Life is NOT a journey to the grave with the goal of arriving safely in a prettily preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways in a shower of gravel and party shards, thoroughly used, utterly exhausted, and loudly proclaiming: "Fuck ME, that was BRILLIANT!"— Saltation (2004)
(revved-up from an earlier quote,
apparently from Hunter S. Thompson)
Friday, April 30, 2004
A sensitive matter, addressed sensitively
Into the pro-life/pro-abortion debate comes this very important third option from that shy and retiring wallflower, he of the self-esteem issues and subtle entendres, the ever-lovely fragrance that is Maddox.
("This page is about me and why everything I like is great.
If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong.")
("This page is about me and why everything I like is great.
If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong.")
"I'm neither pro choice, nor pro life; I'm pro you-shutting-the-hell-up."
Shoe laces
"But have you ever tied your shoe laces as A JOB??"
"....
No. It's just been something obscenely basic I did as PART of doing my job."
[triumph] "You SEE? I need someone who can TIE their shoelaces."
"....
No. It's just been something obscenely basic I did as PART of doing my job."
[triumph] "You SEE? I need someone who can TIE their shoelaces."
More of it
I've decided I want more of everything.
Just a thought...
Just a thought...
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Serenity restored
It's cold and it's wet and I'm freezing my nuts off.
I didn't have that many to start with.
But right now the whole bike-urge thing has receded as far as my parts have. Which is a relief.
I didn't have that many to start with.
But right now the whole bike-urge thing has receded as far as my parts have. Which is a relief.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
I miss my bicycle
The sunshine and the scooter, my post and Vanessa's reminding me, then on tivo today watched last week's MotoGP.
I miss my bicycle.
I REALLY miss my bicycle.
Screaming down empty country roads on the crest of the wave of sunshine and field scent, dancing round the twisties and the corners and the wriggly bits, and random what-the-hell let's-liven-this-up-a-bit slaloming the gaps in the white lines on the A-roads and motorways getting faster and faster till the front wheel starts to skip too much. Then hauling up at a country pub for a huge feed of top notch nosh and some steaming in the garden's breezes before creaking back into the saddle and bam! off and away again, dancing down the country lanes.
"You ride too fast, Sal."
Here's me and my little ninja playing in the sun at Cadwell Park :
[click thru to see properly]
"But Sal," I hear your droning nasal whine, "on the weekends I is watching this MotoDoctor on the telly and this one guy, he is the THE GP of all the GPs, St Valentines Rossco he am good. And he am jumping around on his bicycle and leaning way off and only am saved from falling off and bumping his head by bumping on his knee instead, for which he am having an little cushion attached. And he only rides on the sides of the track. Why are we not seeing this in these here photos? Why is you clutching the tank with your knees and riding in the middle of the road? Where are all the knee-down leaning-over-the-rumblestrip big stylee like what we are seen on the telly?"
I confess. I spent many years learning how to NOT die on Australian roads, and it's bloody hard to turn everything upside down for a couple of hours on the track. I have an overwhelming terror of ArmCo and 'roos on the racing line.
I learned to ride on a rubber-chassis sponge-suspension 2-stroke RZ350 on rainforest covered mountain roads of a highly variable nature, with a fair bit of nature around to boot. Tarmac that was fine one weekend would be rippled the next, and various animules would flatten themselves with cars and lurk slipperily in wait for your tyres mid-corner. The bike didn't slide- it would bounce or slip. Ripples would bugger the suspension almost immediately. The next bump would launch you. Your own body literally becomes part of the suspension: a steering damper writ large. If you don't HOLD the tank with your knees, you have very little input when the bike goes. I couldn't tell you the number of times I physically caught slips by locking the bike with my hands and knees. If you strayed too near an edge or hung off or even took your hand off a lever, you measured your life expectancy in days. Half a dozen to a dozen bikers died on that stretch each year as it was...
And in any case, I find simple speed pretty tedious, I much prefer chucking the bike about. Leaning it way way over and grounding it out. Flip-flopping fast thru esses and roundabouts. Swooping and angles, not dull old momentum. I've never been much above 150mph on the bike so maybe there's some sudden orgasmic moment at 200 or something. But I doubt it. And there's no great thrill at 150, it's just the machine doing it: from your perspective all that happens is the wind picks up, your reaction horizons move waaa--aaayyy out ahead, and you have to haul the bike to turn it. All you've done is move control of your future (quality of) life out of your own sphere of influence and firmly into that of the random unaware vagaries of traffic and chance.
Dull plus exponentially risky.
Whoopee.
I ride for fun, not for pace.
So come track days, I scrape pegs but never knees.
I and my unblemished knee-sliders therefore have no street cred with the pit-posturing knee-down try-hards who crawl around the track on the racing line. On the other hand, I do come back into the pits with beautifully fried tyres and some amusing peg and boot damage. You can't fake boot damage, you HAVE to be right over, you can't just hang off to one side -- it's amusing to watch the posers stumble mid-boast if they catch sight of it. The Ninja's much harder to scrape than the old Thundercat, especially with the front lowered and the tail jacked up, but I still lost both hero-blobs and ground deep into the pegs in a blinding day at Donington a few weeks after these shots were taken, and I've gone through the toe-sliders and deep into the soles and the bootleather on both boots.
I'm ashamed to say there's a certain malicious pleasure in sitting bolt upright cranked over in a corner, riding round the outside of people posing with their knees down...
And the sun is out and the summer's a-comin' and I want my bicycle back.
I want to go dancing again.
Life is too slow without machines.
I miss my bicycle.
I REALLY miss my bicycle.
Screaming down empty country roads on the crest of the wave of sunshine and field scent, dancing round the twisties and the corners and the wriggly bits, and random what-the-hell let's-liven-this-up-a-bit slaloming the gaps in the white lines on the A-roads and motorways getting faster and faster till the front wheel starts to skip too much. Then hauling up at a country pub for a huge feed of top notch nosh and some steaming in the garden's breezes before creaking back into the saddle and bam! off and away again, dancing down the country lanes.
"You ride too fast, Sal."
Here's me and my little ninja playing in the sun at Cadwell Park :
[click thru to see properly]
 Scra-aappe We have touchdown. |
 Get... back... down... you... little... bastard... The front's dropped and the bike's weight's coming back down on the wheels at the point this photo was taken (just after "The Mountain" in front of the "pits"/the club-house). |
 Right-hand-down...scuff... A pretty dull shot with all action on the other side, but if you look closely at the sole of my left boot you can see the chunk I'm starting to grind out of the front of it:- it's the half-moon shadow angled under the toe, cutting into the normal sole shape. |
"But Sal," I hear your droning nasal whine, "on the weekends I is watching this MotoDoctor on the telly and this one guy, he is the THE GP of all the GPs, St Valentines Rossco he am good. And he am jumping around on his bicycle and leaning way off and only am saved from falling off and bumping his head by bumping on his knee instead, for which he am having an little cushion attached. And he only rides on the sides of the track. Why are we not seeing this in these here photos? Why is you clutching the tank with your knees and riding in the middle of the road? Where are all the knee-down leaning-over-the-rumblestrip big stylee like what we are seen on the telly?"
I confess. I spent many years learning how to NOT die on Australian roads, and it's bloody hard to turn everything upside down for a couple of hours on the track. I have an overwhelming terror of ArmCo and 'roos on the racing line.
I learned to ride on a rubber-chassis sponge-suspension 2-stroke RZ350 on rainforest covered mountain roads of a highly variable nature, with a fair bit of nature around to boot. Tarmac that was fine one weekend would be rippled the next, and various animules would flatten themselves with cars and lurk slipperily in wait for your tyres mid-corner. The bike didn't slide- it would bounce or slip. Ripples would bugger the suspension almost immediately. The next bump would launch you. Your own body literally becomes part of the suspension: a steering damper writ large. If you don't HOLD the tank with your knees, you have very little input when the bike goes. I couldn't tell you the number of times I physically caught slips by locking the bike with my hands and knees. If you strayed too near an edge or hung off or even took your hand off a lever, you measured your life expectancy in days. Half a dozen to a dozen bikers died on that stretch each year as it was...
And in any case, I find simple speed pretty tedious, I much prefer chucking the bike about. Leaning it way way over and grounding it out. Flip-flopping fast thru esses and roundabouts. Swooping and angles, not dull old momentum. I've never been much above 150mph on the bike so maybe there's some sudden orgasmic moment at 200 or something. But I doubt it. And there's no great thrill at 150, it's just the machine doing it: from your perspective all that happens is the wind picks up, your reaction horizons move waaa--aaayyy out ahead, and you have to haul the bike to turn it. All you've done is move control of your future (quality of) life out of your own sphere of influence and firmly into that of the random unaware vagaries of traffic and chance.
Dull plus exponentially risky.
Whoopee.
I ride for fun, not for pace.
So come track days, I scrape pegs but never knees.
I go a lot faster when I climb all over the bike, but then to grind the pegs I have to be going so fast that I'm at risk of crashing, and I have a four hour ride home ahead of me on that same bike on that same day to think about...
I and my unblemished knee-sliders therefore have no street cred with the pit-posturing knee-down try-hards who crawl around the track on the racing line. On the other hand, I do come back into the pits with beautifully fried tyres and some amusing peg and boot damage. You can't fake boot damage, you HAVE to be right over, you can't just hang off to one side -- it's amusing to watch the posers stumble mid-boast if they catch sight of it. The Ninja's much harder to scrape than the old Thundercat, especially with the front lowered and the tail jacked up, but I still lost both hero-blobs and ground deep into the pegs in a blinding day at Donington a few weeks after these shots were taken, and I've gone through the toe-sliders and deep into the soles and the bootleather on both boots.
I'm ashamed to say there's a certain malicious pleasure in sitting bolt upright cranked over in a corner, riding round the outside of people posing with their knees down...
And the sun is out and the summer's a-comin' and I want my bicycle back.
I want to go dancing again.
Life is too slow without machines.
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Like someone coughing through a duck
Well, despite that early agonised howl from the very bottom of my wallet, Friday night turned out to be a bit of a blinder.
And that, my dear wwwaudience, wwas my wweekkend.
Lovely.
And that, my dear wwwaudience, wwas my wweekkend.
Lovely.
Friday, April 23, 2004
Not tonight not tonight not tonight
The sun is out and London is lovely and the lovelies are steaming and Saltation is salivating. And the call, the call of the beer, that fresh high frosty beer, comes bold and thrilling over the bricky canyons, matching the devil's wheedling tone in my ear:
"Sal, Sal, just a quick one. The flesh, the yeast, the sun, it's early, go out go out go stake a spot for some optical luurrrvvee"
And Banksy and some manga chap are having a graffiti-fight at Dreambagsjaguarshoes up the road from me, and one of my favourite friends is having her birthday drinks in Cargo round the corner from it, and all the clothes have fallen off all the ladies in London, and another friend wants to hit Tower42 for cocktails and and and and and AND
BEBUGGERATION!!!!!!!
I hope all you non-aussies appreciate the VAST restraint that euphemism required. I nearly said fuck, you know.
This is the night tonight was made for.
And conserva-sal is trapped inside.
"Sal, Sal, just a quick one. The flesh, the yeast, the sun, it's early, go out go out go stake a spot for some optical luurrrvvee"
And Banksy and some manga chap are having a graffiti-fight at Dreambagsjaguarshoes up the road from me, and one of my favourite friends is having her birthday drinks in Cargo round the corner from it, and all the clothes have fallen off all the ladies in London, and another friend wants to hit Tower42 for cocktails and and and and and AND
BEBUGGERATION!!!!!!!
I hope all you non-aussies appreciate the VAST restraint that euphemism required. I nearly said fuck, you know.
This is the night tonight was made for.
And conserva-sal is trapped inside.
Idjit
Why am I looking at the web when I should be job-grovelling? I ask merely for informamotivation.
Oh yeah, bankruptcy. That'll do it.
Bye.
Oh yeah, bankruptcy. That'll do it.
Bye.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
A male Leticia moment
This is hilarious. And also a very difficult image{ining} to get out of my head.
via JB, who you should also read: for example.
via JB, who you should also read: for example.
Sunday, April 18, 2004
"Just a couple of paragraphs"
One of the HR depts wants me to deliver up unto them some words:
And I've discovered this blog has ruined my brain. Actually being able to stretch unrestrictedly a muscle I haven't touched since school (don't say it) has been great but now I need some of the charging punchy professional stuff again, retract from this fleshy corpulent prosody to the old cold bright clean sparse-flung steel spans.
I'm having real trouble. :D
I tore off a quick para. Then looked at it with horror at the realisation of what it would look like to the recipients.
Scene:
HR have requested you write a couple of paragraphs of post interview feedback with a view to sending this to [interviewer] / business .
So just what you made of the job & why you think you are well suited and would like it.
And I've discovered this blog has ruined my brain. Actually being able to stretch unrestrictedly a muscle I haven't touched since school (don't say it) has been great but now I need some of the charging punchy professional stuff again, retract from this fleshy corpulent prosody to the old cold bright clean sparse-flung steel spans.
I'm having real trouble. :D
I tore off a quick para. Then looked at it with horror at the realisation of what it would look like to the recipients.
Scene:
Investment Bank Meeting Room, large dark wooden table somehow combining extreme cost with unpleasant cheapness, a LotusNotes email printout alone and bright and very white in its centre. Four suited&buited Executives stare at it with unconcealable discomfort, real disquietus within their sold souls. The cakedfaced HR head leans forward and prods it with her talon.
"What is it?"
"We... we're really not sure. It came in from the agent in the middle of all the Post-Interview Feedbacks."
"Well, it's CLEARLY not feedback, is it?" sternly through tightening lips and eyes.
"It. Well. It could be. And it READS quite nicely."
"Exactly. Burn it, then seek out this person and burn it too. Also the agent."
Friday, April 16, 2004
Misc.notes through the night as I meander on through it
Drinking and Blogging: what a brilliant idea.
Performance (brainf)art.
Don't say you haven't been warned. You can leave your standards over there; thanks.
Performance (brainf)art.
Don't say you haven't been warned. You can leave your standards over there; thanks.
God I feel like one of those net-curtain twitchers
Crouching over a flickering laptop, saddo home in his own loungeroom on a Friday desperately conserving money plus in any case foul and deranged from last night's oddity. Just me and my little Viking Buddy. I'm parked in the corner with the TVTiVo backgrounding in the background (how the hell did we fill up 140 hours? get through some of this shit, you moron), and I hear suddenly and with odd sharpness through the wall next to my left ear:
"That's it- Get Out." and then "Get out" again oddly carrying yet oddly flat, unemotional.
Just kidding round. Back to drifting driftlessly between TV and PC.
Then I hear thumpings and the door next door and downstairs flung open and raised voices on the footpath. What!? It was a REAL drama!? Damn! I can't hear properly and... I face our squeaky sash-frames and realise I don't have a hope in hell of being subtle about it. And. I. can't... quite... SEE... at this angle. Bugger. Listen then. Little snatches:
"No... you're fucking unbelievable... pathetic weak little... all the crap, the police, all that shit, that was all you... go... get out... no, just..." All delivered in an amazingly calm yet forceful, resolute, voice. Unbelievably together despite his obvious extreme of emotion -- the ideal of what you'd love to be yourself in those moments but never are.
Some muted protests. From a girl. Ah no, not the girl I met? OK, now I'm just too... Heh, I was going to use the word "curious" but "pathetically nosy/ [oh this is irritating: i've slid and slipped round for 5 minutes here trying to get ONE word. ONE bloody WORD! what's that word that means 'living your life through someone else's' GOTTIT! via trainofthought munchausen's (GREAT book, by the way) syndrome:] imminent-bankruptcy-induced need to live vicariously" where was i. Oh yeah, "curious".
OK, now I neeeed to see just who and what. I squeeeaaaakkkk the bloody window up halfway, slowly but: still: that skreek has to be clearly bloody audible, and lean out awkwardly --idiot, should have just bitten the bullet and hurled it up-- they heard it anyway. And, too late. No clear culprits in the alleyway.
Except, no, wait. Look at the walks, the shoulders, the top of the necks. Zzzzipp. Him. He's not a pedestrian. I'd make a great cop. And, hang on, her. And him too? Three? WTF? The closest one's little and jaunty, with that sunk-thin sallow over-drugged under-fed over-clubbed London waster look, thin leather jacket and sharp black hat. Walking and twisting, his chin twisting agitatedly, almost but not quite turning round. They're all walking separately but together, invisible strings holding them together. Each's path's affecting the others'. Classic "be cool" drug-crunchied obviousness. If you're watching. They all join up again up by Kings Stores, she waiting with her hand held out and back, c'mon c'mon, two couple up, little twitch jaunt guy behind.
But I never saw their faces.
So I don't know if it was her.
Or who the others were.
And with the window now open, I'd forgotten how nice it is to sit in the sill and people watch. The constant stream of human randomness 10 feet below, wrapped in their own worlds, almost never knowing I'm there. Memories of lazy quiet summer evenings. It's not summer yet, but... I'm getting my fleece and another beer.
"That's it- Get Out." and then "Get out" again oddly carrying yet oddly flat, unemotional.
Just kidding round. Back to drifting driftlessly between TV and PC.
Then I hear thumpings and the door next door and downstairs flung open and raised voices on the footpath. What!? It was a REAL drama!? Damn! I can't hear properly and... I face our squeaky sash-frames and realise I don't have a hope in hell of being subtle about it. And. I. can't... quite... SEE... at this angle. Bugger. Listen then. Little snatches:
"No... you're fucking unbelievable... pathetic weak little... all the crap, the police, all that shit, that was all you... go... get out... no, just..." All delivered in an amazingly calm yet forceful, resolute, voice. Unbelievably together despite his obvious extreme of emotion -- the ideal of what you'd love to be yourself in those moments but never are.
Some muted protests. From a girl. Ah no, not the girl I met? OK, now I'm just too... Heh, I was going to use the word "curious" but "pathetically nosy/ [oh this is irritating: i've slid and slipped round for 5 minutes here trying to get ONE word. ONE bloody WORD! what's that word that means 'living your life through someone else's' GOTTIT! via trainofthought munchausen's (GREAT book, by the way) syndrome:] imminent-bankruptcy-induced need to live vicariously" where was i. Oh yeah, "curious".
OK, now I neeeed to see just who and what. I squeeeaaaakkkk the bloody window up halfway, slowly but: still: that skreek has to be clearly bloody audible, and lean out awkwardly --idiot, should have just bitten the bullet and hurled it up-- they heard it anyway. And, too late. No clear culprits in the alleyway.
Except, no, wait. Look at the walks, the shoulders, the top of the necks. Zzzzipp. Him. He's not a pedestrian. I'd make a great cop. And, hang on, her. And him too? Three? WTF? The closest one's little and jaunty, with that sunk-thin sallow over-drugged under-fed over-clubbed London waster look, thin leather jacket and sharp black hat. Walking and twisting, his chin twisting agitatedly, almost but not quite turning round. They're all walking separately but together, invisible strings holding them together. Each's path's affecting the others'. Classic "be cool" drug-crunchied obviousness. If you're watching. They all join up again up by Kings Stores, she waiting with her hand held out and back, c'mon c'mon, two couple up, little twitch jaunt guy behind.
But I never saw their faces.
So I don't know if it was her.
Or who the others were.
And with the window now open, I'd forgotten how nice it is to sit in the sill and people watch. The constant stream of human randomness 10 feet below, wrapped in their own worlds, almost never knowing I'm there. Memories of lazy quiet summer evenings. It's not summer yet, but... I'm getting my fleece and another beer.
wtf?
I just checked in on Blorgy and got quite a shock. Then felt really chuffed. Looks like we've had a bunch of new people hit blorgy and they like what I've stuck in. Even the stuff where I've just been probing to try to work out what on earth the blorgy voters are triggered by.
Cool.
But then I looked at the whole list and something jumps out at you. They all have 37 votes. But... the other posts have the usual odd jumble of miscellaneous vote numbers. Hmm. Now I've only told one person about these blogs (he gave me the idea, actually), and one other person twigged via grepping the web on the content of something I sent "offline". And neither has a couple of football-teams-worth of voting-bots waiting in the wings.
At least, not that I know of.
Now, I'd just shrug and go "meh." But (a) it's bloody odd, and (b) it LOOKS like I've rigged blorgy. Which sucks.
I have a THEORY. There's one other RecentPost which has exactly the same number of votes. It's also quite an unusual site. I added a comment on it last night. On looking again on that site, mine is the most recent comment. Possibility: he has had a traffic-jump from a special-interest group he's told about his blorgy, and they've clicked through the comment. But to all then go back and vote on blorgy stretches the imagination.
Fucked if I know what's going on. Given the apparent dodginess, I can't even feel chuffed, just uncomfortable. Blech.
Cool.
But then I looked at the whole list and something jumps out at you. They all have 37 votes. But... the other posts have the usual odd jumble of miscellaneous vote numbers. Hmm. Now I've only told one person about these blogs (he gave me the idea, actually), and one other person twigged via grepping the web on the content of something I sent "offline". And neither has a couple of football-teams-worth of voting-bots waiting in the wings.
At least, not that I know of.
Now, I'd just shrug and go "meh." But (a) it's bloody odd, and (b) it LOOKS like I've rigged blorgy. Which sucks.
I have a THEORY. There's one other RecentPost which has exactly the same number of votes. It's also quite an unusual site. I added a comment on it last night. On looking again on that site, mine is the most recent comment. Possibility: he has had a traffic-jump from a special-interest group he's told about his blorgy, and they've clicked through the comment. But to all then go back and vote on blorgy stretches the imagination.
Fucked if I know what's going on. Given the apparent dodginess, I can't even feel chuffed, just uncomfortable. Blech.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
00_README.install
Heh, just ran across the first ever quick notes for the first ever install, for a chap with no other project knowledge than that I handed him the disk and asked him to load it up while he was there. I got a phone call from Frankfurt the next day which consisted of a thick German accent shouting "Don't run with scissor!! Game over man!! Ha ha ha haaa[click]"
You can bleep over the techy bits. Although they're not really techy.
You can bleep over the techy bits. Although they're not really techy.
Installation.doc
================
1. Untar the archive so you can read this file...
2. Make cup of tea
3. Move the pnl01/* tree into the [product] $ACTION directory if you haven't
untarred the archive directly into it:
> % mv ./pnl01* $ACTION
> % mv ./custom/pnl01 $ACTION/custom
4. Change all database references to reflect the site's setup:
> % cd $ACTION/pnl01/install
> % ./install.sh
> usage: install.sh OLDDB NEWDB ACTIONDIR
> % ./install.sh saltation bigbunterdb $ACTION # for example...
5. Slurp tea noisily
6. Create the database structure and populate the basic config data:
> % cd $ACTION/pnl01/setup
> % ./cre.sh
> usage: cre.sh USERNAME PASSWORD SYBASEDB
> % ./cre.sh [product]_dba its_a_secret bigbunterdb
NB: This Sybase user requires Resource Authority (drop/create db objects)
NB: This Sybase Database will require the SelectInto/BulkCopy option to
be ON and to remain PERMANENTLY ON.
7. Ask for chocolate biscuit
8. Protest quality of provided biscuit
9. Create crontab entries for the daily uploads:
1. pnlscript_updatefxdaily.sh SYBUSERNAME PASSWORD
2. pnlscript_generateunderlyingdata.sh SYBUSERNAME PASSWORD
NB: Both are to run BEFORE midnight, otherwise we're going to have to modify
the code to calc yesterday's date.
NB: They do not need to run in any particular order: fx is not used by
anything except the Home Currency reports.
NB: The username/pwd need only have insert,update,delete permission on the
database, but MUST have all three.
NB: The user MUST have its Default Database set to whatever database the
cre script generated the tables in, ie, the SYBASEDB specified on the
cre's command line.
10. Run the generate script to prime the pump, so to speak:
> % cd $ACTION/pnl01/00_keyscripts
> % ./pnlscript_generateunderlyingdata.sh SYBUSERNAME PASSWORD
11. Run the 2 main reports to check they work OK:
> % cd $ACTION/pnl01/00_keyscripts
> % ./pnlreport_market_Localcurrency USERNAME/PASSWORD ats 'apr 16 1997' 'apr 15 1997'
> % ./pnlreport_market_Homecurrency USERNAME/PASSWORD ats 'apr 16 1997' 'apr 15 1997'
12. Observe coldness of tea.
13. Hand-modify the scripts with DEBUG code in them, if necessary.
They should be pretty well tidied up, but you can't be too careful.
NB: the only file to check is 00_keyscripts/pnlscript_generate....sh
MB: a measure of memory size
NB: don't run with scissors.
14. OK, everyone out of the pool. Pack your bag and leave by the side door.
Game Over Man.
Coding for Fun
Heh, just browsing thru some of my old code for examples for someone. And ran across a whole system I'd thought I'd lost. And dipped in with a grin for some of the old classics.
See, coding is actually quite quick, in terms of the typing time. The effort's in the thought, not the keystrokes: number of characters is quite small, the language is quite dense. And dense in terms of having key assumptions and restrictions and critically the overarching sub-purpose and architectural fit which, if understood, makes many of the assumptions and restrictions swiftly re-inferrable, where was I oh yes coding's also dense in the negative sense of opacity of the code's key points and gotchas.
So, code unto others as you would have them code unto you. TALK to the later reader. Spend lots of your time on the Comments. Jot down key decisions and the thinking behind them, IN the code as they're made, where they're made. Point up the optimisations you've wired in here and how to take them out for later restructuring & renewed optimising. Flag up future gotchas and the circumstances that will mean particular chunks of code will need to be re-visited, and any thoughts you immediately have as to how. If you've spent 2 weeks staring into space chewing and 60 freak minutes blinding inspiration, quickly write down the Why of the infinitesimal subtleties that eliminate the garbage and provide such upside. Since all this stuff is pouring through your head at the time, is pretty much your universe at the time, it's hardly a mental switch to type about it. And you can avoid the time-suck by saving it for the flat spots you get when your brain rears back for a breather and coding is pointless because it'll all be wrong. And as you repeatedly completely fix and rewrite the previous afternoon's work in 10minutes the next morning you start to learn the value of matching task to current ability, that life ain't neatly linear. And since any code you wrote more than 3 months ago (or 3 weeks if C++) is actually written by somebody else, you could even be helping yourself out, in the unlikely event you've made any mistakes worthy of correcting or the client wants yet another bloody modification.
I think the longest comment I ever did ran for two A4 pages of printout, for a single line of code. Although, to be fair, that single line of code itself ran for one and a half pages of printout and you could halve its speed by moving parts of it around. And it was part of the central hub of the entire system, with every structural design decision and fuckup pivoting around this module. Subtle code, and tense. And stepping very carefully through certain of Sybase's more jaw-dropping bugs.
The bits I've seen of Mac OS X's Darwin (just the file-handlers-- their latest file-open is badly thought-out, by the way: note their silly approach to auto-defragmentation. Nice and quick and elegant to code, safe and guaranteed to work. Also guaranteed to piss-off every single Mac OS X user ever and always and unavoidably and to firmly degrade system performance subject to what is now and has always been the slowest memory access available and the one least capable of technological speed improvements) take this approach and they are truly lovely bits of code. Clear, clean, crisp. Little diagrams in the comments, worked-through examples. Lovely always to see the First Tier at work.
A good trick is to actually pre-comment your code, particularly if you're coming in on a large and tightly integrated greenfield chunk or system. By that, I mean take all your pencil sketches and data designs and just transfer them to appropriate files etc as comment descriptions. It's fast and easy --again, there's little thought involved: you're just moving your mental map outside-- and it then serves as a delightfully elegant micro-level project guide for the rest of your typing. You can add useful code even when in one those brain-eddy periods -- just read the comments, pick a linear chunk, and type. Easy.
And then, when you're noodling about in the comments, you might as well have a laugh. And in fact, as long as it doesn't get in the way, might as well make your code funny as well.
From a shell script which essentially re-wrote your code's syntax to get around a pointlessly brain-dead parser "design" and let you get on with the meat:
Hmm, the 'PRE' tag's not real gentle on the original formatting. Oh well.
From the tail-end of a particularly fraught and infuriating project:
A lot of them are in-jokes or techie-jokes or context-jokes --the SPPEEEDD one's language becomes uproariously funny if you've read in sequence the growing frenzied over-tired fuck-you-serge series of comments in the halfhour and dozen files leading up to this one-- but I think you get the gist.
Our clients back then used to really look forward to getting new issues of my stuff. They'd read it while it was installing. The phone'd go, and
"Sal! It's R. from the Bank of Austria"
"R.! How'r'y'goin'theremate?"
"I have no idea what you just said but we are all well and life is good here. A. says hi."
"Ahhhh, Vienna is lovely this time of year, isn't it."
"Yes. Hey, we got your update. I LOVE Bond Option! And Swap! And the new Exchange-Traded-Products stuff is great. And we have been laughing about Corporate Funding for an hour now, my manager has a print-out stuck up on his wall and I have forwarded it to my friends, I hope you don't mind."
"It's your money, mate. Hey, have you got to the core-algorithm optimiser's safety-trapping yet?"
"No-ooo..."
"Oh, I think you'll love it. I've completely reworked it and there's loads of new material."
"Oo, this is even better than having an empire. I can hardly wait for version 4."
See, coding is actually quite quick, in terms of the typing time. The effort's in the thought, not the keystrokes: number of characters is quite small, the language is quite dense. And dense in terms of having key assumptions and restrictions and critically the overarching sub-purpose and architectural fit which, if understood, makes many of the assumptions and restrictions swiftly re-inferrable, where was I oh yes coding's also dense in the negative sense of opacity of the code's key points and gotchas.
And C++ is just an excrescence. Just so wrong-headed in every way and for all the wrong reasons. As a zero-worth example pointing up incontrovertibly the problems the language's designer had with the real world and the actual purpose or even design objectives of his own language, the requirement for code stub prototypes in a supposedly object-oriented coding environment SOLELY so Bjarne could have a shot at writing it as a one-step compiler is so breathtakingly counter-productively wrong-headed that I can't even bring myself to not repeat my adjective. MAKE it a bloody three-step compiler and get the machine out of the way of the coder you idiot.C#/.net on the other hand is everything C++ should have been. Yum. It needs a linker before you should validly consider it for any Production environment but as a RAD tool I can see it sweeping all before it. If you like Apple's NextStep --or, come to think of it, and for completely different reasons, VB-- you'll love C#. I just wish it wasn't Microsoft.
So, code unto others as you would have them code unto you. TALK to the later reader. Spend lots of your time on the Comments. Jot down key decisions and the thinking behind them, IN the code as they're made, where they're made. Point up the optimisations you've wired in here and how to take them out for later restructuring & renewed optimising. Flag up future gotchas and the circumstances that will mean particular chunks of code will need to be re-visited, and any thoughts you immediately have as to how. If you've spent 2 weeks staring into space chewing and 60 freak minutes blinding inspiration, quickly write down the Why of the infinitesimal subtleties that eliminate the garbage and provide such upside. Since all this stuff is pouring through your head at the time, is pretty much your universe at the time, it's hardly a mental switch to type about it. And you can avoid the time-suck by saving it for the flat spots you get when your brain rears back for a breather and coding is pointless because it'll all be wrong. And as you repeatedly completely fix and rewrite the previous afternoon's work in 10minutes the next morning you start to learn the value of matching task to current ability, that life ain't neatly linear. And since any code you wrote more than 3 months ago (or 3 weeks if C++) is actually written by somebody else, you could even be helping yourself out, in the unlikely event you've made any mistakes worthy of correcting or the client wants yet another bloody modification.
I think the longest comment I ever did ran for two A4 pages of printout, for a single line of code. Although, to be fair, that single line of code itself ran for one and a half pages of printout and you could halve its speed by moving parts of it around. And it was part of the central hub of the entire system, with every structural design decision and fuckup pivoting around this module. Subtle code, and tense. And stepping very carefully through certain of Sybase's more jaw-dropping bugs.
The bits I've seen of Mac OS X's Darwin (just the file-handlers-- their latest file-open is badly thought-out, by the way: note their silly approach to auto-defragmentation. Nice and quick and elegant to code, safe and guaranteed to work. Also guaranteed to piss-off every single Mac OS X user ever and always and unavoidably and to firmly degrade system performance subject to what is now and has always been the slowest memory access available and the one least capable of technological speed improvements) take this approach and they are truly lovely bits of code. Clear, clean, crisp. Little diagrams in the comments, worked-through examples. Lovely always to see the First Tier at work.
A good trick is to actually pre-comment your code, particularly if you're coming in on a large and tightly integrated greenfield chunk or system. By that, I mean take all your pencil sketches and data designs and just transfer them to appropriate files etc as comment descriptions. It's fast and easy --again, there's little thought involved: you're just moving your mental map outside-- and it then serves as a delightfully elegant micro-level project guide for the rest of your typing. You can add useful code even when in one those brain-eddy periods -- just read the comments, pick a linear chunk, and type. Easy.
And then, when you're noodling about in the comments, you might as well have a laugh. And in fact, as long as it doesn't get in the way, might as well make your code funny as well.
From a shell script which essentially re-wrote your code's syntax to get around a pointlessly brain-dead parser "design" and let you get on with the meat:
Hmm, the 'PRE' tag's not real gentle on the original formatting. Oh well.
# Readability Note:
# Subfunctions are defined at the top of the script, while MAIN() is at the end
# You are recommended to turn immediately to the end of this script and
# commence reading it in reverse order. OK? Good.
######################################################################## BEGIN
## Prelim Functions definition
function its_all_gone_horribly_wrong {
echo "These scripts need to be named prep and unprep, and they're not."
echo "Please find someone who knows whats going on and inform him of this terrible"
echo "state of affairs."
echo " signed, Mr.Unix"
exit 1 # eeeewwwwwww NASTY!
# BUT it works
# AND I'm lazy
} # END its_all_gone_horribly_wrong
function show_usage_and_die {
echo "Usage: prep [-o[nefile] | -t[wofiles]] [filelist]"
echo " unprep [-o[nefile] | -t[wofiles]] [filelist]"
echo ""
echo " If no filelist specified, uses * or *.txt files"
echo " Default is using two files and therefore *.txt"
exit 1 # eeeewwwwwww NASTY!
# BUT it works
# AND I'm lazy
} # END show_usage_and_die
function see_Naples_and_die {
:
# doesn't actually do anything, I just thought I needed to lift the
# number and quality of this script's literary allusions
} # END see_Naples_and_die
And the core was the very last line:# Do It
oh_my_god_whats_it_doing_to_my_files
######################################################################## END
From the tail-end of a particularly fraught and infuriating project:
Serge... Bane of my existence for the duration. Unbelievable. I'd wandered off into a hedge fund for a while (and THEREin lies a tale or two -- my god, I was working with a bipolar viking, literally genetically a viking with a documented bloodline and family traced back to the lads on the boat with William the Conqueror. They'd kicked the living shit out of Guernsey then stayed put for some reason. If you've seen those ostrich-eyed beak-nosed Normans on the Creole Tapestry, you'll jump when you see this guy. Identical. Not just physically: mentally too. Give him a sword and a shiny suit and he'd be off ravening at the drop of a hat. Instead, he worked out his invasion frustrations at "work"), and due to Visa problems I'd had to come back to the dull old software house afterwards. Deep code can be fun, linear code is dull.
Serge was a nice enough French chap, one of those intense slight Parisians with little artsy glasses and a keen confused excitability. You'll know the type if you've ever played with what the French love to call their intelligentsia. I don't have a lot of time for these any more -- I've seen too much damage done by the overwhelming irresponsibility coupled with some minor skills and a dedication to provingthey are better than youa point. He'd come in on a big system of mine and modified it for one of the French banks' additional requirements.
Jesus.
Jesus.
I really can't describe to you the depth of the fuckings-up he'd spattered through every single part of my code. And to give you an idea of how big "every single part" is, it was around 20,000 lines of code and config files, and nearly 1,000 lines of that had come from the necessary consequences of adding a single column to one table. This stuff had been TIGHT. He had had one or two nice ideas, but it was as though he was coding through one eye, inspecting everything through a tiny long tube so that he couldn't see what any of the immediate context or consequences were, just this roaming hotspot of excitable well-intentioned damage wandering round the system. After a fortnight of realising just how bad it was, that 9 months of excruciatingly tedious data-driven QA and data+structures+code+configs bug-ironing and polishing had been vaporised, I decided it was quicker and INFINITELY safer to take my old version and simply recreate his intended modifications. OK, so an extra month's work on top of what I'd originally thought.
But the result would then do the job.
Which is pretty much the whole POINT.
That was when I discovered he'd deleted the code archives and we were way past our IT department's backup horizon.
...
To deliberately delete tiny compressed text archives is an irresponsible fatuity of such degree that even today I can't not start to splutter with rage when I think about it. Sorry Serge, you might be a nice guy, but for blowing my blood pressure through the roof for 6 months for what should have been a 3 or 4 week enhancement, you've waived your right to have this one get kicked under the carpet too.
I wouldn't have minded QUITE so much but I hated doing that system the FIRST time because it was so dull yet so utterly crucial to each client that I couldn't get away from it. P&L-- it ain't sexy but by god do people pay attention to it, and where you're the system-of-record for entire divisions and in some cases the entire bank --40,000 trades in every asset class-- things have to be both correct and complete. There's nowhere to hide, you can't say "Oh, that part of the algorithm's still coming" or "we'll do that instrument once we've got this one working." And once you got past the engine design (the first 3 weeks) NONE of it's hard, it's just huge. It's like eating babyfood -- anyone can do it, but drop 10 gallons in front of you and it's a whole different story. Correct is easy. ANYone can do that. But Complete... ah now, that's a whole different story. Although similarly worded, I just noticed. The difference is sort of like observing something arithmetically versus being able to prove it mathematically. And you're using very friable tools, not the cleanliness of equations.
So, to be forced to re-do it before I could even start on the tedium of enhancing it...
Pleah. I hate irresponsible incompeten{ce|ts}.
So anyway, I was on about iteration four of ironing out structural fuckups, deep structural irrationalities, in a key core part of what had once been my code, in a manner and fixingup-effort-related-to-fuckingup-effort similar to extracting an unwanted and unaskedfor spoon of sugar from your tea, and was sweeping through all the modified files stamping them with appropriate change-comments, and it was getting very late, very very late indeed:
# create proc to hardwire optimisation table for SPPEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!
#
# We stopped this nice old lady in the street and asked her opinion of Speed, and
# she replied firmly in her reedy old voice: "I think there should MORE OF IT!"
# So there you go and here we are and is that the time? I'm late.
#
# Cre: 98.??.?? Serge why did you remove this file's comments? I ask merely for information.
# Mod: 99.05.17 [Saltation ] : Made Serge's mods more relationally nice: no more nulls : new structure
# : mod for fuller funding
# : swung printout twice round head for testing purposes: passed with flying colours
# : sang and danced and skipped and clapped
# : had a lie-down at manager's suggestion
# Mod: 99.06.18 [Saltation ] : Wholesale overhaul discovered necessary -- thank'ee Sergee, you never fail to astound me
A lot of them are in-jokes or techie-jokes or context-jokes --the SPPEEEDD one's language becomes uproariously funny if you've read in sequence the growing frenzied over-tired fuck-you-serge series of comments in the halfhour and dozen files leading up to this one-- but I think you get the gist.
Our clients back then used to really look forward to getting new issues of my stuff. They'd read it while it was installing. The phone'd go, and
"Sal! It's R. from the Bank of Austria"
"R.! How'r'y'goin'theremate?"
"I have no idea what you just said but we are all well and life is good here. A. says hi."
"Ahhhh, Vienna is lovely this time of year, isn't it."
"Yes. Hey, we got your update. I LOVE Bond Option! And Swap! And the new Exchange-Traded-Products stuff is great. And we have been laughing about Corporate Funding for an hour now, my manager has a print-out stuck up on his wall and I have forwarded it to my friends, I hope you don't mind."
"It's your money, mate. Hey, have you got to the core-algorithm optimiser's safety-trapping yet?"
"No-ooo..."
"Oh, I think you'll love it. I've completely reworked it and there's loads of new material."
"Oo, this is even better than having an empire. I can hardly wait for version 4."
How did you get this way?
I may just be in the mood for it today, but I think this is BRILLIANT:
Last night a BJ saved my life
I can't get this out of my bloody head now. I keep laughing as the chorus/title-line lilts on through again. It just popped into my head in the shower this morning, as so many great ideas do. Like: "Wouldn't this shower be subtly yet profoundly improved by the presence of Elle Macpherson?" And: "I'm glad I'm not in prison."
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Old me, you fool
Bwah ha haa!
I'm trying to type up some of the weekend, and went hunting an email wherein a mate had neatly summarised a character flaw of mine, which fitted in beautifully to a spot of self-expl{or|an}ation I was attempting.
Buggered if I can find it.
But damn, have I run across some brilliant bloody emails or what. Tossing up about just posting extracts for wider audiences' laughter/appreciation of 2 loony philosophers cluttering the net at each other.
This one is quite separate but popped up as I regretfully recognised I'd not tonight find the mail I wanted:
--
27th April, 1999: a response to an old Aussie mate enquiring about the UK situation.
Subject: Wahey!
Cease your ceaseless ceasing to bombard me with mails! I inceaset you deceaset!
I am yesterday returning from "Over There Land" of frogs and watery winery and Lo! am surprised when I am checking my personal mails and am looking at 96 new messages. I poke at them with nervousness and a stick but they stay and look at me and don't blink or even go oww even when I use my stick. They are tough cookies. So I am reading some of them at high speed because it is late last night and I am sleepy, and I forward to me some of the more urgent and/or tough cookies. But now I am looking at a heap of dross and realising that sleepy me should not be trusted judgement-wise with heavy machinery or light machine guns. Heavy machinery WITH light machines guns is a different story of course and we all know this.
What is this crap from Oz I cry. Why am I the unwitting victim of days of unlooked for abuse heaped upon my simple self I cry in a going-on sort of manner. Who am I speaking to I cry in a conversational tone indicative of further discursion on the topic but now with a slightly rhetorical bent you know. Less beating of breast and fevered brow-clutching but bumping up the injured sigh quotient.
Mate, great to see another leaper into the old swimmingpool of fate. Prepare yourself for some of the most intense years of your life.
TKD-wise, good luck. [Sydney is sad but London is ludicrous.] Martial arts clubs are uncommon and low quality. For example, even in my dilapidated condition when I first arrived in London, I walked thru "London's best TKD club" "World TKD Federation [wow!]" 's best players, even tho it was my first time full-contact; quote-of-the-evening was from a 6th dan (6!?): "stop hitting me." More pose than puissance. I tried a few others, similar results. A karate mate tried all sorts, including Bruce Lee's own Academy, similar results; after we'd sat around over mutiple beers lamenting our bodies's blossoming blancmange-osity, he did a fitness test at the Academy to try to scare some motivation into him, and got rated "Better than our 'Ideal' level." Errr. So I gave up and have spent the last 3 years developing powerful drinking muscles. I have an idea for you/Grant: You're second dan now aren't you? How about we just hire a hall and start Sang Dan's London branch? I've been toying with hte idea for a while but lack skill, fitness, recency of training, etc. etc. ad fucking nauseam. From memory you're orders of magnitude better than anyone I've met over here so skill-wise you don't have to worry about the embarrassment of not stacking up against local legends. (I trained with 6th dans a few times, not _quite_ as good as Grant's lowly 4th...) What do you reckon?
Job-wise, not sure exactly sure what you're looking for as I'm a little vague on real-world careers: I'm more finance and computers. [...big long boring useful bit deleted...] Timing-wise, you sure you want to arrive at the end of summer? London summer kicks arse but winter bites it. Go June/July!! Scrimping for extra A$ savings aren't really worth it when everything costs 2-3 times as much....much better to just rock up and start earning ££ doing scutwork straight away and then upgrade jobs. London just goes batshit over summer, and there's something magical about it still being daytime when you go into a night club at 10:30pm.....
Umm. Enough typing. Maybe I should start earning some of this money I'm charging....
good to hear from you mate, send us the extra info when you get a chance, and have a think about setting up that club!
I'm trying to type up some of the weekend, and went hunting an email wherein a mate had neatly summarised a character flaw of mine, which fitted in beautifully to a spot of self-expl{or|an}ation I was attempting.
Buggered if I can find it.
But damn, have I run across some brilliant bloody emails or what. Tossing up about just posting extracts for wider audiences' laughter/appreciation of 2 loony philosophers cluttering the net at each other.
This one is quite separate but popped up as I regretfully recognised I'd not tonight find the mail I wanted:
--
27th April, 1999: a response to an old Aussie mate enquiring about the UK situation.
Subject: Wahey!
Cease your ceaseless ceasing to bombard me with mails! I inceaset you deceaset!
I am yesterday returning from "Over There Land" of frogs and watery winery and Lo! am surprised when I am checking my personal mails and am looking at 96 new messages. I poke at them with nervousness and a stick but they stay and look at me and don't blink or even go oww even when I use my stick. They are tough cookies. So I am reading some of them at high speed because it is late last night and I am sleepy, and I forward to me some of the more urgent and/or tough cookies. But now I am looking at a heap of dross and realising that sleepy me should not be trusted judgement-wise with heavy machinery or light machine guns. Heavy machinery WITH light machines guns is a different story of course and we all know this.
What is this crap from Oz I cry. Why am I the unwitting victim of days of unlooked for abuse heaped upon my simple self I cry in a going-on sort of manner. Who am I speaking to I cry in a conversational tone indicative of further discursion on the topic but now with a slightly rhetorical bent you know. Less beating of breast and fevered brow-clutching but bumping up the injured sigh quotient.
Mate, great to see another leaper into the old swimmingpool of fate. Prepare yourself for some of the most intense years of your life.
TKD-wise, good luck. [Sydney is sad but London is ludicrous.] Martial arts clubs are uncommon and low quality. For example, even in my dilapidated condition when I first arrived in London, I walked thru "London's best TKD club" "World TKD Federation [wow!]" 's best players, even tho it was my first time full-contact; quote-of-the-evening was from a 6th dan (6!?): "stop hitting me." More pose than puissance. I tried a few others, similar results. A karate mate tried all sorts, including Bruce Lee's own Academy, similar results; after we'd sat around over mutiple beers lamenting our bodies's blossoming blancmange-osity, he did a fitness test at the Academy to try to scare some motivation into him, and got rated "Better than our 'Ideal' level." Errr. So I gave up and have spent the last 3 years developing powerful drinking muscles. I have an idea for you/Grant: You're second dan now aren't you? How about we just hire a hall and start Sang Dan's London branch? I've been toying with hte idea for a while but lack skill, fitness, recency of training, etc. etc. ad fucking nauseam. From memory you're orders of magnitude better than anyone I've met over here so skill-wise you don't have to worry about the embarrassment of not stacking up against local legends. (I trained with 6th dans a few times, not _quite_ as good as Grant's lowly 4th...) What do you reckon?
Job-wise, not sure exactly sure what you're looking for as I'm a little vague on real-world careers: I'm more finance and computers. [...big long boring useful bit deleted...] Timing-wise, you sure you want to arrive at the end of summer? London summer kicks arse but winter bites it. Go June/July!! Scrimping for extra A$ savings aren't really worth it when everything costs 2-3 times as much....much better to just rock up and start earning ££ doing scutwork straight away and then upgrade jobs. London just goes batshit over summer, and there's something magical about it still being daytime when you go into a night club at 10:30pm.....
Umm. Enough typing. Maybe I should start earning some of this money I'm charging....
good to hear from you mate, send us the extra info when you get a chance, and have a think about setting up that club!
You must behave the way I expect
Via a mailing list, wherein a chap had a hissy fit when all did not
dance attendance utter upon a stray query of his:
From: Eamonn Anous
Subject: Re: Re: [Hissy fit]
>> I have to say whenever I have made a query to this list or whenever I
>> have supplied this list with info which I have supplied which I
>> genuinely thought would be of interest I have had not a single word
>> from anyone.....
welcome to the wonderful world of busy people with lots of other things to do
silence does not always imply condemnation
> I've always found this list very useful and generally us Mac types
> thank in advance (TIA), or even if not apparent it is meant.
> I do agree courtesy goes a long way, and manners are free, however,
> moaning won't get you anywhere on this and many other lists and a
> reply or some response to any of your posting should be taken as
> thanks in itself.
>
> Don't take things too much to heart
quite.
if you are unused to how electronic communications restrict "normal" human interaction's standard respect-signalling techniques and how those techniques have been modified to allow said communication, perhaps you could consider spending a little more time looking and learning a little more widely, before inveighing against one of the more rational helpful groups on the web
> perhaps you should get out more.
harsh, but you can see what he meant.
given that this is an electronic communication group, perhaps, though, he should have said:
perhaps you should stay in more
you'll note (i hope) that what you've posted in the last couple of days
has been drenched in standard conversational space-fillers ("i have to
say") and repetition ("i have supplied this list with information i
have supplied"). on the modern interweb, such constructs have been for 20 years considered actively rude.
when moving into a different environment, something people can often
consider is that the different environment may have different codes of
conduct, possibly encouraged or even dominated by that very
environment's nature. it works for other countries, it works for other
cultures, it works for other throttled mechanisms of expression.
getting upset at someone not reacting to your archly raised eyebrows
during a phone conversation might not be appropriate, for example.
just a thought
From: Eamonn Anous
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Hissy fit]
> Hmmn, well all's well that ends well.
>
> Not really the standard of argument I expect from this List though,
> things HAVE changed :-)
>
> btw - personally I'm steeped in the old fashioned netiquette - don't
> clog the bandwidth with noise. I never say "I don't know" or "me too"
> or maybe if" when I can help it.
>
> (Although using dialup at home has kept me 'honest'!)
>
> You will find that if you give out good advice often enough you get a
> good few thanks, but off-list.
>
> If you don't get a response to a problem take it elsewhere (without
> rancour), or try it again on the List but perhaps at the weekend when
> people have more time to create a reply. Often the better informed
> people are working a lot. (This may not apply for fine sunny weekends)
me too
all what he said
dance attendance utter upon a stray query of his:
From: Eamonn Anous
Subject: Re: Re: [Hissy fit]
>> I have to say whenever I have made a query to this list or whenever I
>> have supplied this list with info which I have supplied which I
>> genuinely thought would be of interest I have had not a single word
>> from anyone.....
welcome to the wonderful world of busy people with lots of other things to do
silence does not always imply condemnation
> I've always found this list very useful and generally us Mac types
> thank in advance (TIA), or even if not apparent it is meant.
> I do agree courtesy goes a long way, and manners are free, however,
> moaning won't get you anywhere on this and many other lists and a
> reply or some response to any of your posting should be taken as
> thanks in itself.
>
> Don't take things too much to heart
quite.
if you are unused to how electronic communications restrict "normal" human interaction's standard respect-signalling techniques and how those techniques have been modified to allow said communication, perhaps you could consider spending a little more time looking and learning a little more widely, before inveighing against one of the more rational helpful groups on the web
> perhaps you should get out more.
harsh, but you can see what he meant.
given that this is an electronic communication group, perhaps, though, he should have said:
perhaps you should stay in more
you'll note (i hope) that what you've posted in the last couple of days
has been drenched in standard conversational space-fillers ("i have to
say") and repetition ("i have supplied this list with information i
have supplied"). on the modern interweb, such constructs have been for 20 years considered actively rude.
when moving into a different environment, something people can often
consider is that the different environment may have different codes of
conduct, possibly encouraged or even dominated by that very
environment's nature. it works for other countries, it works for other
cultures, it works for other throttled mechanisms of expression.
getting upset at someone not reacting to your archly raised eyebrows
during a phone conversation might not be appropriate, for example.
just a thought
From: Eamonn Anous
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Hissy fit]
> Hmmn, well all's well that ends well.
>
> Not really the standard of argument I expect from this List though,
> things HAVE changed :-)
>
> btw - personally I'm steeped in the old fashioned netiquette - don't
> clog the bandwidth with noise. I never say "I don't know" or "me too"
> or maybe if" when I can help it.
>
> (Although using dialup at home has kept me 'honest'!)
>
> You will find that if you give out good advice often enough you get a
> good few thanks, but off-list.
>
> If you don't get a response to a problem take it elsewhere (without
> rancour), or try it again on the List but perhaps at the weekend when
> people have more time to create a reply. Often the better informed
> people are working a lot. (This may not apply for fine sunny weekends)
me too
all what he said
She knows me too well
Email just collected.
"Geilen", btw, is a German word meaning an-intensity-of-feeling-which-is-nearly-but-not-quite-orgasm. What a great word. English is a sadder language for not having this term. Let's Adopt-A-Word Today! Can you give this poor helpless german word a good home? Ring now.
--
Sal
Can't you think about stupid things like eggs and chocolate like a normal human being at Easter time??? :-)))
M.
--
nope
"Geilen", btw, is a German word meaning an-intensity-of-feeling-which-is-nearly-but-not-quite-orgasm. What a great word. English is a sadder language for not having this term. Let's Adopt-A-Word Today! Can you give this poor helpless german word a good home? Ring now.
--
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Saltation
Gesendet: Sonntag, 11. April 2004 01:08
An: M C v F
Betreff: like the name...
http://www.medizin.fu-berlin.de/ceramide/
check out the name of the lab
Sal
Can't you think about stupid things like eggs and chocolate like a normal human being at Easter time??? :-)))
M.
--
nope
"Ohh... crap"
And like stuff like this helps.
blah
EDIT: Looking at this the next afternoon, I suddenly realise that it could very easily be very mis-read. I umm-ed and I ahh-ed and I chopped and I changed it, then decided to return it and to leave it like this:
Read this as someone rolling round the rollercoaster, then jumping out to hit the web for contrast, for perspective, for distraction. And of course, what I read, made it worse. In a good way. But still worse.
This explains everything far faster than I could.
blah
EDIT: Looking at this the next afternoon, I suddenly realise that it could very easily be very mis-read. I umm-ed and I ahh-ed and I chopped and I changed it, then decided to return it and to leave it like this:
Read this as someone rolling round the rollercoaster, then jumping out to hit the web for contrast, for perspective, for distraction. And of course, what I read, made it worse. In a good way. But still worse.
This explains everything far faster than I could.
This Was Then
I cringe crunch literally tears in my eyes, when I re-read that line "This Was Then:"
You idiot. You poor about-to-be-fucked-up idiot.
I'm there. Looking forwards. Only Forwards. Estimating and Guesstimating the future from the beauty I've been shown.
And looking back now
It's all lies
Just an Act
Everything I'd seen, I'd been Shown
Just an Act
Just lies
Little Sal, Little Innocent, hasn't yet had his nose smeared in the shit. She's smearing, she's smearing, and he's excusing, he's excusing. And then. You run out of tolerance. And you discover from her friends that you're not the first. That her games weren't one-off's like you thought -- oh no, that's the way that she THINKS, the way that she LIVES, not the way she's just for this one nasty time in her life decided to PLAY.
And the bleeding torn strings
trailing out across London
get thinner
and thinner
and still bleed
You idiot. You poor about-to-be-fucked-up idiot.
I'm there. Looking forwards. Only Forwards. Estimating and Guesstimating the future from the beauty I've been shown.
And looking back now
It's all lies
Just an Act
Everything I'd seen, I'd been Shown
Just an Act
Just lies
Little Sal, Little Innocent, hasn't yet had his nose smeared in the shit. She's smearing, she's smearing, and he's excusing, he's excusing. And then. You run out of tolerance. And you discover from her friends that you're not the first. That her games weren't one-off's like you thought -- oh no, that's the way that she THINKS, the way that she LIVES, not the way she's just for this one nasty time in her life decided to PLAY.
And the bleeding torn strings
trailing out across London
get thinner
and thinner
and still bleed
Monday, April 12, 2004
Lips like a silk cushion
Dragged back to flashback.
I had a beautiful but extremely disturbing night the other night, which I'll try to blog properly. If only to try to get it out of my head, to work out what the hell I do. Can do. Should do. Shouldn't do. Don't want to do. Want. Want to do. Want.
But it triggered many memories, flashback. And it's almost spot-on the 6 month nonaversary. Scraped off the scab I'd so diligently non-tended. And it keeps pounding through the back of my head and I'm shying away from the memories of the outlook-then.
Today's brightening now, the bluewhite-glow of London's clouds merely leaching colour from the low flat sky, not the starkness from the shadows nor the radiant warmth from the ground. Next door's Prodigy's wailing and spiralling in through the door behind me in the kitchen, open wide to let the spring-chill air in from the roof terrace. The house is filling with the scent of wakening Nature. A Doctor Who (Tom Baker) is narrating Stelios's easiCinema venture on a 2 month old Trouble at the Top episode I've kept on TiVo for a rainy day. It's almost sunny but what the hell. The tubby child's efforts serve for background noise. I'm flicking around in my own brain, running and bumping and getting nowhere but tense. I feel like nuking myself on beer or tha likka or maybe the last of the head-fukka skunk. Pointlessly wipe this lovely empty silent afternoon. But I've got a big interview tomorrow that I don't want to risk -- could even be my entry back into managing money, a field I'd ruefully admitted only a month ago to a friend still in sell-side economics that I'd recognised realistically I could never get back into. Too long out, too shallow a hiring process. The skills are there, the drive is there, the ability is there, but the gatekeepers are too dissociated from their own clients' actual needs to ever let me past.
And something I noticed when I switched from student to lecturer at university was that the best way to truly understand something is to try to teach it to someone else. The vast deep structural fundamental improvement in your understanding of something you thought you knew, that you were absolutely sure you knew, really has to be experienced to be realised.
If you want to truly understand something, try to explain your understanding to somebody else.
In writing.
This Was Then:
--
P. was a physically startling girl who turned up at our place looking for a flat when we advertised a spare room. She'd sounded a little scatty on the phone, bluff false plunges and over-confidence, but a very thick Italian accent and I knew that that culture lent itself to that sort of means-nothing noise --a language construct rather than a personality trait: all my (real-) Italian friends throw the same laughing chaff-- so I didn't worry too much. But the seed was there, planted in the increasingly-uncharitable mind. When she walked in and when I ducked down and around the stairs to welcome her, to see a literally breath-taking sight: a slender strut figure wrapped in elegant fawn pants-suit walking with dancer bounce under a mane of artfully presented shining black hair and a face swift-turned up to me with a bright rich smile that an artist would have struggled with; I brain-hiccupped and I thought:
We were looking for a flatmate not a model, someone human, rational, and fun. Every single Freak-Glamour we had ever met while flatmate hunting over the years --and in London's bleeding heart, by God do they come occasionally freakishly beautiful-- almost without exception, has had her head shoved so far up her own arse she made farting sounds when she spoke. The more beautiful the girl, the more intense the paranoia. Paranoia as a psychologist's technical term does not mean fear that the world's out to get you: it describes the certainty that the world revolves around yourself. That you are the most important thing in the world. As psychosis, that you are the world. As normal-neurosis, that you are the most important thing in the world.
This can turn into fear, where the world is hunting you. And it can turn into yellow shellac, where the world dances attendance upon you. And the über-models we've had walk through here have had no scintilla of doubt that the universe was hung out for their pleasure. Their lives were filled with people, male and female both, revolving in worshipful dutiful orbits around their wonderful perfection. As visual spectacles, these girls were intermittently gob-smackingly groin-numbingly surreally spectacular. Perfection on legs. Literally freakish. Air-brush beauties walking around in your little lounge room and swaying breath-catchingly up and down your myriad stairs. The genetic mutant shapes that flare so briefly (because damned if they'll ever (need to) understand why you would want to exercise) that every air-brush photoshop handyman seeks to recreate. The models in the magazines are not the first-tier, believe it or not: the truly first-tier don't bother to "work". You're looking at the ugly ones. The ones whose faces reward makeup artists and whose physiques reward air-brushing. The first-tier are just doing it. As in every profession. Doing it the way the world dreams of. The way the first-tier in every profession does. Casually, thoughtlessly, brilliantly. Not attempting to show off, not attempting to Do It, just doing it. As a verb, not a slogan.
But once you'd peeled them off their photograph, as human beings they were woefully deficient. The sheer absence of soul in these girls is something I can't easily describe without sounding out-and-out abusive. You really need to meet them, in a situation where they're expecting their usual treatment, so that their "positive" acts are kept in abeyance.
But essentially, they're write-offs. They open their mouths and all your fifteen-year-old's fantasies turn to frozen ash.
I tried once to describe to a friend how these girls made you feel, and started with ice, but trailed away. That was not quite right. It was more like someone had thrown dust in your groin. Grey, dull, chill, dust. Just: not remotely interesting in a non-scientific sense. Flare in your eyes and frost in your crotch.
And your eyes and your brain and your soul and your groin are all shuddering against each other in alternatingly alternate opposite directions.
So to see this vision walk in, well... crap. We'd effectively just written off the next 15 minutes or so as a complete waste of time.
And how we were wrong.
She turned out to be fantastic fun. Fantastic.
If she'd'a been'a bloke, I'd've wanted ta'fuckha.
Really deeply truly beautiful.
We were laughing, she stayed for a drink, leaning back casually artlessly in one of our raggedy kitchen chairs nursing one of our brandy-balloons of good red, clothes forgotten, ignored, she helped show the flat off to another girl who turned up an hour later, throwing her head back laughing and spotted on the ceiling(the fucking ceiling!?) and laughed about(!!)(yum) some maggots (WTF!?! ah! courtesy of shortly-ex-flatmate's habit of leaving food out everywhere, and us surrounded by restaurants.... [old fume]), chatted up a storm, etc etc etc. Complete opposite of most pretty girls who turned up, basically. She could-a looked like-a plank and I'd'a been gettin' aroused. And there were two different girls for a bit: the rowdy-happy-lad I was laughing with, and the picture-poster who stood up to go. When the heart caught and went "Christ-- where'd that come from?" Anyway, she couldn't quite afford the place but in the subsequent meeting when we confirmed that, she was getting very flirty & touchy etc, way after it could have had any impact on the financial discussion (And who thinks that? Who THINKS like that? And why do I keep seeing it?) [I'm not naturally touchy, it means that much more to me. I [intellectually] KNOW it means nothing to the girls doing it for attention. It doesn't mean I can't roll around in the pretend-joy of what it would mean if they meant it] and invited me to the halloween charity fundraising event being put together by some of her friends. I forgot the time it was a-fleeting, realised late and rang weeks later the Thursday before the Saturday, she invited me also to another friend's small home halloween party on the Friday night, to meet up, get the tickets for Saturday, to etc.
Turned up, barely fancy-dressed, not expecting a huge amount, chatted to P. with pleasure, but I wasn't really relaxing/firing on all cylinders. And then when I did fire up, she was... well... she'd almost turned into the girl I was afraid she was when I first saw her. Almost. No, not really, that's not quite right. But... she wasn't the girl I'd met. She was attention-shopping. Driven. Scatty. Skipping from new conversation to new conversation. I felt like an intruder in any chat I joined. And so I jaggied away. While seated next to P. in a deep and comfy couch, as she turned (yet again) to chat to someRandomOne who'd walked up (and wouldn't YOU?), this girl walked in and through the party alone and looking about brightly and interestedly. Yum. Smooth sleek taut body and a pretty face, in last-minute fancy dress with blood/lipstick splodge for blood trickling out corner of mouth, and a blue sheath-style long dress, hair hacked off (literally) very very short hairpinned together in scraggly spikelets. But what caught me was her looking around and the expression behind the eyes, not commonly seen in a pretty girl. I'm afraid I watched her cross through the crowd from door to right to left to disappeared, with great interest, while sitting next to P. -- cad! :D Two standout beauties unattached at the same party-- god, THIS is the sort of thing that keeps me in London. And the weird thing is, there were half a dozen other girls as pretty as she there that night. I didn't really see them after I'd seen them. Just girls. Playing girl games. Now I know them: not interested.
The strange little lovely wandered up later while I was standing talking to some bloke and P. was off somewhere leaping from person to person, and from the first exchange of words we pretty much spent the rest of the party next to each other talking and laughing. We fit together freakishly well. Insanely well. INSANELY well. The girl I'd looked for for my whole life. Literally. I can't say that too flatly. My whole life. The girl. THE girl... Finishing each other's sentences, feeding each other jokes, after a while not bothering to finish, laughing as they start. As an indication of the level of "click", when she cried out early that she didn't want us thinking she's stupid because she wasn't following everything the two of us were saying [at rattling speed] because her english wasn't perfect, when I laughed uproariously and told the 3rd conversation member that that was rubbish, her english was perfect, it's just that she IS actually stupid: rather than choosing to hear it as the usual English/American veiled-insult "joke", she looked at me with an expression somewhere between near-disbelieving grin and wanting to eat me. And, that expression was something of a pattern for both of us.
I just wanted to eat her. Weeks and months and years and my whole life so what of fresh smorgasbord stretching out before us.
I'm very glad I drank too much at that party. I would have been too disbelievingly overfast future consequences assessing and counterassessing and so on and so on and so on indefinitely infinitely indefinitely recursively essentially leaving me locked rigid with indecision and fear of buggering something up.
As it was, as she announced sadly she was going to have to leave, I hesitated in a last spasm of rigidity before kicking myself and shouting "now or never, idiot! just do it!" in an internalised don'tbeanidiot kinda way, leaning over and kissing her.
Kissing her.
Kissing her deeply.
Lips like a silk cushion.
Lips like a silk cushion.
Her response: "..... wow"
Then response.
Then rapid brief hilarious exchange, and then:
"Sorry, should I have not kissed you?"
"No!... it's just I really didn't expect it...."
"No?"
"No, I thought you were gay"
bwah hah haaaaaaa
cue various party fumblings
at length
She DIDN'T turn up to the next night's party as promised, wretch. Leaving me with no one else there I knew except P., who had turned up at my shoulder right at end of Friday's party looking briefly bravely stricken. I'd given her a hug (God! to have so casually touched such a woman would have had my fifteen-year-old self drowning in a shower of sperm) and told her "you're too damn sexy for your own good," to try to make her feel better and also because it was true.
So surreally true.
The 2nd party was relativelyspeaking a washout, though good enough in and of itself. Particularly given P.'s costume, her character of "La Notte" / "The Night", which was essentially a plain-black spray-on flat-silk version of this plus a diaphonous gauze slip pretending to be a dress, plus a ring of erections supplied by the audience. She can dance. Lord, she can dance. Right at the end as I left, just to turn my 99.9% surety back into absolute certainty, I went to kiss P. and within 0.1 secs knew I'd done the right thing the night before. She flinched and turned sharply, pointedly, away.
Cue growing dismay of Sal over the following days as his attempts to track down the fridaynight belle (bella?) proved continuingly fruitless -- I had only a rough address - upstairs from the original party :) No phone number, no flat number. On the 3rd return visit and more wandering up and down around outside killing time to give her time to return home (not even sure if I had the right flat number...), I said fuckit, on the burst: hit the buzzer for the party host's flat, ended up spending a couple of hours chatting there (very enjoyably, as it happens) and, while I didn't get a phone number (no one had it) I did get to shove a note under the door.
In fine "Mr [Sal]" style (for which [realname], my deepest thanks again to my father), it said, and I quote:
"[Aa]! You're a hard girl to track down. I have reserved a table for two at Home Bar & Kitchen for 8pm Friday; I'll meet you at 7pm at Cantaloupe for pre-dinner cocktails. [Sal] (mr)" Followed by some address/tube footnotes. (They are roughly opposite each other and about 15mins walk from (my) home)
Cue manifold "oh you idiot" worries the wording could have been regarded as arrogant during Friday, till text message at 2:30: "...see you later mr [sal]. aa"
She looked better than I remembered.
We clicked better than I remembered.
This time: she kissed me.
As it turned out, we left Cantaloupe at 8 but didn't make it to dinner.
I had a beautiful but extremely disturbing night the other night, which I'll try to blog properly. If only to try to get it out of my head, to work out what the hell I do. Can do. Should do. Shouldn't do. Don't want to do. Want. Want to do. Want.
But it triggered many memories, flashback. And it's almost spot-on the 6 month nonaversary. Scraped off the scab I'd so diligently non-tended. And it keeps pounding through the back of my head and I'm shying away from the memories of the outlook-then.
Today's brightening now, the bluewhite-glow of London's clouds merely leaching colour from the low flat sky, not the starkness from the shadows nor the radiant warmth from the ground. Next door's Prodigy's wailing and spiralling in through the door behind me in the kitchen, open wide to let the spring-chill air in from the roof terrace. The house is filling with the scent of wakening Nature. A Doctor Who (Tom Baker) is narrating Stelios's easiCinema venture on a 2 month old Trouble at the Top episode I've kept on TiVo for a rainy day. It's almost sunny but what the hell. The tubby child's efforts serve for background noise. I'm flicking around in my own brain, running and bumping and getting nowhere but tense. I feel like nuking myself on beer or tha likka or maybe the last of the head-fukka skunk. Pointlessly wipe this lovely empty silent afternoon. But I've got a big interview tomorrow that I don't want to risk -- could even be my entry back into managing money, a field I'd ruefully admitted only a month ago to a friend still in sell-side economics that I'd recognised realistically I could never get back into. Too long out, too shallow a hiring process. The skills are there, the drive is there, the ability is there, but the gatekeepers are too dissociated from their own clients' actual needs to ever let me past.
And something I noticed when I switched from student to lecturer at university was that the best way to truly understand something is to try to teach it to someone else. The vast deep structural fundamental improvement in your understanding of something you thought you knew, that you were absolutely sure you knew, really has to be experienced to be realised.
If you want to truly understand something, try to explain your understanding to somebody else.
In writing.
This Was Then:
--
P. was a physically startling girl who turned up at our place looking for a flat when we advertised a spare room. She'd sounded a little scatty on the phone, bluff false plunges and over-confidence, but a very thick Italian accent and I knew that that culture lent itself to that sort of means-nothing noise --a language construct rather than a personality trait: all my (real-) Italian friends throw the same laughing chaff-- so I didn't worry too much. But the seed was there, planted in the increasingly-uncharitable mind. When she walked in and when I ducked down and around the stairs to welcome her, to see a literally breath-taking sight: a slender strut figure wrapped in elegant fawn pants-suit walking with dancer bounce under a mane of artfully presented shining black hair and a face swift-turned up to me with a bright rich smile that an artist would have struggled with; I brain-hiccupped and I thought:
Yum!!!
!!!!!
...
...oh CRAP!
We were looking for a flatmate not a model, someone human, rational, and fun. Every single Freak-Glamour we had ever met while flatmate hunting over the years --and in London's bleeding heart, by God do they come occasionally freakishly beautiful-- almost without exception, has had her head shoved so far up her own arse she made farting sounds when she spoke. The more beautiful the girl, the more intense the paranoia. Paranoia as a psychologist's technical term does not mean fear that the world's out to get you: it describes the certainty that the world revolves around yourself. That you are the most important thing in the world. As psychosis, that you are the world. As normal-neurosis, that you are the most important thing in the world.
Once you've hit the description, it's hard to shake that awareness from your life. A lot of what previously merely pissed you off, has a category, a state, a place on a scale.
This can turn into fear, where the world is hunting you. And it can turn into yellow shellac, where the world dances attendance upon you. And the über-models we've had walk through here have had no scintilla of doubt that the universe was hung out for their pleasure. Their lives were filled with people, male and female both, revolving in worshipful dutiful orbits around their wonderful perfection. As visual spectacles, these girls were intermittently gob-smackingly groin-numbingly surreally spectacular. Perfection on legs. Literally freakish. Air-brush beauties walking around in your little lounge room and swaying breath-catchingly up and down your myriad stairs. The genetic mutant shapes that flare so briefly (because damned if they'll ever (need to) understand why you would want to exercise) that every air-brush photoshop handyman seeks to recreate. The models in the magazines are not the first-tier, believe it or not: the truly first-tier don't bother to "work". You're looking at the ugly ones. The ones whose faces reward makeup artists and whose physiques reward air-brushing. The first-tier are just doing it. As in every profession. Doing it the way the world dreams of. The way the first-tier in every profession does. Casually, thoughtlessly, brilliantly. Not attempting to show off, not attempting to Do It, just doing it. As a verb, not a slogan.
But once you'd peeled them off their photograph, as human beings they were woefully deficient. The sheer absence of soul in these girls is something I can't easily describe without sounding out-and-out abusive. You really need to meet them, in a situation where they're expecting their usual treatment, so that their "positive" acts are kept in abeyance.
But essentially, they're write-offs. They open their mouths and all your fifteen-year-old's fantasies turn to frozen ash.
I tried once to describe to a friend how these girls made you feel, and started with ice, but trailed away. That was not quite right. It was more like someone had thrown dust in your groin. Grey, dull, chill, dust. Just: not remotely interesting in a non-scientific sense. Flare in your eyes and frost in your crotch.
And your eyes and your brain and your soul and your groin are all shuddering against each other in alternatingly alternate opposite directions.
So to see this vision walk in, well... crap. We'd effectively just written off the next 15 minutes or so as a complete waste of time.
And how we were wrong.
She turned out to be fantastic fun. Fantastic.
If she'd'a been'a bloke, I'd've wanted ta'fuckha.
Really deeply truly beautiful.
We were laughing, she stayed for a drink, leaning back casually artlessly in one of our raggedy kitchen chairs nursing one of our brandy-balloons of good red, clothes forgotten, ignored, she helped show the flat off to another girl who turned up an hour later, throwing her head back laughing and spotted on the ceiling(the fucking ceiling!?) and laughed about(!!)(yum) some maggots (WTF!?! ah! courtesy of shortly-ex-flatmate's habit of leaving food out everywhere, and us surrounded by restaurants.... [old fume]), chatted up a storm, etc etc etc. Complete opposite of most pretty girls who turned up, basically. She could-a looked like-a plank and I'd'a been gettin' aroused. And there were two different girls for a bit: the rowdy-happy-lad I was laughing with, and the picture-poster who stood up to go. When the heart caught and went "Christ-- where'd that come from?" Anyway, she couldn't quite afford the place but in the subsequent meeting when we confirmed that, she was getting very flirty & touchy etc, way after it could have had any impact on the financial discussion (And who thinks that? Who THINKS like that? And why do I keep seeing it?) [I'm not naturally touchy, it means that much more to me. I [intellectually] KNOW it means nothing to the girls doing it for attention. It doesn't mean I can't roll around in the pretend-joy of what it would mean if they meant it] and invited me to the halloween charity fundraising event being put together by some of her friends. I forgot the time it was a-fleeting, realised late and rang weeks later the Thursday before the Saturday, she invited me also to another friend's small home halloween party on the Friday night, to meet up, get the tickets for Saturday, to etc.
Turned up, barely fancy-dressed, not expecting a huge amount, chatted to P. with pleasure, but I wasn't really relaxing/firing on all cylinders. And then when I did fire up, she was... well... she'd almost turned into the girl I was afraid she was when I first saw her. Almost. No, not really, that's not quite right. But... she wasn't the girl I'd met. She was attention-shopping. Driven. Scatty. Skipping from new conversation to new conversation. I felt like an intruder in any chat I joined. And so I jaggied away. While seated next to P. in a deep and comfy couch, as she turned (yet again) to chat to someRandomOne who'd walked up (and wouldn't YOU?), this girl walked in and through the party alone and looking about brightly and interestedly. Yum. Smooth sleek taut body and a pretty face, in last-minute fancy dress with blood/lipstick splodge for blood trickling out corner of mouth, and a blue sheath-style long dress, hair hacked off (literally) very very short hairpinned together in scraggly spikelets. But what caught me was her looking around and the expression behind the eyes, not commonly seen in a pretty girl. I'm afraid I watched her cross through the crowd from door to right to left to disappeared, with great interest, while sitting next to P. -- cad! :D Two standout beauties unattached at the same party-- god, THIS is the sort of thing that keeps me in London. And the weird thing is, there were half a dozen other girls as pretty as she there that night. I didn't really see them after I'd seen them. Just girls. Playing girl games. Now I know them: not interested.
The strange little lovely wandered up later while I was standing talking to some bloke and P. was off somewhere leaping from person to person, and from the first exchange of words we pretty much spent the rest of the party next to each other talking and laughing. We fit together freakishly well. Insanely well. INSANELY well. The girl I'd looked for for my whole life. Literally. I can't say that too flatly. My whole life. The girl. THE girl... Finishing each other's sentences, feeding each other jokes, after a while not bothering to finish, laughing as they start. As an indication of the level of "click", when she cried out early that she didn't want us thinking she's stupid because she wasn't following everything the two of us were saying [at rattling speed] because her english wasn't perfect, when I laughed uproariously and told the 3rd conversation member that that was rubbish, her english was perfect, it's just that she IS actually stupid: rather than choosing to hear it as the usual English/American veiled-insult "joke", she looked at me with an expression somewhere between near-disbelieving grin and wanting to eat me. And, that expression was something of a pattern for both of us.
I just wanted to eat her. Weeks and months and years and my whole life so what of fresh smorgasbord stretching out before us.
One particular flash-stuck moment stands out. P. & Aa on chairs facing each other as I crouch between to one side to talk to them both. And see suddenly just the world with none of my feelings flavouring it. And I see two beauties facing each other, pretty-bristling as they challenge in the usual passive-aggressive I-am-better,everyone-thinks-so BitchFight. And startledly realising that even though Aa is freakishly pretty, the girl facing her is surreal, looks like a statue. In an idealised sense. And shaking my head with a grin -- what the hell? And they are both so stupidly pretty that asking for one or the other is hysterically funny, yet, they are both here and willing to talk to people instead of demanding competition, and despite the literally surreal beauty of my inviter, literally surreal physical perfection, I want the "plainer" one so much my teeth tingle.
Because of how we've talked.
Another particular moment. Same chairs but P. hasn't turned to acknowledge our presence yet. Talking. What do YOU do for a job, etc. And it's her turn and she blurts out "I'm a STRIPPER!" with a huge late grin, her party joke, then wriggles almost embarrassedly. What? Turns out she "works" as a nude model for an arts school, the Royal Academy. I explain that I'm glad I'm not attempting to draw her as my hands would be shaking too hard to do anything non-expressionistic. "Ah no, I couldn't do that." And, "Nice art, by the way."
I'm very glad I drank too much at that party. I would have been too disbelievingly overfast future consequences assessing and counterassessing and so on and so on and so on indefinitely infinitely indefinitely recursively essentially leaving me locked rigid with indecision and fear of buggering something up.
As it was, as she announced sadly she was going to have to leave, I hesitated in a last spasm of rigidity before kicking myself and shouting "now or never, idiot! just do it!" in an internalised don'tbeanidiot kinda way, leaning over and kissing her.
Kissing her.
Kissing her deeply.
Lips like a silk cushion.
hard to explain the impact of that choice and that moment on me. I don't do that sort of game-playing shit. I only live in the real world. And though the comfort is higher, the changes are stress-fraught. And to do something like this... well... I hadn't. Ever before. Not with the same intent/long-term-consequences.
This was the girl I'd been looking for, hunting for, waiting for, wanting for... for... for my whole fucking life, man.
So to roll that dice.... [insanely tense tension PING!]
Lips like a silk cushion.
Her response: "..... wow"
Then response.
Then rapid brief hilarious exchange, and then:
"Sorry, should I have not kissed you?"
"No!... it's just I really didn't expect it...."
"No?"
"No, I thought you were gay"
bwah hah haaaaaaa
cue various party fumblings
at length
She DIDN'T turn up to the next night's party as promised, wretch. Leaving me with no one else there I knew except P., who had turned up at my shoulder right at end of Friday's party looking briefly bravely stricken. I'd given her a hug (God! to have so casually touched such a woman would have had my fifteen-year-old self drowning in a shower of sperm) and told her "you're too damn sexy for your own good," to try to make her feel better and also because it was true.
So surreally true.
The 2nd party was relativelyspeaking a washout, though good enough in and of itself. Particularly given P.'s costume, her character of "La Notte" / "The Night", which was essentially a plain-black spray-on flat-silk version of this plus a diaphonous gauze slip pretending to be a dress, plus a ring of erections supplied by the audience. She can dance. Lord, she can dance. Right at the end as I left, just to turn my 99.9% surety back into absolute certainty, I went to kiss P. and within 0.1 secs knew I'd done the right thing the night before. She flinched and turned sharply, pointedly, away.
Cue growing dismay of Sal over the following days as his attempts to track down the fridaynight belle (bella?) proved continuingly fruitless -- I had only a rough address - upstairs from the original party :) No phone number, no flat number. On the 3rd return visit and more wandering up and down around outside killing time to give her time to return home (not even sure if I had the right flat number...), I said fuckit, on the burst: hit the buzzer for the party host's flat, ended up spending a couple of hours chatting there (very enjoyably, as it happens) and, while I didn't get a phone number (no one had it) I did get to shove a note under the door.
In fine "Mr [Sal]" style (for which [realname], my deepest thanks again to my father), it said, and I quote:
"[Aa]! You're a hard girl to track down. I have reserved a table for two at Home Bar & Kitchen for 8pm Friday; I'll meet you at 7pm at Cantaloupe for pre-dinner cocktails. [Sal] (mr)" Followed by some address/tube footnotes. (They are roughly opposite each other and about 15mins walk from (my) home)
Surreal to read now. Happily, for the first time in my life, joining in and playing the games that've fucked me -- that I loathe. I don't DO this shit. I don't PLAY these games. But... if she's there, and she knows it's --can be no more than-- a silly word game, then, let's kick back and for once enjoy the romance of the name I've been given. Instead of being drenched in the falseness of fantasy.
The tone of the note: oh so very Sexy.
My name [granted] and attitude [chosen,lived] triggered texts like this one she subsequently sent me: "[...],are you real?you are the dream of every women...."
I'm reading and I'm reading and I'm reading that line, and I loathe it. It sounds like a wank. But I really really want to get across the mood of the time, of the moment, and the heaving frothing mutual lust --god, I was getting a hard-on when I saw her name appear on the phone's ringing screen-- and this SMS/text really fits it, intimates both her actions and my thoughts, describes so much in implication with so little in explication.
Cue manifold "oh you idiot" worries the wording could have been regarded as arrogant during Friday, till text message at 2:30: "...see you later mr [sal]. aa"
She looked better than I remembered.
We clicked better than I remembered.
This time: she kissed me.
As it turned out, we left Cantaloupe at 8 but didn't make it to dinner.
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Groundnut Oil
"Ideal for deep, shallow, and stir frying"
also: for generic cooking. with oil. out of this bottle. in the pan.
also: for generic cooking. with oil. out of this bottle. in the pan.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Reflections at Easter
In honour of today's significance, I'd like us all to listen to this amusing yet insightful work, and to take a moment to reflect upon the essence of Easter.
[needs sound]
[needs sound]
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Let's Go, Tesco
And home again home again jiggety jig. Ah a jam donut. Oh, and a spot of Keemun tea.
I should really wipe that up.
4pm is Babe-time at Tesco Metro Bishopsgate. I have absolutely no idea why, but regular as clockwork (not a bad thing to be) 4pm to 5pm every day, it fills up with eye candy of the most candy-watering cwality. Maybe the City firms have some sort of Early Release Programme for the Glamorous.
Never one to complain, me, I skip down there to do my shopping. Sadly, this particular expression of energy never fails to fail me from further consideration by the loverlies of choice. Well, mine, anyway.
Yummy.
As usual for this particular branch, the selection of women VASTLY outweighs the selection of food. They take the English dedication to restricting everyone's lives to the 2.5 Approved Choices to its corner-point extreme. Can anyone tell me why English supermarkets find themselves incapable of having shelf-stacks more than about 4 shelves high? And even then, rather than providing a choice of goods, they take a small quantity of one type of product and arrange it in a thin line, one-deep, along the front edge of the shelves for as long as they can reach. At first glance, you have a uni-sea of quantity. But then you look closer and realise it's just a shell one-layer thin. One strong gust of wind and the whole thing's away, leaving us hungrier than we're going to be anyway.
Meat. Need meat. Meat good.
Specifically: little nibbly bits for snacks and lunch and so on.
Trundle trundle through the miasma of people apparently dazed at the wonder of walking around in public, bumping randomly into things and each other and clustering in the bottlenecks to talk rather than perhaps moving just two feet to the bloody left you imbeciles, what, they don't have other people trying to get round you where you come from? Hardly surprising from the look of you both and congratulations on your escape.
"Luncheon Meat" is always a rather surreal concept. Like there's some particular quality level above which one may not rise during the middle of the day. Stuff you wouldn't feed a dog? No worries. Run a roller over it and eat it for lunch. There must be some different gradings of meat in the Health Inspectorate ("please inspectorate in the receptacles provided"): Fit for Human Consumption-Midday , Fit for Human Consumption-Evening. I'm hoping there's some sort of Unfit for Human Consumption-Anytime classification but you really can't be sure in England.
So here we have 3 basic choices.
Corned Beef. Which according to the packet contains over 100% beef and no corn. Brilliant. Matter of time before the Trade Practices crew catch up with that lot and do you think I want to be inadvertently swept up into the inquiry, the inevitable media witch-hunt and burnings? My arse. Back on the shelf for you, my son.
Ah, here we have Turkey slices. It suddenly occurs to me, looking at the piles and piles of sugar-frosted --sorry: honey-roasted-- turkey slices, that all the slices are exactly the same size. Not just width, although even that's not too unimpressive as anyone who's laughingly mutilated 80% of an unsliced loaf of bread with a knife in a futile bid for toast will only too readily verify. No, they're all exactly the same AREA too. Fantastic. Every single packet, every single slice, all exactly the same shape. All these turkeys were the exact same size! All the way through! I have to take my hat off to this. Precision farming at its best. At. Its. Best.
Finally, we have choice number three, which for the Hard Of Thinking has "Lunch" in nice simple words on the front of it. Pork Lunch Tongue, to be precise, and why shouldn't we be. As opposed to the more general purpose type of tongue, I assume. Surreally, whoever "designed" the wrapper saw fit to bold and largify the word TONGUE and have the words Pork Lunch italicised and smallificated above it. Presumably this is to catch the eye of the hordes of people who come out shopping for tongues (general purpose).
There's something rather odd about the fact that there is no other non-chemical lunch meat available. The only lunch meat is Pork Tongue. I'll be snogging a pig.
I look a little left (it's the beret), ruefully seeing raw beef lumps but no precooked beef slices. Then wince at the raw beef prices per kilo. Then think, hang on... go check the pork tongue price per kilo. Hmm. Pound per metric pound, it's cheaper to buy rump steak than it is pork tongue. Someone's having a laugh here. And presumably if it's a hard-to-understand laugh, it's the pig.
Manual cow's arse or automatic pig's tongue.
It's a tough call.
I should really wipe that up.
4pm is Babe-time at Tesco Metro Bishopsgate. I have absolutely no idea why, but regular as clockwork (not a bad thing to be) 4pm to 5pm every day, it fills up with eye candy of the most candy-watering cwality. Maybe the City firms have some sort of Early Release Programme for the Glamorous.
"'Ere, love, you're lookin' a bit gorgeous, yoo should go 'ome."
"Thanks. I do... I do feel a bit pretty."
"Yeah. Ooo. Yeah, no, yoo should DEFnitly 'ead off early."
Never one to complain, me, I skip down there to do my shopping. Sadly, this particular expression of energy never fails to fail me from further consideration by the loverlies of choice. Well, mine, anyway.
Yummy.
As usual for this particular branch, the selection of women VASTLY outweighs the selection of food. They take the English dedication to restricting everyone's lives to the 2.5 Approved Choices to its corner-point extreme. Can anyone tell me why English supermarkets find themselves incapable of having shelf-stacks more than about 4 shelves high? And even then, rather than providing a choice of goods, they take a small quantity of one type of product and arrange it in a thin line, one-deep, along the front edge of the shelves for as long as they can reach. At first glance, you have a uni-sea of quantity. But then you look closer and realise it's just a shell one-layer thin. One strong gust of wind and the whole thing's away, leaving us hungrier than we're going to be anyway.
Meat. Need meat. Meat good.
Specifically: little nibbly bits for snacks and lunch and so on.
Trundle trundle through the miasma of people apparently dazed at the wonder of walking around in public, bumping randomly into things and each other and clustering in the bottlenecks to talk rather than perhaps moving just two feet to the bloody left you imbeciles, what, they don't have other people trying to get round you where you come from? Hardly surprising from the look of you both and congratulations on your escape.
"Luncheon Meat" is always a rather surreal concept. Like there's some particular quality level above which one may not rise during the middle of the day. Stuff you wouldn't feed a dog? No worries. Run a roller over it and eat it for lunch. There must be some different gradings of meat in the Health Inspectorate ("please inspectorate in the receptacles provided"): Fit for Human Consumption-Midday , Fit for Human Consumption-Evening. I'm hoping there's some sort of Unfit for Human Consumption-Anytime classification but you really can't be sure in England.
So here we have 3 basic choices.
Corned Beef. Which according to the packet contains over 100% beef and no corn. Brilliant. Matter of time before the Trade Practices crew catch up with that lot and do you think I want to be inadvertently swept up into the inquiry, the inevitable media witch-hunt and burnings? My arse. Back on the shelf for you, my son.
Ah, here we have Turkey slices. It suddenly occurs to me, looking at the piles and piles of sugar-frosted --sorry: honey-roasted-- turkey slices, that all the slices are exactly the same size. Not just width, although even that's not too unimpressive as anyone who's laughingly mutilated 80% of an unsliced loaf of bread with a knife in a futile bid for toast will only too readily verify. No, they're all exactly the same AREA too. Fantastic. Every single packet, every single slice, all exactly the same shape. All these turkeys were the exact same size! All the way through! I have to take my hat off to this. Precision farming at its best. At. Its. Best.
Finally, we have choice number three, which for the Hard Of Thinking has "Lunch" in nice simple words on the front of it. Pork Lunch Tongue, to be precise, and why shouldn't we be. As opposed to the more general purpose type of tongue, I assume. Surreally, whoever "designed" the wrapper saw fit to bold and largify the word TONGUE and have the words Pork Lunch italicised and smallificated above it. Presumably this is to catch the eye of the hordes of people who come out shopping for tongues (general purpose).
There's something rather odd about the fact that there is no other non-chemical lunch meat available. The only lunch meat is Pork Tongue. I'll be snogging a pig.
I look a little left (it's the beret), ruefully seeing raw beef lumps but no precooked beef slices. Then wince at the raw beef prices per kilo. Then think, hang on... go check the pork tongue price per kilo. Hmm. Pound per metric pound, it's cheaper to buy rump steak than it is pork tongue. Someone's having a laugh here. And presumably if it's a hard-to-understand laugh, it's the pig.
Manual cow's arse or automatic pig's tongue.
It's a tough call.
Belle DJ
Oh what a GREAT topical name for a DJ, Belle Dj cummin atcha, man, layin down sum trax, whorin' his art for tha bling and tha shorties
yo
I am getting absolutely bloody NOTHING done today. Bloggily catched up on some of my "Daily" Blogs and that's about it. There's a great article/post I ran across (Splat. Sorry, mate.) via blorgy which among a number of great points also summarises something I've noticed about myself the last week or so: "I have also noticed that I have been relying on traditional media far less since I joined the ranks of the bloggers." That's one to stick in the subconscious for a bit.
But on making a comment, I ran across this in reference to the apparently ubiquitous Belle de Jour:
Is that is or is that ain't a fantastic name for a London DJ? No, no, not DJ Boring, the other one.
Belle DJ
OK, it's very topical (do not apply to broken skin) and the joke will be stale in a year. But it still stands as a name, and as a brand the in-joke has the potential to really help whoever uses it to open doors in the next few months, the hard hard critical first few doors.
Remember, you read it here first! (ish)
Anyone's welcome to use the idea, first in best dressed, but in doing so commits to free tickets to all gigs for me and ma posse. And Seamus is your Progenitor, man, props to y'old skool projenitaurrrrr
yo
I am getting absolutely bloody NOTHING done today. Bloggily catched up on some of my "Daily" Blogs and that's about it. There's a great article/post I ran across (Splat. Sorry, mate.) via blorgy which among a number of great points also summarises something I've noticed about myself the last week or so: "I have also noticed that I have been relying on traditional media far less since I joined the ranks of the bloggers." That's one to stick in the subconscious for a bit.
But on making a comment, I ran across this in reference to the apparently ubiquitous Belle de Jour:
i too find belle dj boring
-- Seamus O'Blimey
Is that is or is that ain't a fantastic name for a London DJ? No, no, not DJ Boring, the other one.
Belle DJ
OK, it's very topical (do not apply to broken skin) and the joke will be stale in a year. But it still stands as a name, and as a brand the in-joke has the potential to really help whoever uses it to open doors in the next few months, the hard hard critical first few doors.
Remember, you read it here first! (ish)
Anyone's welcome to use the idea, first in best dressed, but in doing so commits to free tickets to all gigs for me and ma posse. And Seamus is your Progenitor, man, props to y'old skool projenitaurrrrr
Idea: Teflon Sheets
Blow de Jour
i mourn
i've seen the rolling ongoing sunday and daily papers' "Outings" and claims of a professional writer's hoax, and despite the now-seeded alloying of the previous pleasure, i'd mostly just smiled
on an overdue catchup, i just ran across this
if you've already read it and don't mind a spoiler, read it again to remind yourself
if you don't want a spoiler, move off this post now
the initial alarm-for-another.
minor bubblings/overtones as you read through it: the back-of-mind fret, the ruminatively chewed lip as you realise there's nothing you can do but observe
but then
the niggle at the back of the mind. the re-reading. the "what's wrong with this picture"ing. it seemed alarming at first but now seems fundamentally wrong, what is it, what is it, what. chewing it like a loose tooth.
ah!
...fuck
ah, BUGger it
a standard literary device, revolutionarily created by hitchcock to much acclaim at the time but now so fundamental a tool in the armoury of the professional writer that it's not considered the un-reality it is, is the revealing to the audience of danger that is/must be hidden from the drama's participants. revealing it in a way no actual participant in the actual situation would dream of doing because of the consequences.
i mourn
there ARE two other ways to read this. [excluding the thick-as-pigshit option, as belle has admirably done from day one]
2/ she WANTS to be caught/exposed (mmmm...) by the people muttering this
3/ this didn't actually happen-- she's throwing the alluded-to pre-emptive protective ruse
but...
damn.
i mourn my lost innocence
and i curse the hope that keeps growing it anew
i've seen the rolling ongoing sunday and daily papers' "Outings" and claims of a professional writer's hoax, and despite the now-seeded alloying of the previous pleasure, i'd mostly just smiled
on an overdue catchup, i just ran across this
if you've already read it and don't mind a spoiler, read it again to remind yourself
if you don't want a spoiler, move off this post now
the initial alarm-for-another.
minor bubblings/overtones as you read through it: the back-of-mind fret, the ruminatively chewed lip as you realise there's nothing you can do but observe
but then
the niggle at the back of the mind. the re-reading. the "what's wrong with this picture"ing. it seemed alarming at first but now seems fundamentally wrong, what is it, what is it, what. chewing it like a loose tooth.
ah!
...fuck
ah, BUGger it
a standard literary device, revolutionarily created by hitchcock to much acclaim at the time but now so fundamental a tool in the armoury of the professional writer that it's not considered the un-reality it is, is the revealing to the audience of danger that is/must be hidden from the drama's participants. revealing it in a way no actual participant in the actual situation would dream of doing because of the consequences.
What are the consequences to her of placing this in her blog if these people are actually reading her blog and asking these questions? Immediate exposure. Small worlds leave no place to hide, self-referral within that world flags that self to that world. Ask any village resident, ask any clique-ee, ask creepy.
i mourn
there ARE two other ways to read this. [excluding the thick-as-pigshit option, as belle has admirably done from day one]
2/ she WANTS to be caught/exposed (mmmm...) by the people muttering this
3/ this didn't actually happen-- she's throwing the alluded-to pre-emptive protective ruse
but...
damn.
i mourn my lost innocence
and i curse the hope that keeps growing it anew
Oh, THAT was smart
On the cover of this week's New Scientist magazine:
I did.
Years ago.
Haven't seen the bastard since.
"Release the genius inside your brain."
I did.
Years ago.
Haven't seen the bastard since.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
I have all the time in the world. Today I'll...
Everyone unemployed, everyone working from home, everyone downshifting, everyone retired, everyone feeling like they're currently under-challenged...
Like little Billy Gates once said: click "Start"
you need to watch this
Like little Billy Gates once said: click "Start"
Zero Delta, High Gamma
As the fog clears, some of yesterday's happenings recurred to me. And yes I know that's incorrect usage of 'recur'. It just sounds right somehow.
If you've been sufficiently bored and/or deficient of life to have perused these archives, you may recall I've had a few red-mist grey-gloom months battering my way past various spectacularly fatuous recruitment agents and/or HR people. They weren't quite deliberately obstructive but that's more a reflection of their inability to conduct any sort of purposeful activity than a comment on their motives.
And it seemed the easier or better the job (personally, I often find these opposite ends of the spectrum, but maybe that's just me), the sillier were the fatuities I met.
I don't handle irrationality, arrogant incompetence, or self-obsession terribly well.
But finally the Law of Large Numbers meant I stumbled across a handful of agents who knew what they were doing. Behaved professionally. All at the same time, oddly enough, about a month or so ago. Catastrophe! I had to relinquish some of the bitter fury I'd so lovingly nursed, the blinkers and comfortable stereotyping torn away. It was sort of like discovering Hitler liked puppies or that England can get sunshine. There were still a handful sitting as gatekeepers on some prime contracts that were just too attractive to tell them to get lost. But they were now the minority. Just luck I guess. The new guys can actually understand where CV can match job and are keen to proceed if appropriate, as opposed to not finding sufficient boxes to tick and stone-walling. Professionals. Fantastic.
Add to that that now my CV, at approx 25% of what it originally was, is now non-threatening and that the banks' recruiting is once more on the march, and I might even be able to get back to work soon. Relief. Like you wouldn't believe.
It's going to cramp these blog bleatings though. Which is a great pity since I'm starting to really enjoy them. To my surprise. If anyone'd prefer to pay me to keep writing instead of knotting my stomach watching political fools smash things in a corporate environment, bring it on!
I still have all the actual HR + interview randomnesses to get past though, with my best odds as of today of 14:1. For example, I have a phone "interview" 5:30 this arvo. These are great. They offer no useful vetting ability and add a lot of "noise" to the interview process. How often do you meet someone you've spent time with on the phone and gone "hey, you're just like I imagined you!" Uh huh. So why should calling those conversations Interviews suddenly swing that real-life fact the other way round?
But the fact of Having Done Something is important for the hirer, to show HR that Something has been Done. A box has been ticked. A process has proceeded. The connection of the Process to the Outcome is always taken for granted. Despite being rarely the case.
Essentially, phone interviews are only desirable to Hirers who judge the value of an activity by its cost not its worth, by whether it's taken effort for them to do it not whether it's taken them closer to their goal.
Actually, this is a very common human characteristic, especially where there is little or no directly observable measure for the outcome of an activity, such as where the activity is more social than physical. As an example, how many girls don't care about the cost of an engagement ring or the size of its diamond? How many people believe that by adopting a weird/unpleasant diet, or by doing activity they don't enjoy, they should improve their body shape?
So although the phone interview sounds positive, it's actually not.
On the upside, it's not negative.
Which is an improvement on many aspects of life in recent times.
If you've been sufficiently bored and/or deficient of life to have perused these archives, you may recall I've had a few red-mist grey-gloom months battering my way past various spectacularly fatuous recruitment agents and/or HR people. They weren't quite deliberately obstructive but that's more a reflection of their inability to conduct any sort of purposeful activity than a comment on their motives.
And it seemed the easier or better the job (personally, I often find these opposite ends of the spectrum, but maybe that's just me), the sillier were the fatuities I met.
Memory: losing it completely with one of them: shouting "I've done this shit for 15 fucking years, I've trained and helped people do this shit in every job I've ever done, and you're telling me you won't consider me for a 3 fucking month contract doing it?! Because quote unquote, you can't see where on my CV it says that I only did that, only did that as my only job?!"
I don't handle irrationality, arrogant incompetence, or self-obsession terribly well.
But finally the Law of Large Numbers meant I stumbled across a handful of agents who knew what they were doing. Behaved professionally. All at the same time, oddly enough, about a month or so ago. Catastrophe! I had to relinquish some of the bitter fury I'd so lovingly nursed, the blinkers and comfortable stereotyping torn away. It was sort of like discovering Hitler liked puppies or that England can get sunshine. There were still a handful sitting as gatekeepers on some prime contracts that were just too attractive to tell them to get lost. But they were now the minority. Just luck I guess. The new guys can actually understand where CV can match job and are keen to proceed if appropriate, as opposed to not finding sufficient boxes to tick and stone-walling. Professionals. Fantastic.
Add to that that now my CV, at approx 25% of what it originally was, is now non-threatening and that the banks' recruiting is once more on the march, and I might even be able to get back to work soon. Relief. Like you wouldn't believe.
It's going to cramp these blog bleatings though. Which is a great pity since I'm starting to really enjoy them. To my surprise. If anyone'd prefer to pay me to keep writing instead of knotting my stomach watching political fools smash things in a corporate environment, bring it on!
I still have all the actual HR + interview randomnesses to get past though, with my best odds as of today of 14:1. For example, I have a phone "interview" 5:30 this arvo. These are great. They offer no useful vetting ability and add a lot of "noise" to the interview process. How often do you meet someone you've spent time with on the phone and gone "hey, you're just like I imagined you!" Uh huh. So why should calling those conversations Interviews suddenly swing that real-life fact the other way round?
"Dave?"
"Sal."
"Get out."
But the fact of Having Done Something is important for the hirer, to show HR that Something has been Done. A box has been ticked. A process has proceeded. The connection of the Process to the Outcome is always taken for granted. Despite being rarely the case.
Essentially, phone interviews are only desirable to Hirers who judge the value of an activity by its cost not its worth, by whether it's taken effort for them to do it not whether it's taken them closer to their goal.
Actually, this is a very common human characteristic, especially where there is little or no directly observable measure for the outcome of an activity, such as where the activity is more social than physical. As an example, how many girls don't care about the cost of an engagement ring or the size of its diamond? How many people believe that by adopting a weird/unpleasant diet, or by doing activity they don't enjoy, they should improve their body shape?
So although the phone interview sounds positive, it's actually not.
On the upside, it's not negative.
Which is an improvement on many aspects of life in recent times.
Reasons to be Fearful
An email I just sent.
The devolution will hopefully not be televised. Expect no blogging during the Nail-A-God weekend. Treat any posts you DO see with mercy, compassion, and the realisation that God inflicts Hell on Agnostics during life because that's the only chance he and we both get.
>Hey all,
I know its only Monday morning but i hate work today so i thought i'd start making plans for our long weekend already.
A few people have mentioned sorting out an all day pub thang on Friday, and I'll be more than happy to get mails rolling.
so whoever wants to join us, drop me a mail so we can think of a plan and place...
luv
Me x
sounds very dangerous and not a little traumatic
count me in
The devolution will hopefully not be televised. Expect no blogging during the Nail-A-God weekend. Treat any posts you DO see with mercy, compassion, and the realisation that God inflicts Hell on Agnostics during life because that's the only chance he and we both get.
Some days are better than others
All days are born equal, but some grow up better.
I read in the rear of the Sunday Times Magazine this morning --hey, I'm perennially unemployed, I'm not bound to the rigid vagary timetable strictures of you workaday-to-day types-- that Martha Kearney, whom we're assured is on TV so therefore worth knowing about, starts every day as follows:
I'm not sure whether to congratulate her or her husband. Shattering sexual services every single morning? The man's a star.
I'm feeling a little blurry today as I didn't get to sleep till after 4 but woke before 8. No good reason for it that I can detect. With my handy dandy what-kept-me-awake-detector-ometer. I want my money back. The annoying thing is I had all these great and funny and philosophical and poignant things to post yesterday, concepts of power and awe and scintillating expressed-ed-ness, a great delightfully interlocked web of them running through my head as I zipped around doing stuff. But when I sat down at last at the keyboard, or "keyboard?" as we computer experts like to call it with a raised eyebrow and a superior tone, I was feeling more afferent than efferent so decided to browse for a while while my subconscious got itself back in the correct frame of submind. Yeah, I know: fooling myself. If not my subself. It giggled and got on with vegetating while I plodded round the interweb going "hey." I even knocked off at a vaguely reasonable hour and threw myself into bed scoring a direct hit and a triple word bonus. (For 'Q'. I always keep a 'Q' in the bed. I figure any night with a queue by the bed is a Good Night.) I hugged myself with pride, turned to hug my girlfriend and flailed through the empty space, and propped myself up on the pillows scowling and not sure what to do next. I stared at a book for a few hours. The book stared back at me. I'm not sure who won.
The book looks reasonably fresh this morning. So I guess maybe it wasn't me.
Beaten by a good book. I feel like a nun or a catholic schoolboy.
Of course, both would get me in trouble.
Even either.
One of my cousins was a nun.
She dropped out to become a lesbian.
I didn't realise it was an either/or thing.
Oo I just went all creepee-stylee there for a bit didn't I. Where'd that come from?
I wonder if it'll last?
Cuntymints, I really wanted to fly my kite yesterday but my mother
stopitstopitstopit!! i'll get sued for breach of copyright or theft of style or maybe creepy will just e-come over and e-kick my e-ar(gh)se or whatever it is they do in this modern day and age i don't know the kids today WE never did ANYTHING bad or interesting or funny or different when WE were kids oh no we did just exactly what our grannies told us to so why don't you just go and fetch me a nice cup of tea there's a dear.
[sip]
Ooo--ooahh. Now fetch granny's incontinence pants. Quickly! Never mind.
I read in the rear of the Sunday Times Magazine this morning --hey, I'm perennially unemployed, I'm not bound to the rigid vagary timetable strictures of you workaday-to-day types-- that Martha Kearney, whom we're assured is on TV so therefore worth knowing about, starts every day as follows:
My husband cycles to work, leaving me semi-comatose.
I'm not sure whether to congratulate her or her husband. Shattering sexual services every single morning? The man's a star.
I'm feeling a little blurry today as I didn't get to sleep till after 4 but woke before 8. No good reason for it that I can detect. With my handy dandy what-kept-me-awake-detector-ometer. I want my money back. The annoying thing is I had all these great and funny and philosophical and poignant things to post yesterday, concepts of power and awe and scintillating expressed-ed-ness, a great delightfully interlocked web of them running through my head as I zipped around doing stuff. But when I sat down at last at the keyboard, or "keyboard?" as we computer experts like to call it with a raised eyebrow and a superior tone, I was feeling more afferent than efferent so decided to browse for a while while my subconscious got itself back in the correct frame of submind. Yeah, I know: fooling myself. If not my subself. It giggled and got on with vegetating while I plodded round the interweb going "hey." I even knocked off at a vaguely reasonable hour and threw myself into bed scoring a direct hit and a triple word bonus. (For 'Q'. I always keep a 'Q' in the bed. I figure any night with a queue by the bed is a Good Night.) I hugged myself with pride, turned to hug my girlfriend and flailed through the empty space, and propped myself up on the pillows scowling and not sure what to do next. I stared at a book for a few hours. The book stared back at me. I'm not sure who won.
The book looks reasonably fresh this morning. So I guess maybe it wasn't me.
Beaten by a good book. I feel like a nun or a catholic schoolboy.
Of course, both would get me in trouble.
Even either.
One of my cousins was a nun.
She dropped out to become a lesbian.
I didn't realise it was an either/or thing.
Oo I just went all creepee-stylee there for a bit didn't I. Where'd that come from?
I wonder if it'll last?
Cuntymints, I really wanted to fly my kite yesterday but my mother
stopitstopitstopit!! i'll get sued for breach of copyright or theft of style or maybe creepy will just e-come over and e-kick my e-ar(gh)se or whatever it is they do in this modern day and age i don't know the kids today WE never did ANYTHING bad or interesting or funny or different when WE were kids oh no we did just exactly what our grannies told us to so why don't you just go and fetch me a nice cup of tea there's a dear.
[sip]
Ooo--ooahh. Now fetch granny's incontinence pants. Quickly! Never mind.
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Retrospective
TiVo very kindly taped a Kylie Minogue retrospective for me a while back and I'm watching it with some difficulty at the moment. "Retrospective", etymologically speaking, from the Greek words "Retro" meaning "behind", and "Spective" meaning "of or pertaining to spectacles", which in those days were really just eye protectors.
Thus, the English word Retrospective, meaning: "to goggle at a spectacular arse".
She's singing: "Put yourself, in my place" (1994) Oh, my dear, I'd love to.
Thus, the English word Retrospective, meaning: "to goggle at a spectacular arse".
She's singing: "Put yourself, in my place" (1994) Oh, my dear, I'd love to.
Blogarama
I'm a bit new to this blog phenomenon and all its private cultural morés, so I spent some time last weekend directed to joining in properly. I stuck my name on a few directories (hence the new tit-for-tat blogwhoring links in the sidebar) and I browsed around the blogoverse like a maniac. Since I am one, this was fairly easy.
My god there are some talented people out there.
My IE Favo(u)rites list has exploded in the last 5 days. I'm having to use the Subscription thing for the first time just to have even the remotest hope of keeping up. And I haven't read any of my favourite Dailies for a fortnight, I'm having Belle & Bellow withdrawal symptoms. And my old Dailies|Regulars|Intermittent Diversions layout just doesn't cut it any more but I can't think of any better way to do it right now.
But the big problem --well, within the tiny scope of these 2 blogs, I have one or two other things in my life-- is my sidebar. It was already grievously out of step with my Favo(u)rites before I deliberately splashed around in the blogoversea. And now it's just ludicrous. It's like a little antique, a shopfront preserved from "The Good Old Days" when men were men, women were women, and electrons were made out of wood.
But I'm not sure what to do about it, how to approach the combination problem of flagging up geniuses, showing the current drifting population of my tighter "community", and allowing the Tip-Of-The-Hat reciprocal acknowledgement of respect that this blogworld seems to run on but which produces vast vast lists of links that only the truly dedicated will fail to quail to click-through.
My problem is I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want the next step to be right.
Think I'll have to stick it in the subconscious and let it chew for a bit.
But any suggestions very welcome.
In the interim, I was going to pass on some of the geniuses, joys, freaks, and nice people I've tripped across that you might like. But my perfectionism had me realising I'd have to go grab all the URLs, and that if I started something like that, I could offend someone if I didn't happen to think of them right now (this is GUARANTEED) so I should really compile a proper list, and then maybe think about how I'd describe them and why I keep checking in, and so on and so on and so on. And I'm just not interested right now. So instead I'll just throw you at google and mention SpyChic and Sarsparilla and Empty Bottle and Spazzymoto and Creepy Lesbo and Bacon & Oatcakes and NakedBlog and Kitchen Sunk and I Don't Believe It and Audi Olympics and Blorgy (blorgy is where I picked up on LOTS of the legends). And if you like Bellow, I've found another Bellow: Missuh Golightly. 5 minutes into reading either of them and you want to wake up next to them. Glorious. Glorious, glorious, glorious.
And I've missed out heaps. But I couldn't be arsed. Later. Properly.
My god there are some talented people out there.
My IE Favo(u)rites list has exploded in the last 5 days. I'm having to use the Subscription thing for the first time just to have even the remotest hope of keeping up. And I haven't read any of my favourite Dailies for a fortnight, I'm having Belle & Bellow withdrawal symptoms. And my old Dailies|Regulars|Intermittent Diversions layout just doesn't cut it any more but I can't think of any better way to do it right now.
But the big problem --well, within the tiny scope of these 2 blogs, I have one or two other things in my life-- is my sidebar. It was already grievously out of step with my Favo(u)rites before I deliberately splashed around in the blogoversea. And now it's just ludicrous. It's like a little antique, a shopfront preserved from "The Good Old Days" when men were men, women were women, and electrons were made out of wood.
But I'm not sure what to do about it, how to approach the combination problem of flagging up geniuses, showing the current drifting population of my tighter "community", and allowing the Tip-Of-The-Hat reciprocal acknowledgement of respect that this blogworld seems to run on but which produces vast vast lists of links that only the truly dedicated will fail to quail to click-through.
My problem is I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want the next step to be right.
Think I'll have to stick it in the subconscious and let it chew for a bit.
But any suggestions very welcome.
In the interim, I was going to pass on some of the geniuses, joys, freaks, and nice people I've tripped across that you might like. But my perfectionism had me realising I'd have to go grab all the URLs, and that if I started something like that, I could offend someone if I didn't happen to think of them right now (this is GUARANTEED) so I should really compile a proper list, and then maybe think about how I'd describe them and why I keep checking in, and so on and so on and so on. And I'm just not interested right now. So instead I'll just throw you at google and mention SpyChic and Sarsparilla and Empty Bottle and Spazzymoto and Creepy Lesbo and Bacon & Oatcakes and NakedBlog and Kitchen Sunk and I Don't Believe It and Audi Olympics and Blorgy (blorgy is where I picked up on LOTS of the legends). And if you like Bellow, I've found another Bellow: Missuh Golightly. 5 minutes into reading either of them and you want to wake up next to them. Glorious. Glorious, glorious, glorious.
And I've missed out heaps. But I couldn't be arsed. Later. Properly.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Brothel creepers
I'm tapping away upstairs and the door buzzer goes. So I plod downstairs to see what it is. A heavily slurred voice:
"Is... Is anyone on tonight?"
Eh?
Oh.
"You want the door behind you mate. The red one."
He mumbles apologetic thanks and I hook the receiver back on the wall. I hesitate, then turn and go over to the lounge room window. He's trying to get into the accountants'. He looks up and sees me, I gesture to the left, he gives me a blurry thumbs up and turns.
"Is... Is anyone on tonight?"
Eh?
Oh.
"You want the door behind you mate. The red one."
He mumbles apologetic thanks and I hook the receiver back on the wall. I hesitate, then turn and go over to the lounge room window. He's trying to get into the accountants'. He looks up and sees me, I gesture to the left, he gives me a blurry thumbs up and turns.
Cook a Borough
Down to Borough Market again to ogle and goggle at the supermodel behind the Konditorei & Cakes counter and to be just that little bit too late to get me some deer in a bun. Bebuggerit. But I'm too feeble to sustain so draining an emotion as disappointment so I bimble off along the river enjoying the bright open space and the fresh moist air and the panoply of people out touristing. The excruciatingly beautiful clockwork ballerina's not by the Tate, which, though tragic, merely leaves me still idling along with no goal. The musicians are magic, truly talented. The two wild Italians playing amplified African jazz under the Oxo, the placidly glum tunnel man playing Spanish bagpipes that looked like he had a skinny leggy goat tucked under his arm, the kettle drummer noodling something truly poignant and sparsely honeyedly beautiful amidst the tables of books, the guitarist wringing melodies from the strings and the bridge that fill the tiled space with light and air dancing. Past Gabriel's Wharf where the path opens out for the NFT approach and a sparse row of trees appears, there's a man playing violin on a slack-wire between two of them. Not just the impressive feat of moving slowly and still along a loose, thin rope, he's playing smoothly and musically and entertainingly without smearing a note, his head tucked into the violin and his arms sawing dangerously while his feet move round to work their magic. London is awash with talent.
I passed some of the shiny unhappy people on the way into the Festival Hall, all hair gel and coiffures and labels and teeth and faces and claws. Up to the top for the spectacular balcony --today hosting only a couple at the far end lost in each other's tonsils, appearing from here like 2 coats with 1 head, and a huge shiny bald Nigerian surreally reading O'Reilly's DNS book with all the arty pretension the backdrop to his solid real obscure technical reading matter-- and to check out the Poetry Library. I'd not heard of it before a few weeks back: I'd been to a couple of SpitLit workshops since they were right round the corner and hey, I've got to fill the day, and the last was run by a chameleon. Looking nothing like her photo, she's much prettier, sleeker, high-boned, darker, but appears stern, abrupt, and forbidding as she sweeps into the room with her furry white hat helmet and matching furry coat, classic African warrior woman face. Fuck with me and I'll fuck you up. Until she speaks. Then she sparkles. Oh, she sparkles. Intelligent, aware, funny, fast, eloquent, switched-on, masses of common sense. She almost kept me from being distracted by her breasts -- down boy! OK, I have a chocolate problem at the best of times, and a repartee problem, and the two together? Aye caramba. We're all getting up for a cup of coffee now? I... uh... I might just keep sitting here with my legs crossed for a bit, thanks.
So anyway, she'd recommended we all check out the Poetry Library as it subscribed to all sorts of publications. So what the hell. And it's nice. Little sleepy haven of bookishness at the top of the stairs. Groovy kids nook with flat animal beanbags and nifty toys, a cubicle cubbyhole behind some pillars by the window with 3 scowlers earnestly scowling their earnestness at me.
There's some musicians setting up and warming up in the auditorium who(m) I watch and listen to for a while through a gap in the side doors they've overlooked. They're good. The drums spatter the air, coruscate. I'd love to be able to play something like that, but I have absolutely no rhythm. Guess I must not be a black stereotype, then. Damn. Mum will be so disappointed, she had her heart set on me becoming a black stereotype when I grew up.
So thrown out on the street for a little thing like genetic substandardness. Don't call me "white male," I prefer "differently oppressed."
Down to the foyer for a restorative beer -- welcome home, my little yeasty buddies. "Squawk!" said the barmaid. Squawk? Weird. The kids are running and squeaking and laughing and jumping and climbing on the furniture and exhibits in the cavernous space -- not quite frolicking, but they're nearly there, nearly there. They're always one of the prime joys of this place, this brilliant indoor space oasis. Along past various try-hards and up to one of the flanking balconies suspended in mid air between the auditorium's underbelly and the 4-storey high glass wall looking over the Wayward Gallery to the left. A transparent blue plastic-bag ghost dances high against the window wall, silently imploring with its little mime to be allowed in to join the bustle, dance among the transitory throng. Then, fickle, distracted, it turns and plays and swoops across the middle air and away. Good bye, little ghost. Thank you for the antigravity dance. I have a million little jokes and sparks I'd like to post before they fade -- I need to write some down. So here I sit, pen scratching across pad for later transcription, leaning back in my chair for thoughtful sips and slow people-watching, the churning changing chattering spectrum beneath me, unaware I'm watching.
I passed some of the shiny unhappy people on the way into the Festival Hall, all hair gel and coiffures and labels and teeth and faces and claws. Up to the top for the spectacular balcony --today hosting only a couple at the far end lost in each other's tonsils, appearing from here like 2 coats with 1 head, and a huge shiny bald Nigerian surreally reading O'Reilly's DNS book with all the arty pretension the backdrop to his solid real obscure technical reading matter-- and to check out the Poetry Library. I'd not heard of it before a few weeks back: I'd been to a couple of SpitLit workshops since they were right round the corner and hey, I've got to fill the day, and the last was run by a chameleon. Looking nothing like her photo, she's much prettier, sleeker, high-boned, darker, but appears stern, abrupt, and forbidding as she sweeps into the room with her furry white hat helmet and matching furry coat, classic African warrior woman face. Fuck with me and I'll fuck you up. Until she speaks. Then she sparkles. Oh, she sparkles. Intelligent, aware, funny, fast, eloquent, switched-on, masses of common sense. She almost kept me from being distracted by her breasts -- down boy! OK, I have a chocolate problem at the best of times, and a repartee problem, and the two together? Aye caramba. We're all getting up for a cup of coffee now? I... uh... I might just keep sitting here with my legs crossed for a bit, thanks.
So anyway, she'd recommended we all check out the Poetry Library as it subscribed to all sorts of publications. So what the hell. And it's nice. Little sleepy haven of bookishness at the top of the stairs. Groovy kids nook with flat animal beanbags and nifty toys, a cubicle cubbyhole behind some pillars by the window with 3 scowlers earnestly scowling their earnestness at me.
There's some musicians setting up and warming up in the auditorium who(m) I watch and listen to for a while through a gap in the side doors they've overlooked. They're good. The drums spatter the air, coruscate. I'd love to be able to play something like that, but I have absolutely no rhythm. Guess I must not be a black stereotype, then. Damn. Mum will be so disappointed, she had her heart set on me becoming a black stereotype when I grew up.
"I don't ask much of you, not much. Just this one little thing. And you won't even do that for me."
"I'm sorry, mum, it's just that, genetically..."
"Oh, here come the excuses! Did I raise you to lie to your mother?"
"Actually, I'm not sure that you did. Am I in the right house?"
"Dave?"
"Sal."
"Get out."
So thrown out on the street for a little thing like genetic substandardness. Don't call me "white male," I prefer "differently oppressed."
Down to the foyer for a restorative beer -- welcome home, my little yeasty buddies. "Squawk!" said the barmaid. Squawk? Weird. The kids are running and squeaking and laughing and jumping and climbing on the furniture and exhibits in the cavernous space -- not quite frolicking, but they're nearly there, nearly there. They're always one of the prime joys of this place, this brilliant indoor space oasis. Along past various try-hards and up to one of the flanking balconies suspended in mid air between the auditorium's underbelly and the 4-storey high glass wall looking over the Wayward Gallery to the left. A transparent blue plastic-bag ghost dances high against the window wall, silently imploring with its little mime to be allowed in to join the bustle, dance among the transitory throng. Then, fickle, distracted, it turns and plays and swoops across the middle air and away. Good bye, little ghost. Thank you for the antigravity dance. I have a million little jokes and sparks I'd like to post before they fade -- I need to write some down. So here I sit, pen scratching across pad for later transcription, leaning back in my chair for thoughtful sips and slow people-watching, the churning changing chattering spectrum beneath me, unaware I'm watching.
Friday, April 02, 2004
Later
A-wandered down to Borough market for a late lunch, barely lucid and floating happily through the olde worlde pillars and arcades, revelling in the smells and joys of real food, real choice. Choice is o so rare in England. And the back-of-the-eye frustrated bitterness in each farmer each cheesemaker each grocer rolls out and over you in their gladsome pleasure at your pleasure. They're unable to sell through the big-money channels, yet loyally persist in the quality-ways despite the lack of financial reward, loyal to the idea, the concept of a rich life. Food that is food. Nutrient rich and a slow taste explosion on the tongue, warmth in the stomach. And all for about 5-10% more than the supermarket dross that leaves you starving and fat, gnawing on chocolate all day to substitute for nutrition. I front up for a second venison burger and the chap in the Adobe shirt --Adobe? Not very farmerish-- says "we'll just make it two pounds eh?" And I'm drifting floating round the stalls and nooks with the odd green oily taste of deer fat filling my mouth my head. As I wander over the rich rich range of foods, vegetables I've never seen or even heard of before. And there are some fullsize tropical fruit, memories of home. Starfruit that aren't the sad stunted little dwarfs you see in Safeways. Special-effect clusters of mushrooms. Black potatoes. Black!? No way. Yes way. But not in Safeway.
Man, there's GOT to be a market for a food broker in England. A firm that does all the salesy and logisticy things these farmers loathe, can't handle, don't want to handle. Because their produce is so good. And they can only sell it in these dicky little micromarkets. No cash. Little heartbeat trickles, not the flood they deserve. So this firm would stand between them and the bigger market. Aggregate all the Sources, push for sales Sinks, do the marketing, make the noise, do all the dull dull grey office stuff they abhor.
Badge it, so the consumer in the street will be able to know what s/he is getting: 10% pricier, 100% better.
Each shop that does similar does booming trade. A.J.Gold round the corner from me in Spitalfields, a French chap so astounded by the quality of England's non-centralised produce that he set up a shop selling only non-standards. There's a market. People LIKE good things, LIKE choice, LIKE the option of not being forced to eat crap.
And we see a sea of tomato sauce in the supermarket, yards and yards of identical bottles, a wall of red, infinite repetitions of the same the same the same bloody bottle. And I ask if they have any choices, any other tomato sauces, like tomato & onion (magnificent), or tomato and garlic, or tomato and etc. And the "my job is about minimising my effort" guy shakes his head quickly and irritatedly and disbelievingly dismissive, declaring with a wideflung hand: we have LOTS of choice! How much more tomato sauce do you want!?
Man, there's GOT to be a market for a food broker in England. A firm that does all the salesy and logisticy things these farmers loathe, can't handle, don't want to handle. Because their produce is so good. And they can only sell it in these dicky little micromarkets. No cash. Little heartbeat trickles, not the flood they deserve. So this firm would stand between them and the bigger market. Aggregate all the Sources, push for sales Sinks, do the marketing, make the noise, do all the dull dull grey office stuff they abhor.
Badge it, so the consumer in the street will be able to know what s/he is getting: 10% pricier, 100% better.
Not many people have realised that if you eat for the food you need, if you listen to your tongue and your stomach, organic is actually cheaper than supermarket standard. You eat half as much, your stomach throws the flag up early: "done. cheers. got everything we need." And your life is so much easier, stress falls away, problems collapse before your clearer stronger mind. Millions of little trace metals and things, below the research radar, but needed and present in the old-method food. Before they discovered vitamins, the British Navy used to prescribe sulphuric acid to prevent scurvy. Well, lemons and limes and all things citrus prevented scurvy, right? And they were acidic, right? So, logically, and very travel-conveniently...
100 years from now, people will look back on the currently fashionable calories & protein dogmas with the same scoffing hilarious disbelief.
Each shop that does similar does booming trade. A.J.Gold round the corner from me in Spitalfields, a French chap so astounded by the quality of England's non-centralised produce that he set up a shop selling only non-standards. There's a market. People LIKE good things, LIKE choice, LIKE the option of not being forced to eat crap.
And we see a sea of tomato sauce in the supermarket, yards and yards of identical bottles, a wall of red, infinite repetitions of the same the same the same bloody bottle. And I ask if they have any choices, any other tomato sauces, like tomato & onion (magnificent), or tomato and garlic, or tomato and etc. And the "my job is about minimising my effort" guy shakes his head quickly and irritatedly and disbelievingly dismissive, declaring with a wideflung hand: we have LOTS of choice! How much more tomato sauce do you want!?
Diasporadic
applied and was accepted last week to a group blog re my old adopted home town. finally got back to it and made my virgin post in joyce-ian scintillaskiptillating mood. just re-read it and laughed. put yourself in a manic milligan mood --subtexts: globally aware, steeped in silicon valley, and o so very slightly cynical-- then read this.
god i love brisbane
my perfect lifestyle: 3 months brisbane, 3 months london, rotate. food and health and real real people and space, then crazy dense jamPACKED busy people-only whirl but with still the energy and the freshness to enjoy it .. to see it for what it can offer, not what it denies .. what it forces people into becoming
god i love brisbane
my perfect lifestyle: 3 months brisbane, 3 months london, rotate. food and health and real real people and space, then crazy dense jamPACKED busy people-only whirl but with still the energy and the freshness to enjoy it .. to see it for what it can offer, not what it denies .. what it forces people into becoming
Wipe clean with a damp cloth
Every home needs one of these
I fixed my hangover by drinking myself into insensibility. I just woke up. Really. I just woke up now. What the hell kind of morning was that? God my teeth have grown a whole cat. A couple of ice blocks in the leftovers and I'm ready to face the new day. What there is of it.
I fixed my hangover by drinking myself into insensibility. I just woke up. Really. I just woke up now. What the hell kind of morning was that? God my teeth have grown a whole cat. A couple of ice blocks in the leftovers and I'm ready to face the new day. What there is of it.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Nice brain there, Sal
So having finally got to the point where he's starting to think clearly again, what does yer ole uncle Sal do? He goes hits himself in the brain with a bottle, that's what he does. Nice brain there, Sal.
Came the text last night: "we're downstairs in The Gun". Mere moments later it's 9:30 the next morning and I'm face-down pulling meself out of a high-gravity bed.
Let's see: 6 pints between 8 and 11, then a couple of bottles of red between 2 until 1. Wise, Sal, wise. M. just said with a grin he saw me asleep on the couch when he went to the loo at 5 and that I'd been woken and gone to bed by the time he came out. No memory of that whatsoever.
The Gun's a stone's throw away ("ouch! stoppit") --actually it's so close it's almost a stoner's throw away-- and the local lads were there to watch the soccer. Sorry: football. Some sort of world cup thingy, I gathered. I steamed in, grabbed a pint of Auld Reekie and joined the worshippers at the big screen, to stare at a bunch of little red and yellow men run round. Or was it blue and yellow. No, wait, the blue chap was the goalkeeper, or "goalie" as we soccer experts call him in the in-crowd's argot. So, lots of little chaps in bright shirts and twinkling feet. Sweden versus England. About 20 minutes into it, I worked out which side was England. This relieved me, and my friends, as it greatly reduced the chances of me getting bashed.
Does anyone know why England and Estonia have exactly the same national emblem of three lions statant dexter? I ask merely for information. Actually, it's not statant is it, it's... it's..... not coming to me.
A few fit looking Scands there, transparent pale brown skin drawn thin and tight over high cheekbones and narrow arched noses, thick fine hair standing stiff and spiky. Many great East-End pub mini-scenes, snapshot moments. Droopy thin bell-bottom barmaid, roundish energetic bluff switched-on bar owner,the regulars, the rowdies, the nods, the shufflings, the ritual exchanges. Her black eyes like marbles in odd sock-stretch face stretch neck two tables over as she throws her head back laughing, laughing loud, looking for all the world like a startled frog. The thin-faced long-nosed ex-boxer type, looked like Eric Sykes on a bad day or maybe a bad life, who decided he was going to hurt me. Ho ho. See you, Jimmi; as I believe you English are wont to quoth. And as we all bundle out after the bell and tromp home --oh shit we were one of the rowdy gangs-- and I wave & loudy my farewells at my door, the guys go "Hey Sal! Your neighbour! Say hi to your neighbour!" And a girl in their midst at the next door looking round with her key in her lock and her grin on her face. The little alleyway seems suddenly full of us gathered round the lamppost as I go up and introduce myself. I've not seen her before, but hey, she's our neighbour! I invite her in for a glass of red and a stickybeak at our house, she "umm"s, I "go on", she "OK"s, the lads are off with a wave and a farewell roar.
Quick tour of lounge and roof-terrace then parked in the kitchen as I open a bottle of my very fourteenth-best red with my magic bizarro sticky-out bottle opener thing. And we talk and we laugh and so on. She's great. Not my physical type at all, but sexy and fun. Or sexy because she's fun? Whatever. It works. M. rolls in also pissed, joins us for a glass. Lots of house stories going back & forth, us filling her in on some of their predecessors, lots of random god-knows-what. I see the rainbow arch sewn into her khaki army coat lapel, I almost laughed out loud. Bloody hell I'm just not getting ANY breaks, am I? Hur hur. My natural state is Desperation. It's not an emotion, it's a lifestyle. It wasn't a major lust or anything, just funny to see that, so few moments after realising she was making me horny. Or was it the drink. Oo you sexy red you. That was pretty early in the piece, we rattled on for another bottle and a lot of laughs after that. I was eyeing off either another bottle or polishing off the remaining vacuum-sealed third of the bottle of Wynn's Coonawarra but no, she begged off. Something about having a life, sorry, having something to do the next day. Coward.
Oddly, I can remember that, but nothing after I showed her the door. (I love that phrase. Mental image: "Have you seen our door? Oh you must see our door.")
Bumping into doors and walls and floors and things today, people kept trying to talk at me and I wasn't having any of it. Go away. Go away. Budgie pecks
So my plans to chase [Bulge-bracket bank]'s interview request and to follow up various others and to review/critique something properly with anonymised examples and so on and so on all went to hell in a Number 15 handcart. And I discovered I'd somehow offended someone whom I'd discovered an hour before I'd headed out the night before had said something really nice about me/this rubbish. And I've got a fur on my teeth that would embarrass a cat. Not an easily embarrassable animal, the cat. Like me. But more so. Furrier too. But not today, oh no. I have teeth. Furry teeth. And no toothpaste. For future reference kids, and one day: past reference, toothbrushes (teethbrushes?) are pretty ineffectual in the absence of toothpaste.
Oh crap. I just remembered I had a bottle of Monkey Brand Black Tooth Powder (Bombay. For Dental Cleanliness) down in the kitchen the whole time. All this time. God, where's my mind. I could have spent the day in total comfort, flashing my pearly blacks at passersby and bad children.
And I went to the gym to try to shake it off. And after the first 30 minutes which went fairly well, I suddenly feebled then frailed. I was getting headspins, grey tunnel vision, on standing up too quickly from a machine. Odd and vaguely surreal because I was still able to exercise OK, walk OK if a little stilt-leggedly (and why were there stilt walkers outside the tube as I came home, having lofty deep&meaningfuls with genuinely cheerful yet slightly puzzled commuters? we want answers, Ken). And the grazy gleaner kept coming up and chatting at me. And I'm not chatty at the best of times, let alone when I keep falling off things. Like the floor...
I thought she was just doing it to me, but I heard a couple of the other staff chuckling as she accosted another, "she just loves the people, doesn't she"
I crawled home, cooked up the meat that's teetering on the brink of toxicity while I still had the chance, ate and hit the web. Paff. Do you mind? Sorry-- just browsing. Discovered the source of the offence was one of those weird crazy jolts you get via email because 99% of the context, of the body language, of the nonverbal hints, is missing from each missive so you read everything in your own light not the source light.
So I have a backlog I'd like to post, but no brain. And no intellectual grip. OK, hair of dog time. Sloe gin, you are my friend. Where'd that bottle go? Got it. Blimey, where'd that bottle go? And so here we are. And maybe I can get round to some of this backlog instead of just raving, farting through my mouth, farting through my fingertips.
Came the text last night: "we're downstairs in The Gun". Mere moments later it's 9:30 the next morning and I'm face-down pulling meself out of a high-gravity bed.
Let's see: 6 pints between 8 and 11, then a couple of bottles of red between 2 until 1. Wise, Sal, wise. M. just said with a grin he saw me asleep on the couch when he went to the loo at 5 and that I'd been woken and gone to bed by the time he came out. No memory of that whatsoever.
The Gun's a stone's throw away ("ouch! stoppit") --actually it's so close it's almost a stoner's throw away-- and the local lads were there to watch the soccer. Sorry: football. Some sort of world cup thingy, I gathered. I steamed in, grabbed a pint of Auld Reekie and joined the worshippers at the big screen, to stare at a bunch of little red and yellow men run round. Or was it blue and yellow. No, wait, the blue chap was the goalkeeper, or "goalie" as we soccer experts call him in the in-crowd's argot. So, lots of little chaps in bright shirts and twinkling feet. Sweden versus England. About 20 minutes into it, I worked out which side was England. This relieved me, and my friends, as it greatly reduced the chances of me getting bashed.
Does anyone know why England and Estonia have exactly the same national emblem of three lions statant dexter? I ask merely for information. Actually, it's not statant is it, it's... it's..... not coming to me.
A few fit looking Scands there, transparent pale brown skin drawn thin and tight over high cheekbones and narrow arched noses, thick fine hair standing stiff and spiky. Many great East-End pub mini-scenes, snapshot moments. Droopy thin bell-bottom barmaid, roundish energetic bluff switched-on bar owner,the regulars, the rowdies, the nods, the shufflings, the ritual exchanges. Her black eyes like marbles in odd sock-stretch face stretch neck two tables over as she throws her head back laughing, laughing loud, looking for all the world like a startled frog. The thin-faced long-nosed ex-boxer type, looked like Eric Sykes on a bad day or maybe a bad life, who decided he was going to hurt me. Ho ho. See you, Jimmi; as I believe you English are wont to quoth. And as we all bundle out after the bell and tromp home --oh shit we were one of the rowdy gangs-- and I wave & loudy my farewells at my door, the guys go "Hey Sal! Your neighbour! Say hi to your neighbour!" And a girl in their midst at the next door looking round with her key in her lock and her grin on her face. The little alleyway seems suddenly full of us gathered round the lamppost as I go up and introduce myself. I've not seen her before, but hey, she's our neighbour! I invite her in for a glass of red and a stickybeak at our house, she "umm"s, I "go on", she "OK"s, the lads are off with a wave and a farewell roar.
Quick tour of lounge and roof-terrace then parked in the kitchen as I open a bottle of my very fourteenth-best red with my magic bizarro sticky-out bottle opener thing. And we talk and we laugh and so on. She's great. Not my physical type at all, but sexy and fun. Or sexy because she's fun? Whatever. It works. M. rolls in also pissed, joins us for a glass. Lots of house stories going back & forth, us filling her in on some of their predecessors, lots of random god-knows-what. I see the rainbow arch sewn into her khaki army coat lapel, I almost laughed out loud. Bloody hell I'm just not getting ANY breaks, am I? Hur hur. My natural state is Desperation. It's not an emotion, it's a lifestyle. It wasn't a major lust or anything, just funny to see that, so few moments after realising she was making me horny. Or was it the drink. Oo you sexy red you. That was pretty early in the piece, we rattled on for another bottle and a lot of laughs after that. I was eyeing off either another bottle or polishing off the remaining vacuum-sealed third of the bottle of Wynn's Coonawarra but no, she begged off. Something about having a life, sorry, having something to do the next day. Coward.
Oddly, I can remember that, but nothing after I showed her the door. (I love that phrase. Mental image: "Have you seen our door? Oh you must see our door.")
Bumping into doors and walls and floors and things today, people kept trying to talk at me and I wasn't having any of it. Go away. Go away. Budgie pecks
> and the "budgie" just tickled the hell out of me.
I take it you've owned/lived with one at some point in
your life then. I think it's one of those things -
you have to have seen it.
> except i have less energy than you
Wouldn't bet on it. Talking takes no effort for me at
all. Usually.
> and tend to do the upset cattle thing. "cow upset,
new thing, making noises and demanding reaction, can't
do, shamble away")
Ha ha. I like that.
So my plans to chase [Bulge-bracket bank]'s interview request and to follow up various others and to review/critique something properly with anonymised examples and so on and so on all went to hell in a Number 15 handcart. And I discovered I'd somehow offended someone whom I'd discovered an hour before I'd headed out the night before had said something really nice about me/this rubbish. And I've got a fur on my teeth that would embarrass a cat. Not an easily embarrassable animal, the cat. Like me. But more so. Furrier too. But not today, oh no. I have teeth. Furry teeth. And no toothpaste. For future reference kids, and one day: past reference, toothbrushes (teethbrushes?) are pretty ineffectual in the absence of toothpaste.
Oh crap. I just remembered I had a bottle of Monkey Brand Black Tooth Powder (Bombay. For Dental Cleanliness) down in the kitchen the whole time. All this time. God, where's my mind. I could have spent the day in total comfort, flashing my pearly blacks at passersby and bad children.
And I went to the gym to try to shake it off. And after the first 30 minutes which went fairly well, I suddenly feebled then frailed. I was getting headspins, grey tunnel vision, on standing up too quickly from a machine. Odd and vaguely surreal because I was still able to exercise OK, walk OK if a little stilt-leggedly (and why were there stilt walkers outside the tube as I came home, having lofty deep&meaningfuls with genuinely cheerful yet slightly puzzled commuters? we want answers, Ken). And the grazy gleaner kept coming up and chatting at me. And I'm not chatty at the best of times, let alone when I keep falling off things. Like the floor...
I thought she was just doing it to me, but I heard a couple of the other staff chuckling as she accosted another, "she just loves the people, doesn't she"
I crawled home, cooked up the meat that's teetering on the brink of toxicity while I still had the chance, ate and hit the web. Paff. Do you mind? Sorry-- just browsing. Discovered the source of the offence was one of those weird crazy jolts you get via email because 99% of the context, of the body language, of the nonverbal hints, is missing from each missive so you read everything in your own light not the source light.
It's incidents like these which serve to reinforce my conviction that if Khruschev and Kennedy had had e-mail during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we wouldn't be sitting here speculating about it.
-Dan Martinez
So I have a backlog I'd like to post, but no brain. And no intellectual grip. OK, hair of dog time. Sloe gin, you are my friend. Where'd that bottle go? Got it. Blimey, where'd that bottle go? And so here we are. And maybe I can get round to some of this backlog instead of just raving, farting through my mouth, farting through my fingertips.
Unique Visitors:
Total Visits:
