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.

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...

Say you want a resolution.

I've been having a bit of a think about what this site is for. Other people's criticsm has never bothered me ("Adolscently angsty and self-indulgently cynical"? Yeah. That's right, fucker. Watchoo gonna do about it? Eh? Eh?) but after the break, I came back and read the last couple of months over and realised that I'm starting to sound like someone I really don't like very much.


When I first started journalling, it was about going Oh, look, I can get a site and write on it every day if I can be bothered. Then it was about venting my permenantly overloaded spleen. Now... I'm not bored, exactly, but a new direction would be good.

It's like this, see: my job sucks. I'm tired. I'm epileptic, asthmatic and half-deaf in one ear. I don't have a degree and I'm fucked off with being treated like a second-class citizen because of it. I'm fucked off with bigots, rightwing dickwads, lazy-arsed wannabe revolutionaries, racists, sexists and all of you shitheads. Actually, I'm fucked off with everything and everyone*.

But see, that doesn't matter. It's small stuff. The world is full of crap, crap like you wouldn't belive, so starting now-- and I mean NOW-- things are gonna change around here. I'm elevating my sights from you itty little fools: the self-satisfied wankers, the smug rich so-and-sos who jude a person's worth by what kind of car they drive, the petty little gits who spend their time fishing around for any nibble of attention they can get. I'll slag you off now and again for old time's sake because everyone needs some light relief, but it's just not that important. My hate is too big for you, too hot and bright and hatey.

Ave atque Vale, tiny fuckbakes. I've got bigger fish to fry.


*Except possibly marmots.

Flash!

Huzzah for days off! Spent the morning installing and tinkering with Flash. Made a dancey blue circle thing and stuff. Can exploding mole-rats be far off? I say NO! There must and shall be exploding mole-rats! RAHHH for EXPLODING MOLE-RATS!

It's probably going to take a while to get the hang of it properly, but I've already worked with Flash a little. I'm trying to think of ideas for cartoons so I've got summink to shoot for. When you're getting to grips with a new medium it's always good to have a pet project to work towards, even if the end result isn't quite what you had in mind. I'm really excited about this, as it goes. It's cool.

It might seem a bit demented to start learing yet another new skill when I've already got so much on the boil, but I really need some pointless and fun thing to muck about with. Everything else (writing, studying, singing) is such a big deal, even if I genuinely enjoy it. If I'm going to avoid doing things that I should be doing, then at least my avoidance tactic can be something semi-constructive. Beats getting all obsessive over computer games, anyhow.

Life imprisonment for publishing Internet article

Aren't you glad you don't live in the Maldives? (Via Amnesty International. )

Twelfth Night.

First day back at work today. Not too bad. Thought I'd be more bored/anxious/generally cheesed off than I was. I've been sucking up shamelessly to Fotamecus, which might explain why it sucked less than I expected. Everyone else was complaining about how long the day seemed, but I found it was okay. My consciousness has been on a slightly different level than what I think of as "normal" for the last few months, something I only realised recently.

I've abandoned sigils as a way ov moving everything forward, and gone back to affirmations. I write my goals out,like so:

I, Mordant Carnival, will complete and publish a novel

I, Mordant Carnival, will get a job I like

Each affirmation is repeated fifteen times a day. The guy who does Dilbert swears by 'em.

"The radical Goth trend has become a contradictory product of bullshit in its purest form", according to the Insta sentence generator for the obnoxiously hip.

Stuff.

I had an okay break, apart from some stuff I don't really want to put on a public blog as it involves other people. Both me and the bloke were sort of viral and blehh so it was fairly quiet, but we did mamage to catch up with some mates. It was nice just slouching around, watching vids or downloading stuff off Kazaa. Watched loads of Tenacious D and I'm now pretty much up-to-date with BtVS 7. And I got a Bagpuss mug and Flash and GIN and loads of cool stuff, so Rah.

Oh, and write? Did I ever. Once I got over a brief bout of writer's block I worked on my novel pretty much every day. I've put a serious dent in the opening chapters, and licked the outline into shape. I also spent some time getting to know my characters, which I hadn't managed to do before; now I know who the story is about, who we're focusing on. I was also kicking around some promising short story ideas with Lurid which I hope to write up soon. I've got a couple of good articles on the boil, one about how revolting you people are and one about the Dow Chemicals press release (which should be finished today). All-in-all, a good festive season.

But now it's over. I've got an eight till six shift on Monday, and part of me is actually hoping for a bout of pneumonia.

I'm BAAAAAAAAAACK!

Didja miss me? Didja? Course you did. For some reason the PC where I was staying wouldn't let me to log on to Blogger, so I took an enforced yet much-deserved break.

More soon.

Mummy's Curse unravells in a big pile of manky bandages if you check the figures, says BMJ

Yes, that's right. Someone has sat down and conducted a statistical analysis of Tutankhamen's supposed curse. I love people like this.

(Via Neil Gaiman's journal.)

Runic Hands

Further to the events detailed here and mixmage's comments thereon, I decided to look into a runic interpretation of the minor injury to my right pinky. For those of you who've not come across mixmage's Runic Hands concept, here's some edited highlights:

Elder Futhark = 24 runes = 3 groups [aettir] of 8 runes.

human hands = 8 fingers = 8 groups [digits] of 3 sections [phalanges] = 24 sections...

*Use location of short-term injuries/blemishes [minor burns/scratches/etc] as runic divination. Itching in digit section as "HEADS UP" early warning.
Use Location of permanent scars [eventmemoryloop?] for "life-path" divination/history examination.

An illustration can be found here.

Using mm's layout, the injury would relate to Laguz. My runcraft is rusty enough to inflict tetanus-- I had a bit of a falling out with the associated pantheon a few years back and sort of let it slip, plus I don't use tools for my divinatory stuff that much these days (unless you count Google). However, I took a quick shufti round various rune sites. Superficially at least, this site seemed the most resonant (relevant?).

From here:

Letter : L
Meaning : Water
Element : Water
Deity : Njord, Baldur, Nerthus
Galdr-sound : llllllll

From various other places: Well, the rune Laguz is associated with Water so most of the sites went on about renewal, rebirth, Age of Aquarius, alla that sloppy stuff; the flipside of course being floods, the dangerous ocean that must be braved in order to gain sustenance, life, new territories.

It's also associated with leeks. Stop laughing! Look, the whole onion family is very important in herbal medicine and it's not funny! There was this thing where if a warrior had an abdominal wound you fed him garlic and... oh, why do I bother?

Cream crackered.

Today sucked. Every other customer that came in seemed to be soused to the eyeballs. I swear, I think I actually got slightly tipsy just breathing in the fumes. The manager is off so everything was all arse-about-tit. And some bloke said my labret was stupid and there was a humungous delivery and cleaning and I had to make up a huge stack of rolls and that made me have to stay late and my feet hurt and rghghghghghh. (Mad props to Fotamecus for speeding the day up. Long may he kick Chronos' backside.)

Anyhow. It's over for a couple of weeks. I get to go to London, see my mates, kick back. I still haven't seen Donnie Darko, y'know.

all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girlall work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girlall work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girlall work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl all work and no play make Mordant a dull girl

I'm going to regret this in the morning...

..but then I regret everything in the morning. That's what mornings are for.

Okay, so here's the thing: You know the whole magick deal, yeah? Then possibly you know how you can be a fully-functioning magicko without even a smidge of innate psychic ability. You may also know how I always said I fell into that particular category.

I was fibbing. A bit. Nearer the truth would be to say that I am horribly horribly suggestable, and have therefore been studiously ignoring any and all psychic sensations in case I happened to be deluding myself. There was always the thing with the tarot: when I read tarot for someone, I get flashes of their future. I also get hugely tired, which is why I only read tarot once in a blue moon these days.

Just lately I've been getting these flashes: tactile and visual sensations relating to individuals of my aquaintance. They've been strong enough for me to make cautious enquiries of the "this might not mean anything to you, bu-u-u-t..." variety, and every single time I've been right.

This is new, and disturbing. Maybe it'll wear off, or maybe it's a case of a blind squirrel turning up a few nuts. Just thought I'd mention it.

Ultralove Ninja

You have to watch this or I won't be your friend, ever.

(From the 'Lith, natch.)

In which the diarist goes postal.

Mordant Carnival's eyes narrowed. From her vantage point on a hill of snow, she saw a rotund white figure approaching. Her heart beat a little faster-- the quarry was in sight. She took careful aim with the shotgun and fired, both barrels. There was a small, localized blizzard. As the flakes settled on the ground, corncob-pipe, button nose and eyes made out of coal dropped on top of the sad little heap.

Mordant smiled grimly. It would take more than the magic in that ol' silk hat to bring Frosty back now-- assuming they could ever find it.

The noise had attracted some unwanted attention, however. A group of diminutive blue creatures were scurrying up the hill. Mordant dropped to her belly behind a snowdrift, waiting.

"What the smurf was that?"
"I don't know, but it was smurfing loud!"
"I don't like this. One minute we were smurfing in our winter wonderland, the next--"

Mordant stood up. The shotgun again? Nah. This was a job for the M16. Pieces of rubbery blue flesh spattered across the pristine whitness of the snowfield. Mordant paused, scanning the hillside. Had she got them all? No! A single survivour was wheezing his way up the hill, oblivious to the fate of his fellows. The lone gunwoman waited until she could see the white of Papa Smurf's beard. Their eyes locked.

"Oh, smurf--" was the last thing the evil blue geriatric said before a short burst of automatic gunfire turned him into a stain on the ground.

By now it was growing dark. Drawing her PVC trenchcoat more tightly around her she strained her eyes, trying to see if anyone else was coming. Out of the dark sky, a single spark of red appeared. Mordant pulled an antique Derringer from her stocking top and aimed a couple of inches above the light. There was a satifying thud as the reindeer plummeted to the ground. Santa would just have to get foglights, she reflected.

A satisfied smirk flickered across Mordant's face. The night was young, and she hadn't even broken out the grenades yet. She cocked her Smith & Wesson and waited for the red, red robin to come bob, bob, bobbing along.

61 hours.

That's how long I'll have worked between my last day off (Thursday) and the first day of my hols. Only three more ten-hour shifts to go. Yeah, I'm going on about work a lot lately. Yeah, I know your job sucks too. Hard cheddar.

I'm tired, tired in a strange, distant kind of way. The world looks cold and glittery and odd, unreal. The days sort of blur into one another; it's getting harder to differentiate between stuff that happened this morning and stuff that happened last week. I know what I had for breakfast today, but only because I've had the same thing for the last few days: a marmite sandwich. Brown bread. I get paid the minimum wage: six Euros and thirty-five cents an hour (in English money that's about four pounds ten. One Euro is roughly the same as one American dollar, I think).

Bottle of coke, bleep. Loaf of bread, bleep. Chocolate bar, bleep. After a while the world is just one big barcode. When there's no customers around I clean, or stock shelves. Walking home, I feel robotic, corroded.

Yet I'm still writing. By the end of the day I'm dog-tired, freezing cold and hungry as a hunter, but I spend that last interminable half-hour dreaming not of a hot meal or a cosy bed but of popping open one or other of the documents I'm working on, the various novel fragments, an article, anything. When I get indoors I don't fire up the microwave, I fire up the PC.

I think I may be losing my mind.

Ooh, get her.

Betty Woo's got a new weblog, and very nice it is too: Or.Kill.Me

Had.

I had an eight till one shift yesterday (Sunday), right? And I was all tired and hungover and generally out of it. During the course of the morning a couple of people seperately told me that I'd given them the wrong change, that they'd given me a note of x denimination and had recieved change for a note of y denomination, with x being less than y. They were shirty and aggressive about it; there was much irritable brandishing of change and a general suggestion that yours truly was a little reduced in the hat department. So I gave them the damn money.

I gave them the damn money because they acted like they should have it. I gave them the damn money because they leaned in over the counter, because they barged and pushed and held up the queue, because they talked to me like an idiot and that made me feel like an idiot so I assumed that they were right and I was wrong.

You'd think I'd never seen a David Mamet film, wouldn't you?

This morning, my supervisor told me that the till from yesterday was short. We looked everywhere, but there was no sign of the money. Which means that those guys from yesterday pulled a scam. Ordinarily it wouldn't have worked-- ordinarity I'd have rung for the supervisorand had her come and check my till to see if it was over what it should be. Ordinarily. But it was Sunday, I hadn't had enough sleep, the shop was busy, and I fell for it.

Now, I don't know if you know this but when you pull a scam like that, the loss is not painlessly absorbed by the Corporate Entity that you have so boldy robbed. The money comes out of the member of staff's wages. In this case, mine.

I don't know who I'm more fucked off with, the con-artists or myself. The moral of this story, kiddies? Never let anyone intimidate you into doing anything. Trust your own judgement.

(Oh, and never rip off a mage with a foul temper...)

RIP FIST.

Never been, never gonna go now, never really felt the need. However, I feel that I just had to say WHAT THE BLOODY HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE PLAYING AT, YOU BUNCH OF HOMOPHOBIC PILLOCKS? I mean to say, even if you don't approve of the concept... what was the point? Hey, look, there's nothing going on in Safe London except a child murder or several, let's go and close down a club in case gay people have sex in it.

Wankstains.

I leave the last word to bengali/plums/umeboshi:

People, poor innocent people, who manage to accidentally find their way to places that are never advertised, then along dark alleys, down three flights of stairs, past alert security, and suddenly, mysteriously find themselves surrounded by perverts.

Fuck Off.

Amen.

Okay.

Right. I'm going to Spain in a few months. Another move, another starting over. However, this time I will be prepared...

"We must be nothing less than fabulous."

First impressions are where it's at. I've always relied on my silver-tongued charm to sway an audience. That will no longer be possible when I am Incomprehensible ExPat Woman. Ergo self-expression by other means, mostly sartorial. I can't afford to buy tons of cool clothes but I did bring quite a lot of clothes-making gear. Time to get creative.

Bod-mod is my buddy. I must and shall invest in more peircings/tatts. I want to depart for Barca with lugholes like shower-curtains.

Confidence building is a must. Coz I'm such a shrinking violet, me.

Strengths, playing to. In the abscence of academic quals, a good portfolio of work seems like a plan. Much writing, painting, drawing and sundry noisemaking shall ensue.

General skill brushing-upping. You never know what's going to come in handy.

Other stuff as and when I think of it.

(And if all else fails, there's always this... The I Can Eat Glass Project)

Tired and Emotional

I'm starting to get used to the fact that I'm probably not going to do half the things I planned to do while I'm in Ireland.

I was going to hang around on windswept cliffs and let my Titian locks blow about my porcelian complexion while I waited for inspiration to strike. However, my busy schedual and the fact that I don't actually have a porcelain complexion and Titian locks, or indeed any sort of locks, militates against this. And my face gets all chapped when it's windy. And it hasn't really stopped raining here for weeks. So that's out.

I'm supposed to be learing Spanish, but my Spanish For Dummies book is gathering dust on the shelf because I'm so tired when I get in from work I can't think straight. Ditto writing, singing, painting and everything else. Well, I mean obviously I'm writing. I can't stop. It's like sneezing or something, it just happens. However, I'm not really producing anything you could call coherent, nothing I can send off to a publisher.

And I'm stuck with this job. See, after Christmas, there's only going to be another couple of months or so during which I can reasonably be working full-time, ten weeks at the outside. Which means I can't really get another job, because by the time I start I'll be about ready to stop again. I wouldn't mind really but when I get to Barca I'm going to have to get a job in a bar or something, which will be more of the same. It's unlikely I'll get anything particularly good out in Spain because I don't speak the language and I don't have a degree.

Which is a bit depressing, really. If I'm realistic, it's starting to look like I'm going to be doing this kind of work for... well, for ever. Certainly I can write, certainly there are things I could be doing to improve my situation, but when am I going to find the time or the energy? People keep giving me breezy encouraging suggestions, but when I remind them that-- HELLO! I don't have a degree! And I'm going to be living in a country where I don't speak the native language! For a year and a half! And I'm not a kid anymore, I'm 29!-- they go sort of quiet.

I know my situation could be much worse, I really do. Counting blessings like nobody's business over here. It's just that the thought of wearing a name-tag for the rest of my life has a rather limited appeal.

Yeah, I know what you (or some of you, anyway) are thinking. "Oh, but she's got a male pard'ner who's working! What's she worried about?"

Well, where to start? First off, I'm an independant sort. I don't like the thought of needing to rely on anyone for anything, because in my experience that never ends well. Secondly and hugely more importantly: I signed up to be a life partener, not a fucking bracket fungus. I don't see any particular reason why a guy should support me just because he's a guy. (I know that in general the situation is not that simple, that there are all kinds of socioeconomic factors swooshing around and complicating every little thing. I'm not in general. I'm me.) I'm a Feminist with a great big hairy capital F, and I reckon that if I'm going to stamp around demanding my Rights I should show a little Responsibility. Which is how come I'm doing these sucktastic jobs instead of whining at my boyf to get himself a job in a bank. True, he does earn more than me, but I think I work longer hours. Plus he's got a career doing something he loves and is good at, while I have... a name tag.

Large or small coffee? *simpers*

Fuck work.

Found out today that I'm going to be working another solid week. Every day they can squeeze out of me between now and my flight date is being squoze.

I'm going to be looking even harder for a better job come the New Year. This bites. I'm working seven days on, two days off and I can't stand it. I want a nice job in a nice shop. There's a shop down the road that sells swords. Really big swords. I want to go and work for the sword-selling shop.

Wahhh.

Ouch.

So much for shopping. Today I was surfing the crimson wave, singing the Ketchup Song, entertaining Aunt Flo, whatever your fave euphemism happens to be, which sort of put me out of action. The week-long overture to the main theme isn't so bad: wanting to kill things most of the time has a certain rough charm once you get used to it. But the cramps? Neh. You can keep the cramps.

You've heard of Realdoll. But haven't you always yearned for a REALHAMSTER?

No? Really? Uhh... I mean, me neither.

Day off.

Or to be precise, two-- tomoz and Thursday. Oh joy unconfined. Me and last week's wages have a date with the Goth shops-- I've worked bastard hard and the Universe owes me a hoody top with an amusing evil-related slogan.

Plus, I'm gonna stock up on spell ingredients. I have most of the bits I need for my Job spell but my glamour is getting a bit threadbare. I want a big chunk of rose quartz to use as the focus for a new one. It's not the most original choice, I know, but I just love rose quartz.

And I must re-shave my head. I let it grow back for a few weeks because it was cold and raining and there were floods and I wanted a job. Now I have all this brown fuzz sticking up from my head at random angles: I have the Bad Hair of Winter Job-Hunting and I don't look like me.

I reckon if I wear a scarf to work, I won't get the sack. If I do then... well, pfft, frankly. With and option on thssszzsszzzppp.

Blood.

The most exciting thing that happened to me today was the moment I sliced open my little finger with a breadknife while cutting a baguette at the deli counter.

Experienced, in no particular order: The moment of disbelief. The cutting sensation an instant before the pain kicked in. The pain itself. My own gasp of shock. The blood welling between my own skin and the polythene glove.

I couldn't see at first how bad it was. I went up to the washroom, tugging off the gloves as I went. I stuck my cut hand under the cold tap, flexing it gingerly to see how bad the damage was. The cut was small but deep, just under the joint. It lipped open as I moved the digit, bleeding freely. I watched it, a narrow little mouth, speaking to me of some essential part of myself that I had somehow mislaid, a shock of the real in the bright desert of a weary ten-hour shift.

Red swirls shaded to pink against the porcelain, faded, were gone. I pressed the cut closed and went kitchenette where the first-aid box was kept, the pain still a low thrum, pulsing. Sliced, I was alive again.

And I got to wear one of those special blue plasters, too. Kewl.

My brain is turning into potato salad...

...and my next day off isn't until Wednesday. I'm down for the eight till one shift at the Local Shop tomorrow morning, which is a bit of a bugger coz I'm going out tonight. I've got to take it, though. My place likes to have a week's notice if you're not going to be available and there's no chance of pulling a sickie. Neeeever mind. I got that thing in UpsideClone, so I spent today feeling like a writahh, dahhlings, instead of a till-jockey. Hope it's quieter than today. Today was pure murder: every single person in the county was out Christmas shopping and they all converged on the Local Shop for ciggies and parking permits. And Vodaphone top-ups. And my till broke. And they shouted at the Chinese girl I work with and that pissed me off because she's really nice and she tries so hard and everyone's so bloody horrible to her. And rghghghghh.

I figure it's like this: I can either let this job and its attendant cruddyness grind and crumple me until I'm concertina-ed into a little cuboid of skinless misery, or I can focus on the small pleasures and treat it as a learning experience, all grist to the writaahh'hs mill, dahhlings, and so on and so forth.

Anyhow, in a couple of weeks I'll be winging my way back to the Smoke for Chrimbo, followed by New Year at my folks'. Jet-setter, me. Yerrr.

upsideclone [The Face of The Future]

By moi, again.

My turn.

Now it is my B-day. Rah. I'm 29, if anyone's counting.

I got my first pay-packet for my new job today. Came home from work to a home-cooked meal and discovered that L.A. had got Morrowind for us to play together. So, yay. I'm not going to go out tonight-- we did a whole pub-and-posh-restauraunt-and-pub-again thing last night and two of my mates are chucking an engagement party tomorrow. I need to recharge my batteries a bit.

Still haven't sorted out my TEFL course for next year. I really need to get that fixed up, or I shan't have a place. There's also the whole Reiki thing: I've decided to go for it, probably in the new year. I've sort of accepted that I'll never work as an engineer now. After years of being turned down for jobs because I was too young or too female or because dumbshit personnel officers think epilepsy stops you using a frigging VDU, it's now too late for me to aquire the relevant experience (plus the whole fucking industry seems to be going down the tubes. %I can't think why%). Instead, I'm going to concentrate more on the artistic applications of my electronic knowledge.

My primary ambition remains to make my living as a writer. However, that's hardly going to happen overnight so lining up a productive and ethical sideline/day-job is a priority. The teaching english thang looks good but to work at a recognized school you need a degree, which in my case I have not got. Working as a healer, on the other hand, doesn't seem to require much in the way of formal academic quals and would be ethically groovy. I'll look into it.

Happy Birthday, Lurid Archive!

Yes, it's my fella's B-day. No, I'm not telling you how old he is. (I doubt he's very sensitive about his age but I'll leave it up to him to break the news.) No, he doesn't know I'm doing this and yes, he'll probably be royally embarrassed when he finds out. Bwhahahaha.

(Mine's tomorrow, BTW. I'll be sure and rant about it.)

No-Close Blues

Finally got my act together and shelled out the dough to rid my personal message-board of pop-ups and sundry annoyances. Should take effect in a few days time.

To be honest, I've been pretty close to giving Thee Big Acidic Mudshow a decent burial several times now. There are plentee of decent places to hang out on the net and I wasn't sure that I had anything fresh to contribute. However, there's been just enough interest for me to keep the thing open, and I'm starting to think that maybe something good could come out of it. 'Course, now I've gone and spent money on the sucker I'm going to have to start posting there myself.

P.S.:

You read the blog. You know the rules. The next time-- the very next time-- you use the phrase "D'you want fries with that?" or any other crap-job-related cliche to humiliate someone in my presence, you're getting hexed. Flipping burgers will look like a weekend in the Bahamas. I mean it.

Rite On.

I like the LBPR, but I can't get on with it these days. It's a bit too monotheistic for me. Not that monotheism is a bad thing or anything, I just find it a wee bit uncomfortable. And I can't find anything else that's as simple, clean, useful and newbie-friendly. I often use the Vortex Rite, but that's very chaos-specific. So I've decided to write a more general version, something that retains the integrity of the original rite but does not demand a monotheistic approach.

This may take some time.

However. I am a writer. Even if I'm stuck behind a counter eight hours out of every 24, I remain a writer. Writing isn't just about making stuff up, selling pretty lies to publishers, making a fast buck. Writing is creation. If I write a story, it'll get get read and people will like it. If I write a ritual, it might live for decades.

Where credit is due...

Looks like I might be getting a reward for busting this guy who tried to buy 100 Euros worth of Vodaphone time with a nicked credit card. I'm gonna have to go halfsies with another lass who was on tills with me at the time because she phoned the bank while I stalled the guy, but it's still about thirty euros (twenty quid-ish). He was a complete wanker about it, by the way, shoving people out of the queue, implying that I'd tampered with the card and generally being a pillock. He even reached over the till and tried to snatch the card back, with me squealing "No!" and slapping his hand away. I mean, why? He can't use the damn card again anyway! It's been cancelled! You're busted, dude-- now shut up and be busted quietly! Come back when you've nicked a new card so's I can get another reward off the bank.

Pillock.


"Neither am I."

I've finally started to make some headway with one of my putative novels. I've been working on it pretty hard, and I've now got a serious chunk of the sucker under my belt. I had the idea for it months back and I'd started it about a dozen times but it just never gelled. Then last week I started writing some random dialogue, and the whole thing just fell into place. If I can keep the pace up, I should have a first draft by the time I get to Barca. Which would be a Good Thing.

Also, I'm planning a big working soon to get a better job. I've outlined the basic ritual and I'll be getting the stuff together sometime in the next week or so. I'll keep you posted, my minions.