tears to the eyes

meant to go to the theatre this evening w/ HF - a bday present, she got me a ticket - but my right eye was all funny. started at work, just figured it was adjusting to contact but it wouldn't stop tearing up and going kinda gungey (mmm, nice). at about 430ish i just stood up and said i was going, as i couldn't work on the computer screen properly anymore because of it. went home and took out contact lenses then went to meet HF in town. luckily managed to change tickets for another night (so wouldn't have been any point in going tonight), but the run ends on saturday so we had to get saturday matinee. we then went for dinner, where i had to eat with one eye shut. really distorts your perspective and depth perception...as i learnt on my walk back home from the station earlier on.


not too sure what's going on with this thing, have dr's appt for tmrw morning. can barely see screen, will have to go now.

everything but the kitchen sink

so the builders came in today and completely demolished the kitchen. took everything but the kitchen sink. seriously. it looks very strange. we've created a make-shift kitchen in the living room, moved the kettle and microwave in (although the latter has an incredibly inpractically short plug and lead so doesn't plug in anywhere yet). already tempers are frayed and nerves are shot. the house is small enough as it is, ruling out that entire room means we are all completely living on top of each other. nightmare.

another year older and deeper in debt...

so. 23 today. shocker.


lame ass day. early twenties, meant to be peak of partying performance. woke up wayyy too early (5-ish) so am now completely knackered. lil sis bought me lunch (for a change), had dinner with the fam this evening, now i just want to go to sleeeep. i'll postpone the partying till some of the kids get back in the country.


happy birthday to me, and all that jazz.

theoretical physics

birthday bbq today at s's, in wimbledon. lots of oxford people. met a guy who is in his first yr of a phd in theoretical physics. hf asked what it was, i was sorely tempted to crack a joke. "theoretical physics, like 'i think i see that bunsen burner, therefore that is a bunsen burner.'" luckily i bit my tongue. i have a strange sense of humour. anyway, apparently it's physics without the experiments, more sitting around in dark rooms hunched over, propounding earth shattering (hopefully) theories. or something.

showed hf the "fat lady" short story for her opinion and miss MA-in-Creative-Writing actually gave me a quick crit which was cool, useful as i didn't know what i was doing with it. it's cool that she has this practice, will have to get her opinion on more things. it's funny how people are sometimes kind of - scared? wary? i don't know, just a bit hesitant about giving true opinions, but i'm always curious to know what people think of my work. like with b---, he always seemed like he didn't want to hurt my feelings or something, whenever we were talking about BNFM, but i need these criticisms, else what am i going to work on, build on? i'm objective enough to be able to take it.

the weather is being very mercurial today. sunny - although incredibly windy - then for no reason at all it will rain solidly for five minutes, then the sun will reappear. spring time is here.

mother's day. the younger sib has disappeared somewhere; can't do a thing till she returns.

the flowers on the clematis outside my window are out, and the blossom on the peach tree is budding. a new project, herbal tea, Abbey Road, a handful of toffee popcorn; everything is fine.

cogito ergo sum

a quote from a columnist on knotmag struck me:

"When you strip it all way, we are lonely and confused and, all told, rather pointless. Our constant bluster must be amusing to whomever created this universe; because nothing we do is important. In 90 years we're all going to be dead, and whatever we have created during our short time here will be forgotten. Everything I've ever written, anything I've ever done, will, eventually, be the dead sea scrolls, relics, strange curiosities easily dismissed..."

amen, brother. thank god for will leitch.

i know kung-fu

ways you can tell you're not taking your job seriously, part one.

you've been left alone all morning as the rest of the department is at a meeting out of office. copy typing yet another crime-series script, you come across the lines

"According to L-----, self-defense is about more than just physical fighting techniques."

your first impulse is to add the line "try to realize... there is no spoon."

i know kung-fu.

a host of golden daffodils

on the train this morning between acton central and willesden jct, i noticed this tiny patch of scrubland - a small trapezium of land bordered by the railway tracks and back yards. it was a dump, overgrown and piled up with trash and garbage that people had obviously just chucked in there. and in the middle there was a tiny circle of clear and a small silo of bright yellow daffodils. it looked kind of beautiful.

the clouds are very low today.

too much buffy is bad for the psyche

i love that it's still light...kind of dusk-ish...when i walk to the station in the evenings now. the most magical time of day. and my road smells of springtime and the anticipation of summer. that incredible blend of the cherry blossom and magnolia and warmth. it makes everything seem good.

i watched 'the laramie project' this evening, the HBO film of the play about the killing of matthew shepard in 1998. it was - i don't really know. i thought it was really good, but the main thing that kept echoing as i was watching it was "this is true. this happened." i did, of course, cry like a bastard, and i know films emotionally manipulate you anyway, and this was obviously no exception especially given the subject matter, but it was still that "it's all true" thing that got me. and the amount of hate just pouring off some people - that guy phelps or whatever, that turned up at matthew's funeral with the "matt in hell" and "fags burn" kind of signs just make me so angry and frustrated and you just don't know what to do. i guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion. i guess? i mean of course they are - esp in america, freedom of speech etc. but there's a time and a place. and the reaction of the public was amazing. the catholic priest they interviewed, they were apprehensive about meeting him so i'm sat there thinking "oh christ what's he going to say" but this guy seemed to have his head screwed on and his feet on the ground and he said some good things. then the baptist minister one of the girls talked to - what a prick. this is what i hate about religion, the intolerance, the narrow-fucking-mindedness of it all that just drives me to the wall. (cf. religion article on knotmag...) there were scenes of candlelit vigils and so on and it made me want to have something to believe in, but what?

we fill our lives with things: religion, work, friends, family, alcohol, drugs... each to their own, whatever it takes to get through the day. i just don't yet know what that is. sometimes it's writing. sometimes it's the sun shining. often it's the thought "once this day is over, one day nearer to the weekend..." :)

i'm giving up on f-log for a while, i'm just not feeling it at the minute. it's not really going to matter one way or the other, is it.

on the train this eve coming back from work, a guy sat diagonally opposite me in the next section of seats - i guess mid-30s, early-40s, bald, wearing a black hoodie. and my mind immediately went "ooh, he's obviously the bad guy." too much buffy is bad for the psyche. it makes you see "bringers" and demon people when in reality they can't help it if they're bald and decided to wear a black hooded sweater that day. it also makes you think you're more powerful than you are. then you get followed home and realise you actually *are* the blonde-running-down-the-alley archetype that joss whedon was trying to turn on its head. anyway, it still made me laugh to myself that i thought that about him. lucky for him the train was crowded and i didn't have room to do some high-powered buffy kicks and roundhouses...

looking after charlie this evening and when he was having a bath he got some water up his nose and worriedly called me to tell me, then told me how "if you get a bubble in water in you it can kill you if it gets your brain or heart." as in, if you get an air bubble in your bloodstream it can kill you. i had to reassure him that getting a bit of water up his nose would be okay, it wouldn't kill him.

happy birthday laura, hope all is well in colorado, miss you. happy birthday to the parkinson twins - curly claire and ben, see you guys soon i hope. xxx

if i was a child i would point out that it is only a week till my birthday, but i am soon to be 23 and am therefore not even remotely interested or excited in this news.

Vanity Publishing for the Digital Age/The Boy Who Cried Wolf

i still can't really get my head round these things. blogs, i mean. they just seem so... self-absorbed. like i've re-subtitled my page, "Vanity Publishing for the Digital Age". surely that's all it is? who actually cares what i did or think or see? why do people read these things? the vicarious thrills they get? that feeling that you're peering into someone else's life? it's like reading their diary. possibly more to the point - why do people WRITE these things? why am i writing this now? because i write, but this could just as easily be part of my private journal that sits on my harddrive, password-protected, never to see the light day. but it isn't. hmm. i can tell this is a thought that is going to be going round my head all week. the vanity and self-obsession inherent in blogs.

thinking of "the absurd state of the nation" - this morning a conversation with my father about which would be a more likely terrorist target, the tube or the buses. this was just before i went to the station. none of the usual "have a nice day, dear." instead we agreed that london would probably be hit in some way at some point this year; that public transport is indeed a good way to do it; whether it would make more sense to hit the tubes, trains or buses. i figured that tubes are fairly localised if underground, whereas buses can effect the whole street. of course, a tube done badly enough could technically make the ground collapse i guess, destroy water lines, gas lines, electricity and phone and cables and so on. this is a horrific conversation to have. but it seemed so normal. it wasn't until i was thinking about it later, out of context, that it seems like an appalling conversation to have. and the more worrying thing is that neither of us were panicked or overly scared. it has become a part of our daily lives now. this incessant warmongering and propanda that the media spouts "Terror Warning for England" "Tanks Outside Heathrow" "London on Full Alert" just seem to have desensitised people to things. well, me at least. i see these new headlines and i think "yeah, whatever." it's like the boy who cried wolf. maybe sometimes it works, puts people a little more on their guard, but mostly it's like, so who's threatening to blow us up or release a deadly virus this week. one day it'll happen and, despite all these stuff about it, it'll still catch people somewhat off guard.

and that's only the start of the absurdity. that such a conversation can be so mundane. let's not even think about all the other shit that has slowly been piling up since the start of this new millennium.

outside of cyberspace

too many hours in cyberspace and i figured i should venture into reality (reality? noooooo!) walked up to the library, where the magic eye to open the doors wasn't working from the outside, so there was a cluster of people waiting for someone to be coming out. the whirrrr kachunk sound; the doors slowly inch open; the eager visitors surge forward, pushing in between the slowly opening doors, mowing the old man down, trampling him under foot. i think the council might need to look at the doors.

sainsburys, packed as it's saturday afternoon. the PA announcer thing kept going off "contract cleaner to aisle 13, contract cleaner to aisle 13" "azim to desk 56 please, azim to desk 56. " then the chick doing it got the giggles. "this is a staff annoucement, please could lucky go to the kiosk - lucky to-" she broke off and there were two seconds of uncontrollable giggles, a whine of feedback and a sudden click as the announcer was turned off. obviously saturday afternoon was too much for her. and yes "lucky to the kiosk" was actually what she said.

passed a small girl quietly singing to herself, "i hear thunder, i hear thunder" and i was instantly in the infant school hall with miss morris sat at the piano and twenty five other six year olds. then someone almost ran me over with a trolley and i was back in 2004 in a busy supermarket. it was very strange.

this f-log thing is becoming a bad habit; i stopped so suddenly to take a photo someone almost walked into me.

i walked past a woman carrying a tray of brownies a couple blocks from home. i wanted to grab the tray and make a run for it. i controlled that urge.

placebo on the radio doing a cover of that pixies' song, Where Is My Mind. not bad.

a star studded premiere

first entry. so, a new website. interesting. i'm not hugely tech-literate, so i have no idea how this will all turn out. although, out of my family, i'm about the only one who can do anything. i feel i should set up a separate phone line on my mobile for tech support for when one of them calls me.

"okay, so, how do i do timer on the VCR?"

"...it's due in ten minutes and i need to go and print it out and i don't know how to save it to disk - help!"

"well, how do i move down a line?"
"press enter."
"enter? what's that?"
"enter. ENTER.... carriage return?"
"ohhh."

three feet high and rising burning up the stereo and weird springtime weather - sunny but keeps sporadically pissing it down.

bear with me while i wrestle with this bastard. i'll have square eyes by the end of the weekend.