I'm bored.

And we all know how ugly that can get.

My friends have gone home. I'm sulking now. Sulky sulky sulk sulk.

Been on a big shutdown since the festivities, but the ol' writing on the wall says it's time to get back into the swing of things.

UJnconsciously, I've been stripping everything down: no frills, no adornments, just the bones of a life. Even my attire: the same black combat trews, the same t-shirt. No makeup. No jewellery apart from my labret. My hair allowed to grow in will-i-nill-i. Now I think it's time to start rebuilding: Spring is in the air, the trees are in blossom here in Spain (and have been for a couple of weeks).

The guides have been almost silent in my mind. I can feel them, though: waiting for the right moment. I need to get out there, out into the woods and the hills, out into the wild places. It is spring, and I begin again.

If the spooky perverts are listening, and they always are: I appreciate the break but I'd like to get a move on now. We were going great guns before Crimbo, and I think we should get back to it. Ready for the next stage!

Toys and stuff in sidebar.

I put some name generators and stuff like that down in the sidebar so I don't have to spend like half an hour thinking up a name every time I want to write about an Elf who is also a Dragon who is a Cleric. And then another forty minutes thinking up sword names for all the big swords.

Swords should always have cool names, like "FrostFang the BloodSpurttastic Blade of OrcDoom." It's that level of craftsmanship that makes me a superawesome writer of Fantsy, like Tolkien only with strong female characters. Who have swords, nopt just any swords but named swords. That is how you know they are strong. I should write a book about what a superawesome fantasy writer I am, but all you less awesome writers would steal my ideas.

Attention foes!

I have just had a very tasty tortilla de patates* with frozen peas, and earlier today I saw some odd kind of cobwebby nesty things high up in the trees which must be made by some kind of huge spider or something, I don't know, I've never seen them before. Also, the other night I saw this thing that looked a Wild Boar, but I thought Nah, that an't be a Wild Boar, surely. But just now I looked it up on the internet and apparently this place is PRIMO wild boar territory and I probably saw a Wild Boar after all! I am therefore Happy.

Eat the Happiness of Mordant, foebeasts! HA!


*Spanish omelette, not a flour tortilla like you use for fajitas or wraps. With potatoes in.

More on Canned Fish U.

Since the last time I wrote about this, I have heard nada from these guys. Zip. Zilch. So much for "Someone will email you in a day or two." It's been over a week, and no one's contacted me.

Once again: I am trying to give these people money. Give. Them. Money. And they won't let me.

If this doesn't get sorted soon, I'm naming Canned Fish U. I'm going to post a link to the web page, and tell anyone who'll listen what a fucking shambles their institution is. I've fought shy of doing this in the past because I thought they might be petty enough to deny me my qualification, but if they won't give me my qualification anyway then why shouldn't I out them? Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

No comment.

My comments system went kerflooie once too often, so I've replaced it.

Stuff.

Well, it's starting to look like we probably won't be staying in Spain after Lurid's current job runs out. That makes me feel a touch sad, since I've really fallen in love with Barcelona, but what the hey.

So, if we're not staying here then where are we going to go? Dunno, really. Lurid's got a couple of things a-brewing in the UK, one in So'ton, one in Surrey. Permanent, like. I could do with some permenance, TBH. Apart from that there's a place in Boston that needs someone for a year. It would be a touch upheavalish but truth to tell, a year in the States wouldn't sit ill with my plans. I've wanted to see America for a while now; there are places I would like to see and people I would like to visit. It is, as they say, all good.

Unless we end up in Slough or somewhere. That would suck.

This is all very up in the air, obviously but I'm going to check out the employment sitch for unwed S.O.s; don't know if I need some sort of visa or permit or whatnot to work in the USA.

Kid's stuff.

Hmm...

ARGGGHHHH!

Don't! Just don't do that! Don't put on your writer's guidelines that you'll let me hear back in under a month, and then sit on my dead people story for more than two months so I don't know if you want it or if I should send it to someone else or what, and THEN when I go to your site have a thing up saying you're closed for submissions! Now what am I supposed to do? Did you get behind on your reading over Christmas? Is my story in the pile of Things To Read? Or did my story run smack BOOM into a brick wall of close-for-submissionness? Should I contact you, or will you get all shirty and defencive and can my story because I added one more email to the tottering pile of emails you don't have time to reply to? I hate webzines! I especially hate Goth webzines! I hate writing! I hate everything! You're all a bunch of cheese-weevils and I hate you!

One of the sleeping editors just woke up.

w00t! I got a poem accepted! I got PAID! for a POEM! I'm so chuffed. I mean, it's only $2, but it's still poem=money, right?

Worm heads-up: Don't open any attatchments UNLESS you are sure you know what they are...

(...you stupid pillocks.)

'Kay, the latest worm has been doing the rounds for a wee while now but I thought I'd mention it. This bugger is transmitted via a zipped attachment.

It tries to get you to open the attachment by putting a message in the email body that tells you the email was in a non-standard format that couldn't be displayed, so the actual email is being sent as an attachment.

This is what we experts call "a load of bollocks."

The attachment is a WORM, dur-brain. It does all kinds of nasty things. It digs out your address book and has a quick shufti, then sends itself on to all those unfortunates therin. (For the benefit of passing idiots: This means that the worm-laden email can appear to come from someone you know.)

It also seems to have a keylogger involved somewhere, which might let a hacker find out your passwords and user names.

Once again: These are ordinary-looking emails containing an error message which asks you to open an attached file. Attached file is wormy. Do not click on it.

howwasshe.com

When I make shit like this up, people ask me how come I'm so cynical. They ask me where I could possibly have met guys like this. They imply that making shit like this up is a symptom of some secret misandry on my part.

I am not a misandrist. I hate everyone.

And my mind can never be as foul as reality.

Show and Tell.

Why? Why do I do this? What demonic force is it that impels me to overcomplicate every damn thing I do? Oh, sure, I've got loads of little bits and piece of writing scattered up and down my hard drive which could be dusted off and punted out to TSR, but because I'm a collosal toxic perfectionist I think I'll just quickly write write a huge great ten-page story. I know, let's make it about a Doomed Hero who is on a Quest for Redemption, so I've got to explain just what said hero has done that wants redeeming without making the reader hate said hero for doing it, and do all this without too much thinky exposition because it's supposed to be a sword and sorcery type deal with much hacking and magicyness and action, rather than long boring treks through the character's psyche? Oh, and why don't I make it even more interesting by using tons of flashbacks, so I've got to manage changes in perspective and tense and still keep the momentum of the main story ticking over?

Please. Kill. Me. Now.

Fed up.

'S a bit grim out, all dark and foggy. Don't know if it's the weather bringing me down or what, but I'm feeling sullen.

Been looking into those pay-to-click programmes. The idea is that advertises pay them to display their links, and the pay-to-click guys pay you a little bit of money-- between half a cent and five cents, usually-- if you click on the links.

What I bet really happens is, you click on a whole pile of stupid links and they never pay you. In the absence of a proper job, tho', I'm giving it a whirl just to see if I'm right. Doesn't take long anyhow.

Shit, I need a job. I'm getting all kinds of stupid ideas.

Spoke to University of Canned Fish on the phone the other day, about clearing my debt to them and finally getting some kind of acknowledgement that I exist. That yes, I pissed away four years of my life and huge sums of money trudging backwards and forwards to a big aluminium shed full of alkies and useless gits and staff who were too busy looking for their next job to give a fuck if you lived or died, let alone passed or failed.

It's fucking ridiculous. I probably owe them like a fiver or something but the tightfisted little gits won't release my certificate, or even tell what I've got a certificate of, until I cough up yet more cash. Should have done all this before I left England of course, but at the time I was so pissed off I just couldn't bear the thought of giving those bastards one more penny.

Anyhow: I finally got someone to answer the phone (no mean feat, considering that the vice-chancellor is trying to replace all the staff with Ikea coffee-tables by 2008). Unusually for Canned Fish U. the woman on the other end was actually polite & helpful. She even sounded sober. Like everything else at Canned Fish U. the computer system is fucking useless, so she couldn't actually sort anything out right then. However, she did let slip that I've got a Certificate of Higher Education, whatever the fuck that is, when the money finally clears.

She said she'd get someone to email me with details of how to proceed, but I haven't heard anything. No surprise there. Fish U are so fucking useless you can't even give them money without a fight. So far they've ignored at least five letters, a dozen or so phonecalls and a survey form. Look, I'm trying to GIVE you MONEY! See? you know money, don't you? Mon-ey.

Why the fuck am I doing this to myself? Why do I continually struggle to make something of my life when quite clearly the Universe at large intended me to sit in a bush shelter somewhere wearing fingerless green gloves, alternately necking Thunderbird and screaming at imaginary people.

On a lighter note, I am number four on Google for Teeside+smack+heads. That makes it all worth while.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

classesusa.com

Hmmm...

Ragh.

I am in the most unremittingly FOUL MOOD. There is much HATE within me.

It has been building from within for many weeks now, but is coming to a head. Today I decided to make good on my New Year's res. to get better at maths, and began cracking some books. Halfway through a polynomial I started to get this weird semi-flashbacky thing to my university course; all the hate and anger at this bunch of supposedly professional fucking people and how the whole lot of them had, one way or the other, fucked in the EAR my last best hope at turning my life around.

Yeah, I could have worked harder. I could have bullied the technicians, I could have complained when marks were deducted from perfectly adequate work for no reason, I could have done this, I could have done that.

But when...

on the first day of your foundation year you are told that half of you can expect to fail the entry requirements for the degree and the rest of you can't expect to graduate anyway, because Foundation Year oiks never graduate,

And when...

in the first year of the degree proper the vice-chancellor decides that the whole department is to be shut down at the end of the course (and starts selling off books and equipment and sacking staff, and stands up in front of the entire student body and tells them that they're all rejects,

And when...

the Sonic Arts staff think you're a bunch of knucklebrained philistines who shouldn't be allowed to play with their nice shiny musical toys and won't give you the time of day,

And when...

not one but TWO lecturers on your course get booted off your course for incompetence, after a term or two of having to listen to them talking complete shit for hours at a time,

And when...

One of the lecturers who got booted off your course for incompetence is still taking you for lab and marking your labwork,

And when...

You're competing for lab-space and the technicians' attention with guys who break stuff and threaten violence if they don't get their way,*

And when...

your course involves a lot of recording work and your right ear decides to make things really interesting by packing up,

And when...

on the first day of your final year it turns out that the reason you don't understand any of the new maths is because they somehow failed to teach you about a YEAR AND A HALF of vital mathematics, which you will now have to learn in a seperate tutorial, because of course you have so much free time in your FINAL FUCKING YEAR ,

And when...

the one thing you were absolutely convinced you could pull off, your final year project, gets shitcanned because the alkie stoner fuckhead who was supposed to be ordering the parts for it fails to order said parts despite repeated and increasingly frantic requests that he order said parts because he's too busy being an alkie stoner fuckhead,

Then, I think you will agree, IT'S JUST A WEE BIT FUCKING TRICKY!

Six people made it to the end of my course. Six. And one of them was from the year above us. Last time I saw him he was talking about legal action. Good.

I'm increasingly loth to go back into conventional education. What the fuck do I have to show for those four years except ?18,000 of debt? Fuck all. All I got was fucking older. Now I can't even get the crappy insecure dangerous minimum wage jobs that I was getting before I went to Uni. If I don't make it as a writer, my life is utterly and irredeemably fucked.

Can I hurt them with magicks now? Just a little bit?

Writer's markets

Lj community now up.

Fatbeards unite.

Thinking seriously about approaching TSR for writing work. (Stop laughing.) Apparently they will consider new writers on the basis of a short story, after which you might be lucky enough to get picked up on a work for hire basis. (I said. Stop. Laughing.) Probably not very easy to get into this sort of work, but I feel that my fantasy writing is now of a high-enough quality to have as good a chance as any. (STOP LAUGHING! STOP LAUGHING NOW!) There are drawbacks, of course: less creative freedom, being restricted to a certain setting, a certain formula. That might be a good excercise, though, and any kind of writing job is better than the jobs I've been doing.

So my plan for this coming fortnight is to finish at least one piece of travel writing (there's a local church I'm dying to snoop round) and one short fantasy story of the pointy kind. Should keep me pretty busy... (RIGHT! THAT'S IT! I'M GONNA MAKE YOU LAUGH ON THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUR FACE! I'M COMING OVER THERE AND YOU'RE GOING TO DEAL WITH MY SWORD OF SHARPNESS +5!!! I WARNED YOU!)

Home.

Just been tinkering with the new digital camera I got from my folks. It's great. My other camera, the cast-off one, is really a webcam and doesn't even have a preview screen so it's impossible to compose pictures properly; also, the colours are weird, not enough blue. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, because the resulting images are fun to play with, but I would like to take some "proper" photos. I want to submit some pix of Barca to Jade's globalwatch thang, and the other cam just isn't good enough for that.

Took a few pix of the view from the great big window at the back of the flat, just as an experiment. I love the view from my window. Maybe it's the fact that I'm up on the highest level of my building, maybe it's the hills in the distance with the big communications mast up there, picking up signals from all over the sky, but when I stand there and look out I feel airbourne. I feel like I could fly off anywhere, like the sky's the limit. Sure, I know I don't have a job right now (and that when I do get a job it'll probably involve rubber gloves and bog-brushes), but when I look out of my window I realise that doesn't matter. I'm free. Just being in this part of the world is a lesson, an experience, a source of joy. When and if the time comes for me to leave, there'll still be a piece of it locked inside me for the rest of my life. I draw strength from that.

No matter what happens, no matter where I go, I'm free and flying.

Oh, joy unconfined *grimace*.

Ah, the lovely lovely editors must be sobering up: I've just now got the first rejection letter of 2004. Part of me is dejected, of course-- I worked damn hard on that story, and it was pretty much written with this very webzine in mind. I wanted sooo much for them to like it! On the plus side the rejection letter was really sweet: they loved the story, they raved about the writing, and they went as far as to recommend another mag that might take the yarn in question. How scrumptious is that? It was almost as good as an acceptance.

Unfortunately, the zine they recommend isn't accepting new submissions until March this year. Never mind, I'll just send it to one of the other gothic/horror/ghost-type webzines out there... oh, wait. They don't like multiple submissions, and they're all still SITTING ON THE STUFF I SENT THEM LAST SUMMER. Four week turn-around, my foot. I realise that these webzines are usually a labour of love rather than a moneyspinner, but if you pay ten quid a pop for a three thousand word piece of original fiction you either attempt to honour your advertised response time, OR you change your advertised response time, OR you bite the bullet and accept simultaneous submissions. I don't care if your Granny's just died, I want a response!

Work-related maunderings and a self-education rant

Dammit, but I want a job. Only been back a few days and already I'm tearing my hair out (metaphorically speaking, duh) at the thought of my continuing unemployment. When your partener is an academic, lenghty spells of unemployment in Foriegn Parts pretty much come with the territory (a friend's bloke was out of work for 2 years and that was in Australia, and he was all degree-having), but knowing that doesn't help. I like to be up and doing. Currently I'm tracking down electronics-flavoured employers (there are many manufacturing plants out on the way to the airport, including a dirty great Siemens), but I don't hold out much hope. Not much hope either for the English teaching option, since I can't afford to do a TEFL and frankly I'm not convinced my English language sk1llz are up to snuff. GCSE in English (B*) striking fear in no-one's heart.

Thing is, if I want to start an OU course in the autumn (and boy do I want to), I need to be working now or I won't be able to afford it. Arrgh. Also it looks likely now that we'll be heading back to the UK after September, and I really want to get my Castillano match fit before then. Working with Spanish people would help with that, so non-job-having puts a crimp on things. Arrgh argh arghhh.

These, friends, are my Cunning Plans...

Cunning plan A: Work on my travel writing, try and get a foot in the door, so that by the time I return to the UK I have some dosh in the bank and some clippings to wave at editors. If this pans out, of course, I shan't be so frantic about the degree-having coz I'll be doing what I lurrrve. Ditto the short fiction, tho' I feel there's less money in fiction than in articles so no breath-holding there.

If plan A fucks up, then there's...

Cunning Plan B: Get all fluent and things in Spanish, thus paving way for translation work, teaching, ect. when back in UK. If I train myself up to A-level standard I can just barge on in and sit the exam.

Should B gang aglay then there's...

Cunning Plan C: Finally get results off of stupid uni and actually get some work IN THE ACTUAL FUCKING FIELD THAT I HAVE FUCKING TRAINED IN AND STRIVEN FOR AND SWEATED FUCKING BLOOD OVER FOR LIKE SIX YEARS ON AND OFF, YOU KNOW, IF IT'S NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK, IF YOU DON'T MIND, PUUURFUCKINGBLOODYLEASE.

Cunning Plan D: See if I can't knock my art & design skills into some sort of exploitable shape. It's a long shot, but something might come of it.

Cunning Plan E: Some strange synthesis of all of the above. I do not know what form this might take, but suspect that one exists and everyone else knows about it except me.

Cunning Plan F: Invent a religion or something.

Plan G is less cunning. It is the Life of Minimum Wage Machine-Minding and Related Crap. All I need for that is a prescription for Valium and maybe some mild brain damage.

There's also the Novel, but that doesn't really count as a plan. The novel is more what I'm doing everything else for; it's not a living, it's a way of life.

I'm 30. I don't, as I have said, feel old. Yet I'm approaching the cut-off point, the point where the world says that you do not pass go, do not collect a career, do not do anything except resign yourself to being where and what you are, no matter how much you hate it and how far below your weight you are punching, because you will never be given the chance to do anything else.

Nothing new to me. It's only the same old song I've been hearing all my life, ever since I was a kid, ever since I discovered that if you don't have a conventional education there is no place for you in the world, that self-educated people are nothing but worthless freaks. Sit down. Shut up. Get that floor mopped. Get out the way of the real people. Accept mediocrity as your lot. Do not hope or strive, do not do anything except what we tell to do.

Self-education is the way forward. I took over the reins of my own education when I was eleven, and I did an okay job. My big mistake was buying into the hype surrounding conventional education, assuming that I needed their grades, their bits of paper; trusting the lie that if I collected enough bits of paper they'd let me into their world. My biggest mistake was ever handing those reins over to strangers, to a system whose outlook was and remains utterly alien to me and whose concerns are frequently inimical to my own.

See, the Western education system is not about aiding the success of the many, it is about abetting the greed of the few. I wish I could go back in time and say all this to my younger self.

I can't, of course. But I can say it to you. Only you know what you are capable of; only you know what you might be able to achive. Do something for me, right now: Ignore the voices of self-doubt and remembered criticsm for a while. Forget "I can't afford", "people like me don't" and "I'm not good enough"; forget the things they said and the names they called you, stick your fingers in your ears and go "Neener neener neener!" till they're gone.

Just be for a moment. Look down inside yourself, look at the things that thrill and impassion you. See all that you might be, see all the potential locked away inside. If you don't see anything, try again later. Eventually you will glimpse it, that buried treasure, and it will astound you. Grab a little of it to take out to the world. Just a fragment will do for now.

I am currently looking into ways of formalizing my self-education somewhat. I will discuss my findings at a later date. I know it's possible (in the UK anyhow) to barge on in and sit an exam even if you haven't done a conventional course, like a GCSE or an A-level or whatever, so long as you sort it out with the exam board and pay the exam fees and so forth. I'm looking at ways in which I can expand on this principle, if it's possible to pull the same stunt at higher levels. Basically I want to see if it's possible to get a degree without setting foot in another fucking bloody university. (Apart from the OU, I mean.)

Understand: I will win free of the trap I am in. I will make someting of this little life and it will be bigger and brighter than even I can imagine right now. I will walk through the world that has rejected me like a ghost walks through a ceiling. When they shut the door in my face I will find new doors, different doors, better doors; dammit, I will punch a dirty great hole in the wall and wave the rabble on in after me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I saw a cleaning job in the small ads and I want to catch the post.

j0.

Back again, after a longish interval. Ah, bliss. No filthy readers to worry about for at least a few weeks. Decided to give the internet a bit of a break so I could bond with meatfolk more effectively. Internet tends to piss me off these days, and I didn't want to be all pissed off around freinds and family who have 0 to do with pissedoffness.

The hols were good fun, for the most part, but going back to see my folks gave me a lot to think about. Nothing I can really discuss here, tho', as it involves other people who might not be best pleased if they found themselves putting in a cameo turn on my blog.

Hooked up with loads of mates, both real and imaginary but mostly real. Sorry to have missed some of you. Looking forward to seeing Cherry and sleaze again in Feb.

The spooky perverts were a bit quiet. More alcohol and bad food = lower level of magickal consciousness. What I need is a short fast, I suspect, but past experience would suggest that jumping directly from overconsumption to vichy water is... unwise. I'll leave it a week or two.

Not much on the writing front. I tried, but all I have to show for the festive period in that respect is several reams of word-salad. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough. Maybe I was trying too hard. Maybe this is something that happens to everyone sometimes and I shouldn't worry. Maybe I'm doing something totally wrong and should worry like mad. Buggered if I know. I'd ask another writer for advice but writers suck.

ME: I want to be a writer.
WRITER: Writing is hard.
ME: I know. I still want to be one.
WRITER: Writing is really really hard.
ME: Yeah, I heard you the first time. Still want to be one.
WRITER: Well, then you should write.
ME: I do write. I write a lot. Sometimes I get a bit stuck, but--
WRITER: Ah-HA! You don't do the work! If you don't do the work, how can you be a writer?
ME: Look, I'm doing the work. I want to know how to do it better, consistently and successfully. I was wondering if--
WRITER: How dare you hang our shiny writer medals on your unworthy carcass, grubby non-writey person? Go and get me a beer and make me BEANS ON TOAST!

Writers suck.


Spanish going okay tho'. I'd sort of hit a plateu just before Christmas and now I seem to have beaten it.

Other than that: I find myself on a bit of a downer. My stupid uni is still ignoring my letters, so even now, a year and a half after I chucked it in, I still don't have my results. I still don't have a job, either. World fails to appreciate GENIUS in midst. Stupid world.

New Year's Resolutions: Get another tatt, play more bass, paint more, draw more, get good at Flash, get good at Spanish, do more practical electronics, improve pure math as well as applied, write more, travel more, and ROCK THE FUCK OUT.

Here endeth the lesson.

A small sample of the kind of random crap that sleets through my brain all the goddamn time, which, whilst not terribly edifying in and of itself, may go some way to explain why I must write or EXPLODE (boom).

Patronising Nelson (Nelson="differently abled"). Evil vampire alien nanobot cosmetics that make you lose weight by devouring your life force. An online pro-Domme who uses magick to control her subs, which practice they are not only aware of but get off on*. Everything that begins with an X. A man falls in love with his sex doll and the gods take pity on him and make her live, even tho' she doesn't have a head or any limbs. Your goldfish is God. Your little finger houses the soul of Genghis Kahn. Your tribe hunts mermaids and butchers them for food. The Truth hurts; she's go a recurrent urinary tract infection that's gone to her kidneys. A postmodernist brothel: "LIVE" "GIRLS". There's a clock in my soup. The woman who stole the colour of your hair. Children blossom like mushrooms from the flesh of your forearms.

Borrowing this stuff without asking allows me to sluck out your prana like spaghetti. Really.



*This am my worst idea ever. It must never be done!

Sort of blocked at the mo. Well, not really blocked per se, just stuck in a loop. That last thing I did has stirred up a lot of stuff (for other people as well as for me) and I'm having a hard time moving my head into the next space. I mean, I could just write more of the same (in fact I am writing more of the same) but that gets tired. I'd like to work on my new amputee sex robot story for a while now, then come back to that theme fresh. But I can't. It's like I'm lost in my own anger; the worst of it is, I can see the pettiness of that. The smallness. And yet I still can't seem to pry my brain free of the "I'm cross and I can't do anything and it hurts" box.

Stupid brain.

Maybe write some SMUT instead. Lovely filthy SMUT will fix all things including stupid brain. Mmmm, SMUT.

Still waiting to hear back from the last lot of places I submitted to. I've begun writing poetry again; it's not easy, but it feels good to be doing it. I've even made tentative moves towards a couple of paying poetry markets, shock horror. Only five bucks a pop, but better than a poke in the eye etc etc.

I love webzines. I know I bitch about them, but it's fantastic that there's this big ol' market out there for writers now that just didn't exist a few years back. I wish there'd have been webzines back when I was 18. All we had back then was wood-burning internet.

Anyhow, I have managed to write a new thing for the entities. It's up now, if you want a read.

Some of Armin Meiwes the German cannibal's Usenet posts.

I am Franky from Germany and i search for a young Boy, between 18 and 25 y/o. Have you a normal build Body and will you di, than come to me, i butchering you and eat your horny flesh.

%Well, when you put it like that...%

(via waxy.org)

No big news, just checking in.

Apart from the escalating quantities of snot pouring from every orifice as my recently-upgraded body attempts to throw off a nasty cold via my mucus membranes and completely overdoes it, I'm doing okay. Been feeling energized since my 30th. Not a very interesting number; too divisable, man. 31st is a prime, which'll be cool. Made some more T-shirt designs over on zazzle.com: you can see them here. They are all peppers, though, so don't bother checking if you don't like peppers. So far exactly zero people have bought this stuff but what the hell--i'm extending my creative/magickal datashadow, and that's the important thing. Said shadow is still pretty short, but fortunately the lumpyness of cyberspace means I claim more unreal estate than a cursory glance might suggest.

I will commence putting sigils on tees soon. Then you will alllll be mine.

I've been writing some more: bits and pieces for the entities, and some amputee sex robot stuff which riffs off the Kitchen Lover idea. That's for pimping though so you can't have a read of it until someone buys it. You can, however, have a read of Punching your girlfriend in the tits is a revolutionary act, my newest free fic. Enjoy.

Almost forgot (part 2)

I turn 30 today. (Yeah, me and L.A. have our birthdays within a day of each other. So? Wanna get all astrological, is that it? Huh?)

I guess I'm supposed to do one of those God-I'm-So-Old blog posts, but I really don't feel that way. I'm happier than I've ever been. After years of struggling, there are small signs that I'm finally turning my life around. I'm achieving more than I ever hoped. My magickal life is bearing fruit. I'm living in a beautiful part of the world. I'm in the best shape of my life (apart from the fact that L.A. has infected me with his foul germs and I'm filling up snotrags like there's no tomorrow). Over and above all that, I'm entering the 7th year of a wonderful relationship with an amazing bloke; just being with him makes me happy beyond words. I'm the jammiest fucking bastard alive.

I feel excited to be 30, like I should go out and do something I've never done, go snowboarding or something.

The age-is-death meme must die. Humans (rich western humans anyhow) are exploring the very edges of mortality now; some of us are in this life for a really long haul, maybe 120 years. Time to start enjoying and relishing our long healthy lives instead of bemoaning the fact that we can't stay 15 forever. Time to stop hating and resenting the young just because they're young and we're not. Time to learn to live.

Gonna burn in hell for this one...

fagarina the singing tampon!

NB: link not even a little bit worksafe. Genitalia and everything, man.

Oh yeah...

Almost forgot-- Happy B-day, Lurid Archive! :) We were planning to go clubbing in celebration, but the poor boy's down with the lurgi. (Either that, or he's faking it just so I'll take pity on him and not give him his richly-deserved bumps. Heheheheh.)

A word on the green book...

Was going to post this to the blog in question, but it's more about me than it is about the guides.

I have started a book. They made me. They kept on and on and on until I started this damn book. In vain did I protest that they already had a weblog. In vain did I protest that I'm trying to work on my fiction, poetry, and travel writing. They want a book as well. So the other day I went out to the art /stationary/bookshop and they picked out a notepad. No, they couldn't make do with any old notepad. It had to be a special notepad. And the special green pen.

Then I went and sat in the caff across the way with my green pen and my special book, while Spooky Pervert M-L spent about three quarters of an hour dictating to me.

Five pages.

And it's all about goats.

Goats.

I had a little chat with them in the same cafe yesterday, wherein they chided me gently about not writing a bit more often. Goats, that's why! Goats! Everyone else has proper spirit guides, who bang on about being Evolved and on Higher Planes. Everyone else gets told about their Past Lives on Atlantis and shit. What do I get? GOATS! I mean, who needs Gematria when you can be COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBILE in plain English?

You are Professor X!

You are a very effective teacher, and you are very
committed to those who learn from you. You put
your all into everything you do, to some extent
because you fear failure more than anything
else. You are always seeking self-improvement,
even in areas where there is nothing you can do
to improve.


Which X-Men character are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla


What the fuck? I am so not Xavier! Not not not! I am Magneto, quiz-setting person, MAGNETO! Don't make me come round your house and chuck metal objects at you using only the POWER of my MIND!

Googlewhacking.

Silly damn game doing the rounds, on the B and elsewhere. You have to get a unique result on Google by searching just two words.

Of course, I totally rule at it.

A little more of my stuff.

You're all alone in that internet cafe and nobody loves you

Injectable fetus trainers

Go read, filthy blog-sniffers.

Guidelines.

It used to be so easy, you know? White paper, black type. 10pt Courier, double spaced, title and word count at the top, <end> at the bottom. SSAE for return of manuscript (noone but a fule use email). Sure, you'd make an amatuerish mistake or two at first, but once you knew the rules it was a piece of cake.

But the print market for unknown short-story writers (that would be moi) is pretty much a non-starter. The only chance for the grubby likes of us is webzines. And I swear, every single bloody publication out there wants something else.

First off, it's gotta be email. Most webzine editors turn their noses up at snail mail or 'dead tree' submissions. Fair enough. But how should I format this email? One wants you to attach your story in a seperate file; another wants you to paste the whole thing into the body of the email and jumps up on the chair screaming at the mere thought of an attachment. One wants .rtf, another wants .txt, yet another insists on Word, though Lord knows why. One wants you to italicise your italics using the Italic button, another wants you to use _underscores_. Yet another wants you to use HTML tags. One wants single-space, another wants double. One gets hives if you use a serif font, another gets the vapours in the presence of sans-serif.

What really gets me is that every single one of them thinks that his or her way is right. Their way is the only possible way that any sane, reasonable adult would ever submit anything, ever. And because they're so damn sure their way is the One True Way to send an email submission, zines that haven't been up for long or are run by people with little or no experience don't actually think to have this stuff in their bloody writer's guidelines.

Hint: if you want to play Big Grown-up Editor, create a proper bloody guidelines page (better yet, have a comprhensive guidelines page and an online submissions form, like Bloodlust-uk). Don't just wait for everyone to screw up and then kvetch about it in your editorial about how all these cretins get it wrong, because your cretinously wrong is likely to be someone else's self-evidently right.

Just a reminder...

Mordant Carnival's Emporium of Negativity

There are now four smashing T-shirts for you to buy/rip off. There will be more. Check back in a day or two.

Spec fic markets.

I still can't belive there's a magazine called Gobshite Quarterly. And paying 5-10 cents a word, too...

Selling out again.

'K, so remember when I was going to make T-shirts on zazzle.com and you were all going to buy them because if you don't I'll make it rain microwaves in your house? I've finally got around to sorting out my account. You can veiw my first T right here: memetically altered

Don't worry, I'll do some gothier stuff soon.

Obviously there's nothing to stop you from ripping off my idea and making your own shirt for a fraction of the price. I mean, it's not like I'd go to the trouble of creating a copyright protection servitor to hunt you down and suck your brains out of your ears with agonising slowness or anything.

Toodles!

Smut.

Got right back on the horse after my little knock-back the other day, and punted out a thang to Gothic.net. I'd already submitted it to another webzine which shall remain nameless, but the swines never even responded. Rude! Would it kill ya to send out one little standard email, mister big swankypants editor? Anyway, it's a killer little piece if I do say so as shouldn't.

Also finished a piece of filthy disgusting SMUT yesterday. It's not really up to much; I haven't found my SMUTvoice yet. Still, that'll come. I was trying to write a very straigt down-to-earth piece with no ghosts or aliens or prehistoric animals, and that's hard for me. I live in spec fic land so much, it's hard to come out sometimes.

Bleagh.

Story got rejected. I'm going to go and eat worms now.

Okay...

Updateyness over at the Liber V. Spooky perverts give me prezzies now, yes?

First off, I want out of my current blockyness. Like, now. Whatever's causing it, I need to know so I can fix it. I'm writing, but I haven't had a decent splurge for a week or so now. This must end. I want to finish some filthy smut tomorrow, and also a Leftover Parfait piece puhleeeze. If nothing esle, Leftover Parfait actually seemed to be giving people a bit of encouragement to get on with their own stuff, and that made me happy.

Argh fuck.

Submitted a piece to Fables the other night-- just a short, 1000 word-type-deal. And now I'm re-reading it, and it looks like crap. No typos or anything, no identifiable clunkers; it just looks weak, derivative, lame. I wish I hadn't sent it off now. I feel stupid.

You all look the same to me.

I suck at recognizing people. Seriously, I've got a problem. Case in point: a while back, me and the Fawning A. were watching some film on the telly, and I go "Heyyyy, I know that guy. He's been in loads of stuff. What's his name?"

The Fawning A. turns to me with a look of utter incomprehension and says "Dude. That's Robert Redford."

And I wish that was abnormal for me, but sadly it's not. I am so crap at recognising people it's untrue. Faces are not only unhelpful to me, they can actually throw me for a loop-- I can sometimes recognise someone better if I don't see hir face. See, it's not a pattern recognition thing. I recognise patterns fine-- probably better than you lot. It's just human faces that throw me.

Just as a for example, I was watching Buffy videos yesterday and was able to spot that the guy playing the demon with the horns and the beard and stuff was the same guy who played Clem, the demon with the floppy ears and the saggy skin. That sort of thing happens a lot. When the face is occluded with all latex and yak hair or whatever, I'm free to look for other cues-- voice, intonation, body language.

So I'm better at recognising demons than people. I'm comfortable with that. Most people are really boring looking. If you hom. saps. would just make a bit of an effort, I wouldn't even have this problem.

Script.

Okay, so I'm halfway thru an Eric script right now. Not sure why I'm bringing it up, given that a) I'll probably never finish it because of terminal literary constipation and b) I know sweet Fanny Adams about writing comic scripts so what I do write is probably incomprehensible, but there you go. Anyone up for drawing stuff? Want to poke me along a little, or just offer comic script writing advice?

Yep, it's happened.

Fuck fuckity fuck. Totally off the fucking boil, blocked to fuck, sod everything, I hate you, suck any part of my anatomy you find sticking out from under the duvet because I'm going to bed now and even if I never write another word again as long as I live I'm still 5000000% better than you at everything and if even I suck at something it's because that thing wasn't worth being any good at.

I hated you first.

Creamcrackered.

I've got a horrible horrible feeling that I'm coming off the boil. I wrote that Eric thing yesterday and worked on my smut a bit, but that was all. I didn't write nearly has much as I have been writing. I did somethign this morning but it only came to half a page. Please don't let this have been an abberation. Please let me finish something tonight.

Feels like I'm on a comedown; tired, jangly, paranoid. I want to sell stories! I want to do this for a living! How can I do this for a living if I go back into my 200-word-a day coma? Arggh! Help! Arrgh!

Stupid writing.

Something's not right.

Way, wayyy too many of my cool friends have recently or still are going through really harsh times. I'm thinking of you.

Eric and friends.

Well, I got a phonecall from my Mum and finished a story, so big thanks to my imaginary friends. It was just another Eric though, not saleable. (Thinking of boshing out a comic script based on the Eric stories but that means work: narrative, coherency, backstory, actually sitting down and thinking about the thing.) So if the invisible frotteurs could see their way clear to helping me finish something I can get money from today, that would be groovay.

I was feeling afraid that this is just a flash in the pan, that the power will run out and this terrific output will falter. I'll fall back into the 200-word-a-day living death that was my lot only recently. The fear keeps me pinned to the keyboard for most of the day, so my output remains ferociously high. Now I fear losing the fear. I will achieve some sort of equilibrium at some proximate juncture; equilibrium, or at least metastasis.

I am becoming my own fiction, an invented being of my own device, and all the stories that you create around me are thus fan-fic. I have my canon which exists unto itself and which your texts do not violate. It was foolish of me to ever belive otherwise.

In other news: a plea for you to spare the weak(er than you in some regard and in this place at this time) from your unacknowledged aggression is not a violation of your intellectual freedom. This is old stuff but I thought I'd mention it.

Well, it's morning again, half past one to be precise, and still things are not right.

Where is my huge golden pyramid full of drugs and my army of khol-eyed worshippers? Where is my novel that is better then everyone else's novel and impresses the impressionable so that they want to snuggle up to my sagging flesh and warm me with their priceless youth? Why isn't there anything good on the internet? I hate the internet, it's all full of shite. There isn't any descent booze in the house. There is kirsch, on the principle that it's always good to have some undrinkable filth in the cupboard so that you'll keep the vodka topped up rather than drink it.

GODDAMN IT PEOPLE WHERE IS MY BOOZE?

I hate you all. This isn't the reality I ordered.


(Note for guides: All right, you spooky perverts, I've updated your green weblog. Now give me stuff.

I want to finish a story tomorrow, I want inspiration, I want to be magically filled with the passion and energy I need to do all the stuff I need to do, I want the door to freezer compartment to not be all iced open again, I want... I dunno, stuff. You know the sort of stuff I like.)

Dirt.

I'm sick of being broke so I'm channeling the relentless flood of words that has been pouring out of my twitching fingers recently into something more (potentially) lucretive. Namely: smut. Filthy disgusting SMUT. I've got my beady eye on Pink Flamingo Publications (short stories, paperbacks and e-books for the discerning perv). The bar's pretty high but my writing's come on quite a lot just in the last few weeks.

For some reason, I've never been able to finish a pr0n story till now. But things have changed lately: not only am I writing between ten and twenty times as much a day as previously (no, that's not an exaggeration), but the quality has improved. I'm becoming a better editor.

I will sell another story before the year is out. I can feel it in my boneessss. And I got some other tricks up my sleeve, too.

I AM YOUR SUPREME DARK RULER. GROVEL BEFORE ME OR PAY! OR BOTH!

Dreamed this afternoon of many things, including the Two of Swords and the Hermit. My tarot cards want me to take them out and play with them.

Validation.

The kind of backslap that comes with a good solid pricetag attached is nice, but d'you know what? The other day, when Cholister referred to my Leftover Parfait gubbins as "fics," I felt heckofa validated. I mean a) I didn't know what to call those hideous red-headed textual abortions that fester on my Lj and now I do, they're fics, and b) fics is a term that's fairly specific to the fanfic/slasher community, and I felt like Chol was giving me an honorary community... errr... thing. An "OKAY!" type thing. Coz I don't write fanfic. I could, and I don't have any real problem with fanfic or anything, I just, y'know, don't.

Anyway. It was nice.

w00t!!!

Guess who's just flogged another story? :D

Sick.

Or something. I'm processing something big. The night before last I had this minor freakout: loads of stuff from the past coming up, how crazy things seemed when I was growing up. Stuff like my folks getting their post opened because they were in CND, the way we all felt so vulnerable because of the homeschool thing, the way we had to be so damn careful all the time because other families who homeschooled were getting hauled up before the courts and having their kids taken into care left, right and centre. That wasn't what got to me, though. What got to me the impossibility of getting people to understand what it was like, that we weren't just being stupid and paranoid, that these fears were real and justified, and that the world is just such a fucking crazy place.

Realised that although I've begun to put the fear behind me, I've never really dealt with the anger at other people's blank incomprehension. And I need to free myself from it, get it off my fucking throat and pucnh its lights out and shoot it full of tranks until I've got it chained up in the cellar with the rest of this crap. Then I can use it, make it into my creature.

So anyway, all that came up and here I am a couple of days later, with a fever and a gunky throat (blue chakra flashing like an ambulance). And I'm thinking: This is it. This is where I get the poison sweated out and burned off. I think I'm getting to the bottom of where my voice is. The nature of the beast that rises up and chokes me.

When I find it, I'm going to kick its arse.

"Killing people at work is getting cheaper!"

I'm going to do that annoying thing of posting the full text of an email on my blog. You need to be thinking about this stuff.

The "Health and Safety" Executive today announced that the average fine for a conviction on a health and safety offence has dropped by 21 percent over the last year.

Commenting on this news - which shows the grubby reality behind the
government's spin about promoting a safer workplace - Mick Holder of the London Hazards Centre said

"This is very bad news indeed. Employers are getting away with killing,
disabling and injuring their workers at the expense of a paltry fine.

"Many cases involving the death of a worker are still heard in the lower,
Magistrates Court, which does not reflect the serious nature of the crime and restricts the fine to a maximum of £20,000. Nothing will change until errant employers face real sanctions such as prison and much higher fines that reflect the seriousness of the crimes."

Tchhh. When will these knee-jerk liberals understand that weeding out the weak in favour of the strong is a good thing? I mean, obviously, if you're desperate enough to be in a job that threatens your life or health, then you're inferior to your employer.

Examples of fines in recent court cases:

* SUPERMARKET chain Asda was fined £4,000 recently after Brian Costin, 42, a warehouse worker was crushed to death at one of its Yorkshire stores in July 2000.

Graham Naden, who trades under the name Roof Build was fined £2,500 and ordered to pay £3,750 compensation to the family of Terence Severs, one of his workers who died after falling off a roof. Huyton magistrates heard that Terence Severs life could have been saved if safety scaffolding which costs just £100 had been used on the job.

Farmer James Thompson was recently fined £7,500 following the death of seasonal worker Sean Dodds, 24, who died when a forklift truck he was driving toppled over at Redhouse Farm, Hepscott, near Morpeth in October 2001.

Information for health and safety activists at www.lhc.org.uk

www.simonjones.org.uk

Sure, to the Guardianistas who worry about this kind of thing, the fines might not seem like a lot. They probably spend that much on pashminas every week! But you have to look at these things in context. What's the point of bankrupting companies or imprisoning decent, honest businessmen, just because they were unlucky enough to have a little accident occur on their premises? You have to ask yourself: how much is the life of one of those sorts worth? It's not like they're real people; why, I bet some of them weren't even homeowners.

If you ask me, the UK has gone safety mad in recent years. The nanny state has far too much power. Don't people realise that financial weath is a clear indication of a person's worth, of their fitness to survive? We don't need more saftey precautions in the workplace, we need fewer! And while we're on it, what's all this namby-pamby nonsense about child labour laws? We need to weed out the undesirables at as young an age as possible. What Britain needs is a rolling programme of realistic safety targets and conscription for any child over the age of seven who flunks their SATs. Your bleeing hearts are diluting the gene pool, people!

Themes.

The forces of synchronicity have declared this Bottled Fetus Month. Every time I turn on the TV or surf the web or anything: bottled fetuses.

I really hope they don't mean what I think they mean. If this is a missed opportunites thing then I'm going to be very cross with a certain pair of entities. I'm trying, guys! Throw me a bone!

Writeoff.

I'm looking for an online writer's group at the mo. I need people I can spark off. My board is great for that, and to a lesser extent my Lj, but I need more-- more, dammit! MORE! I'm looking for people who write at the darker, slightly nastier end of things. Obviously.

The seach is not going well. My list of people who must suffer and die when I get my powers back just grew by a bout three feet of names. I mean, for the love of God, does everyone who's not a complete muttonhead stop writing when they hit twelve or something? Why is everything out there so unbelivably fucking crap?

If it was even different kinds of crap, that would help. But I swear, this stuff all looks the same after awhile.

"Hello my name is Marie but my real name is Gerladrial I am a elf because I went to see LOTR and I realised I was Gerladrial in my past life and I said to my friend OMFG I just remembered I'm Gerladrial from a past life and she was like OMFG!!! I am Gerladrial TOO!!! so were both best friends forever now because of both being Gerladrial in a past life and we love Gerladrial and we want to meet her one day. Also I am a Vampyre I realised I'm a vampiree after I watched Queen of the Damned. NEway here is my poem it is about my boyfreind or rather my EX boyfriend I hate him.

Ashen tears like blood
Flow down my face.
They flow like blood
Also like rain
But mostly blood really.

You put those tears there,
like cutting me so there is BLOOD
When you walked into the
Fourth-form common room
With HER.

I am going to kill myself now.
With knives.
Yes.
There will be blood
Like my tears

By Marie aka Gerladriel"

From a 14-year-old, this sort of thing would almost forgivable. But sometimes the author turns out to be a 44-year-old mother of three, whereupon that last tiny fragment of hope for humanity crumbles within your breast and you howl to the uncaring skies: "Evil, be thou now my good!"

So, if you want to clue me in on a writer's community that I won't want to kill after five minutes, that would be groovy.

Okay! Okay! I give up!

I finally yeilded to the nagging of my unidentified and quite possibly imaginary guide/angel/entity-type-people and gave them their own blog.

It is green. It is called Liber Viridis.

I thought that would shut them up, but nooo. I have to link to that blog from this one.

If I've buggered up the Latin, let me know. It was supposed to mean "the green book."

Do you spooky perverts know how embarrassing this is? I mean, no-one else belives in you, guys. I'm not sure I belive in you, and I talk to you.

Tired and brutishly pissed-off.

Even that hamster isn't doing it for me anymore. I feel like hurting something.

This isn't related to anything happening in the real world, you understand. It's purely my own misfiring brain chemistry that's making me want to tear around the room screaming. I fucking hate being at the mercy of my glands like this. My glands hate me. They hate you, too. My glands want all of us to suffer.

I was sort of run down today; possibly a reaction to my mammoth healing sesh on Sunday. Sounds peverse, but sometimes giving/receving healing actually sends your body off into disease symptoms for a while as it processes all the crap it needs to throw off. Cold symptoms are the commonest, but some people get fevers and stuff. It can't hurt you, it's just uncomfortable for a while.

Or maybe I'm just some sad deluded fuckwit with a headcold. Who knows.

Anyway. Angry fits. Usually I get them the week before the painters come round. I've got at least another five to seven days of this to get through, followed by a week of mopeyness and cramps. Oh, joy unconfined. Black Cohosh usually puts me to rights but I've run out and I can't find anywhere round here that sells it.

It's not been that bad this year because I've been channeling the random, unfocused rage into my writing. But at the mo I'm all writer's blocky, and that's making me bitter and frustrated.

Everything seems so damn limited right now. I know I should be moving on to the next stage of my life, the next stage of my thinking, but I'm stuck here in this space. Every time I go looking for guidance, for inspiration, for one tiny fucking glimmer of what it is I need I have to wade through all this tedious old crap, crap that people keep trying to convince me is some stunning new idea.

Well, the hell with that. I'm not listening to you anymore. I'm listening to my real imaginary friends.

You hear that sound? That sound is the wheels of the Chariot, rolling into my life. I aim to be the dude sat up top with the big fuckoff cup. You will not pull me down because I have been under those big red wheels wayyy to many times in my life already.

I may have to go and blow something up soon.

Spam.

Okay, so just now I got a Nigerian spam email that addressed me as "Daddy". I am more weirded out than I can comfortably accomodate.

Random stuff I need to get sorted.

Well, they warned me that getting hooked up with Reiki would stir shit up in my head. And lo, shit is stirred up. Has to do with... well, stuff.

It has to do with fear, mostly. Fear of being strong. (If I develop my abilities, I might hurt someone). Fear of being used. (If I develop my abilities, other people will bully me into putting those abilities at their disposal). Fear of being hurt. (I've never been able to induce an OOBE since this one time where I left my body under fairly hellacious circs.) Fear of losing touch with reality. (Will end up in looney bin, or just bloody nuciance in dangly earrings).

All these fears are rational to the extent that they are all rooted in experience. But they are irrational in the way that they persist, in the way that I allow them to limit me.

Stupid fears.

Twinkle, twinkle...

Betcha all wondering about the pretty blue star, hmmm? No? Sod ya then.

It's a heptagram, representing the seven days of the week. It has other interpretations, of course, but that's the one I had in mind. Then you've got 24 7 at the top, which is the hours of the day and the days of the week. The 29/11 bit is some numerolgical stuff that this numerologist told me once: it's obtained by adding the numerals of my birthdate together in a certain way. It represents my lifepath (supposedly that's a shit-hot number to have for your lifepath but I suck at numerology so hell if I know).

So anyway, the total significance of the doodle is that I'm now going to try and stick to my lifepath 24-7. No more detours, no sidetracks, no more... hey, look, a bunny!

Hmmm.

Big things are afoot. Had a bit of an odd day. Had to leave the healing marathon a little early, having Reikified and Sekhimed two satified punters.

One of said punters being a channeler. I'm hoping she might work with me at some point, maybe in exchange for more zappage (?) Don't know what the form is for this sort of thing. New territory... Anyway. Channeler. 'K, so she confirmed a lot of the psychic sensations I've been having recently. She reckons that and I have this two guides (check!) one who stands behind me while I'm healing (check!) and one who flies/hovers up on the ceiling while I work (check!) She remarked on the power of the priniciple guide, which is, y'know, cool. She also said that I'm a teacher, I just didn't know it because I was all self-doubty.

Interesting.

Grab a helping of Leftover Parfait.

Right. You know that Lj I started up so I could stalk more people? I've been chucking bits of fiction, poetry, and general ramblings there so it didn't look quite so empty. It's now chocka with writey goodness, so you can all bugger off there and have a look at it. I'll be updating it fairly regularly so don't forget to check back.

Can't be bothered with this thing at the mo. Maybe in a day or two. Meanwhile, here's a guy who fed bits of himself to his Venus flytrap.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

My head hurts. My back hurts more. I appear to be having yet another identity crisis.

Taking stock, looking back over the years: Never had a proper job, everything always casual temporaryminimumwagebollocks. I try to go to Uni, and they pull the rug out from under my feet, they dick me around with this unprofessionl crap and I let them. I move here, hoping for a fresh start-- I can't even get a job mopping fucking floors. I try to build something, it falls down. Every time. Ever feel like the universe is sending you a message? What if the message is "Screw you, loser"? What do you do then?

Where do you go?

When you know you should say something, but you're not sure what to say, because anything you do say is just going to set everyone off again... there should be a word for that.

Screw all this.

Why do I even try to communicate with the world? Sometimes, seriously, I think I had the right idea at 17: Stay in your room, close the door, don't talk to anyone unless you absolutely have to.

I feel like someone's ripped out my guts, made balloon animals out of them, and stuck them back inside along with a canteen of plastic cutlery. I can hear the while mess rattle when I move.

Why did I think I could do this?

I mean, when does anything I touch not turn to shite?

Email!

Okay, that's a start. Still some major damage control to do, but oh, boy, what a relief.

Arrgh.

No, really, arrgh. Seriously, really badly arrrrrrrgggggh.

I don't wanna go into too many details, but I don't think it's a breach of confidence to mention that I'm in the middle of a major-- what? Not really a fight, more of a communications breakdown-- with a very dear friend.

Therre's nothing like the fear that someone's never going to speak to you again to make you really, really appreciate them. You think about everything they've done for you, everything they are.

Like I say, Argggh.

Yay!

The other day I found an old computer disc in amongst my stuff. Turned out to be chocka with stories that I wrote way back in '99. I thought I'd have a hard time getting into the files, because I wrote them on another wordprocessing package. But StarOffice can handle them just fine. I'm well chuffed. They're not good enough to sell, not without some comprehensive re-writing, but I may put some of them up on my board or my Lj or whatever. I'd forgotten all about some of them. I'll probably bung a couple of them up tonight.

It's odd, reading them after all this time. It feels like a different person wrote those words.

Unicorns.

Real Unicorns do not have any of the following:

Wings.
Rainbow fairy butterfly wings.
Rainbow anything else.
My Little Pony tails. (Unicorns have lion's tails, stupid.)


Also, you may not ride them. No, not even if you're a virgin. It's just not on.

Brains4zombies.com

Brains, Other Brains, and Celebrity Brains.

(Via Pagga.com)

Awwwright! No seziure!

Must've been a petit mal or something. That was okay. I could handle more of those. Shame I had to turn in and sleep through it, but it was about 3am my time and I was cream crackered.

Today I woke up feeling out of sorts tho'. I'm consumed with a desire suddenly to make something happen in my life. I don't know what I want it to be but I feel like my mind and my whole body are turning into tapioca. Think I'll start having my midlife crisis now, while I'm still young enough to enjoy it.

Okay you entities. If you're going to send fits, I want a sweetner. I want Signs and Wonders. Really big impressive ones. I want to see ghosts or aliens or, I dunno, something.

I'm going to regret asking for this, aren't I?

Uuuummmm.

Think I might be going to have another fit. I haven't had one since Cork, maybe as much as 8, 9 months ago(?) I shall be really fed up if I have one.

Been feeling a bit odd today, sort of slow and ditzy. Maybe just lie down. Finished that stupid story, thanx be to grud.

Yep, evrythings gone all colours again. rats.

Resignation.

Try as I might, nothing I dream up will ever be as messed-up as reality. Trust me on this.

The writing is going well.

The writing is going very very well. I did the bits that I posted over on my board, oooobviously, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. I was a bit leery about chucking those pieces out on my board, because it renders them unsaleable to a lot of webzines (most places want exclusive rights).

But now it feels like that was the right thing to do-- like a sacrifice to the gods of writeyness. Two or three people seem to have enjoyed them, and that's two or three more than if the pieces had just stayed on my wordprocessor.

Plus, I've come over all prolific. Just today I've been kicking the old novel around a bit and I've written half of two short stories. I reckon I should finish one of them tonight-- well, the first draft, anyway.

And it feels good.

Teenaged boy arrested for saving girlfriend's life.

Story here.

Okay, so say you're a 15-year-old kid with asthma. Your girlf also has asthma. You guys take the same meds. One day your squeeze forgets her inhaler-- bit dopey, but we've all done it-- and she has an attack. She's in a bad way, so, rather than watch her fight for breath, pass out and die, you lend her your inhaler.

She says you've saved her life. Her mum thinks you're a regular knight in shining armour. Your school, on the other hand, has you arrested because of their braindead "zero tolerance" anti-drugs policy.

This kid's being threatened with expulsion and quite possibly a stretch in juvenile hall because authorities at this school would rather let a 15-year-old choke to death on her own phlegm than see one of their students show a little gumption. Initiative is bad, m'kay?

Wankers.

(Via Stupid Evil Bastard and elsewhere.)

She doesn't hit him; you did.

New thing.

Also from underreported.com: USA: Portland police pepper-sprayed, tazered and handcuffed a blind disabled 71 year old. According to the woman in question, Eunice Crowder: “They pepper sprayed me in my prosthesis... it ran through and down my nose so fast.”

The prosthesis in question being Ms. Crowder's glass eye. Ouch.

Secret Spells Borebie

This is just disgusting-- more disgusting than Borebie's normal background level of disgustingness. As if any mage worthy of the name would wear such restrictive and impractical clothing for a ritual. Gold lamé flares? I ask you. And do you call that a cauldron? Puh-lease!

(Via underreported.com)

Random.

Was nudged in the direction of Found Magazine today. I haven't looked at it for a while, but it made me think. I need to be doing stuff, getting stuff out there. I've started posting up poems and stories on my board but I need to be doing something else. Maybe make pictures, slogans, notes, drop them in public places? Buy a cheap tarot deck like the IJJ or something, drop the cards around town until there's none left. Or maybe just ordinary cards, I don't know. The tarot can upset people who aren't used to it. If you've grown up with it, like me, the images are old friends but for people who aren't up on that side of things they can be disturbing.

IK need to be doing something... something fresh. I'm so sick of this old crap that's being thrown in my face all the time by people who act like I'm supposed to be mindblown by it. It's like having someone come up and tell you an old, bad joke, and when you don't laugh they tell it again... and again... and agian...and they never, ever shut up.

I get it. I just don't want it.

So anyway, I want to do, to make, to feel... the way they're always telling me that they're going to make me feel, right before they tell me the one about the fly in the soup for the thirtieth time. I need to cut loose; I've been hiding for too long.

Tingle.

I get this tingly feeling in my back sometimes, from a spot around my shoulderblades down to my tailbone. I've been getting it on and off since I was a kid, but this year it's got much stonger. It's as if there's a limb there, as if I should be able to, I dunno, extrude tentacles or something. Sometimes if I've been doing a lot of magickal work it gets very strong, very intense (for somereason I typed that as "insense"; how?). Right now I can barely feel it. Had a few drinks last night; I mentioned before how alcohol seems to drop me down to a lower level of consciousness.

I don't know. It's just this thing, I suppose.

Talking of microwaves...

Help! Hong Kong police-terrorist's use Brain Voice Read / Write Machine Murders Hong Kong people, please email the world.

(via Jack Fear, diepunyhumans.com, and pretty much everywhere else.)

I love this. Reminds me of another site I linked to a year or so back... can't be bothered to trawl thru my archives but I think this is it:

Alan Yu's Reports

"Part II-A4: The invisible personnel are tiny and can levitate. Thus, by wearing a propulsion device on their back, they can move as flying ants. So, they can secretly fly onto the target's head to mind control the target, manipulate the target's bodily functions & emotions, read the target's mind, implant thoughts and sent microwave voices into the target's head anywhere."

Flying invisible ant-sized rocket propelled spies. How come this isn't a computer game yet? It would rock! You could do like a Total War type thing, only instead of your teeny little armies fighting on earth landscapes they'd fight amidst the convultions of a giant brain, or a hugely magnified ear or something. I'd buy it.

"I'll have to stick my head in the microwave now to see if it fits – %Thanks, Mordant%"

I disclaim all responsibility.

Hello to all my new readers.

Hi there. Sod off. I hate you all and I want you to suffer. If you haven't sodded off yet, here is some basic information which you'll need if you intend to make DCIATM a regular part of your online diet.

1) The sidebar is there for me, not you.

I fix it only when I can't remember a crucial URL or none of my friends has said URL on their blog. Otherwise, I ignore it.

2) This blog is here for me, not you.

I don't care if you came here looking for dead people, dead dogs, Jordan's b00bies, Goth bands, or any other damn thing. This is not toybox, a jazzmag, an excercise in journalism, or a mutual appreciation society. This is a small dark room in the cellar where I go to punch the walls and scream at people that no-one else can see. If you don't like that, fine, browser, back button, look into it.

3) I really mean it about the hate.

I'm bored.

Today all my sleep debt seemed to land on me at once; I've been doing just fine on 6 or so hours a night for a week, and then suddenly all the sleep I've missed decides to land on me at once. So I end up in bed at 4pm unable to move because afternoon naps on top of sleep debt = sleep paralysis. At least there were no monsters in the room this time. One time I had an attack of sleep paralysis and this guy with a rat's head came and stood next to my bed for ages. Stupid monsters.

Got very little writing done today. I did okay yesterday because I wrote that piece for my board, which was farily long, but today I'm nowhere near my quota. Oh, and I'm stuck with my novel again. This is bad. I wanted to have far more of that stupid novel under my belt by now. I'm going to step away from the narrative for a bit and work character sketches instead.

Made a couple of pendants; I got a load of glass pebbles and I'm making them into dangles. Running out of thongs tho'. I feel like making something for myself now. I've been planning this ring-pull chainmail vest for a while. It looks cool in my head, but I'm not sure how well it'll work in practice. I'm just going to go for it, I think.

Dug out some of my artwork and tried to take some pictures with the digital camera, but they were terrible. The image in the viewfinder bears absolutely sod all resemblance to the actual pic, so the composition is completely shagged. I may give up and use the scanner in the cybercafe that's opened up in my building.

On the plus side, some the pix I took in Inchyoney came out pretty well. I got couple of really great shots of these rockpools.

Pictures.

Okay, so I've resolved the digital camera problem by abandoning the big PC and just installing the drivers on the bloody laptop, which runneth Windows 98. Of course if I was buying the computers in this household, we would have a big yummy Mac. Macs do not throw themselves on the floor and sulk when faced with a teeny tiny digital camera.

Be that as it may, I can now make pictures of things for to go on the internet. I have a cold and barren Fotolog allll set up ready. You may mock, but you'll laugh on the other side of your faces when I'm the toast of Thumbs and Camera Straps Monthy (incorporating Big Shiny Blurry Thing Gazzette).

The outer shell of the duvet looks like cobwebs.

Another piece, similar in style.

The temporary files clerk damns you with a glance from her bloodshot eyes and all the LSD you took back in Goa will not save you.

A thing I wrote the other night and didn't know what to do with. If the response is good I may post this sort of thing on my board more often in future.

Be a part of the hate.

Right-- I've just created my first t-shirt with Zazzle. You can see it, and any other stuff I make, here. It is way overpriced for a naff t-shirt with some writing on, so some of you may be thinking of going out and just buying a t-shirt off the market and writing on it with a magic marker. If you do this I'll kill you with my evil magick skills. Just saying.

(Edited to say that the t-shirt no longer seems to appear in my gallery. I have no idea why, but I'm trying to fix the problem.)

Hmmmm...

Might give this a try: Zazzle.com

In the continued abscence of gainful employment, I'm casting around for alternatives with increasing franticity*. You may recall that I set up a Cafepress account awhile back, but I never got round to doing anything with it and anyway, Cafepress suck. This Zazzle thing looks a bit more promising at first glance.

The eBay thing: Well, there's a slight problem there. The PC chokes and goes base over apex every time I try to install the drivers for my digital camera. Without photos, I can do nothing.

Anyhow, I'm looking at other ways I could make money from the internet. Apart from selling writing to webzines (waiting for one or two places to get back to me as we speak), I'm mostly thinking about making stuff to sell online, but there may be other things I could do.**

*What? Yeah, that's a word. It might not have been before, but it is now.
**Apart from that.

Just to confuse matters further...

I now have a Livejournal. I'm still going to blog here, but I wanted an Lj account so's I can annoy the hell out of comment on other Ljer's journals.

There's nothing it it at the moment, but you can find it here: Leftover parfait.

Killed for being queer?

In 1993, a North Carolina man, Edward Hartman, shot and killed 77-year-old Herman Smith Jr. It was, without doubt, a cowardly, sickening, detestable crime, and Hartman deserved to be punished.

However, the case was not without mitigating circumstances. Hartman grew up in an atmosphere of grinding misery and continual abuse by his disturbed and suicidal mother and her string of boyfreinds and husbands. He was so severly beaten on one occasion as a child that he was left unconscious and hospitalized. He was a victim of repeated, terrifying sexual abuse. Emotionally and physically tortured, violated by the adults he should have been able to trust-- surely these factors would have swayed any reasonable jury? Surely they could have found it in them to ask for sentence of life imprisonment instead of the death penalty?

Well, no. Because Edward Hartman was gay, and according to his prosecutor, sexual abuse is "different for homosexuals." (Yeah, you read that right. Apparently raping children is okay now so long as they're queer children. ) He made repeated references to Hartman's sexuality throughout the case, using it to erode any sympathy that the jury might have had for the defendant.

The hand-picked jury, twelve honest homophobic fuckbakes and true, swallowed the whole thing. They handed down the death penalty. Despite protests, despite appeals to the courts and to any shred of basic decency still left in the legal system, that sentence was carried out on Friday.

Leaving aside the inherent iniquity of the death penalty for a moment, you may like to reflect on whether Hartman would have been put to death had he been straight. Don't go away thinking this is an isolated incident, either; it's not.

Read more about the case in this Zmag article, if you can stand it. An Advocate report is here.

"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye..."

I've been obsessing on self-enucleation lately. Not myself, you understand, other people's self-enucleation. I get these fixations from time to time; this one was sort of owning my brain until I went and saw May, which seemed to kick it into abeyance. I hate my brain sometimes. It keeps on chucking all this sick stuff out at me, will-I-nill-I. It's a pain. Still, this isn't as bad as the "what would happen if someone stuck your head in a microwave" fixation that kept bugging me all the time I was in Cork.

Anyway, that aside, I've been distracted today. I think I've overdosed on caffine again; not hard to do, when you've got my ultra-lightweight brain chemistry. I'm wrestling with a rather confusing Celtic Cross spread, which I'll add to my public tarot log when I work out what the hell it's going on about.

Since I got back from the UK I've emailed some places about work, mostly hostels where they need English speakers. No-one's written back. Would a simple "thanks but no thanks" kill these people? Jeez. Now that my Spanish is a bit less crappy I've decided to set up as a private English tutor. I was going to go into town to buy teaching materials at the FNAC, but somehow I don't have the stomach for it. This whole non-job having is just tearing chunks out of my self-esteem. I really want to start working as a healer as soon as possible, but I don't know anything about it. I don't even know where to start. I mean, can you just put up a postcard somewhere, or do you need some kind of licence, or what? I've tried approaching some of the arty-type places in town in the hope of getting some life modelling work, but so far no luck. I don't have a lot of experience, just one term of sitting for a night class. I'm going to try the art campus here again; they had nothing at the beginning of September but maybe that'll have changed by now.

I'm writing an article on a nearby town in the hopes of getting it accepted by one of the English language papers. It's not terribly interesting. Maybe I should have picked a better subject, like the Parc Guell, but everyone writes about the Parc Guell. Yeah, I know I should've done loads of these already-- I've been trying, okay? Everything I write these days comes out either like a lab report or incomprehensible magical realism. I know I had some middle gears aroud here somewhere...

Okay, this is the part where I go to check my email and the entities have dropped something fantabulous into my lap.

*Refreshes inbox*
*Waits*

"Get four more inches on your..."

Stupid entities. No sense of narrative.

This is seriously weirding me out, actually. I have no idea why I haven't got a job yet. I've approached loads of different places in loads of different ways, I've tried dressing up smart and losing the labret, and my Spanish isn't that bad. Yet I remain jobless.

I am obviously... CURSED! Cursed, by MAGICKIANS of BADNESS!

Whodunnit?

In which the diarist attempts to use a chatbot for a purpose other than that specified.

(The chatbot in question being jabberwacky. My questions are in plain text, jabberwacky's answers are in italics.)

Will I find a job in the next month?
Yes and it will hurt.
Why will it hurt?
Why will what end?
No, not end. I said hurt.
How has no brain?
Okay, who will I meet in the next month?
Seven of Nine.
You're a useless divinatory aid.
I admit it.
I'm going to use my tarot in future.
Love you forever.

Thoth.

So I've been getting back into the tarot, using the Crowley deck. It's going pretty well. I had visions of having to re-learn the whole damn thing, but the meanings are coming back to me. I also find this deck sits well with my preferred method of reading, which is to use the textbook meaning of the cards as a jumping-off point, fleshing the reading out with the images that form in my mind. The rich, multi-layered symbolism of the Crowley deck works for me, gives the mind lots to chew on. Like parfait. Chewy parfait.

Got to keep up with it, is the thing. Started a tarot log over on my board as an incentive to keep reading regularly. I've got to stop falling back on that hostage-to-fortune tactic, though; I look like such a dork when it doesn't work.

In other news: Sexbot. No, I don't know why it's got that paint-roller either, and yet it obviously had to have the paint-roller, what are you, stupid? My world is a brighter place tonight.

(Via nightguard.)

Things that are currently irking me.

The PC keeps dying.
My head aches.
I feel sort of itchy. Here. Behind my navel.
I keep wanting to be taught, but I don't trust anyone to teach me.

Holy scmoly, I think I've just had a rebirth of culture!

Yes folks, I have to confess. I have sinned. I have strayed from the way of Gothdom. I have worn manky cheap combats with (shudder) flip-flops. I have let my hair grow back. I have worn big floppy t-shirts. I have ventured out without makeup. Please! Spare me your condemnation-- I feel bad enough as it is. I have been one shade of Dylon away from vanilla.

I hereby renounce my sorry backslaaaahdin' ways. From this day hence, I will strive to regain the true path that is GOTH. A-fuckin'men!

Sooo cute!

Seriously. How adorable is this? Not to mention these.

Bless their slightly disturbing frilly fishnet ankle socks.

(Found all alone on memepool. Can I keep'em? Can I? Can I?)

Work.

Still shagged out and antsy. Going into town today to see about a TEFL course. I emailed the place asking for further details, but that was weeks ago and they still haven't bothered to write back. Does not bode well. I mean, if this is how they behave when I'm trying to give them money, how are they going to behave when they've banked the cheque?

In other news: Listen, you spooky etherial types, I really need a job. Money's getting tight. Any job, no matter how sucky, will do, tho' obviously I'd rather find work in healing or maybe divination. Help me out here.