Farting through my Fingertips

Terrified Londoners today, darting from shadow to shadow, squeaking and fleeing from the shockingly exposed vasty plains between buildings, crowding and jostling in the streets' suddenly confined spaces, staring frantically up at the foreigner sun.

Wotisit? That big brighty thing. Up there. In the sky. No, wait, where's the sky gone? Omigod it's not there any more, our nice neat low safe grey grey roof, it's gone! Some shreds still there- torn away and drifting uselessly high above high above, but TOO FAR. It's letting the air in! Argh! Everyone! Quick! Back inside where the roof's still working properly!!

Here is the news.
Today in London, for the second day running, millions of people claimed that the sky changed colour to something approximating tropical postcards and a large unidentified glowing ball of fire flew overhead in broad daylight.
Some eye-witnesses further claimed that the so-called "glowing ball" first appeared in the east this morning, quite low to the ground. However, doubts have been raised about these reports and an official government spokesentity has assured us that "no one in London is awake at that time of day."
No serious property damage has been reported apart from the ever-present looting, and the Homo office states that Peter Manhandlesen is keeping his finger on it, although nobody actually asked them and frankly nobody cares. Dr Agonise, Professor of Alarums at Cowbridge, plagued the station with unsolicited advice throughout the day and we will be bringing you regular updates on his self-publicity campaign in our new celebrity reality series: Who Gives A Shit?

Woke yet again to the smokey red tickle of virus-fight in the back of the throat. That's over a week now. Lends a lovely peppery smell to the chill air. But it's dimmer today so I'm brighter today. Also dimming: the neon greenness of the morning phlegm. The last two days' were surreal balls that glowed golf ball size and shape on my disbelieving mirror's tongue. Today, no longer soft kryptonite pumice, merely green and grey blood-flecked rubber lumps. I said it before and I'll say it again, this virus is not normal.

The brain's not quite ready for prime time yet but it's intermittently briefly spluttering back into life. Like bimbling along in a neglected car then flooring the acclerator to clear the plugs. Brief joyful roars as you bound forwards then an exploding clatter of misfires and thrown valves and failed acceleration and you subside with dismay back to mid-revs again. But each roar clears a little more crap.

And I look at what I wrote the last couple of days as focus-efforts and they just don't cut it. You can see brief flashes of playfulness, some froths of fantasy, some attempt to bound. But they don't stretch, they've no flair, they fall short. They don't so much leap tall buildings in a single bound as lumber down a 50foot runup and hurl themselves into the third floor.

But soon, soon I will ARISE once more! Rise to my feet from where I fell through to the foyer, the pyramid of rubble the red sea to my moses, brushing off glass bits, brick dust, and irate security guards like notterriblysuperheroesquebuteveryonehastheirburdensyouknow dandruff, I will stride boldly forth once more out onto the road of destiny and
"omigodmister! LOOK OUT!!"


Abnormal service will be resumed shortly

I woke up this morning, which in my book is always a good start to the day. Fever's broken! Temperature's almost normal and portions of the brain are being broken out of storage again, but I'm still not the full packet of biscuits.

That applies pretty much any morning of course. Me and mornings, we're like [gestures vaguely, depicting with breathtaking economy of motion the precise yet emotionally charged impression of two dogs circling and snarling with hackles flaring and neighbours fleeing] that.

But I knew with inner insight and outer outsight that this was no ordinary morning. Oh no. It was THIS morning. Every time something bad happens, it starts with THIS morning. Also, I advise caution re TODAY. It can be a bloody nightmare.

Sweeping such concerns aside and placing them in the bin provided, I flourished a pen, paused to wipe the ink off the wall, flourished again in a more cautious, nay, restrained manner, and raced off a quick To-Do list or three. Always good for a laugh, and quite elegantly provides the illusion of progress without the grating need to actually DO anything. I leaned back in my chair, filled with the quiet pride of a job not-done well, and contemplated them with a satisfied air of contemplative satisfaction. For one brief glorious shining moment, time stopped. The dust motes twinkling in the sun slanting through the window, the clattering of hail against the other side of the house, the hacking cough of an urban fox outside my window begging for change, all were stilled, silenced. I had mastered my life. I had mastered the world. All lay within my grasp.

Then the phone rang.

Blast.

Oh well, give into it. A short sharp NASTY coffee and proceed with the day.

Blimey. That single-cellular cavalry match inside me got well out of hand last night and the little buggers smashed up their playing field. I went from feeling cautious optimism as some lucidity returned, to literally passing out an hour later. I woke up under the quilt/doona, fully clothed including thick woolly jumper but still cold, with absolutely no recollection of getting there. I checked email & web a little nervously...

Crap, some alien posted to my blog at midnight.

I had to sit down to read it. It was so disjointed it made me dizzier than I already was. After a little thought, I realised most of it was shards of 3 email discussion threads interleaved. And taken out of context and thencely juxtaposed in such wise --or even put next to each other like that-- the running jokes transmogrificated into a single bathetic whine.

I have absolutely no memory of typing it.

Right, PDF off a copy for later headshaking purposes then seek me out the delete stick. BAM! It's gone. Little puff of electron cloud dissipating out onto the net. Try to fix MY aberrant ephemera forever in time, will you? Ha! Eat hot history e-revisionism, dowg.

Word.

Under-tongue temp finally dropped to 40 degrees. (40c = 104 fahrenheit which i believe is an alarm point?). Desk thermometer says 23.2 degrees, I am FINALLY starting to think I can tak e my big half-inch-thick channelisland wool jumper off soon. (still not warm)
Yeee---esssss
That pepper-y tree-ey smell in the back of the nose as the immune-system defence changes flavour from desperate to tide's-turned.
Hope to have clarity return soon
Maybe even tomorrow morning

Things went exponential, as real life usually does
(linear is for trivia) (linia is for trivear?)
But feel like things are plateauing or even starting to back off

I could have my brain back tomorrow.

Brain tho still buggered in strange ways, specifically my microshortterm memory is near absent. Many times today have frozen: blank: unable to work out where i am or what i meant to do, despite the feeling of doing trivia. took to writing next-purpose down: came-to twice looking at pen on paper, wondering what i'm writing. Long pause. Reconstruction intellectually of where I must have started from and wher I must have been going, based on what I'd written so far. All good groovy detective shit. Except it was me writing it/thinking it/living it. ("Hmm. I wonder what a culprit would have done, sorry, I wonder what I *DID* in this situation?")
This from the man who can talk trivia(l social crap) to three people at once and who stresses people out by conducting deep intra-conversation parenthetic subject investigations and then deeper and deeper, then rolling them out and up and continuing with each at that appropriate point before popping back out to the original conversation and continuing.
(
"Stop changing the subject, Sal!"
"I didn't; I just went deeper into one bit of it."
)
Today clicking open new windows, staring at them blankly for seconds before even the question occurred to me: "what should i be doing with this window?" The dull slow silent implied demand of an unfunctioning window having to batter thru a waxy layer of shell stupidity
Concern: was browsing stray blogs and things. I switched to un-configured MacOS X to restrict stray mindbuggered "hey, they want to HEAR what I'm THINKING!" garbage, and lost about an hour's good slashdot posts due to a lovely ("doesnt happen!") OS X crash, but still: can remember posting a couple of things.

Postees: my deepest apologies if anything i wrote offended. Offence is a specialty skill of mine. Hope you missed it this evening.
You would have read the gruntings of my unterbrain, sans social layer. Me when I was 7 and unscarred and bewildered.
Just me me, really.
Sorry.

Oddly, or rather, Oddlier: muscles remain ~75% strength and joints ~50% and flexibility almost normal.

I don't know what the hell this is, but it ain't no normal virus.

Head's just gone cold cold cold for the last 15mins while hands have gone red. Mind literally spinning again. Retyped that last sentence twice because each time after completing i noticed i'd started with both hands one key away from where they should have started. iegibberish. But can stand static indefinitely on one leg moving my head randomly, tho then bumping into things when moving-- surreal.

M. had a louder version of this last weekend. He was then running negative temperatures (eg. 35) for 3 days before he left on friday, which is something I've not come across before except in medical textbooks. He's currently doing major (paid-for, but still intense-- his climb leader is the brit.champeen or somesuch, and they have structured it to allow weaker peeps to bail early) expedition thru some southwest spanish mountain range. I hope he's all right. He's still got what I've now got, with the (slight!(!)) disadvantage that he actually has to DO shit
whereas me, I'm sitting on my arse at home. M. the poor bastard could be burning physical capital halfway up a spanish mountain and be still paying the piper 6 months from now.

Assuming his situation/climbing doesn't run off too far past what he can do easily, statically, without damage

fuck i hope he's alright

My flatmate M. is a great bloke, relaxed, fairly openminded, is british yet occasionally attempts to do his share of cleaning up after himself.

But he is a continuous disease vector of prodigious capabilities.

He's over-exercised rather than well-exercised, so despite being strong of muscle and joint from 3-4 days a week of climbing, his immune system is fucked. Happens to most people who follow knee-jerk "healthy eating guidelines" as published by FIGJAM experts, rather than paying attention to what the body wants. And the nutritional content of english food is so low that any athlete is that much more drained. So in the whirling workaday bazaar of human parasite swapping that is the City of London, he's constantly seized upon by joyful little bugs who immediately set up vast new civilisations in his arteries and organs. He's so run-down that he barely notices a new one, he's worn down to operating at 50% most of the time anyway so more slowing down is just annoying, not catastrophic.

Problem is, having worked these little civilisations up to babylonian proportions, he then comes home to this tiny little english house and hands them off to us. My immune system's fairly robust, but he's training them up to be pretty potent little parasites by the time they put out their first colonies.

Normally, I just get a day or two of having ~25% taken off me. Operating mentally slower and imprecisely/befuddledly, and physically weaker and stiffer. Just annoying, no biggie.
But he's been nurturing a new braindeath doozy for a while and it finally crept up on me. It's not a major one, it's subtle. Knocks about 10% off you, and just slight manifest symptoms. In fact, I've only just realised that the last week's vague feeling of being out of sorts was actually a virus. My immune system seems finally to have noticed this little swine lurking under the radar and has kicked in. So I'm feeling the cold more than I should today and I'm very lethargic and my eyes sting slightly. But irritatingly, I lack mental sharpness. I feel like someone's thrown a damp cloth over my brain.

Problem is, I had stuff I really wanted to do today which I need a clear brain for.

I really shouldn't be posting today, but wanted to have some evidence for myself for tomorrow of just how wise I was not to do anything today with serious consequences. For example, ringing... oh i just couldn't be arsed. If these things not done are THAT important I'm sure you'll read about them in the paper.

God this post looks dull.

Even if it's just a shadow hat.

I saw this partly debulbed shandelier chadow on a wall:



The logical thing to do was both obvious and necessary.

Oo more McGuardian shockhorror. Britain has a serious drink problem, apparently, and the facts are "as staggering as a double vodka before breakfast."

That IS breakfast. Bloody fools.

Oh, it's just started raining. There must be a weekend coming up.

Iggledy diggledy, tinka tin ting;
Achievements today? So thin so thin!

Contact! Here goes the chase across town.

Phone remains steadfastly switched off...

Well, finally tracked down the lunch girls' current phone number. With any luck i might still get to see M. before she flies out.

can't get hold of P.

can't get hold of S.

Well, finally got to speak to F. after some office run-around and a dud number she left on my voicemail (double 8, not 8). Turns out she was transferred this week to the Heathrow offices so there's no easy (free!) access to the downstairs Tottenham Court Rd YMCA. If it'd happened to me, I might have rung the other person to cancel. But hey. I'm getting used to humans in my old age.

:) That WOULD have been fun, no? Travel halfway across London in the rush-hour tube to wander round various wanting-to-be-closed office foyers trying to track down someone who hasn't been there all week and is sitting in front of the TV at home.

Still don't have the lunch girls' afternoon phone number

[First Tier Bank]'s Credit Derivatives Trading front office just informed a very well connected headhunter that my CV is too heavyweight for them.

(flow? exotic? (I'm assuming not proprietary since it's a separate, & named, desk) the guy doesn't really understand the concepts let alone the fundamental difference let alone the market, so couldn't tell me -- like most, he just would never think to ask, since he wouldn't know there was anything to ask. he was rare- he was motivated and professional. and an extremely nice guy. but that's not the same as having stood behind the curtain)

If you know anything about the investment banks, you'll realise that that automatically precludes me from consideration for the easier middle or back office.

I can't even do Noddy work for them -- "Oh, no," sayeth ye guru agents, "You won't like that. You'll get bored. We will protect you:- we will refuse to consider you from this long long long o so very long 3 month contract. But gosh, i tell you, we're having the devil's own time trying to find anyone who can DO this job. Because it's so short, and they need someone who can just come in and do it without needing training up."

Chimps.

It's not much chop being in the top few hundred globally in the world's hottest instrument class --actually that was a couple of years ago, probably couple of thousand now-- and in the top 2 or 3 (I'm assuming Toronto Dominion had someone putting it all together, and I saw some clever thinking in some aspects of Summit's approach. But the rest appeared clueless the last time I looked.) in terms of creating a bank-useful IT system in same (computers-for-computers'-sake is dull dull dull (I regard it as one skill in a range of skills-- everyone else seems to assume it's a lifestyle choice. Or a summation of personality and capability. Or capacity.) but that shouldn't --no. fuck it-- DOESN'T mean the skill can't be valuable), when that just puts people off.

OK, first hiccup-- the girls just brought lunch forwards two hours. I have to bail out: i have opened several calls/matters with the agencies that I need to get re-stabilised while they're fresh -- if I don't keep each call on the boil and bring each agent's new questions/requests to a closing point today, I'll have wasted the last half-day and £50 of phone calls.

Have substituted a mid-late afternoon coffee/chat/wander/whatever. They have no idea where they'll be; I'll ring them. They're swapping boyfriends' phones and will text me the number they'll be on.

Today could be interesting: either a day well-spent or a logistical shambles.

I've organised a people-dense day, with a nicely meshing series of meet-ups. There's absolutely no reason for it not to all work perfectly for all the people arriving in from various parts of London. But there is a strong girl/italian element to the arrangements so therefore it could all go completely pear shaped and no one would think to let anyone else know.

Just me:

Chores then several hours of headhunter & agency chasing by phone.

Joint:

Late lunch with two female friends, one visiting from Ireland for a couple of days & leaving tonight, the other Italian. Then me wandering off and doing some supplies shopping that you can only do in Covent Garden (Salada, Soothers, maybe some Crocodile). Then meeting an Italian girl to be her personal trainer for a couple of hours after work. Then we two will meet an old male friend of mine and another Italian girl for after-late-work drinks and maybe nosh.

Let's see:
male mate: very reliable-- will let me know if things change
chinese girl, italian girl, italian girl, italian girl: oh dear lord. I love them to death but 'planning' and 'consequences of actions for other people' are concepts utterly alien to them.

I'll keep you posted. I'm not holding my breath.
heh

Ah no! My lovely lipstick lesbian has gone to Cuba! 3 weeks early and quite suddenly. What a depressing lunch that turned into, instead of the usual cheerful mucking around and imagination games ("Xtreme Soda! [crash] Yeah!").

"Hello." And I turn and the little Thai woman who seems to run the pub's thai restaurant is there, concern for me on her pretty face tilted up at me. "L. is not here any more." My heart freezes, sinks. "She has gone to...umm..."
"Cuba?"
"Yes, that is it: Cuba."
The new barmaid chips in with "Yeah it came up really sudden, her friend came back and said now she could go straight away. She was real excited, eh."
"No. She said she wasn't leaving now till the end of March. Damn. Damn! She said she'd still be here." And me trying not to look too down-at-mouth, too pathetic, too much the sad-arse. Because I never was able to get past L.'s shell. So I have no right to feel loss.

Yet... And yet...

...I will really miss her.

OK, I was (am) torn the whole time between wanting her and P. the Italian goddess. (Is Both really so much to ask?)
Both sidelined for a while inter alia by Aa. who exploded into my life --the woman I've been looking for my whole life, whole future landscapes shifting-- then slunk out just as suddenly but even less honestly -- all just a fucked up act, but an act that cut deep.

And yet...

I'm not attracted to that many girls. Oh, I fall lightly in lust at the drop of a hat, like everyone does. I have eyes. And fitness-fuelled sex drive. And this is London, where the streets are paved with pulchritude and supermodels abound. Or at least awalk. Or at least atotter on their stiletto heels and stiletto legs. But they open their mouths and I lose all interest, take 2 big steps backward and start looking for an exit.

So when I first saw L. I thought "hey yum" but didn't think much more of it. A beautiful bar girl? In London? What are the odds? Ha. But(t), she was genuinely fit. Not "fit" like the Brits say when they mean attractive. I mean she had muscle and strength and power-to-weight ratio, stood straight and moved with bounce. Like a dancer or martial artist. She stood out in London like a tiger among cattle. Five foot nothing of Polish pocket tiger. She was a delight to watch move.

And I realised there might be something different about her, about her Self I mean, when she was trying not to eavesdrop on me and a mate eating at the bar the first or second time I was there, and she kept laughing out loud and then looking a little embarrassed.
So I chatted a bit with her, drew her into our jokes, waiting for my usual "discovery".

And like I said, most girls I lose interest in.
And she just got better and better.

And I started going in by myself just to see her, feeling like a loser but doing it just the same.
And she just got better and better.

It's bloody hard to ask someone out who's working behind a bar, you know. Always a major audience, and no opportunity for a casual lets-go-do-something since she's working.
But we got closer. Her friendliness was more than just surface act, she opened only with trust. And she had some odd strange inflexible walls, some hint of deeper roil.
But the more I saw, the more I liked. How she laughs and talks, how she behaves, her outlook on life, her joy in travel, her willingness to do things, her attitude to her own life, her sense of responsibility, of doing what needs to be done, how she actually DOES everything around the bar instead of just standing around like the usual pretty parasite, how her face lights up when I walk in, how she mucks around sometimes almost like putting on a little performance for me ("Hey, a Pole dancer" "Oi!" with an unserious glaring delicious grin). And: "No, it's ALWAYS a pleasure to see you, Sal," said with an odd earnestness behind me as I was turning away, some undercurrent I realised too late at the time might have been a diffident hint.


I don't know for sure if she's a lesbian, that's just what A.(nother) and I semi-jokingly assumed after her prolonged focussed interest one afternoon in the bared womanflesh in a tabloid I'd brought in for a joke --she and I agreed we have the same tastes-- followed by a couple of pointed statements/responses she made when she rejoined us later in the downstairs bar. Her later flirting made me think she might be bi, made me hope she was bi, just taking her luxurious choice from the whole universe presented to her.

But I hope she's pure lesbian.

Because each time I asked her out, tried to organise us doing something together that she likes, like rock climbing or hunting down the obscure underground Leicester Square wine bar or even just filling in the afternoon break with a coffee, every time I had the opportunity to ask without putting her under pressure, and had the mood upon me to risk fucking up the cheerful casual interplay I'd come to value so much, every single time she'd stonewall it. Blanked. Deflected. The suggestion ignored.
And the weasel worm whispers at my heart...Had she maybe just not realised what I meant?
And the last final time when I decided I had to know for sure even if it fucked up the cheerful friendly future, and I put her in a spot where she could not duck. She'd seen me flip Thursday's Metro to the preview of Bertolucci's Dreamers, "Oh!" she says, pausing her glass-gathering and leaning over my shoulder, eyes fixed on the threesome photo, "I WANT to see that" with an odd intensity. She pulls her lunch up next to me a little later, I flip back to the Dreamers for her, then "Hey, you said you really wanted to see this. How about we go see it sometime this week?" holding her gaze. She looked briefly irritated/puzzled like I'd said something nonsensical that needed working out, then froze for an instant with something flicking through the back of her eyes, a look somewhere between horror and dismay. And our eyes, steadily looking into each other's, held too still too long as she carefully chose her words and slowly said, with the air of picking her way through somewhere delicate she'd not wanted to be, trying not to hurt, not to crush: "Well, you know, with this job, I can never commit to any evening-- I can't make plans." A world-swimming pause, and my voice came from far away: "Ah. [pause] Bad rota." She knew. I knew. We both knew the other knew. The words: just little publicly presentable facades. And I swivelled stiffly back to stare unseeingly into the Metro's swimming text while the world moved away around me and the voices dimmed and my face flared hot with stupidity, regret for making her feel like that, catastrophe of what I'd dreaded being confirmed so flatly, so considerately.
"She likes me but not that way."
The weasel worm withered away from my heart, blackened, died.
And as I rose to go a little later, no one else left but lunching staff, she stood high with a smile which tore at my heart and cried in a voice cut loud for all to hear "And make sure you come back sooner next time!" (I'd been away a couple weeks) then with a wry reflective self-mocking half-smile, gave a little odd laugh and quietly, implosively: "That is, if you DO come back..."

Not the best of days.

I went in the next week, to apologise for putting her on the spot. She had a new wall up, one I couldn't quite identify, but she derailed my apology with an implied return apology. Delivered...oddly? It didn't feel like a "yeah, well, no harm done."
And the weasel worm's corpse suddenly twitched, unwelcome but nourished by the ambiguity, the return of a possibility.
Fool.

And then life got majorly busy. And I only got the chance to return 3 weeks later. Not great but no drama, she's not leaving till the end of the month.


She had leaving drinks on Friday.


She didn't let me know, neither call, text, or email.


And I will really miss her.

This was last Wednesday. Just realised today the Draft was not Posted.

There's nothing quite like folding sheets to thrill the soul and invigorate the wibbly bits.

Spending hours crawling back and forth over alternate summary starts to a contract-specific CV. All of them I alternately like then don't.

I bloody HATE trying to second-guess the blinkers on imbeciles' minds. Which brain-dead keyword will they best respond to? Which phrasing will stick their little jellyfish minds to the page long enough to understand what's on it?

And having dumbed it down to fit their primitive little receptors, how can I make that still attractive to their clients sitting behind them getting dribbled-down those CVs that the agent both understood and thought good enough to forward?

Conversation Transcript: Sal and almost all agents when it comes to a highpressure contract (and bear in mind that what is funny the first few times, swiftly ceases to be so):
"You'll need to make the CV more specific for this role."
"Fine. My standard two-pager is violently summarised. What sort of extra detail would you like me to include in the CV for this role?"
"Just list out all your projects and accomplishments."
"No, that runs out to 15 plus pages."
[exasperated with my stupidity] "Then do it point-form."
"That IS point-form. Would you like to see it?"
"Oh god no, no one's going to read 15 pages."
"Well then, I need to edit it down some way that you're happy with."
"Oh no, they'll need to see everything."

red mist starts to form... hands twitch from repressing urge to shake little wobble-head by the neck until s/he grows up


Me, when I was hiring, I always found it FAR faster just to read the bloody CV to see if the applicant could potentially do the job. For all the drama-queen posturing about the woes of being flooded with CVs, it really doesn't take that long to identify potential in a 2-3 page CV. I used to get through 20-50 a day in the peak times, while also doing my main job(s). All the box-ticker agents got the push almost immediately, since all I got through them were clone drones of N years in the one job. Useless. We always used to joke about people with 10 years of the same 2 weeks experience, but that's all a lot of agents would show me. I was able to bulldoze them into acting professionally when I was the client


, but now as applicant I'm stuck outside the shiny glass shell, trying to find some way to dumb down the CV enough to not confuse the agent while still presenting as sale-able.

"Over-qualified" sucks, kids. Whatever you do, make sure you stay stuck on that one dreary endless repeated sameoldsameold career track, don't for god's sake seek to skill up or stretch yourself.
"More than one skillset? Not possible. That would require me thinking about the job, rather than ticking a box. Your CV is not clear. It is messy. I can't put you forwards, you understand. OBSERVE! : My preconceptions."

Intellectual laziness rewards only linear growth.

Hey cool, the cops just broke in next door with a hand-held battering ram.

Monday lunchtime. Me at desk, trying to stay motivated to fill out yet another pointless HR-ism.
Thump thump. Scrape clang. Downstairs outside front door from the sound of it. Grr more noise. Pavement repair again? Good one, pick the busiest time of day. THUMP thump. Scuffle bang. And some more, and odd sounding, not like road works. I get up and go lean out the window, curious, look vertically down into the little slot that is our busy alley-- a cop is watched by the salad bar's chef leaning against the little Narnia-esque lamppost as he goes in the door. Odd, did the salad bar lock themselves out and ring for urgent help? Can't be right, the chef would have his coat on. And every single passerby is stopping and gawking and lingeringly looking back as they trail away.
I wonder what's going on?
And all the windows and workers peering down to see what's going on. Lean out, leeaaan out, look right, 2 cars at the end of the alleyway in the crook of the corner, bright flaring flashes of yellow and blue and red on their sides, 2 big "POL ICE" red-stickered vans further up the road where there's more space.
Hmmm.
Bundles of asian businessmen exiting the chinese restaurant whose door faces the neighbours' across the alleyway, swift and sudden and moving away with cautious alert non-interest. I put shoes on to go out and ask what's going on. 2 big cops in body armour and armed are striding past me and into the house as I open my door. The restaurant manager is at the unmarked and unremarkable brothel door, swift look over shoulder before he does more than unlock it, going up to tell them to get their house in order presumably.
It's not the salad bar, it's our neighbours above it. Their door is open and the corridor stretches bare to the stairs at the back of the building.
"What's going on?" The waiters grinning on round the door don't know. "Drugs?" they guess. "They're only new right?" and say something about industrial which I don't catch. "Wrong address?"
We hover briefly. Not a lot to see, not a lot to say to each other since we're all equally ignorant. A copper comes down the stairs and out alone, shortish, armoured, unhelmeted, dark closecropped stubble hair on a dark no-nonsense face cramped by irritation.
"Scuse me mate." He keeps going. 'Scuse me!" He turns, unwilling. "Yeah?" "What's going on?" He grimaces. "Ehr. There was a 'concern for personal safety.'" Ah. I thank him, he keeps going.

Bleah. Poor bastards. The police, that is. Given my brief contacts with the new neighbours and the types of noises filtering through various weekends, probably just an end-of-weekend post-clubbing E-comedown gone paranoid wrong. The amphetamine crash is the main penalty I can see of the London/Brighton danceparty-gay scene. A major head messer.


Nothing much more to see, and it's cold- I wander back inside.


...
:) Can hear talking through the wall next to my desk, but no words. I wonder if I should try that glass-to-the-wall thing everyone's seen on TV?
...
No further action. The brothel has their window open and the net curtains flare and ripple, there's a very chilly breeze and no need for summer's ventilation... guess they're understandably keeping a rather closer, rather more interested eye on events than the rest of us. :)

I might go make myself a toasted sandwich.

Voicemail this morning from Italian friend who'd offered to forward my CV to some friends of hers working in finance. Begins:

S.? It's F.! One of ma fre-enz, she just answered me back for your CV. [laughing, somewhere between disbelief and I-never-realised] She said you SCARED her for your experience! She say-zz she is going to send it a headhunter she know, i don't know what it is a headhunter I have no idea. But Ah think that it's guid, that something might happen.


Voicemail again:

S.!! [laughing, mock outrage] Why you no ring me!? Here is my work number I wan to TALK to you!


Voice-to-Voice:
We greet and chat and laugh and then start stretching surreal bold conversational sketches.

F:

[laughing] What DRUGS do you eat for breakfast?!

S:

A big heaping bowl of hallucinogens, the better way to start the day!

F:

[laughs] Oh good to laugh at work. So, what is this 'headhunter'?

S:

They're recruiters, a type of recruiter: a company rings them with a role to fill and they go through their contacts and find people who can do it. Think of them like proactive recruitment agents.
Alternatively, it could be an amazonian indian pursuing me with a blowpipe.
I hope it's the recruitment type.

F:

Well, I did not hear from you so I emailed your phone number, but I wanted to warn you first, for if you get surprised by a stranger and hang up.

S:

[laughing] "What? Who? Stop hounding me!! I TOLD you: you're not getting any money from me! Good bye!" [and a couple of variations on the same, then:] Oh, that'd be worth doing to THEM, the bloody agencies. They ring me? Well, I'll just bloody ring THEM! Just ring up and when they pick up the phone and say "Hello?" shout "What?! I don't WANT your bloody job! Stop HOUNDING me, dammit!" and hang up. And leave them there on the other end, blinking and going "uh?" and "what?"
[both of us, growing rolling laughter at the images on images on chain of images forming from the rapidfire words]
Actually, I don't even really need phone numbers for that, do I? I could just dial at random, get some poor schmoe wherever, "What?! I don't WANT your bloody job! Stop HOUNDING me, dammit!" And these poor random people all over England standing there in their living rooms with wide eyes and the phone in their hands going "bzzzzz". Get some poor old lady in Yorkshire "well, actually, you COULD help me with the dishes..."

--

F:

So, I see you Tuesday...

S:

No! [laughing] WEDNESDAY! WEDNESDAY! Remember?

F:

[laughing] I keep forgetting! I can't DO Tuesday, I'm be-zy. Why I keep mixing them up this week?

S:

Well, I'll tell you what. Just for this week, just for you, we'll switch Tuesday and Wednesday. All right? Wednesday now Tuesday, Tuesday now Wednesday.
But remember! Next week, it'll all be back to normal. In fact, you should put a reminder in your diary: "This week:- NORMAL"
[both laughing]
Actually, that's going to confuse the hell out of you first thing Monday morning before the coffee hits or the week hits, isn't it. You'll open your diary and you'll see "This week:- NORMAL" and you'll think "phew, good" and then you'll think "shit, hang on, i have no idea what this means, what's it talking about? What's 'Normal'? Does this mean it almost wasn't normal? But now it's different so just normal? What should I worry about? Should I be keeping an eye out for something? Is a normal week good? Crap, I don't know, crap, what do I do?"

I'm in a lazy vaguely randy mood this afternoon. Casual, so casual. That perfect blend of healthy body and a lack-of-sleep taking the edge off the mind. Seeing bright sparks of attractiveness, aspects of yum, in every second girl I see. Stray comments and glances turn to flirting and enthusiastic response, and move on, following the winds of velleity.

Sad that the response comes from my attention and my disinterest and my appearance, not my character or my feelings or my me. But hey, I'm in the moment, enjoy it.

Just wandered through Spitalfields Market on the return leg of my Sunday Papers hunt, and Oh! the beauty the beauty everywhere. Long legs, slim hips, flashes of cheekbone through slash cut hair, tip-tilted noses and wolven eyes. A melange of languages -- melanguage? -- from around Europe, a gathering of beautiful travellers flocking from round London to the shiny trinkets and sweetmeats and organic greens and hippychick rags, wandering and bumping and browsing through.

A new stall today, Italian cheeses. Reminded: gorgonzola bought to share with Italian newcomer welcomed to my life, left to rot when she spun off into lala land. Such a waste. (I now meant the cheese, but... both ways, actually.)
I'd not yet tried gorgonzola, had wanted to taste-test back to back with roquefort over a heavy red. Wandered over. Ahh, huge rich creamy fresh blue-cheese mass, standing high and mottle proud, a foot and a half around and a foot high. Big rounds of pecorino. Taghlitia (sp?). Yum. But there's a self-obsessed drama type weaving and trilling and agonising and monopolising the stall owners. I wait a touch, she's going to be there a while, I drift off into the surrounding slow maelstrom for more beauty.

A stroll around and via the novelty furniture/accessories shop with the delicious staff and back around past the Spitz and through the food again, and the stall is now clear of me-me-me-me-me. I wait while what I think is the couple in front buy, the guy goes, the girl waits for change, I step into the gap, the guy's gone, long gone, guess they're not a couple. A slow smile and a brisk hello as the stall owner beams at me. I make the mistake of tasting. Oh superb. Like tangy cream, dissolving. The girl is still beside me, very smart knee-length houndstooth coat, bright black and white matching and setting off her hair and skin, short and erect with a trim black bob and curtain bangs, glimpses of delight showing through as they swing and part; she turns slightly, watching with diffident alarm as the legendarily stinking blue is slivered and a piece proffered me. "Try it," I say with a smile. She turns and Oh! such pixie beauty, eyes and skin and face like a lively porcelain picture. I tease a little and she takes the cheese, she responds but ah I'd have to do all the work all the work, no cut&thrust here. Alas. I let it drop. After a short while she walks away looking let down. But I'm not in the mood to yet again have to make all the running. Now, I'd rather drift.
Regret: she was sweet. And exceptionally beautiful.
A pang: I look to see if she's near -- maybe some effort's not so inconceivable after all.
Alas.
Gone.

I play with some other browsers on the other side of the market, tweak a matron's pomposity, cheer up a drooping young shop assistant and leave her twinkling, show some pretty french tourists looking for a picturesque photo of my alleyway a better backdrop of another door with its number "Four and A Half", hearing their delighted shouted thanks of surprise behind me as I walk to my own door. Funny. Today today all is beauty and ease.

So. Home. Cheese in the fridge, wine loosened in the rack ready for action. A pause.
I'd prefer to savour the mood. Go out, go randomly flirting with a glass of wine under the pink bright sky. Maybe the Spitz, people-watch from their cold metal tables. Or go down to the river. But no one, no one's around.

Am I in the mood to go alone?

What the hell has happened to The Times over the last month or so? It's turned into another red-top like the Mirror or the Guardian, Britain's biggest tabloid. I'm not being sarcastic about the new Compact Times' shape warping the content of the paper to match the Sun. I'm talking about the "journalism": it's been altered to match.

You learn a lot about The Stance and nothing about the story.

The headlines, the lead paras, and the journalists' analyses & conclusions are often flatly contradicted by the facts, buried Guardian-style in the on-average least-read-part of the body of the article, should they in fact be presented at all.

This means there is now no British paper which is not herd-driven, no British paper which takes fact-based journalism as its starting point. All we have is rant sheets.

I have nothing against rant sheets, so long as we have a choice as to whether we read Rants: juicy emotion-firing outrage-inducing; or Facts: dull, dry, but a good place to start. There's nothing wrong with junk food being sold, as long as you also have the choice of buying real food. Right now, Britain's newspaper shelves are a sea of Burger King and KFC, with McGuardian preening itself amongst them as "worthier".

Come on, Times.
Just because you're competing with the Guardian doesn't mean you have to emulate them.
Get the editorial back on the editorial pages, and put reporting back in the reports.

Give us a choice again.

Frankly, I find this difficult to believe, but according to Slashdot:

Bloggers' Plagiarism Scientifically Proven

Posted by michael on Friday March 05, @03:25PM
from the we-prefer-to-say-'borrow' dept.

XiceeX writes "Wired has up a story about HP, as part of a larger drive to figure out how ideas ideas 'infect' large groups of people, scientifically proving what most people already knew: bloggers steal their ideas from other bloggers."

And sometimes from Slashdot.
Not that I'd know.

Plagiarise, plagiarise,
Damn your eyes but plagiarise.
Plagiarise, plagiarise,
But always remember to call it research!
-- Tom Lehrer, "Bright College Days"

Oh the self-referential meta-ironical recursionality of it all.

In honour of Easter and Mel Gibson's recent effort:

"Banging in the Nails"

A delightful interpretation of our lord jesus christ's suffering on the cross, as brought to you by The Tiger Lillies on their deeply religious album "From the Brothel to the Cemetery."

Everyone who's mortified by the new movie "Messiah" or whatever it is, will definitely want to listen to this to soothe their shattered tattered sensibilities.

http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk/

I can't sleep. I've eaten too much again. My little stomach is all a-swoll.

Dinner was an english breakfast gone bad. I had 2 sausages left, you see, and I didn't want them to go off. And I'd just come back from the gym for the first time in a week and a half, so I thought I'd top up them proteins and fats for the newly shocked body.

I should point out at this juncture, not that it's much of a juncture really, more a semantic pause in the midst of an otherwise frantic race to the point, that when I said this was the first time I'd been home from the gym in a week and a half, that I was not actually AT the gym this whole time, oh no. I'd been vegetating in a gymless state, communing with concrete. Not nature, concrete: no nature in the middle of London I'm afraid; gaia's given way to mortar.

So, currently being eroded by my stomach juices are:

• 2 large beef sausages, spitting juicy congealy fatly spatters
  
• an omelette of several large duck eggs, half a tin of spinach, several tomatoes, lashings of butter and an onion
  
• 2 rashers of thick back bacon
  
• 2 turkey rashers, which I'd not seen before and thought I'd give 'em a go
  
• 2 tomatoes
  
• handful of mushrooms
  
• slab of cheese
  
• about 3 inches of cucumber
  
• a tin of baked beans
  
• a pint of orange juice-- it's "breakfast", right?
  

I guess it doesn't sound like much simply listed out like that, but the resulting plate was an artfully layered wet mound of high density food 12 inches across and 4 inches high, drenched in high quality high density protein, fat, and antioxidant vitamins and looking like one of those silly over-piled plates you saw in kid's comics. Gorgeous.

Probably wouldn't have been quite so bad but I had two decent lunches today, the second around 4 o'clock.

Dessert was a despairing look at the chelsea bun sitting in the kitchen snickering at me.

I have now triggered an insulin release to drive all the sugars, fats, and proteins out of the blood and into my muscle cells. I did this by scarfing gummy lollies (Haribo!), half a bar of chocolate, and peppermints. It's all very scientific. And sound. Honest.

The disturbing thing is, this is not a big meal by recent standards. I cooked and ate 1.5 litres of bolognese sauce the other day. 3/4 of a kilo of Australian meat, lashings of fresh spinach and bacon and leeks and mushrooms and onion and garlic and red wine and black-eyed peas and peppers and broccoli and oh some other stuff as well. Plus the pasta. It was just bloody gorgeous. It was supposed to be dinner for me plus 3 more meals. I ate the whole bloody lot. I ended up draped over a pile of beanbags moaning softly while my Italian flatmate shrank fearfully away from the expected meaty explosion.
One and a half litres is a lot of food, you know. It was a saucepan about 10-12 inches across, filled 4 inches deep. I know it's easy to knock back three pints, but that's kinda less work (zero) for the stomach. These here litres were solid, PACKED with goodly foodly vitamins & things, and my body was going to bloody hang on to them.
I couldn't get to sleep till about 2.
As a tribute to the quality of the food, errr.... none of it came out. My digestive system absorbed the whole bloody lot. Serious. Gone. I thought maybe it'd backed up or something but no, next time I ate normal english food normal service was resumed. With no errr backlog.

This is becoming a habit; maybe I should keep a log of these feasts. Show people how to eat like a maniac and maintain that 6% body fat physique every whippet dreams of.

Disturbingly, I'm still hungry for something. A couple of vitamins and a prowl around the fridge methinks.

cables & boxes & stuff going everywhere this morning, all laid over the top of each other in random task jumble.
mobile phone on charger lead briefly resting on PB's external keyboard where the mouse lead plugs in, and it wakes up for its regular brief network heartbeat. i hear the buzzing 'tik tikka tik' on the laptop's speakers like normal, from the induced current where the radio waves hit conductors.

but then surreally see the mouse cursor drift jerkily left on the screen, one pure horizontal twitch per spike on the speakers. fantastic. 'tik' twitch 'tik' twitch, electrons dancing and photons responding.


i've never seen that before. ok theoretically possible and all, but what are the odds of the induced cable power spike sufficiently matching the 'one-eighth-rotation negative-X' mouse signal.? woot i say, woot.

"Apple & Elderflower Juice-- made from hand selected apples"

Hand selected? Not eye selected? Interesting. They must have crack teams of blind people poring over bins of apples in Braille. "OOO! Bumpy!"