I am utterly enchanted by Nervousness, and have spent most of the morning, looking through the exchanges on offer.
Being the magpie that I am, the opportunity to exchange stuff for more stuff is making me all giddy :)
So of course, I had to join in the fun.
You should too.
Go on, you know you want to.
Sometimes, I really hate people.
I especially hate people with children during school holidays.
For those of you who have just recently joined us, I walk with a crutch. It's there to help me balance because I'm not as steady on my feet as I once was (as D was rudely reminded when last week he had to drag me off the middle of a road, again - but that's another story entirely). So, bearing this in mind, I walk a bit slower than I used to, and am generally less responsive when obstacles are placed in my path.
Particularly when said obstacle is a young toddler, who is wobbling all over the place, right in front of me, and comes within a whisker of actually walking into my knees.
Where, I hear you ask, was said toddler's mother while her precious child was trying to play chicken with my kneecaps?
Talking to her mother. That's where, and completely oblivious to what her daughter was doing.
Oblivious, that is, until I made a loud, irritated noise and slammed my crutch on the ground in a desperate attempt not to fall on my face, and flatten her daughter. At which point she suddenly developed a maternal instinct and snatched her child out out of the path of danger.
Which would have been fine. I didn't necessarily need an apology, but what I did not expect to her was: "Fuck sake! I'll straighten her face for her..." directed towards my back when she clearly thought I was out of earshot.
I turned round as fast as I could and said "Pardon me?". I think I surprised her because she stuck her head down, grabbed her daughter and shot off as fast as she could. I don't think she expected anyone to stand up to her, much less a fat cripple like me.
I really thought that I'd got used to the ignorance and rudeness by now, but it really pissed me off.
I especially hate the "hard nut" mentality round here, where manners are a sign of weakness, and even if you're in the wrong, you get to be rude and angry and indignant because someone had the cheek to be inconvenienced by your actions.
I know that being a parent is difficult, but I get more and more concerned (and pissed off) when I see parents that are completely oblivious to what their offspring is doing most of the time. If it's one thing I've had to adjust to it's that getting around under normal circumstances with no obstacles in front of me is no guarantee that I won't have an accident, and that one of these days, I'm not going to be able to stop in time, or something will happen and I'll fall, and probably injure myself. I also can't guarantee that I won't wind up hurting one of these ankle-biters in the process and then there really will be trouble, because I won't hesitate to claim for compensation if parental negligence causes me to wind up in a wheelchair or in hospital again.
I have enough shit to deal with in my daily life, I don't need it made life more difficult for me.
At last, someone else that understands the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Light.
I've been a Diet Coke junkie for years now. In fact, I think I was maybe about 10 or 11 when I made the decision that I was no longer going to drink ordinary Coke. I don't really remember why. I have a vague feeling it might have been because I overheard an older girl denounce ordinary coke as fattening and too full of sugar.
Anyway, from that day on Diet Coke became my drink. Not Diet Pepsi (too fizzy and tastes too sweet), or Diet own brand cola (goes the gamut of ick from too fizzy and sweet to too flat and bitter), or even the caffeine free Diet Coke (because frankly, what's the point? at that point it's coloured fizzy water). Although I tried every other brand and type, I kept coming back to Diet Coke.
I first encountered Coke Light on my first trip to Paris to see D, and in my naieveté I thought it was the same thing. Not so. I drank it, because there was nothing else, but it just tasted wrong. After all, it was only a holiday and I could get back to the Real Thing (tm) when I got back home.
Then something funny happened. I started to notice Coke Light cans appearing in sandwich shops. Usually with froggy writing on them, but sometimes with other languages. Gradually, I figured that these places were pulling a fast one. For some obscure reason, it appears to be cheaper to import Coke Light from the continent than it is to buy Diet Coke from the local cash 'n carry, and of course, they charge the same price for a can of Coke Light as they do for Diet Coke, and so make a bigger profit.
A nefarious plan, to be sure.
Me? I grumble and mumble and mutter and drink Pepsi Max as a gesture of defiance (if it's available), because that's the closest acceptable beverage to Diet Coke.
It's just not the same tho'.
Isn't this just the coolest thing you've seen?
I have to have one. Possibly more than one.
Yes, I know it's not much more than a compactflash card in a fancy housing, but it's the fancy (and teeny) housing that makes it so interesting. Carry-able in a handbag without the concern that it will get handbag fluff in important bits (which usually leads to having to find some sort of case for it) and just big enough not to get lost under the inevitable detrius (actually, I'm talking shite there. I regularly lose my mobile in the bottom of my handbag - the thing (Siemens c35i - it was free, okay? and I turned off the annoying ring tones that only tossers use) is just too small and slippery to find easily, unlike it's bricklike motorola c520 predecessor).
Anyway, I'm rambling again. It would just make life so much easier than having to waste bandwidth uploading and then downloading stuff to transfer it between home and work. Never mind how useful it would be for D to be able to transfer stuff between his home and work PC's, given his lack of internet connection at home.
The pisser is that it's on Scan's Today page today, and I'm broke until at least Friday.
Boo-hoo.
I'm going to take this, this and this as proof that D arrived in Paris, safe and sound, since he seems to have exhausted his poor little fingers so much he couldn't sent me an email to let me know he was there (bad boyfriend! no biscuit!).
Yes. I am cranky.
Why?
Cos I wanna be in Paris too, damnit!
Paris is one of my favourite places to be. I get a huge sense of excitement when I'm there, even although I don't really speak French. It doesn't mean I can't, it just means that I can't stand to hear myself speak it, because no matter how hard I try, I can't lose the Scottish accent, and French spoken in a Scottish accent just sounds weird. I also hate the Parisians (I love the city but I hate the people - isn't that ironic?) that try and take the piss because they hear D and I talk in English, although it has been amusing on occasion when they realise that D can understand them perfectly and replies like a native.
So yes, I'm seething with jealousy, and basically, just desperate to be there and wandering around the streets maxxing out every compactflash card I have every day.
Bah.
So, D is safely back in London and I'm safely back from taking him to the airport via a short trip to see my mother in the homeopathic hospital, which doesn't actually look like a hospital at all, except for the hospital beds, and a loop back to pick up my sister's boyfriend, who is still employed by my ex-employers (saw my ex-boss as we were pulling out of the car park. waved. she did a double take, then smiled sorta, then glared and then caught herself and smiled again).
My room seems too big for me again, after being too small for both of us again, and I feel a bit strange again like I did in December when he first left for the bright lights of the big city.
So, tonight as I go to bed, alone again (unless you count a supersize Eeyore, or 3 pillows more than is strictly necessary for one person), my fingers and toes are crossed, and I'm offering up prayers and begging every deity and anyone else that I think might possibly have any influence, that what's wrong with my dad isn't serious, so that I don't have to make the choice between staying here and watching him die and going to London to at long last start to have the life D and I have been talking about.
I've hesitated to say this before now, and I'm not sure I really know the reason why, but I think it's time that I came out and said it...
I'm moving to London.
[whew]
Might not seem like a big deal, but given my usual state of health (I had this plan in my head that I was going to wait until I'd been healthy and felt fine for 3 months in a row before I made plans to move, but frankly, I could be here for the rest of my life if I stick to that one), the usual state of health of my various family members (Previously: gran, recovering alcoholic with early stage alzheimers; mum, primary progressive type multiple sclerosis and type III ehlers-danlos syndrome. Now: as above but add dad: something wrong in his lung(s)/lymph node(s), doctors still undecided exactly what.) and the state of the noomeeja job market these days (see: Tom - if he can't get a job what hope do I have?), and my mostly stable at the moment but would have to stay that way financial situation, it all adds up to make things a little more complicated than I'd like.
Nonetheless, my mind is made up. I'm moving to London. Soon. Sometime in the next couple of months. The plan had been for me to spend last week and this week in London jobhunting and generally making plans to move, but all the stuff about my dad's health utterly trashed those plans.
D keeps making half jokes where he says "if" I move to London. I keep telling him that it's not an "if" thing. It's just a "when" thing. I mean it too.
So. I'm moving to London.
Soon.
I mean it.
At long long last, D has finally gotten his very own little webloggy type thing.
Theoretically, this should halt any confusion that has arisen in recent months over who's actually doing the writing around here.
Now you all have to go and "ooh" and "ahh" over the lovely design that he made out of several photos that I took and that I did all the hard code-type stuff on, and remark on what a kind and good and generous girlfriend I am to do all that for him.
Of course, you all have to come back here and keep reading afterwards, 'kay?
After months of clicking daily on the link to noahgrey.com in my bookmarks, today I'm rewarded with what I'd hoped for. Noah has come back with a photolog full of wonderful pictures, and I'm both glad and jealous (of the images) and feeling oddly re-motivated to get working on my photolog.
Welcome back Noah! It's so good to see you again.
I can't believe I'm awake at this time, and on a Sunday too. I just woke up from one of those incredibly vivid dreams that have you convinced while you're having it that its not a dream.
Imagine a FPS of the classic Syndicate, but not as in Deus Ex, more a mix of the anime style of Oni, and the sheer bulk of on-screen characters as Startopia. Lost? Here's something vapid and distracting to play with, and some light music. Dah-da-da-dahdadada-da-da the girl from ipanema.
So anyway, I'm wandering through a dark dystopian setting, in the full on bullet-proof trench coat and face mask, to the menacing music, when I realise I need to avoid some massive mecha. (there weren't any mecha in Syndicate, I think Deus Ex encroached in at this point) I dodge a car and duck into a back alley and decide to hack an ATM (again, a function only found in Deus Ex) but two street punks are messing around in front of it. So I go up to them and with the cybernetic enhanced body all agents possess, smash their heads together. They don't crumple to the ground, they pull out guns and blast me in the chest (yes I know how geeky this sounds, but you're here by choice remember, now do you want to hear the rest or not? I can't sleep anyway, what do I care?)
Unafraid of being shot, I instead try to knock the two guys unconcious with the butt of my gun, with no success. Instead, after a short conversation that Eddie Izzard must have scripted I discover that these two punks are higher versions of cyborgs than I am and they start taking me apart with their hands bit by bit.
The nasty thing is that I woke up with a bleeding nose. So gamer geek it hurts? And why has this left me with a hankering to go and play The New Zealand Story? Damn I've missed that Kiwi.
After a thoroughly satisfying pub lunch, Pixie pulled out her Coolpix and started setting up various "still life" tabletop pictures. Her sister and I turned our attentions to the golf as Colin Montgomerie (who needs a better bra) and Tiger Woods thrashed their way around the course.
A gentleman I could only describe as "portly", like Gilbert from A Doll's House, in a white cardigan with tinted glasses, paused beside our table and put a hand on the free seat. "Is this seat taken?" he asked.
I wish he'd asked if it was busy. I have a fantastic comeback line from Denis Leary for "Is this seat busy?" but when do fantastic comebacks ever get the set-up they deserve?
"No, go right ahead" I said and the man walked away. I wondered if he'd misheard me and decided that he'd probably noticed another table open up or a stool at the bar had become available.
Turning my attention back to the golf, Tiger had landed deep into the rough somehow and now it was getting interesting.
plunk plunk
A pint of bitter and a high-ball of scotch were placed on the table and the portly old man sat down beside me. Was I supposed to protest? Was I supposed to revoke the availability of the seat? I looked at Pixie and she was still absorbed in the bubbles of her Diet Coke, trying to get funny patterns captured on digital film. Her sister had noticed but was pretending to ignore the guy.
"Ever played golf?"
"Uh... no, not really."
"Builds character. What's the score at the moment?"
Ah-ha. I had seen the score moments ago and said with some knowledge, "Montgomerie's seven under and Tiger's five under par. Not sure about the others."
He nodded approvingly as though these were good scores. In my experience negative scores are to be avoided at all costs, but what the hey.
"I never met a Spaniard with enough patience to play the game."
It was not the sort of comment that needed an answer from me.
Tiger was being escorted back to where he had originaly taken his shot in the rough by a WPC, I had missed why. The female police officer was in black trousers and white shirt, standard uniform, radio on hip. I imagine he was having to take his shot again and the WPC was simply making sure he wasn't mobbed or attacked by members of the crowd.
The old gentleman took a sip from one glass then another, placed them on the table, leaned back and quite plainly said;
"The camera doesn't do much for her arse, does it."
That previous Megatokyo post wasn't by Pixie, it was me, I hit the wrong button. Oops.
We're just back from late night shopping at Safeway's. It was like Dawn of the Dead with a soundtrack by Starship. Pimpled pony-tailed fifteen-year old boys were restacking the occasional shelf as we were told that nothing was going to stop her now in a hollow, Muzak-kinda way.
All the lights in the freezer cabinets were out but they still had the clouds of frost over them in a weird morgue atmosphere, I half expected a hand to shoot up out of the dark swirling cold mists but, hey, no such luck.
So its now a quarter to midnight and we have warm apple pie and cream and three episodes of The West Wing to catch up on. Damn those trailers for Final Fantasy look good!
MegaTokyo - relax, we understand j00 - updated every monday, wednesday, and friday
"What I have learned as games have matured... I've learned that you cannot make a realistic First Person Shooter. All you can do is frag people and hope they don't respawn.
I've learned that no matter how much I care, some people will continue to camp.
I've learned that it takes years to build a decent game, and it only takes IGN.com five seconds to destroy it.
I've learned that you can get by on hype for about fifteen months. After that, you'd better have a decent product, or you'll be shot.
I've learned that you shouldn't compare console and PC games. People that do are more screwed up than you think.
I've learned that you can keep vomiting long after you think you're finished. (no change)
I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, unless we are celebrities. (no change... woohoo!)
I've learned that regardless of how many bump maps and steamy pixles the DOA3 girls have, their relationship with Microsoft makes the passion fade.
I've learned that 99% of the time when something isn't working on your PC, it's because you fsck'd it up.
I've learned that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon because of Everquest....
Largo"
Word, Largo. Word. (for those of you who are tired of me posting here, Pixie has promised that tomorrow we get mine set up, and hopefully dump the content blogged here on it)
Pixie and I somehow got onto the subject of "status food" over lunch today. Steak and onion sandwich for me, pasta and smooshy french bread for her.
An explanation perhaps? Well, while making a rather paltry wage as a temp the ultimate dinner treat for me, the one meal I lusted after from my days of parents preparing food and my step-dad's gourmet menu every night, was steak and green beans. (Although at times other members of the family were picky, I don't think that ever in eight years did my step-dad make a meal I didn't eat or enjoy. Other than the aubergines thing, but I can't talk about that. I just can't. Don't make me, please)
Juicy, tender meat, with maybe a thin vein of fat at one edge easily trimmed away but that adds just that little hint of flavor during cooking. With a dollop of Dijon mustard to one side of the plate beside the mound of crunchy green beans bathed in seasalt and butter. Like prone green Victoria Beckhams... uh... okay, that's going a little far I guess.
Sidenote: Why for some reason do I always associate milk with steak? Whenever I buy milk I think of steak and vice versa. Whichever I get to first reminds me to buy the other. Some subconcious association sees a steak in a frying pan in a pool of milk. And I refuse to even attempt it. I don't know where the mental image came from, I doubt any chef has ever done it... and yet...
So as a temp the best I could do was have roast beef sandwiches. Not quite as good. So, upon making it in London, and having sorted out what "monthly expenses" were and discovering what some people call "disposable income" (do I have to declare it on my taxes? Do we do taxes in this country? Am I about to get investigated for them now that its become apparent I don't know one way or the other?) I took to getting steaks. Big steaks. Yum.
The whole reason for this blog is of course that after a few minutes of poking at the pasta before her, Pixie stopped, looked up at me and said "Wagamama Ramen delivered from Camden". How New Media can you get?
You get into Glasgow Central Station and set your watch back five minutes. Travelling can get confusing when you don't leave timezones. Force of habit plagues you like a blight.
Pixie tells me my favorite author is in town tonight, do I want to go? Sure, I say, flicking my tongue over a rough patch of flesh in my mouth.
There's a gathering in the basement of a bookstore. A big bookstore, Corporate America snaking its tendrils out like a greedy squid. Clawing through towns and cities it has no reason to be in. But it is.
I don't ask which bookstore, they all sell the same books. Pixie tells me this is called free market. You're free to buy whatever you want from wherever you want, it all goes back to the same place eventually.
I've seen this guy before, eight months ago, in the same basement of the same store. He was funny then, I hope he'll be funny this time. He is. He's very funny. He tells us about confessions from out of the blue, confessions of waiters and bellboys and all the little people. He makes me scared to go and eat anywhere ever again.
Looking down into my eyes he tells me that the only way to persuade an attack dog to let go of your arm is to stick your finger up its butt. I smile because I know it works with turtles as well. Pixie looks at me and smiles. I wonder when the next time I'll be attacked by a turtle will be.
My tongue finds the rough patch in my mouth again and I ponder over what I'll write about this night? This Monday night in the middle of a summer I'd been enjoying until the weather changed for the worse. Pixie tells me that since Derek Powazek wrote about seeing this guy everyone and their dog has too. I wonder if he went before I did eight months ago?
The Cult of Personality, Pixie describes it to me, extends into a meme. Just like the french word that means "same", somebody does something original and we all emulate it. Emulating a writing style is easy, you just change a few words around and smile when people ask if you were inspired by someone else. I know this because Pixie knows this.
Read your work out loud, says the author. But I suspect he doesn't mean right away. Read it aloud and you'll discover you shy away from s's and v's, and favor t's and d sounds instead. I can't believe Jack Lemmon is dead.
Read it aloud and you'll never have to worry about it not sounding right to your public because you'll know what doesn't sound right to yourself and fix it first. He has signed my copy of his first book, the dedication says "Deliver yourself from selfish friends" because I told him nobody ever gives it back when I lend it to them. This is my fifth copy.
Triskadekaphobia is the fear of the number thirteen. An irrational fear I feel needs pointing out because how can you be afraid of a number? No, no, I'm told, you've got it wrong. You've got it wrong, its fear of Friday the thirteenth. Does that make any more sense? This has nothing at all to do with the story I was telling. Does it further the plot any or does it just serve as a stand alone paragraph? Pixie doesn't say anything.
The reading and questions end and the author agrees to sign anyone who arrived late, saying he'll stay as long as it takes. I like him because he's a good person and never boring. I realise we have the same shaggy hair and stubble and I ask Pixie later if I'm the Diet version of him. She just rubs my head.
The day before we had been trying to tidy up some stuff that had gotten out of hand in her room. The room is too small for her, she needs to become a hermit crab and change shell. She knows this and she says she knows this. I know this, she says. She lifts something up and the small black Zen garden tumbles, falling face down on a seat. The pebbles are thrown across the carpet and the sand trickles off the side of the chair like a broken hourglass. The moment is frozen in time until Pixie breaks the silence...
"Bugger, that's not very Zen, is it."
Chuck being silly.
To all the forces that conspired to keep me from getting here to Pixie's. Ha. Ha. Ha again, I say.
To the rainclouds that decided to avoid the actual "rain" part of the process and dump all the water they contained instantaneously on Oxford St just as I left the office. Ha, I say to you. There was a hairdrier and tumble drier at home.
To whatever idiot decided to close Euston station to all traffic. Ha, I say to you, I went via Warren Street instead.
To the GWR train that broke down in front of the Heathrow Express and delayed me by an hour and a half leaving me twenty minutes to get from platform to plane. Ha, I say to you. I still made it to the airport with breath in my lungs.
Ha, I say because I'm here and I'll be going to bed now. Pixie says "Ha" too.
I know what I said below, but its still all quiet on the work front.
More worrying however is this, which would come second only to a cancellation of the series altogether for sheer entertainment-crippling value.
Come on guys, work it out. You broke all the records for Emmy awards last year and you could again this year if you out-do the Sopranos again.
There's so much I could blog right now, that crazy South African sitting beside me answering someone else's phone and humming The Girl From Ipanema down the line to a client, pretending to be the hold music we don't have, or the crazy woman on the Tube this morning who, in doing her make-up had managed to clear a protective bubble around herself nobody wanted to enter for fear of being stabbed in the eye with a mascara brush, or the hair-dressing tips I was given by a complete stranger in the street simply because my hair was still wet from washing it this morning.
But I won't. Cause I need to sit on top of every iota of work that comes my way and get it done to ensure I'm out of here and on vacation as quickly as possible.
I just realised, with my impending stay at Pixie's that I haven't had boiled potatoes in over six months. Not a single boiled potato. I've had baked, chipped, fried, mashed, and the roasted ones Del* does where she coats them in the juices from the cooked meat and lightly salts them when they're still soft and absorbant to make the crunchy flavour burst out...
But no boiled.
Pixie's mother loves boiled potatoes and I don't want to appear ungrateful for their hospitality or rude... but I was put off squishy flakey water-flavored white blobs the last time I stayed there, pretty much for good. Dear Abby, please suggest a way I can avoid insulting my hosts and yet avoid eating boiled potatoes... please, please, pleasepleaseplease.
*Del is a housemate from more countries than I hail from. She is quite, quite excentric but refuses to let you be depressed in her presence and will do everything in her power to cheer you up. A good friend to have.
On my way to Computer Exchange in Rathbone Place to get some DVD's (yes, the site is horrible, the shop screams out for air-conditioning and track lighting and you're likely to do a Death Becomes Her on the stairs to the basement, but their prices are incredible!) I spotted the Animation Art Gallery across the road and a Seurat-style Charlie Brown and Snoopy portrait which, it turned out, was by Tom Everhart.
I think finding out about Charles Schultz passing was the first time I'd ever cried at someone I didn't know's death.
I want the third Bolton picture on this page, mounted on a wall somewhere in my house. Not fussy where.
I'm just amazed that in a brain full of Farscape, computer games, sci-fi movies and junk food I was able to look at a picture from across a street and name the french impressionist style it was themed upon. Is that sad or snobby? I can't tell which.
There is a long tradition in the UK of The Village Idiot, best exemplified in the Monty Python skit of the man sitting on the wall spouting nonsense and falling over backwards only to speak perfectly normally to another similarly-dressed man about stocks and shares before explaining that he's the visiting village idiot from the next village over. My theory is that last night I met a village idiot who had been upgraded to City status...
On my way home from work I went to check my balance at a cashpoint and withdraw some money, noticing a rather scraggy man leaning in the window of a white van parked beside the cashpoint. As music played in my ears I pushed the buttons and waited for my card to be returned, when it became apparent by the warm stale breath on the left side of my face that I was being addressed by the scraggy man.
A brown plastic bottle of Strongbow poked out from one coat pocket and the sleeves were rolled up far enough to show varied tattoos of sufficient "hardness" to instantly put me on my guard. His mouth had stopped moving so I mumbled "You're absolutely right. Couldn't have put it better myself." in as thick a Canadian accent as I could muster to make it abundantly clear that we had *nothing* in common and he should stop talking to me.
The cash-point meanwhile was checking whether or not it would give me any money, shaking an internal magic eight-ball for clues, scrying in lizard gizzards as to whether or not I'd put it to good use and generally being the little ATM-deity that we all hope will not one day laugh at us when we push the "50" button.
Mr Hard smiled at my agreement and a lull in the music allowed me to catch the next comment through lips that probably only parted for alcohol: "Grmm-mmmble-bibble-goooryy-yooll-go-mad-tonight. Yesh..."
In my mind raced every Stephen King book I'd ever read. Oh God! If he reaches out to stroke one cheek I'll become bulimic! Are those clown shoes he's wearing or just big army boots? Is he going to try and sell me a homicidal '58 Plymouth Fury because he knows I'm jaded and vindictive? Was he giving me some prophetic message that I foolishly ignore because he's the stereotypical mad man who's not so mad?
With as close to a regurgative sound as a machine can make the cash-point decides to be lenient. Eyes fixed on Mr Hard's I mumble, "Verily, it shall be so." and reach out to take the money in my left hand. He smiles again and puts out his right hand in that half-a-handshake manner, and I very nearly handed him all the cash. But I escaped with just patting the back of his hand carefully and leaving him in the very capable hands of the guy in the queue behind me who had been visibly praying that I shut the hell up and stop encouraging Mr Hard.
Well, I sat and watched Galaxy Quest when I got home, played Deus Ex, weighed myself twice to make sure I wasn't losing weight at a suspicious rate, but didn't go mad... that I noticed...
Except that is, when somebody sends me a streaming Guy Richie film in an e-mail.
Looks like Guy's the only one in the world who can make Madonna an Uber-bitch comedy heroine without damaging her career. You have to wonder how much Blur make in royalties for "Song 2" though.
link via meg
I was just offered a grape from a bowl of lovely freshly-washed pale green grapes.
"Are they seedless?" I asked. The reply:
"Consider this your own private version of The Deer Hunter, only with fruit."
I thought it was a harmless question anyone would have asked. I guess one grape is what it's all about.
As I've pointed out in a few other places, I work with a really diverse bunch of people. The mix of nationalities can get really confusing at times and we're all fluent in at least two languages (Buffy speaks four and still doesn't realise that "Fetid Cheese" is a joke)
Besides me sits our resident South African, and the guy is frequently the heart and soul of any pranks going on around here, he does however have the unfortunate affliction of "no shame"
"No shame" is something most Brits will never catch in their lifetime unless they take one too many trips to Ibiza and see television cameras. A strange affliction that causes the victim to blurt out comments such as he did just prior to phoning his girlfriend. Lets call him G.
G: "Bru, I'm so lucky. My girlfriend wants me to get some porn for us to watch together."
D: "Oh... thats nice."
G: "Do you know where I can find some on the web?"
D: "Uh... you shouldn't really be browsing for that sort of stuff online at work."
G: "So? I see you always typing away at stuff that isn't work-related."
D: "That's not quite the same. You'll get fired if they catch you."
G: "So will you, bru. How about sex shops?"
D: "Good point. Well, there's Soho, if you feel like going for a walk."
G: "Cool Bru, I'll go during lunch. I'll show you what I get."
He then procedes to phone up his girlfriend.
G: "Guess what, D suggested a great place to get porn. You up for it?"
I'm sort of flapping away trying to make it clear by hand signals alone that I did not suggest anything. Doesn't work over phonelines though for some reason.
G: "You want to go halfs? Yeah? What sort of stuff? Oh yeah, I like her too... oh, you naughty girl..."
At this point I wedged my earplugs in as firmly as I could and pumped Orbital up as high as I could. He's gone for lunch now... I'm almost scared to be here when he comes back. Call it stuffy, call it prudish, but there is such a thing as too much information and this stomped across those barriers and ran screaming over the hills.
The next person who stabs me in the ribs with a copy of New Media Weekly on the underground during rush hour gets it rolled up and rammed down their throat Ash-from-Alien style.
And lady, it was a packet of POLO MINTS! So quit it with the indignant-you're-just-a-young-pervert look. Don't you realise its a crime punishable by death to not move out of the way when everybody else wants off at Oxford Circus?
It's raining
It's pouring
The little man is snoring
He went to bed
and bumped his head
and couldn't wake up in the morning
The Joy Luck Fight Club
Late at night four mother and daughter couples meet in the basements of bars and play bloody battles of Mah-Jong until the daughters begin plotting the destruction of credit card companies across the world. The mothers begin to suspect that their daughters might be figments of their respective imaginations.
L'Amantz
A computer animated tale of an underage young ant (voiced by Soon Yi Previn) in french colonial Vietnam in 1928 and the affair she has with a married man breaking class barriers, social barriers and even species barriers.
Ghost Dog: Subway of the Seven Samurai
Seven ex-cops, all with bright orange hair, follow the precepts of Hagakure in their daily jobs as hitmen but are forced to take refuge together in the New York subway system before exacting revenge on their attackers and defending Greenwich village.
Assault on Friday the Thirteen Days
In an update of Rio Bravo, a roving band of escaped mental patients who all survived drowning as children lay siege to a deserted police station on the banks of Crystal Lake during the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK is forced to handle political dealings, serial killing gangs and defend the isolated building from a nuclear strike.
Forget Paris, Texas
An amnesiac basketball referee travels to Paris to rejoin his brother in the hope he can restore his memory. He falls in love with an air hostess but discovers he has a wife and child back in Texas.
Eat, Drink, Rainman, Pretty Woman
Follows the story of an autistic Master Chef and his three mis-matched prostitute daughters who congregate every Sunday for a meal until all three daughters are swept away by rich businessmen one by one leaving the father to perform Abbot and Costello on his own.
To Wong Fools Rush Hour In
Matthew Perry, Jackie Chan and Chris Rock star as three drag queens attempting to free a diplomat's daughter kidnapped by a Hong Kong crime lord desperate to retrieve his signed photo of Julie Newmar. Salma Hayek plays the love interest in an easily ignored sub-plot.
Call of the Very Bad Wild Things
At Charlton Hestons stag party in British Columbia a threesome goes horribly wrong and the stripper is accidentaly eaten by Charlton's sled-dog. He and his bi-sexual partner (played by Neve Campbell) plot to lay the blame on the girl's father. The dog lives.
The Quick and the Evil Dead Again
Through past-life hypno-regression in an abandoned house in the wild west two people relive the various stylish gunfights they survived against ghouls and the demons locked in people's cellars. Unknown to them their hypnotist is also a Deadite.
Down and No Way Out in Hamburger Hills
Set during the Vietnam war, an intelligence officer cons his way into Gene Hackman's Intelligence Agency. He finds he must survive both a falsified witch-hunt for a KGB spy as well as a bloody assault on a Vietnamese stronghold as he attempts to prove his innocence.
Jewel of the Nil by Mouth
Michael Douglas returns as Dependable Jack Colton but finds his family is suffering from depression and drug-addiction in working-London. He attempts to find a fabled holy-man to alleviate his family's suffering of the human condition.
Wing Commander of Desire (Original title: Der Himmel Uber Kilrathi)
Based on the hit series of computer games by Wim Wenders, Freddie Prinze Jr stars as an angel, tired of watching humanity struggle against the evil Kilrathi empire, who descends to earth to sign on.
American Pi
A group of friends make a pact to solve incalculable mathematical equations before the end of the year. The funniest part, as seen in all the trailers, is when young Jason Biggs is caught staring into the sun for too long on a web camera.
And the ones I can't be bothered writing a summary for;
I Know What You Did Last of The Mohicans
Waiting for Playing Godot
The Emperor's New Jack City of Angel Heart of Darkness
My Stepmother is an Alien Resurrection Man
It was about this time yesterday I went out on a quick food run to the nearby Tesco Metro and as I crossed to the south pavement of Oxford Street I noticed one of those guys pushing one of those big white automatic street sweepers that look like a zamboni (no, I didn't know what a zamboni was either, so I never got all those Snoopy jokes until they were finally explained to me, I always confused zamboni with zucchini)
He stopped, flipped the brakes on and turned to start gathering up some trash on a bench. With his attention elsewhere he didn't see the eight-year old boy go up to the machine and, obviously thinking that this was a free ride or co-operative venture, release the brakes. The street-sweeper trundled slowly forward towards Oxford St's never ending traffic.
I'd assume the guy caught up with it but I was too busy laughing at the irony that despite a lack of qualified teachers in this country, kids are still smart enough to cause havoc with complex machinery you need qualifications to use.
Yes I know today is Tuesday.
Don't know how I missed this a few months ago.
And it wasn't her first parole hearing, as further digging found this. No kidding, mind-altering drugs in a sixteen-year old? No wonder she fired a rifle at little kids, how many of us, stoned or drunk have found themselves gripped with the need to blow a few kids away to make the cold turkey easier to deal with?
How stoned do you have to be to come up with one of the world's pithiest excuses for mindless slaughter?
I'm not the world's biggest fan of Mondays either, and my parents didn't give me a rifle and 500 rounds for Christmas, which must be the only reason I haven't done something similar. That and of course the fact that I'm sane!
She was refused again this time around. The world is safe for another four years.
Oh, what brought this on? Big Tori Amos fan, I heard she's going to cover the Boomtown Rats.
No, not the site, although I've posted some of what I'm about to link to there too. I finally got round to putting my photographic efforts of the last few months into a rudimentary gallery type thingy (creativity when it comes to webstuffs has been sadly lacking due to extreme shiteness of dayjob webstuffs I'm forced to do).
So without further ado, I present to you lovely people:
The best of the March-June collection which were all taken using a Sony DSC-S70.
The best of the July collection, which were taken using the brand new and very lovey Nikon Coolpix 995. When I say best of July, I mean best of the photos I took on Friday, Saturday and Sunday... and if you think there's a lot there, you should know that that's less than half of what was taken.
Obsessed with new toy? moi?
Do feel free to leave comments on the photos here.
This is going to be difficult to explain without using names. Lets say there's an Agency, lets call it Agency X, and they're currently on a downward slope and not doing so well, having lost quite a few clients to the dot.com slump and the withdrawl of traditional media from the online market. So Agency X use our software and I've been assigned the task of babysitting Agency X through teething problems.
They've hired some new staff after firing the over-paid staff and the bosses expect the green ones to perform just as well, because hey, they're giving them jobs during a dot.com crisis, they should be paying Agency X for the priviledge of having a job.
So the new girl and the new guy need to ask me about the various intricate aspects of our software, and being a traditional sort of agency they use the phone rather than E-mail, meaning immediate answers are expected. Occasionally they'll come up with problems so devious and convoluted I'm forced to use our in-house tech support to answer the question...
But when they phone up to ask me why they can't get their computer to start up, what am I supposed to say?
Reminded me of that e-mail that gets sent around purporting to be a transcript of a tech support department telling a woman who doesn't realise her machine won't work during a powercut to take it back to the shop.
Geek-fu, cute.
For those of you with images of a guy in thick round glasses and an orange anorak dodging bullets, I'm sorry to disappoint.
Pixie's a bigger geek than me! (pointing finger at Pixie)
Damnit, with all the excitement I completely forgot to get anything to eat. I was too busy watching the tennis and then when I got back and started listening to music again I became hypnotised by Orbital's "Kein Trink Wasser" (Don't drink the water?)... I wonder how easy it would be to learn the piano accompanyment to that...
So Goran's won. Even though he beat Henman to get there, the crowd hanging around outside John Lewis watching the Sony widescreens cheered him on and roared when he won. Cars stopped up on the pavement, they cheered for Pat Rafter, they cheered for Goran. I think it was a very confused crowd.
So which one was the best man? Pat, who was the underdog to Agassi in the semi and swung this match around each time Goran took a lead? Or Goran, fourth time into the final, he's slogged his way through the tournament so many times he'd probably lost faith in himself. As we were continually reminded he was a wild card this time around because his ranking had fallen below 100. Goran was the ultimate underdog.
There was a lot of anti-podean suppressed anger in the office this morning because of the rugby and the cricket (I don't follow cricket at all, I understand England lost again?) and I seemed to be the only one cheering Rafter on.
I liked what I saw of Goran, not being a Henman fan at all, but the relish he took at showing off an imaginary "split-personality" became all too real in the fourth set when Rafter broke him to even the score. Spitting at Lineswomen? Throwing rackets around and kicking the net? Perhaps Rafter was the better man as he's shown none of these sore-loser tantrums, instead accepting that this may well be his final Wimbledon and taking defeat with a smile and a quip for Sue Barker.
We've run out of hot weather it seems, rain is back to being unpredictably heavy/light, and now Wimbledon is over for another year. Anyway, can the country get back to normal now?
Had a great weekend, got interviewed by the Telegraph, got a signed copy of American Gods, spent a quiet evening on the terrace, followed by a lazy Sunday with a shopping trip to Camden. No sign of me in the Sunday Telegraph though...
I'd say more but I'm currently enjoying the Wimbledon final on webcast...
Just posted these over to Dan to add to his growing collection.
Lion King of New York
An ex-con returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition, become the biggest cat in the city and share the wealth amongst the poorer members of the pride.
Cool Hand Look Who's Talking
A baby refusing to stay stuck in the womb takes to eating as many eggs as he can to gain a reputation as a hard man.
The Ten Commandments I Hate About You
A family decrees through ten sacred laws that their youngest daughter cannot date until her older sister finds a way to lead them to the promised land.
A Midsummers Night of the Living Dead
A complicated plot intertwines a plethora of characters trapped within a house surrounded by zombies as they attempt to declare their feelings for one another. Unknown to them though, the nearby forrest dwellers have other plans for them.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Film Festival
The tale of a gunman who spends his time running from the media. Culminates in a shoot-out between himself and the entire Bolivian paparazzi.
Bullitts Over Broadway
An idealistic young detective takes an undercover assignment in a theatre but is torn between catching the killer or the thrill of performance. Includes the world's greatest on-stage chase sequence.
The Magnificent Se7en
A band of mismatched mercenaries are hired to defend a small Mexican town from a sadistic maniac who kills to punctuate his nihilistic lack of compassion for gringos.
The Rocky Horror Picture of Dorian Gray
In Victorian England a young man is given a portrait by an admirer that slowly transforms from the conservative clothing he wore when it was painted to garish and outlandish lingerie. As he grows older his friends do not notice his attire changing to black and red underwear until they are all zapped with tri-pronged lasers.
John Carpenter's Do the Right Thing
An isolated research base in the heart of Brooklyn explodes in violence when the hottest day of the year brings a shape-shifting alien out of hibernation at the local pizza parlor.
Crouching Tigerland, Hidden Red Dragon
During bootcamp training for the Vietnam war a mystical jade sword is stolen by a terrifying murderer among the grunts. The grizzled sergeant enlists the help of a zen monk imprisonned for his homicidal impulses to help identify and catch the culprit.
Priscilla, Queen of the Damned
A large bus is roused from sleep when the vampire Lestat takes to covering Abba tracks.
Get Martin Shorty
An obnoxious broadway actor is tracked down by a floridian mafia stooge in an attempt to have him read a new script with a gun to his head.
That's all folks
While Meg was busy a few miles north-east of me prising her window open before dancing in the rain I was climbing in the newly prised-open ground floor window of a housemate. She didn't find it funny.
My window faces north but the terrace opens out to the south, so I can get quite a breeze channeling through my room with both open. I'd been sitting for a few hours hearing the occasional rumble over my music, curtain drawn over my window to stop the sun thwarting my attempts to rebuild my page and house a blog on it. Coming along nicely thankyouverymuch. Bastard layers!
Anyway, finally persuaded that the rumbling noises were not my housemates I headed out onto the terrace. I thought someone had thrown an orange gel over north London. The light was a deep orange, the sky grey and menacing. The air tasted of ozone, I could breathe it in through my teeth and they ached from the electricity. A storm. Perfect.
It occurs to me that the safest place to be during an impending storm is not on a third floor terrace surrounded by iron railings.
I am now the proud owner of a brand spanking new Nikon Coolpix 995. I'll now have to leave you in D's capable hands, because I have a new toy to play with.
[D's comment: Looks like the Delorean of cameras. Gimmicky, trendy but ultimately designed to support a bad habit.]
Bah. Jealousy is a terrible thing.
Stuck in work missing Wimbledon, I've found the alternative at the Wimbledon Homepage. The biggest problem is that watching the live scoreboard, and listening to the "live" webcast, it becomes obvious that there is a slight lag... as much as a minute.
I don't know what to do... watch the scoreboard and listen to music or listen to the commentary and occasionally glance at the prophetic scoreboard.
1. Brand new, crisp, white, cotton bed linen - and on sale too!
2. Lush tea tree water taken straight from the fridge and applied to face and neck with cotton wool pads.
3. Getting into the caliGallery after only a year of trying.
4. Getting nice email as a result of said appearance in caliGallery from someone who I didn't previously know (actual, honest-to-goodness fanmail! who'da thunkit??).
5. Being surrounded by wonderful people who can make me laugh and forget my troubles, no matter how down I am.
6. My dad is going into hospital on Sunday night in preparation for keyhole surgery to remove a lymph node and another bronchoscopy on Monday.
7. Finding treasures like my great-grandfather's WWI medals, a tripod, a wind-up flash and some slides of Barcelona while helping my dad sort through his stuff to make a comfortable room for him for when he comes out of hospital.
8. Pay-per-view movies, for those hot and sweaty sleepless nights when despite having 70 channels, there's nothing worth watching.
9. Starbucks choc chip raspberry mocha frappuccino (I know they're evil, but I can't help myself - it's got bits of raspberry choc chip cookie in there!)
10. My boyfriend filling the blog up with funny stuff when I can't.
Winamp is lying to me. The random function is not random at all. How in a playlist of over 500 tracks can it play the same Lalo Schifrin track 3 times in less than an hour?
First off, was Jon Voight high this morning on the Big Breakfast or what?
Totally unrelated, but this morning in my office, Mike the loud American asked a question which became a free for all;
M: What was that movie with Charlton Heston where he gets screwed and meets Jesus?
"Planet of the Apes?"
"Return to Planet of the Apes?"
"He wasn't in that, he was in Beneath The Planet of the Apes."
"You know he plays an ape in the new Tim Burton version?"
"D'you reckon he'd be like, picking his nose and suddenly shout out 'Get your hands off me you damned dirty ape!'?"
"No."
"Earthquake?"
"NRA Promoting Nazi's Must Die?"
"Life of Brian?"
M: No, no, no... the one set in ancient times.
"Anthony and Cleopatra?"
"Gladiator?"
"Too recent."
"Tombstone?"
"Thats the Wild West, and he wasn't in that."
"Yes he was."
"Life of Brian?"
"So wait, where was the bit with Oliver Reed set?"
"A funeral home?"
"In Gladiator?"
"Yeah"
"Somewhere hot and sandy. Probably left over sets from Ishtar."
M: He didn't meet Jesus in Anthony and Cleopatra did he?
"I think Jesus had business elsewhere around that time. But he was usually the one at Cleopatra's parties that would get a bit too drunk and start giving all the other people third eyes and stuff."
"Was it Spartacus?"
"That was Thingy Douglas..."
"Who, Micheal?"
M: What?
"Adams?"
"Catherine-Zeta Jones-Douglas?"
"In Spartacus? I don't think so."
"Kirk."
"James T?"
"Its worse than that."
M: Yeah, it was Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, Charlton Heston was in that other one...
"Gladiator?"
"Life of Brian?"
"Will you shut up about sodding Monty Python?! Nobody famous was in that other than them."
"Yes there was, Spike Milligan's in it."
"When?"
"The bit with the sandal."
"And the gourd."
"He's the one making sense."
"For once."
M: Wait, he doesn't get screwed in Ben Hur, does he?
"Spike Milligan?"
"No, Kirk Douglas."
"That was Spartacus."
"Kirk Douglas screwed Spike Milligan in Spartacus?"
"Sounds more like Gladiator with all the beefcake."
"You're not thinking of Jon Voight in Deliverance are you?"
"Jon Voight isn't the one who gets screwed, it's that other one."
"Burt Reynolds?"
"Ronnie Cox?"
"No, the one who has no career."
"Small wonder."
"Guess he wasn't putting enough emotion into the part."
M: I don't mean he gets screwed literally...
"Oh, you mean like he dies and meets Jesus metaphorically?"
"Airport?"
"No, wait... Airplane. Airport was the comedy."
"No, other way round."
"Are you sure..."
"What sense is there in calling a film set on a plane Airport?"
"Earthquake."
"He doesn't die in Earthquake."
"He doesn't die in Airport either."
"He's not in Airport, he's in Airplane."
"Whatever!"
M: Come to think of it, has anyone ever killed Charlton Heston?
"Maybe if we're lucky..."
"At some NRA gathering with a bunch of Alien Hand Syndrome sufferers..."
"You saw that too? How freaky to not be able to control your own hands."
"I have that problem all the time around women." (this one was *not* me)
"He dies in Soylent Green doesn't he?"
"They turn him into salteen crackers... just add water and he'll reform into Charlton Heston. Thats the beauty of osmosis."
"He was in Wayne's World 2 as well, remember the bit at the gas station when Wayne complains about the actor and they wheel in Charlton instead?"
"Wasn't that Rip Torn?"
"What a great name."
"Yeah."
"I mean Rip Torn."
"So do I."
"He doesn't die in Wayne's World 2."
M: Buff, you haven't said anything yet, what do you think?
B: I don't even know who you're talking about.
"Somebody send her the imdb entry for Charlton Heston"
"Where's the fun in that?"
Me: "Oh... wait. He was in Airport, and even The Colby's"
"Great series that."
"Not half as good as Dynasty"
"How old were you when Dynasty was on?!"
"Obviously too young to realise it was crap. Now Dallas on the other hand..."
etc, etc, ad nauseum.
The answer of course was "The Greatest Story Ever Told."
(yes, I am still working on my own blog, these things don't happen overnight though when you can't work on it during your day job)
So I'm typing away happily, and an ant crawls up from between the keys of my Logitech Deluxe and down over the wrist rest.
squish
I go to key in a few values on the number pad...
crunch, crunch-crunch, crunch
Hmm, beginning to see a pattern....
Argh! Ants in the keyboard! How ants got into my keyboard I shall never know. However, it occurs to me that by the end of a typical week you could turn my keyboard upside down and fill a bag of bombay mix. For those of you who enjoy bombay mix... sorry.
I've heard of hardware bugs, but this is ridiculous. I'll fight them tooth and claw for this keyboard.
scratch, scratch
Instead of the usual circular offer to help anyone out with their work now that I've finished mine for the day (see, I keep the clients happy and they leave me alone) I sent this message round instead:
"This offer of help is available for a limited time only. Buy now to avoid disappointment. The Help of D: Volume 12 also comes with a bonus AIM window full of cynical remarks and the occasional profound statement. That's not all though. If you're the first to answer, you exclusively get one pearl of wisdom that you won't find anywhere in the shops."
The pearl of wisdom is going to be that after you've put up with the constant stream of irritating things in the AIM window a pearl should form, just like in real life.
Just watched a BMW almost kill a guy on a bike. The guy got off the bike, pushed it into the gutter, walked up to the BMW driver side door and swung his bike lock at the window. It bounced off and left a massive white scar across the glass. The guy... who you'd expect to get out and kill the man on the bike, instead opened the door slightly and screamed "I didn't see you! I didn't see you! It was an accident."
Still, that's gonna leave a mark.
How do I know? Well, leaving work early and heading to the pub for a quick game of pool and a refreshing iced drink I'm suddenly buzzed by my phone. Hello? Yes, oh, the Tomb Raider Premiere is in Leicester Square tonight? Yeah, I might pop down there, see who I can see... thanks. Love you...
And so I set off walked down to Leicester Square reasoning that the best thing that can happen is that my detour takes me past a media/celebrity blitz. And the worst thing is that I take an extra ten minutes to get to the tube and head home without getting the green beans I'm carrying bashed to bits.
Green beans aren't the important detail there.
I reckon that Premieres are timed down to the minute. You wouldn't make a bunch of celebrities sit around waiting for the star, so there would be a pre-arranged time for the major stars to turn up, I figure it'd be on the hour, so speed up my pace to arrive there just before seven.
Once there, arriving from the direction of Regent's Street, I discover there are so many people there its unbelievable. And they're all hot and sweaty and pushy. I pick a side and muscle my way forwards still thinking that the Premiere is down at the Odean rather than the Empire before hearing wild screams to my left. And there's Jon Voight.
Like...
Right there. Beside me.
My initial thought was to say "Squeal boy, squeal!", my brain just works like that.
There are cries of "Old fart? Who are you? Excuse me... who are you?" from a guy beside me who ducks down when Jon looks round to see who said it. I try and mimic my larynx missing from a horrible hunting accident... which involves looking at him and trying to smile politely as the guy beside me sniggers.
He heads over to the opposite side of the crowd and I nudge my way in beside the girls in Lara outfits but themed to a certain energy soft drink Lara advertises on TV. Not going to say what the drink is, but damn were those girlies fit.
Anyway, Caprice pulls up in a car, gets out and gives the tabloids a few poses. Yawn. Go away. I'm straining my calves trying to see back down the way I came. The cinema entrance is directly across from me and a bunch of guys have taken the Lara-girls onto their shoulders beside me.
A black executive car (could have been a Merc, could have been a BMW, could have been silver, didn't care) pulls up and out get Angelina and Billy-Bob. I realise that all the press are lining the sides of the door and that I'm positioned perfectly for the "star talking with fans without photographer in sight" photo. Cool.
She makes her way along the crowds and is signing this and that, copies of Total Film are dangled over the heads of the crowd and probably not returned to the right people afterwards, someone behind me asks someone beside me to take some pictures with an expensive digital camera... hey, I did Digital Media in college, ask me!
The Lara girls are getting more and more excited and bouncing on the guys' shoulders, who are getting more and more excited. My calves are screaming for me to stop standing on tiptoes, I stand flat on the soles of my shoes and become almost instantly glued to the spot by spilled product endorsement soft drink. Ew.
Angelina makes her way along the line, the Met officers scream at everyone to stop pushing against the barriers. She looks gorgeous in a simple black suit. How she can wear black in this weather I have no idea. Billy-Bob has hung back but they move together for a kiss for all the papers then she moves back towards my part of the crowd.
It gets mixed up after that. I remember her coming over to the Lara-girls and being in front of me as I said "You were fantastic in Girl, Interrupted" (yes, I realise that that's a dumb thing to say, she won an Academy Award for it!) she might have said thanks, I might have imagined it, and then she moved further down the crowd signing stuff as she went.
That was it. No sudden moment of silence with rose-petals falling towards me, no wink or coy smile... in retrospect why was it such a great feeling? I don't know, but I went home, had steak and green beans for dinner, watched some Farscape and thought about how much I'm currently enjoying myself here. Despite the heat.
If you've ever bought your lunch from a place called "Benji's" (I believe they're a chain) here's the thing, their ciabatta's are big on ciabatta and thin on filling. Done on purpose of course. Fills you up faster with a taster of the filling.
So, the trick is, because you know you're never going to eat it all... open it up and fold the filling over in half. Then eat that half. I'll bet that you run out of appetite before you run out of filling and this way you get twice the taste in the same amount of food as you'd have settled for anyway.
This public service announcement was brought to you in association with Charly the cat.
"Merrrowr-oewr-meowrrr-oo-r-wee" Charly says never put your cat in a bath unless you have personal injury cover.
I noticed something recently. I'm always "in the middle" of something. Sometimes closer to the beginning, sometimes closer to the end. And the funny thing is that I'm happy there. I don't like endings, I'm usually distracted during beginnings. But middles...
Wait, before I go any further, I'm usually in the middle of something because you people always distract me! (half-heartedly shaking fist at general public)
Anyway... when you're enjoying something, and you've got past the initial reticence and you're enjoying it, be it a book, movie, meal, nap, vacation, heavy petting sessions, and you realise it has to end at some point but if you think about it too long you'll spoil it and cause the end to arrive prematurely, so you push it out of your mind and keep enjoying the middle bit. Thats what I'm talking about.
If it wasn't for you people though I'd have finished The Lord of The Rings years ago, I'd have finished writing the script that'll make me a household name in my parent's house, and I'd have played the Thief games all the way through instead of giving up on the first few levels. (sob, sob, Looking Glass, you will never be forgotten, because System Shock 2 was a three-changes-of-pants-a-minute gaming experience)
No, I don't have anything to do this afternoon. Sorry.
I just came back from my lunch break and found the two "placebos" on a post-it note on my desk. The post it says "Patrick had Advil, thanks anyway". Not only do I not know any Patrick in the office, but I don't think he had any Advil, but a keen eye for pebbles instead.
I hope I don't get a reputation around here for handing out placebos...
The morning wasn't being kind to me. Already I'd had to suffer countless people at the station, the streets were crawling like a carcass on an ant-hill, I was in a dark mood. The marble pillars of the entranceway to my building towered before me, I tipped a nod to the doorman and headed into the art deco elevators.
As I approached my desk I noticed a skirt, tall with dark skin, rooting around in my desk drawers. She had her back to me and I pondered what to do next. I still had that rough weekend feeling where you shave it all off hoping to come in to work clean and fresh, but it hadn't worked. I felt grizzled like a pack of bears.
"What are you looking for?" I enquired.
The broad jumped back with a start, embarrased at being caught. A few other people had a peek at the commotion but my stare told them to get back to work.
"I was looking for some Advil or something. I've got a headache."
Two lead slugs would do the trick, I mused before sliding back the chair and sitting down. I settled into the chair like the comfortable embrace of an old lover welcoming you back after a prolonged absence. I couldn't be unfaithful to this chair, not even with the armchairs in my appartment.
"I don't have any Advil."
I paused. Was this a ploy? Was she really after something else?
"I do have a couple of Placebos though."
She was American and didn't understand it was a joke.
"Are they just as good?"
"Sure, they'll do the trick," I said, like a cat playing with a spider. Showing the glimmer of hope before covering it over again with the soft pink pad of its paw. How long could I keep this up?
"You don't mind? I'll go and get you some more at lunchtime."
"I've got plenty to spare. Hang on..."
I reached into the side drawer of my desk. My trusty supportive desk. Always willing to take any load I might bestow upon it. It might occasionally have felt the weight of the world on its shoulders, but that was usually solved by dragging the paper recycling bin round to it.
I couldn't find anything suitable inside and instead reached across the desk to the little Zen garden I keep. A funny oriental trinket given to me after solving a case in Chinatown, it was designed to keep my nerves calm, but didn't do the job as well as some things.
Picking two of the three pebbles out of the sand, the black shiny rocks like obsidian rabbit droppings I asked, "Are two going to be enough?"
She wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and hadn't noticed my ruse. I dropped them into her outstreched palm and leaned back into the chair.
"Um..."
Turning to another colleague she decided to verify my claim.
"Are Placebos as good as Advil?" she asked.
The guy was a solid dependable type, we'd worked together a lot in the past and he knew what was going on. A conspirital wink and he replied;
"If you've never had one before, you might be surprised."
That seemed to have done the trick, and I don't think I'll have anyone looking through my desk again anytime soon.
... the online home and (not very) alter(ed)-ego of Ann McMeekin, a recently freelance Web Accessibility Consultant.
... passionate about many things, most of which will turn up on this site at some time or other.
... contactable via email.
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