in this country, perhaps we should just ban Vegas to cut down on impulse marriages. Perhaps I should get a new job. Thanks for watching folks it's been great but for now...it's goodnight.

Queue cheesy background music and fade to black.

(Of course, this is all Solonor's fault.)

Remain calm.

I'm still here. Had a lot on my plate the last few days; mostly this big messy novelizing jag. Still got the sucky dialogue problem, but I think I've licked the reality vs fantasy problem.


Went to this big do the other night with Lurid. It was this maths-related thing at a hotel and was all Formal and stuff, so I wandered around some of Cork's more modestly priced clothing outlets shopping for something Formal to wear. I was thinking along the lines of a velvet trouser suit or maybe some sort of evening gown affair, but apparently there's been a moratorium on semi-wearable, demi-formal clobber that I'd be seen dead in. The suits were all nasty crispy polycotton with shoulderpads. (Since I already have shoulders, the logic of sticking an extra pair of fake ones in my jacket escapes me.) There were a few evening dresses left on sale, strange, sad relics of the long-gone party season. The predominant colours were pistachio, pale orange and bubblegum pink, with an option on all three in sofa-sized florals. I vetoed these on the grounds of a) public decency and b) my not being Margot Ledbetter. After exhausting the varied delights of Mister Thriftee's House O Polyester and Captain Crimplene's Chiffon Shack, I got fed up with the whole idea and blew 30 Euros on a black combatty looking skirt with about a gazzilion pockets and lots of pointless but hugely stylish dangly straps. It's about as formal as a bunfight. (You will have gathered by now that I really suck at shopping.)

'Part from that one night of debauchery it's been work, Spanish, Reiki, and novel. And I'm not telling you about the novel because I don't trust you.

Been looking at floorplans of the flat I'll be living in when we finally move to Spain. Damn, I want to be in Barcalona, now. It's not that I don't like Cork. I've enjoyed a lot of things about living here; the people are cool, and having three pubs on my doorstep is a definate plus. But I just want this interludey thing to be over; I want to get on to the next bit. Ah well-- only a few more weeks...

Tune in, turn on...

It's finally happened. I got my Reiki attunement.

I had a perfectly foul day at work. They had a video crew in to do this thing for this conference, which meant everything was all upheavaly. And I started sneezing, allergies or something, and I couldn't stop. Then, half-an-hour before I ws supposed to come off my shift, these guys came in and contrived to run off with some phone credit and cigarettes. Then to cap it all the guy who was supposed to take over from me didn't bloody show. I mean, I'd been on since bloody eight am, I was supposed to finish at six pm, and this little git just doesn't bother to turn up. By the time I left it was gone 20 past and I was hugely and massively dischuffed. World full of total wankers who come into work anytime they like and ripoff merchants who go through life taking anything they want; me total wanker and idiot because I turn up on time and actually do the work I'm paid for and I'm still washing and re-using Bacofoil and I never have any fun. Bleph, yechh and rghghghghghh.

I had just enough time to pop home and change out of my vile uniform before running off to my Reiki sesh. Half the class got attuned tonight, the rest will get hooked up next week. (I was in the attunement half because I was bouncing up and down in my chair and going "mepleasemepleasemeplease!")

It was odd. Not mindblowing or extreme or anything, but odd. When the Reiki master was doing the thing where they make symbols in the air over you, I could feel the symbols on my skin. Could have been psychological but I had my eyes closed all through the attunement and only worked out what had been going on afterwards, when I watched someone else getting attuned. I got a breif moment of weighlessness when the attunment was sealed.

We talked about how the initiation had felt for us, then we all did a healing on the non-attuned members of the class. The guy I did my first ever Reiki sesh on said afterwards that when I put my hands on his head (over the crown chakra), he felt as though he'd been given an electric shock-- ZAP! all down his shoulders and arms. Then he went to sleep. Hah. I came home... not happy, exactly, but free of the anger and bitterness I'd been dealing with before the class.

There's more, but I think I'll put it in a proper article. If anyone wants to chat about it, tho, I'll be bunging a thread up in Thee Mudshow.

That Bhopal rant in full: "Something we do today will touch your life." @ emergency.PARADIGM

"X-Men Aren't Human", decides judge.

I for one am disgusted by this infringement of Mutant Rights.

Spanish Word of the Day

Kewl.

(Via Google.)

War.

I hate it when there's really only one thing to write about, and I can hardly bear to write about it because the subject fills me with despair and something that used to be anger but is now so worn out with overuse that it's become unrecognizable. But the West must have blood and so here we all are, on the brink of yet another pointless conflict that probably won't even shift Saddam's arse half-an-inch from the throne that we put under him.

I wish this shit didn't make me so damn tired. There's only one thing I can really do, only one response that I'm capable of making: to write about it. I can take no action except to be a commentator on the action, I can do nothing but bear witness. And that one thing gets harder and harder to do because I feel like I'm trying to empty the sea with a sodding teaspoon.

Somebody hate-mail me, please. Tell me how pathetic I'm being, how I'm no better than the despots and the terrorists. You know, the stupid bollocks you're so good at. Maybe you'll actually manage to piss me off. Maybe you can get me to feel something, anything besides this big fat apathy.

Reiki

I would like to make it abundantly clear that the following does not mean I've gone soft. Right? You still don't mess.

Had my first Reiki class this evening. Much as I was looking forward to running whining to my weblog about how it was all new-age chicanery and I'd wasted my enrolment fee, I have to admit that this looks promising.

Tonight we had an overveiw of what Reiki is, the history and all, and what we're going to do on this course. Then we had a divination sesh with... uh... angel cards. Bless Now, I'm not convinced by the idea that we've all got blond feathery types with Timotei hair and loincloths looking over our shoulders (and if we do then I want to find out who their supervisor is and get him to introduce drug tests or something, because someone's clearly asleep at the bloody switch). However, when you use Google as a divinatory aid you're not best placed to point fingers.

Then we had a group visualization, which was kewl. It was all pretty standard issue stuff (Universal light goes in thru head, down thru chakras, out thru spine and feet into earth; earth energy comes up the other way and fountains out of the crown chakra, etc etc), so I was able to relax and just groove into it. Seemed stronger than usual, though, almost an overload; maybe the group environment plus a semi-conscious desire to please the teacher made the experience more intense. Oh, and my hands started doing that floaty thing so when I came out of the trance state I found I was sitting there like a Thunderbirds puppet. (See, this kind of thing is why I work solo.)

And I'm getting my Reiki attunement NEXT WEEK! Yeeeeerrrrrsssss! I can't wait.