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.

This just in: Another quick lesson on how not to be an arsehole all the time.

Your behaviour has consequences TOO, you pack of self-involved, petty-minded, arrogant gits. God, if I had to pick one thing out of the list of things I hate about you lot, it's your relentless commitment to ludicrously unbalanced double standards.

You spend so much time whining about the terrible effect that every tiny weeny slight (real or imaginary) has on your delicate emotional equilibrium: How angry that stuck up bitch made you when she gave you the brush-off, how that guy really hurt your feelings when he snapped at you for strolling out in front of his car whilst staring vacantly at a chipped nail, how pissed you were when that stupid shop assistant told you that their checkout was closing, how insulted you were when that barman asked you if you wanted diet coke (do you look like you need to drink diet coke? Was he calling you fat?) how disappointed you were when people ho-hummed your latest sixteen-page poem about suicide/revolutionary manifesto/list of reasons why beer is better than women/list of reasons why chocolate is better than men, etc, etc.

Now, how about extending some of that incredible sensitivity to the rest of the fucking world? Let's play a little game. Let's pretend that someone has just done to you what you've done to them.

Let's pretend that you've come out for a nice drink with your mates, and now some guy you've never met before has plonked himself between you and them and for the past hour has been talking non-stop about his tedious life. You've had to remove his hand from your upper thigh about a dozen times. You've tried to put him off nicely but he won't take a hint, so you've got a choice between either going home or telling him to get lost in a way he will understand.

Or let's pretend that you're working behind a bar. It's a shit job with shit wages, but you try to make the best of it and you're always pleasant to the customers. Now some neurotic woman whose earrings probably wiegh more than her entire body is chewing your ear off at the top of her lungs because when she asked for a coke you asked her if she wanted diet or regular, and your boss is looking at you like you're the one with the problem.

Or let's pretend that there's this individual with a sixteen-page revolutionary manifesto (or poem, or list of reasons why beer is better than women, or list of reasons why chocolate is better than men, whatever). And this person is insisting that you read their sixteen page poem (manifesto, list, whatever). And even after you've read the list (poem, manifesto) and told them you're really not that interested, they come back with more. And they won't engage in any kind of discussion, and they won't just back off and leave you alone, and then they start telling you how stupid/insensitive/humorless you are because you're not yumming down their sixteen pages of bumf with the uncritical eagerness of a dog who's just found a fresh cowpat.

See how simple it all is, when you look at it like that? It's called empathy. You acheive it when you have the intelligence to realise that other people have feelings, drives and desires, just like you! Isn't that funny?

Now, if you've read more than a couple of entries you'll know about the whole me-being-a-nutsack thing. You'll know that I'm obsessive, deeply paranoid, irritable, and narcissistic. I've got a massive superiority complex (although that's largely your fault: I wouldn't feel so superior if you lot didn't all suck), I'm a collosal pervert-- oh, and there's the hating of everyone, mustn't forget that. If all of that wasn't enough, I'm a Goth.

I am, in short, a total creepazoid. But despite all these things, there's actually a limit as to how creepy I will allow myself to be when I'm around other people. I don't stand in supermarket queues muttering sexual slurs between gritted teeth. I don't reduce bar-staff to tears because they ask me if I want diet fizzy-pop. I don't scream "Clean your bloody ears out!" if someone asks me to repeat something. I try to show some fucking restraint.

Now, the next time you're in the middle of a lengthy whinge about how [insert incident here] has ruined your [insert time interval here], and has furthermore reinforced your low opinion of [insert gender, race, profession, or other social group here], maybe you could take a quick reality check. Enjoy a refreshing whiff of introspection. Take a quick ride on the consideration choo-choo.

Pillocks.

"Drawing pictures of mountains that look like bumps..."

Had my first Spanish lesson on Monday night. Me llama Mordant Carnival, yo soy Dependienta. Bet you're all jolly impressed now, eh?

Cracked open the novel for the first time in a couple of days. I'm not not writing enough. On a day like today when I've had a ten-hour shift, I should be aiming for a minimum of three hundred words; I think I wrote about three (unless you count a few lines of notes). Some days it's even worse. I've just got to my first big alien city and I'm sort of stuck. Well, not stuck really, but a lot of the easier make-it-up-as-you-go-along stuff is done for the time being, leaving me with the background of the fantasy world to fill in-- culture, maps, social structure, all that sort of thing. Arrgh. Ordinarily of course I'd be well up for that (nothing I like better than drawing cute li'l maps and inventing ridiculously overblown titles for wicked despots), but I'm having trouble making these guys ring true in my head. I wish I hadn't learned all that history and reality and shit when I was a kid. It just makes everything more difficult. It's hard to do all the nice romantic pseudo-mediaeval stuff that fantasy thives on when you're acutely aware of just how un-romantic the real mediaeval stuff was. Ho, hum. What it is to have an inner child that's more cynical than the outer grownup.

Still, tomorrow is my day off. I'm sure I can profitably employ the time in fleshing out my imaginary friends. Sometimes there's nothing to be done except to smack your head against that writer's block until the blood flows and you see The Colours.

Toxic.

Finally finished my piece on the Dow/Union Carbide/Bhopal thang this evening. Y'know that phoney-looking press release that's been doing the rounds? The one you all thought was a hoax? I hate to break this to ya'll, but it's the real deal. It's an actual factual press release from the bowels of Dow and they're proud of it. So I decided that having promised a big ranty thang for a certain webzine and having promised myself a big anti-Dow rantfest, I could kill two birds with one big satisfying stone.

Jesus wept. Remind me to write about stuff that doesn't make me want to kill people in future.

Researching that shit had me wanting to stroll into the Dow head office with many big guns and just blow the living daylights out of as many people as I could before the SWAT team brought me down. Actually, check that-- I'd like to move all these souless fucking breadheads and their spoilt bastard families out into the shanties round Bhopal and see how they like it. See how they like watching their children grow up on a diet of poison. See how they like getting cataracts before they hit forty. See how they like fighting for every breath of polluted air. See how they like watching their grandkids born so deformed they can't even survive. See how they like...

No, sorry, sorry, supposed to be all healy and snuggly and good vibey now. Me goooood little chaoette. Whatever.

Book-larnin'

Me'n the bloke finally bit the bullet and signed up for a Spanish Beginners' course. Time is marching on, and despite having made tentative inroads into Spanish For Dummies I'm not making much progress. This'll give me something to shoot for, plus I'll have a Lurid-shaped study-buddy to poke me along when I get slack.

Also I've signed up for a course in Reiki and Seichem. Hopefully this will give me some much-needed magicky focus and put an end to the increasingly unsubtle hints that the forces of synchronicity have been dropping in my direction. Okay? Learning the healing now! Look! Reiki course! You can stop sending the freaky dreams and the sliced fingers now!

Boggle.

Finally saw Donnie Darko yesterday. I'm so disappointed. Everyone's been going on about how great it was for months, and I wanted it to suck so I could put on a superiour tone of voice while telling you all how bad it was. Instead, it had to go and be all cool and stylish and moving and good and stuff.

Not sure why people were talking as though it was this huge mind-warping headrush, though. It was good and all, but it wasn't boggle material (unless you're one of these people who found 12 Monkeys incomrehensible because you can't get your tiny rigid brains around the concept of time-travel). It's not that I don't understand the concepts or the ideas. I mean, maybe it's because of all the stuff I experience with the epilepsy,maybe I'm missing something, but I don't seem to get blown away by the things that other people seem to find mind-expanding boggle material.

"Wow! Is-he-isn't-he paranoid scizophrenia! Mindjob!"
"Um, no. Not hugely."
"No, but, he's mad by society's rules but all the stuff he's seeing, yeah, might be real!"
"Yeah. And?"
"No, you see, he's diagnosed with a mental illness but, right, get this, the stuff he's seeing-- it might be true!"
"Yeah. I got that part. Still mindjobless."
"Oh. Okay then. Time travel eh? What a mindjob!"

Gordon Bennett.

"My mouth tasted like cold peanut butter. I felt a burning in my head and my left leg, and I jumped against the straps," according to Willie Francis, a 17-year-old who survived his execution in 1946. Francis was successfully executed a year later.

But that's okay, right? He was a murderer, and we're not. It's cool for us to kill people.

Mordant Carnival is not a role model.

I've been checking my referral log and it has come to my attention that some of you younger people have seen fit to add me to your blogrolls. You worry me, you really do. It's bad enough if I know you personally, but now completely unknown teenagers have started sticking my URL in their sidebars. It's weird to see my nomme de net hanging around next to blog entries like: "10-1-03: School totally sucked today. I was all, like, math, whatever, then Darren said hi and I was all OMFG!!!! Egg and chips for lunch. Totally rank."

This sick and disturbing practice must stop. I am everything you should be avoiding, carcass kids. If you have any ambition in your tiny little minds it should be to do whatever you can to not end up a bitter and irascible creature of few morals and debatable sanity, lurching from crisis to crisis via boredom and compromise, detesting everyone you meet on general principle.

Oh, and I hate kids. Sod off and sniff glue or something.

Rant-fu

I have lost my will to rant.

Time was when I could just pop open a txt file and rant away about whatever happened to be getting my goat at that particular moment in time, pouring it straight from my heart and out into the world, black-laquered fingertips dancing over the keys, ratting and raving and setting the world to rights.

I can't seem to do it anymore.

I'm trying to write thins thing about that goddamn Dow Chemicals press release (you know, the one about how their hearts just bleed over Bhopal, they really do, but money is just more important that a few hundred thousand dead people who ain't even Caucasian, let alone shareholders). And reams and reams of stuff have now been written: figures, facts, numbers, details, analysis, legal shit. Everything, in fact, but what I actually sat down to write. I'm all blah blah blah when I wanted to be RGHGHGHGHGHGHHHH!

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to check a couple of facts before you fly off the handle and make a moron out of yourself. It's just that somewhere along the line, the important stuff, the energy, the feeling, has gone astray amidst a welter of detail. Gotta find a space between the lab book and the uninformed drivel of Colour Supplement Land ("I don't know what's going on but I'm convinced I feel very strongly about it! Whatever it is!"). Gotta find a way to unite the brain with the bile.

It must and shall be done.

Viral.

I'm sick. I actually got Friday off because I was so blatantly oozy. My chest feels like someone's had a go at it with a cheesegrater and I'm sneezing yellow Krazy Foam.

This isn't a self-pity fest, BTW. I mention it merely because I'm still on the deli-counter at work. Make your own sarnies, kiddies. Bwahahahahaaaaakoffkofffkofffffhrrgh...