We are now in sunny Suffolk, not only having safely arrived without the use of watering cans, but, having entered a wormhole somewhere on the A1, we lost an hour off the normal journey time and strangest of all, ten miles off the normal distance. We took exactly the same route, usual number of breaks for the loo and petrol and it wasn't that we didn't meet the usual tractors on the moors and heavier traffic on the A roads.
As nobody was about when we got here, we made a big fire and burnt all our unwanted personal paperwork. This was strangely thrilling. Well, I guess not so strangely; burning stuff is very therapeutic. Paper, I mean. In a hearth. All in a very controlled and reasonable manner, you understand.
Highlights included writing cheques out in an old cheque book for ridiculous sums of money then setting them on fire. And my old diaries; I don't know quite why I felt so immensely relieved to see them destroyed. It is not as if I imagined anyone else would be desperate to read them or even that I would be mortified if they did.
Since then we have mostly been sleeping and resting. But it is really nice being here. Visiting my folks house is like being on holiday these days. It is really very quiet out here and we're surrounded by trees and greeniness. There are all sorts of exotic birds about, i.e birds which are not seagulls. The local church bells strike the hour, which is rather lovely and my folks have a shower. Imagine, a shower! And the fire. Well you really can sit for hours watching that. Unfortunately, I am a poor pyromaniac and it keeps dying down whilst under my supervision..
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
Films I have watched and not liked much
I am feeling much better today and am really very excited about travelling down south to see the Aged Parents on Wednesday. I am planning on making a cake for [...] birthday which on Sunday. I can’t normally cook at all, but Mum has promised to help. It is going to be a Black Forest Gateau, which translates into my second favourite German word Schwarzwaldkirschtorte (my most favourite German word, since you ask, is Gespensterheuschrecke which means stick insect).
I have been watching a series of very disappointing movies during my dip. I may include spoilers so be warned.
The new King Kong is a disgrace, it could have been really camp and fun and it was painfully long, boring and made little attempt to address the racist undertones of the original story. The stop-motion animation of the original is amusing now but it creates far more genuine suspense than what these guys have done with the CGI. I mean, just because it is possible to havea giant gorilla fighting three dinosaurs at once whilst holding damsel in distress in his fist, doesn’t mean it is convincing to watch. For a superior remake, check out Angry Alien.
Batman Begins (one has craving for comic book heroes from time to time) took itself terribly seriously and therefore reached new, as yet unexplored, depths of cheesiness. And they cast Gary Oldman as good everyman type character. Now, I’m not arguing for typecasting, but when you are making a Batman Movie, is it the right moment to challenge expectations? So one sits through this entire film expecting him to tear off his peachy face and reveal himself to be bright green underneath. He doesn't.
Crash<, having won Best Picture at the Oscars was a greater disappointment. It was beautifully made and terribly worthy, I know, but I felt it failed as a movie. It was just one lot of unpleasantness and tension, followed by a partial, usually unsatisfactory resolution, followed my another set of unpleasantness and tension involving a completely different set of characters. No central narrative, and whilst it illustrates the fact that racism is a complex, sometimes subtle and multidimensional thing, nobody who had the stamina to sit through the film needed to be told that.
It would have made for a better film if it had followed the stories of one or two characters rather than a dozen, each of whom we were required to make quite an investment in within a very short space of time. It would have made for a better film had it included some suggestion as to how this human misery could be resolved; instead it actually suggested that whilst racism is not the exclusive domain of monsters, there’s not a lot that can be done about it.
In fairness, I was having a bad day, it was exhausting to watch so all my negative feeling may have been greatly exaggerated by the sense of having wasted my time and energy. Perhaps what was most meritous about Crash was the fact that it wasn't about the sort of America we see all the time in the movies, where everyone lives in vast houses, is either a hero or a villain, and where people of different race and varying socio-economic status either rub along very nicely or exaggerate the differences to comic effect. The fact that guns were everywhere was demonstrated as the Very Bad Thing that it clearly is, which is unusual for an American film.
On a positive note, the only really good thing we have seen lately is the new series of Doctor Who as kindly recorded by friend Aunty Vic (her nephew was born yesterday). David Tennant rocks. A bit too much of the touchy-feelies so far, but otherwise it is brilliant.
Oh and in bloggings, there is this great new blog written by an enigma.
I have been watching a series of very disappointing movies during my dip. I may include spoilers so be warned.
The new King Kong is a disgrace, it could have been really camp and fun and it was painfully long, boring and made little attempt to address the racist undertones of the original story. The stop-motion animation of the original is amusing now but it creates far more genuine suspense than what these guys have done with the CGI. I mean, just because it is possible to havea giant gorilla fighting three dinosaurs at once whilst holding damsel in distress in his fist, doesn’t mean it is convincing to watch. For a superior remake, check out Angry Alien.
Batman Begins (one has craving for comic book heroes from time to time) took itself terribly seriously and therefore reached new, as yet unexplored, depths of cheesiness. And they cast Gary Oldman as good everyman type character. Now, I’m not arguing for typecasting, but when you are making a Batman Movie, is it the right moment to challenge expectations? So one sits through this entire film expecting him to tear off his peachy face and reveal himself to be bright green underneath. He doesn't.
Crash<, having won Best Picture at the Oscars was a greater disappointment. It was beautifully made and terribly worthy, I know, but I felt it failed as a movie. It was just one lot of unpleasantness and tension, followed by a partial, usually unsatisfactory resolution, followed my another set of unpleasantness and tension involving a completely different set of characters. No central narrative, and whilst it illustrates the fact that racism is a complex, sometimes subtle and multidimensional thing, nobody who had the stamina to sit through the film needed to be told that.
It would have made for a better film if it had followed the stories of one or two characters rather than a dozen, each of whom we were required to make quite an investment in within a very short space of time. It would have made for a better film had it included some suggestion as to how this human misery could be resolved; instead it actually suggested that whilst racism is not the exclusive domain of monsters, there’s not a lot that can be done about it.
In fairness, I was having a bad day, it was exhausting to watch so all my negative feeling may have been greatly exaggerated by the sense of having wasted my time and energy. Perhaps what was most meritous about Crash was the fact that it wasn't about the sort of America we see all the time in the movies, where everyone lives in vast houses, is either a hero or a villain, and where people of different race and varying socio-economic status either rub along very nicely or exaggerate the differences to comic effect. The fact that guns were everywhere was demonstrated as the Very Bad Thing that it clearly is, which is unusual for an American film.
On a positive note, the only really good thing we have seen lately is the new series of Doctor Who as kindly recorded by friend Aunty Vic (her nephew was born yesterday). David Tennant rocks. A bit too much of the touchy-feelies so far, but otherwise it is brilliant.
Oh and in bloggings, there is this great new blog written by an enigma.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
The Big Sleep
I have developed the capacity and the compulsion to sleep for fourteen, sometimes sixteen hours a day. Much less time on my hands. This happened for periods in the autumn, but is quite a novelty for this time of the year where I haven't seen darkness all week.
There are some advantages:
Apologies to all those to whom I owe e-mail; I'll get to it but now I need to go sleep again.
There are some advantages:
- Sleep isn't subjective; when one is unconscious, one doesn't spend too much time worrying about what might be achieved if one made a little more effort.
- The body is far more comfortable when asleep and rather more comfortable having been asleep for most of the day.
- Being unable to resist sleep is far better than being unable to sleep when one needs to.
- The nightmares are getting easier to manage.
- I'm not missing the laptop as much as I would otherwise.
- Time is passing at a tremendous speed; my days are literally half the length of those for folks who only need eight hours sleep in any twenty-four period.
- It isn't following a strong pattern which allows me to know how long I'm going to stay awake for in between times. This is playing hell with my powers of organisation.
- For some reason, I am feeling incredibly hungry. The effort of eating tends to send me off to sleep again. Thus my appetite and food intake has increased at a time when I am (presumably) burning off even less than usual.
Apologies to all those to whom I owe e-mail; I'll get to it but now I need to go sleep again.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Laptopless
Yesterday we went to the computer shop. It looks like the laptop will be okay, but it will be a few days yet. I am suffering such hardships such as listening to radio programmes according to someone else's schedule, listening to entire albums with songs in the order they were designed to be played and watching films using a television set. But most of all I am missing being able to work and write and to read blogs and e-mails for more than a few minutes at a time.
At the computer shop, [...] and the computer chap got into a discussion about their early computers, reminiscent of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, except with one Yorkshireman and one Lanacastrian, each trying to out-do the other with how large, cumbersome, expensive and inefficient their early computers had been. One expected it to conclude, “Luxury! When I were a lad, we had to put our e-mails on paper and place them in t’ letterbox at end of road.”
It actually concluded, “The very first computer I worked with were an IBM, the size o’ this room with 16K ferrite core memory, worth millions of pounds and ’twas that machine that we used to detect any incoming missiles from Russia.”
Honestly. And I unwisely joked that I remembered when they all worked through a system of levers and pulleys, inadvertently prompting a discussion of adding machines, which descended into despair about how young people can’t add VAT without a calculator. I wasn’t sure if I was a young person in this context as on all but the foggiest of days I can do VAT in my head (if you didn't know, you shift the decimal place to find ten percent, half that amount to find five, half it again to find two and a half percent and then add these three amounts together to make 17.5%).
The countryside was very colourful, the sea was very blue so I got a nice trip out by way of compensation for my laptoplessness (is that five this year? I think so). There were even surfers at Scarborough - or at least young men in wetsuits with surfboards, I think you need big waves for the activity to qualify as surfing. On the way home we saw half a dozen deer, the speckly type which I believe are fallow deer (the latin name for which is apparently dama dama dama - obviously one of them shat on a Roman’s sandal once over).
At the computer shop, [...] and the computer chap got into a discussion about their early computers, reminiscent of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, except with one Yorkshireman and one Lanacastrian, each trying to out-do the other with how large, cumbersome, expensive and inefficient their early computers had been. One expected it to conclude, “Luxury! When I were a lad, we had to put our e-mails on paper and place them in t’ letterbox at end of road.”
It actually concluded, “The very first computer I worked with were an IBM, the size o’ this room with 16K ferrite core memory, worth millions of pounds and ’twas that machine that we used to detect any incoming missiles from Russia.”
Honestly. And I unwisely joked that I remembered when they all worked through a system of levers and pulleys, inadvertently prompting a discussion of adding machines, which descended into despair about how young people can’t add VAT without a calculator. I wasn’t sure if I was a young person in this context as on all but the foggiest of days I can do VAT in my head (if you didn't know, you shift the decimal place to find ten percent, half that amount to find five, half it again to find two and a half percent and then add these three amounts together to make 17.5%).
The countryside was very colourful, the sea was very blue so I got a nice trip out by way of compensation for my laptoplessness (is that five this year? I think so). There were even surfers at Scarborough - or at least young men in wetsuits with surfboards, I think you need big waves for the activity to qualify as surfing. On the way home we saw half a dozen deer, the speckly type which I believe are fallow deer (the latin name for which is apparently dama dama dama - obviously one of them shat on a Roman’s sandal once over).
Monday, May 15, 2006
The day the laptop died
My laptop has died! I am going to try and take it to the computer hospital tomorrow and see if it can be sewn back together, but it may be some days. As it is I have managed to redirect my e-mail, but my e-mail address book is trapped on the other machine. Also, UK2, through whom I have redirected my mail, seem to be playing up, such thatI haven’t actually received any e-mail all day which would be unusual for given all the advertising I am usually subject to.
I am rather lost without my machine and I can’t sit at the desktop for very long at all. Also, I am quite sure that computer technicians spend most of the day browsing through their clients’ computers, looking for dirty pictures and secrets. So naturally they are going to fix my computer and then spend the next few days reading my novel. And they will all be giggling when I come to pick the computer up.
What is worse, I had the volume on full last time it shut down. I shouldn’t confess this, but when my computer fires up it says, “Welcome to my underground lair” as said by Dr Evil in Austin Powers and then when it shuts down it says… no, nevermind.
Never mind, I shall be quiet for a while, but I'll soon be back.
I am rather lost without my machine and I can’t sit at the desktop for very long at all. Also, I am quite sure that computer technicians spend most of the day browsing through their clients’ computers, looking for dirty pictures and secrets. So naturally they are going to fix my computer and then spend the next few days reading my novel. And they will all be giggling when I come to pick the computer up.
What is worse, I had the volume on full last time it shut down. I shouldn’t confess this, but when my computer fires up it says, “Welcome to my underground lair” as said by Dr Evil in Austin Powers and then when it shuts down it says… no, nevermind.
Never mind, I shall be quiet for a while, but I'll soon be back.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
The Butterfly Effect
I finished Tinker’s mobile. There are thirty butterflies, two different sizes. The butterflies were already cut out in plywood. I have no idea what I originally
bought them or the bamboo hoops for, but I know the two projects were not connected.
I asked [...] whether he thought Tinker would appreciate any of the things I have made for him or her or whether he or she will even know that I exist. [...] says that Tinker will develop profound lepidopterophobia and require extensive psychotherapy, during which he or she will have lengthy and in-depth conversations about his or her Auntie Goldfish. So he or she will definitely know I exist.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this blog entry you may want to check out I Hate Butterflies, where you can even purchase t-shirts stating that Moths Suck. Amazing.
bought them or the bamboo hoops for, but I know the two projects were not connected.I asked [...] whether he thought Tinker would appreciate any of the things I have made for him or her or whether he or she will even know that I exist. [...] says that Tinker will develop profound lepidopterophobia and require extensive psychotherapy, during which he or she will have lengthy and in-depth conversations about his or her Auntie Goldfish. So he or she will definitely know I exist.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this blog entry you may want to check out I Hate Butterflies, where you can even purchase t-shirts stating that Moths Suck. Amazing.
"I don't stab myself in the head very often!"
I found myself exclaiming. I hadn’t actually stabbed myself in the head, but created a superficial yet conspicuous scratch on my forehead. With a kitchen knife. I don’t know quite what happened, I was cutting up an apple at the time. I also have a more substantial cut on my finger from the same process, although I had acquired that a moment earlier. Certainly no intent.
Fatigue is far worse to deal with than pain. Real full-on fatigue which attacks your very essence. I think therefore I am; I can’t think therefore I am not. There are automatic processes, going to the loo when one’s bladder is full, washing and drying hands afterwards, this sort of thing. These remain pretty much intact, although evidently those interruptions that occur can be dangerous when one has a knife in one’s hand or is working with heat or water.
And it is miserable. Not my head, which doesn’t hurt at all and will have healed up completely before we visit my parents and I have to make excuses (the black eye sustained in similarly bizarre circumstances close to my twenty-first birthday invited some suspicion). But on the inside, having no mind. Which is of course a slight exaggeration, but I might as well have for what's left during such periods.
That particular period has obviously passed now, thus my ability to operate a computer, string sentences together etc. And it is only ever a short time, really; a few hours usually, a few days at most. But it is the worst thing. By far.
Fatigue is far worse to deal with than pain. Real full-on fatigue which attacks your very essence. I think therefore I am; I can’t think therefore I am not. There are automatic processes, going to the loo when one’s bladder is full, washing and drying hands afterwards, this sort of thing. These remain pretty much intact, although evidently those interruptions that occur can be dangerous when one has a knife in one’s hand or is working with heat or water.
And it is miserable. Not my head, which doesn’t hurt at all and will have healed up completely before we visit my parents and I have to make excuses (the black eye sustained in similarly bizarre circumstances close to my twenty-first birthday invited some suspicion). But on the inside, having no mind. Which is of course a slight exaggeration, but I might as well have for what's left during such periods.
That particular period has obviously passed now, thus my ability to operate a computer, string sentences together etc. And it is only ever a short time, really; a few hours usually, a few days at most. But it is the worst thing. By far.
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