Hmmm...

I'm thinking seriously about going over to help with the tsunami rebuilding effort once my course ends in mid-March. (There's little point in my going before then as frankly I have no useful skills.)


Things to consider:

1) I'm flat broke. How do I get there when I can't afford a ticket?

This leaves me two options:

a) Sign up with some sort of voluntary organization.
b) Get the money together privately. Since I don't really have anything to sell off, except maybe a kidney, this means donations from friends or family, and probably blegging. Very very awkward and something I would hate to do.


2) How long for?

I was thinking of 2-3 months. It's my understanding that most voluntary organizations generally require one to commit for a minimum period of time, and I don't think anyone is going to be terribly impressed if they chip in for a plane ticket and then I'm only gone for a long weekend.


3) And do what, exactly?

When my course ends I will have some building skills. However, the bulk of my course consists of decorative stuff like stuccoing and tiling. Not sure that a handsome wall mural or a shiny new splashback is really going to be a big priority for a tsunami survivour.

I have a sound background in electronic* engineering, but I can't see how that'd be much use.

I do have some experience in fixing up electrical* bits and pieces, fitting light sockets and power outlets ect. However, this is mostly stuff I've learned on the fly. I never had any proper training and strictly speaking I shouldn't really have been doing it. I don't have any formal training or references or anything.

Apart from that, I can: doodle, clean floors, sweep streets, make tea, make sandwiches, do basic first aid. Not much else that I can think of.


4) I'm afraid.

It's pathetic, but there it is. Not just of being in a disaster area, although that's a thing. Mostly it's... well, I'm generally clueless about travelling since I didn't go abroad at all before I met Lurid and I've never been outside of Europe. Living in Barcelona is the abroadest I've ever been. Ever. Contemplating two or three months in SE Asia is very very scary.


*Electrical engineering vs. Electronic engineering: The difference, you ask? Oh, 'bout two hundred volts, mate.

Advice and input welcomed.

We could be heroes...

The builder's tale.

I don't mind admitting that this made me mist up. Then I realised--in a couple of months, I'll have the skills I need to go and do something just like that!

Keeping this handy...

Castillian verb lists.

Actually that whole site looks awesome, it's got Cervantes and everything!

"Cuppa tea, cuppa tea, almost got shagged, cuppa tea..."

Does anyone else ever feel like all they've done with their adult lives is work, or look for work? Been dredging through my past looking for something to feed to the ol' mill, and I'm coming up all dole queues and filing.

In other news, there appears to be a slight constitional crisis happening here over the Plan Ibarratxe. Will go into more detail when I track down some English-language links for ya.

And now, the weather: First grey day for weeks. We're into the coldest part of the year--I actually saw some frost on Friday. Mostly the sky is pristine, free of any cloud, turquoise horizons fading to violet overhead. The sunlight is pure red-gold, magically picking out all the fine detail of the old buildings with perfect clarity whilst at the same time lending everything the quality of a dream, a fantasy. Scaffolding crawls along the streets month by month from one edificio to another, renewing crumbling stucco, cleaning stonework, enlivening the colours of the painted plaster.

One day, that'll be my job. Tal vez.

Dominance and submission

Having been vaugely assuring myself that I'm going to start submitting things again anytime now for the last three months, I've finally realised the importance in this sort of enterprise of setting some form of cap on "anytime now." Hencly and theretoforewards, I shall be submitting not less than one (1) piece of written work to some paying market or another in a time period of not more than one (1) week.

I'd prefer to send off more than one bit, of course, but one bit's a start. Hopefully this will kick my little metal hoop a-rolling. What I really need is a morsel of acceptance, a smidgin of success to oil the pan of my literary frittata.

I'm just so unappreciated. Can't think what I'm doing wrong; I mean, everyone loves Comic Sans, don't they? And eight-point fonts are so stylish, whilst yellow text on a magenta background would brighten up an editor's day far more than that boring old black-and-white stuff they normally get...what? What?

Speaking of faceknives...

It's sad when cousins marry.

Look, can we just get rid of the fucking Royal Family now? Even leaving aside the whole "pointless anachronism" thing, they're a bunch of smug, callous, know-nothing, bone-idle, pompous, inbred thugs. That's all they've ever been and that's all they ever will be. We could make them all get proper jobs and then we could have something nice instead, like some hamsters or puffins. You ever see a puffin in a swastika armband?

Thinking of having this as the new piccy on my sidebar. I got sick of the star thingy.

He escrivado.

Couldn't sleep last night, not even after generous doses of stinky valerian tea and BEER, so surfed and cracked open one of my old yarns to do some clean-up.

It was one of my sex robot pieces. At the time I wrote it I was fairly pleased with it, but on re-reading it last night I discovered it was full of this writerarily retarded thing I do which is to bung in several wodges of text in there explaining very clunkily why I wrote the story. "Do you see? This is a metaphor for our consumerist culture! This is a critique of the Barbie aesthetic! Look, I'm all political and a Feminist and everything! I'm not just a weirdo who likes to write about limbless sex robots, honest!" Clunky, clunky, clunky, makes reading the thing like pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks over a cattle-grid.

Man, I should just chill out and accept all that. I'm a fucking weirdo, the story is about a sex robot, take it any way you want it.

You know what?

Fuck 2004.

Fuck it right in the ear.

I had an okay time apart from the whole no-job-thing, because I love where I am. It's really really hard not to be happy in Barna. For just about everyone else I know, last year was a fucking bitch queen from hell.

2004, I appreciate your lessons. You were sort of harsh on me sometimes, but I feel I learned a lot from you. But you were really really supre-mean to all my mates. Phooey to you.

Edit: Yeah, I said supre. And I stand by it. Supre.

My head is doing all kinds of weird shit to me these days.

Like f'rinstance, I keep stressing about my housemates. I keep worrying that they're laughing at me behind my back, or that they might steal money from me, or that they'll have a go at me over the cleaning or they won't do their washing up and I'll have to do it, stuff like that.

What housemates? Oh, the housemates I'd have if for some reason I had to go back to the UK without Lurid and if I couldn't get a job and if I can't afford a bedsit and if I had to share a house and if...

My mind hates me.

Writing

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

Happy new year.

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

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

Still can't get my head round it.

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

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

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

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

And Cava. Lots and lots of Cava.



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

Just so we're clear...

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

Martin Amis is a fuckstick.

He is a Stick of Fuck.

What? That's always relevant.

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

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

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

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

I have not been writing.

I admit it. Bad wannabe. No biscuit.

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

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

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

I so painfully need a job.

Happy B-day, Lurid!

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

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

I'm happy.

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

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