Writing

I'm embarrassed of my writing. I've hardly submitted anything since the move because when I read back over my old stuff it looks shit. Gahh.

Happy new year.

My resolutions are as follows (in no particular order):

1) Get a job.
2) Get another tatt.
3) Sort out my time management.
4) Work harder at my Spanish.
5) Work harder at my writing.
6) Work harder at my maths.
7) Work harder at electronics.
8) Paint more and generally do more artsy craftsy shit.
9) Really actually sell stuff on eBay this time.
10) Get over my issues with going astral.
11) Work on my micropsi.
12) Stick to my no-cursing people vow, even if they are Fred Phelps.
13) Make music
14) More excercise with bigger weights.
15) Sort out social life.
16) Get bitten by something radioactive.

Still can't get my head round it.

The Grauniad says the tsunami death toll is up to 124,000. Can't comprehend the size of the disaster, all those people, just gone. The worst is not over. Disease, hunger, exposure: it's going to get a lot worse.

I'm not going to get into the contras between the aid given by some western nations and our deadly profligacy elsewhere. You're all growed up, you can do the math.

Happy (belated) hijacked pagan shindig, y'all!

Hope you guys had fun doing whatever it is you do. I had a pretty nice Crimbo: I opened prezzies from home (higlights included a Lovecraft plushy and a box of acrylic paints, which I can't seem to get here--not good ones anyway), and then munched Panettone* and polverone** and watched Buffy Season 4 DVDs with Lurid. Chrismas dinner was salmon*** which I poached in white wine with onion and mushrooms, along with roasties, sprouts ect. Yum.

And Cava. Lots and lots of Cava.



*Panettone: Italian spongy fruitcake made with yeast.
**Polveron: Little powdery biscuits.
***I'm a grownup. I can have fish on Chrismas if I want. Nyahhh.

Just so we're clear...

Myself and Lurid Archive are not going to the UK this year. Our money's okay for festive fun in nice cheap Barna but would turn into pumpkins as soon as we got into Stanstead. 'Tonces, we're staying here and drinking Cava. Anyone in town and wanting to hang should try the usual channels (e-mail, PM, post to my Lj). I promise not to set the dollies on you.

Martin Amis is a fuckstick.

He is a Stick of Fuck.

What? That's always relevant.

Aznar a sleazebag liar, to no one's real surprise.

Aznar's PP party wiped records of crisis meetings after the 11th of May bombings, inquiry told.

Yep, you read that right. All the records are gone, all the backups erased. I mean, erased erased--they got a company in to do this for them so that the data is now completely unrecoverable. Oh, yeah--and they stuck Zapatero's lot with the bill.

Maybe all the war-fetishist numbskulls who still accuse Spain of "cowardice" for voting out the PP in the wake of their shameless attempt to profit from the bombings will shut the fuck up now, but I doubt it.

I have not been writing.

I admit it. Bad wannabe. No biscuit.

Don't really know why. 'Snot like I don't have plenty of time on my hands these days. I'm doing the odd bit: a paragraph here, a couple of lines there, a few revisions of existing stuff. But I'm not really doing it. I'm not doing it in a doing-it flavoured way. Plastic writing.

I'm just having a hard time wresting my mind back from present concerns, such that all my writing go as folow...

Ragnar Orcslayer laid aside his mighty blade, FrostFang, which had cost him many hundreds of gold pieces but which would totally be worth it in the long run, and wiped the sweat from his eyes. "The fight is won!" he boomed. "Now for the spoils!" Stepping over to the first Orc, he skillfully removed its armour which would fetch a bob or two down the second hand armour stall. "Ah, HA!" he barked triumphantly, snatching a gold medallion from the neck of a dead foe, "NOW I shall go forth and defeat the evil lord Ovah-Derrapht!"

I so painfully need a job.

Happy B-day, Lurid!

We're going to go an make Lasagne in a minute. Lurid's not much for cake. He said he didn't want a big fuss so I shan't make one, just Lasagne.

I turn 31 tomorrow and I want to do summink Fun. It's times like this I miss London; it would be nice to be within lurching/wobbling distance of the Devvie about now. As we're living in town I ought to find the Barna equivalent.

I'm happy.

I had a go of pebble-dashing today! It was great, first mixing up the special cement in a big rubber bucket with a king-sized cake-mixy thing, then smearing it all over the walls with various implements that I only know the Castillian names for (sorry) and then chucking gravel made from real marble at it. Ace! Everyone should do pebble-dashing at least once, it rocks. And they gave us all a cake.

Stuff like this, involving special fancy coloured cement and stucco and stuff, is taught over at another site, not the place I'm usually at. I find it noteworthy that on both sites, there is a profe called Ángel.

Same old, same old...

Not much to write about really. Ummm... it's gone a bit cold here. I'm doing okay with the course, it's all going pretty well. I like the site. It's mostly lots of pretend bits of houses, random kitchens and bathrooms standing by themselves as people tile and re-tile their interior and exterior surfaces. A spiral staircase winds up towards nowhere, a gatepost stands by the cement mixer like a sentinal. Faux Egyptian murals vie for space with stone cladding, painted saints gaze warily out from inside half a pretend church.

I had another go of the cement mixer yesterday.

Plinggggg.

I am very very twangy and wound up today.

Things started badly, waking up from a long and peculiar dream involving:

1) Being forced to sit through a stage musical of LOtR (it really sucked and putting Gandalf in Elton John glasses was a dumb idea).

2) Finding that I had to perform a trapeze act about 100 feet in the air with a swimming pool instead of a safetey net. There was a sword in the swimming pool and I was supposed to swoop down and grab it up and do all swordy stuff on a trapeze. I tried to explain that I could not, in fact, do any of these things and that I was terrified but the showman wouldn't let me off because he'd already had posters printed.

3) Shopping on a long high-street where all the shops pretended to be shut, just to piss me off. I finally crept up on one and pounced before the shutters could come down. All I wanted was bread, cheese, and water; all they had for sale was cheap schnapps. But really, really, they were just hiding the water behind the schnapps! I bought several bottles of fizzy water while various staff members cursed me in Spainsh, paying with black-painted fingernail clippings and a pocket-watch.


Real life proved barely more comprehensible. There was meeting with the rest of the women on my course so the organizers could see how we were getting on. Fist people started bickering, then they started snapping, and then there was this full-fledged barney, the kind where people only stop yelling to fill up snotrags. And I'm sitting there totally fucking unable to work out what they were all yelling about, because fast and many new words and shouty people and ARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH. For a full fucking hour.

It seem that the Powers That Be are still playing the Make Mordant Deal With Scary Scary Things That Scare Her A Very Lot game. I am very greatful for the opportunity to grow and develop and toughen up or whatever I'm supposed to be doing but I would like a sabbatical now.

Home again, home again...

Finally got a landline in my flat. YERRRRRSSS. At last, I can have a shufti at all those NSFW linksthat have been taunting me since the move.

Important note: I'm getting rid of the bloody stupid comments system as soon as I can be arsed to fix my template, because I'm sick of not being able to reply to lovely lovely comments from nice people. Please use the Blogger comments in future.

Other than that... life's okay. I'm a bit miz because I won't be able to get back to the UK for Crimbo and I miss people. I'm still flat broke and nobody's replying to my English teaching ads stompy stompy sulk sulk stompity stomp.

On the plus side I seem to rock at laying floor tiles. Also I have a hard hat and you don't, nyahhhh.

Nothing much.

Still applying for teaching posts (as well as the other stuff). Still laying floor tiles. I'm getting quite good at floor tiles.

I want to update the green book soon but I just haven't been in the right headspace. Too... twitchy. When I get twitchy, I start second-guessing myself--was that me, was it them, does it matter?--and then I have to go and make a cup of tea. Obviously one should be doing more trancework but when one has been skiving on one's trancework, one is loth to re-engage. It's like a neglected crisper drawer. Will there be nice or at least edible veggies? Will there be a horrible mushy slurry of gone-off yuck? The seeker can only find peace when the crisper drawer is finally opened; the seeker knows that the longer the crisper drawer is left unopened, the greater the likelyhood of horrible mushy slurry. In this way the fear of horrible mushy slurry breeds more horrible mushy slurry.

I must open that crisper drawer this very night. Pray for me.

RAHHHHH!

Hey, you! Petty fleshy readership! You are all very tiny and laughably breakable. I mock you with much hearty chortling.

I'm in a really good mood today. You know, not just a lalala, everything's quite nice actually good mood but one of those extra-spiffy, take on puny WORLD moods. What have I been worrying about? I'm too fabuloupolous to worry. It can only be a matter of time before petty mortal world realises that it was put here to amuse and support Me in the manner to which I would like to become accustomed. I laugh at its tiny attempts to resist.

There is no escape from ME.

¿Que significa..?

Spent this morning trying to do this personal evaluation thingy in Catalan. Fuuuun, since I don't speak Catalan and had to keep asking my teacher what all the words meant. And then not knowing what the Castillian translation meant. And feeling like the world's biggest twonk.

I'm doing okay with the course so far. I can't communicate as well as I'd like but I can understand what's being said to me. Tomorrow is the last day of the theory/evaluation/team-building part of the course. On Monday I will actually get to paint stuff. Strangely joyed up about the idea.

I've been punting out emails to language schools in the hopes that someone will overlook my CELTAlessness and take me under their wings. I liked teaching and I think that I could be good at it if I had another go, but my confidence took a big knock over that course. I'm running on a success deficit. I need to do something right soon.

In which the author once again seeks refuge from the horrors of the world.

Relentless self-absorbtion is the fluffy blue blankey which I pull over my head on dark dark days. Joooooiiiin meeeee. It's bliiiiiiiisssss.

Hokayyyy... Got a friend coming to stay for a whole week. Yay friendy goodness! Also, I blew off the Spanish course in favour of a free (Mmmmm, freeee) painting-and-decorating course. Turns out the Catalan govt runs free vocational courses for unemployed and marginally employed mujers such as my good self.

I'm having another stab at the teaching profession after running in to one of my fellow students from the TEFL course, who says she's never even been asked about quals., and I'm trying to build some social links with the other spooky/magicky people in the area. Which is nice.

No, seriously, fuck.

I just wish I was surprised, that's all. Sure, there was a tiny corner of my being which clung to the folorn hope that the other douchebag would get in, the douchbag who is at least not commited to cramming every fetid prejudice he harbours into the Constitution and tearing up Roe vs. Wade, but I never really took it seriously.

Don't get me wrong here, though. Unsurprised does not mean unfurious.

What the hell is wrong with you people? Oh, sure, nation after nation can be put to fire and the sword, your jobs can be flushed down the toilet of greed and capitalist profligacy, your sons and daughters can be drafted off to fight and suffer and die in hideous, evil wars--but so long as they don't go getting abortions or doing any of that gay stuff, hey, you're cool!

Jesus Christ, people, you may be strangers to tolerance, mercy or charity but are you also utterly devoid of any sense of self-preservation? This creature you've elected is going to fuck up your country beyond your worst nightmares. America is so fucked right now and it doesn't even know it. It's like a paralysed drug addict, mind swimming with happy happy dreams while Bush and his grinning crew line up to pull a train on its hindquarters.

Fucking moronic Bush-voting dickheads. You'd vote for a nuke in a hat if fucking Fox News told you to. You deserve everything you get.

FUCK.

I've got to stop writing crap.

For the last couple of months, pretty much everything I have written has been crap. It's either been derivative or sloppy or confusing or just plain crap. This bothers me. I want people to give me money for writing and people are weird about giving you money for crap writing. It's this whole big prejudice against the writerarily challenged. 'S not fair.