Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity
I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of Big Brother on here, now. I'll try to keep it to a minimum, but the addiction remains. I was going to try to be discreet about it, but fuck it, it's my blog. Feel free to bugger off till five weeks from now, when they'll all be so soporific that I'll have stopped watching the web feeds and exclaiming 'bet they don't show that on the channel 4 programme!', and I'll have nothing left to say.

Most manic wanker: Kitten the apparently mental lezza from Brighton who just got voted by all the other inmates to spend ten weeks with no clothes. She has to borrow all items of clothing, toothbrushes, soap, everything. And she's one bloody nowty, bristly, megalomaniacal obstructive person, being nice to random females for ten weeks is going to be difficult for her.

My vote for winner: Victor!

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Boyhowdy
"Willow, what should daddy write on the computer?

(silence)

Willow?

(silence)

Should I write...Willow is sick?"

Good Things

Topic: Casino Avenue


A few weeks ago, travelling across country with Suprnova and Circe, I noticed that when things break, other people get frustrated. Since October, so many things have broken so many times for me (moving house, finalising my queer divorceage, breaking car, phone, head, heating, computer, etc), that I realised I've finally managed to develop the fatalism about Bad Things that all Buddhists strive for.

Well, sort of. I dunno if 'of course it broke everything breaks' is entirely as enlightened as it should be.

Anyway, this weekend, the six month curse of everything always going wrong lifted temporarily. It was such a shock, I realised the fatalism had become permanent - I actually never expect anything to go right any more.

• I rang my mobile company about the mike on my phone not working, and they sent me a new one, free of charge, right away. You can ring me now!


• It's a bank holiday weekend, and I have 4 days off work.


• I found the missing rubber tip that goes under the A key - wedged it back in with spit (and cat hair), then slammed the key in hard on top. It's permanently depressed, but now if I smash it with my pinky, I get a letter A! Yay!


• Big Brother this year has started, and it's entirely gay people. Well okay, there's one or two straight people in there, but you can tell they're beleaguered already. Okay, this in itself would only please a weirdo like me, but they're also loud, argumentative gay people, thus ensuring more fights than last year. Good good (and Victor to win).

Best Blo'te of the day so far: SarahSpace:
"I could get drunk, but that is rather mundane. I could go get a tattoo on my lower back to complete my slut look. I could take my ?one day I will buy a house? savings and spend the day at Churchill Downs. It must feel exhilarating to say ?$10,000 on 4 to win in the 6th and . . .? Really, I am never going to buy a house. I could take a sabbatical and spend the summer following the Professional Bull Riders circuit around the county. I could just fuck it all and finally join that convent. I don?t know. I am open to suggestions."

Won't Someone Please Think of the Children?

Now Playing: 'God Only Knows', thanks to Grumble, Grumble's latest post

Thanks to Tristan for noticing this snippet of modern jackboot intolerance steadily spreading across the western world:

Nineteen year old Kevin Beebe of Jefferson, Ohio was recently arrested for creating a musical rap cd and distributing it at his local High School in an effort to promote his music and target his appropriate audience of high school students. He placed 10 cd's on car windshields, choosing cars that looked like the owner might be interested in that type of music. Kevin included his e-mail address on each cd so people would know how to get a hold of him if they were interested in his music.

According to local police a couple of students who listened to the music, became scared because they "felt the lyrics" were threatening. The local police Chief admitted in an interview that he never listens to rap music and the school's superintendent stated in a television interview, "we do not see this as poetry, and we certainly do not recognize this as music".

Now Kevin faces a four charge felony trial after his indictment last Thursday by an Ashtabula County grand jury. Kevin was indicted on two counts of inducing a public panic, both fourth-degree felonies, and two counts of aggravated menacing, both first-degree misdemeanors. If convicted on all charges, Kevin could be sentenced to a maximum 3 = years in prison and a $20,000 fine. The indictment alleged that the music, which Beebe admits recording, contains threatening lyrics and references to a Columbine-style massacre at the high school. Chief Assistant Prosecutor Ariana E. Tarighati said, "All we have to prove is significant public alarm. And the community was alarmed," she said. "These kids (who heard the CDs) were scared."

Beebe's attorney, Timothy Kurcharski, said Beebe's reason for going to the high school was about promotion, not destruction. Kucharski said Beebe had First Amendment rights to free speech and never caused any panic.

According to many people following the case, the local police chief and the school superintendent have very much contradicted themselves throughout this entire ordeal. The local police chief, who would later call the lyrics a "very serious Columbine threat, allowed the students to come back to school the following day after he listened to the lyrics, without notifying the parents or searching student (or their possessions) upon entering school grounds.

The words Columbine were used once in the CD as was the word "principals".

The police chief claimed the lyric threatened his life. The "threatening lyrics went like this, "Chief Febel tried to catch me, but he's too fat. He's got a donut hole for a trigger, how about that".

For four days, the local police chief did not try to locate Kevin through his e-mail address, nor did they go and knock on Kevin's grandmother's apartment (located directly across from the High School) where he was seen after he placed the cd's on the windshields.

After four days of intense media coverage throughout the state of Ohio and into Pennsylvania, the local police finally called in the Ashtabula County Sheriff's department because the community was becoming extremely upset with how the school superintendent and the local police chief had been handling the case.

The Sheriff's department almost immediately located Kevin through his e-mail address. The Sheriff's Department would later tell people that they had a lot of sympathy for Kevin because they knew that he was just trying to promote his music, that the local police chief botched this from the very beginning and that this should never have happened, and that if he had intended this as a threat, he would not have included his e-mail address on each cd.

However, the sheriff's also noted that the police were concerned that during a community meeting with 300 screaming parents (upset at the local police), that some parents were so out of control, that they were worried that some might try to file a lawsuit against the police for potentially endangering the students lives because they did not notify the parents (thus giving them the choice to leave their student home from school). In this meeting, the local police Chief stated several times that he let the students come back to school (including his own daughter) because he believed there was NO threat and that they were safe. Yet the next day they arraigned Kevin on 2 felony counts.

Sources: News Herald (Northeast Ohio), Hip Hop Corner NetNews 5 (Ohio), WJET, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Exhibit 5a
"All I gotta say is that it's just great, GREAT that we're depicted as obsessive compulsive computer geeks who would rather blog than do anything. Lemme tell you something, there are lots of things I'd rather be doing else. Like, sex for example. Much more fun than blogging.
Shut up, I have so DONE IT before.
You don't know her.
She lives in Canada."

Sme LPHbet, fewer vowels

Topic: LondonLifer

My mn cts got into my lptop n they rippe up the keyborsxx. I trie putting the letters bck in the right pl\ce, but I'm relly not sure bout the "z" nd the "xxxszzxxxxxxxxxxx", which doubles up rndomly when it slides under the "s" nd jms the thing up.
The letter "d" does work, but rrely, the cpitl "I" opens lod of windows, but worst of ll, I've lost my letter " ".

You cn't even see wht dmn letter I've lost, becuse it's just not here.

I ws peeing my pnts lredy fter I got memo from Dozy IT guy, sying he wnted the lptop bck to virus check it. Oh fuck, I hve to delete ll the downloded progrmme, tv hows, movies, ll the emils, the dmn BLOGS, not to mention bout 5,000 digitl pictues tht I've never bothered to print out.
Now I hve to give it him for his once yerly check over, without dmn keybord.

If you get n mil from me with ny letter " "s in it, think yourself very bloody privileged. It tkes me hlf lifetime to go bck nd copy nd pste the letter " " in everywhere. There's no fucking wy on erth nyone's getting cpitl.

It wouldn't be so bd if I were clled Julie or something.

Best Blo'te of the dy so fr: Heyrdupesi
"I was sitting on a bus last night on my way over to Umbrella's when an old drunk approched me. Hello beautiful. I was not in the mood to be polite so I gave him a *who the fuck are you* kind of look and then looked out the window. He got the message, staggered off and sat in the seat behind me. I may be a sad old bastard but I still have an eye for the ladies he then said and opened a can of beer."

You Doan' Know Me

Topic: Belle de Jour


Taken almost verbatim from comments to Lemonpillows here, and a discussion in Missuh's comments:

The process of saying things on a blog, and thus, actually 'saying' them to almost everybody indiscriminately has rendered me awfully, in fact horribly, open IRL. There's barely nothing left I won't tell people I've just met, these days.

Suprnovr, someone I've known all my life commented in passing the other day that we "never talk about anything real", and I had to differ: pointing out that there aren't any great secrets left for me; anything I'd secretly wanted her to know, I've already said.
There isn't any deep held darkness left in my soul that needs unburdening, and that's largely thanks to the blog.
The blog and coming out, anyway.
It makes you see how silly the idea of 'privacy' is. What's there you can say that everybody else isn't also worried about or secretly fearing?

I did used to be like that - open, generous with my truths - some years ago, but events and situations made me become a lot more circumspect. It feels good to have lost it. It feels more like me to have lost it.

I dunno if it was actually coming out, years ago that did it, that first forced me to be myself in front of people whose judgement I truly feared. I had been teetering on this precipice of never speaking to my family again, out of fear that they'd disapprove (they couldn't have been more supportive), and a comment from Suprnovr forced me forward out of the stasis of hiding behind inscrutability: "if telling someone who you really are is enough to make you never speak to them again, then the issue is not really about who you are, is it? It's about the fact that you have no relationship at all with them."

I try very hard to show everyone as much of me as possible these days. I have to admit the blog has had an influence on that, and one of the reasons I started it was to gain more openness in my life, after a period where I found myself lying and hiding from *everybody*. It wasn't nice, and I felt more unsupported than I ever had before. After a year of that, of ignoring people who cared about me, for my own spurious reasons, I worry constantly that my friends needed and still need years and years of coaxing to feel that I trust and need them. As Krystal mentioned once, I had made it more than difficult to feel you were getting to know me.

It doesn't help that I was so incredibly nasty and cutting to people back when I was on the run from myself. I read things I wrote two years ago, and I don't even know the person who wrote them. Anyone with so little self awareness as to not even see the unhappiness and dissatisfaction that lay behind the snidey quips and cutting asides must have been either truly stupid, or really definitely on the lam from themselves.
Yeah, that was me then. Who knows if it's any better now?

It wasn't just those two years, though - as a teenager I had prided myself on being 'different' on being someone else to every other figure I had any relationship with. Nobody could pin me down. I thought.
It didn't help that I was always the kid at every school (eight! count 'em!) who was new, who came from somewhere else, who didn't hear so well, who had a funny accent, who everybody thought was queer.
One of my earliest memories is of feeling no-one knew me - kneeling in dirt in a wood, my knees damp, scratched and hurting, my hands smeared, a sharp stick in my right fist, stabbing the left palm angrily, till it cut, trying to make myself remember. Hissing to myself "it is the fifth of April, nineteen seventy seven, my name is Vanessa *******, I am seven years old and for as long as I can remember I have always hated my parents. They don't know me." The tears and the snot and the hissing and the blood and the dirt are all mixed up in my memory with the smell of the woods, the feeling of forgotten seven year old injustice that prompted it - but it worked. I remember.

I look back at the person I was, the adult, the teenager, the child - all the way through it, the person who hid parts of myself, and I wonder: did I know what I was hiding it for?
I mean, if there was a reason, a person, a thing, to gain access to all these hidden parts of myself, then that's ... well, that's a reason, maybe. Although I'd question how fair it is if it's *one* person. (How d'you know they can carry that load? And you want them to carry it forever?)

For me, there wasn't a reason - I just didn't want people to pin me down. But why? What would happen to me if they *did* pin me down? What would curl up and die if people knew who I was inside?

It reminds me of that Onion mock shock headline: "Mom finds son's blog!" - the killer was in the subheading: "Knows Him Better".
Why in heck is that something we're taught to avoid?

Is it some weird hangover of adolescence? Dammit, I wish I could smash a lot of my wrongheaded theories from adolescence - knowing what the worst thing in the world is, babies ruin your life, you already know everything, most other people are really stupid, your family must never know you better, there's a group of insiders who are really cool, nobody understands you, you are intrinsically good, it's not your fault - all of them are lies, and if our society didn't damn well encourage us to act adolescent until our late fifties these days, we'd be embarrassed to defend these points of view as adults by now.

Coming out to my family helped me, because it made me confront some of these issues, in passing. Issues like: How is it bad for my family to know me better? They can still select what they want to know, and reject what they don't. What, they don't live in the world?
If my family are hurt, and reject me, then I'll outgrow it, they'll outgrow it, and we'll mend it. If I hide from people, then what the hell shitty sort of a thin relationship do I really have with them? Don't I trust them or something?

I asked Duch, a friend of 14 year's standing, what she had thought during those two whole years when I wasn't communicating with her (not anything meaningful, anyway). What had she assumed was going on with me when the well of self-revelation and sharing ran dry?
"You just seemed like you were having a really good time."
That line scared the hell out of me - it taught me that my defences are *good*. Too good. If I need help, I have to ask for it. Why? Because I built too good a wall.
People won't question why you won't let them in. They're human, and they'll assume you don't need them.
But you do.

Anyway, I'm starting to rant, but this is a topic that touches on where I live at the moment: if I'm going to be true to myself, not lie to myself, then I owe it to others to be open.

If I'm less than open, there's something there that I fear.

And I need to know that thing, I need to analyse what it is. That's the way things are around here right now.


Hope this makes some damn sense without the key.

Search

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity

I ask you, how could any one blog fulful all these requirements?

vanessa
fucking iraq terrors head download videos
kinky lingerie uk
Ophelia Dahl
katie price tongue
muscle dyke goddess
penguin-suited friends
vanessa's blog
gynaecologist restoring virginity in the uk
vanessa
full-lipped
ooa livejournal
knickers blog sex

I feel so inadequate.

Best Blo'te of the day so far: Eurotrash.
"The reason we Europeans don't like your accent (apart from you southerners, we love that one) is that you sound like you are talking out of your noses to us. All we hear is a kind of twangy WAAA WAAA WAAAAAA WAAAA WAAAA WAAAA WAAAAAAA thing, which has the same effect as scraping a fork down a plate to our ears. Afrikaaner South Africans aren't much better, I'm afraid, as all we hear when they speak is coughing. Much like the Dutch."

whisper - I broke the blog

All weekend she tried to break the blog. All weekend she struggled with it, shaking the bars, rattling the windows, hammering on the floor and using loose keyboard buttons to prise the electric doors apart.
Finally, she relinquished the task, and fell defeated against the liquid crystal screen, her forehead resting limply against the links bar.

I don't believe it, she whispered. An imperceptible shimmer. This can't be all there is. There's got to be a way out. Louder, now. I don't believe it. I just don't believe it.
A flicker across the blog, a current disturbed from its usual path became a fuzzy disturbance at the foot of the screen.
I don't believe it, she repeated, fixing her mind on all that was outside the blog, that was beyond, that she could get to if only it would open and let her out. I *don't* believe it.
An insistent buzzing sound marked the fuzzing signal's progress, creeping up over the screen. It crackled over her legs, her crumpled pyjamas, buzzed as it began to race distortingly over her hunched, crouched, blogging form.
She felt the interruption in the signal, and an idea lit deep beneath her dull blogged eyes. I don't believe it. I don't believe it.
A feedback whine as the edges of the room pixellated and rendered her life in 256 colours. The whine traversed the blog in the form of a sharp white visible crackle, painful as it crossed her intent face, still blogging.
I don't believe it.
The static made every fibre ache with its metallic roar as a wave of electrons engulfed her, and the room crackled and popped in the storm that spread from the four corners of the blog, and hemmed her ever further into the square in the centre, a thumbnail white cube, steadily diminishing, a zzzzip sound vanishing into the centre distance, leaving ....

.... silence ....

I broke the blog, she whispers. I broke it. Here in the blue screen of death, was freedom. Here in the ether was potential, possibility, more than just the IRC realm or Tron-like figures of her nightmares.
Carefully she flexes a leg, an arm. Long periods crouched at the blog have made such movements seem strange, unnaturally loose.
Gaining sureness in the void, she lifts her head to the current, listens to the voltage hum.
Unnaturally loose.
Unconstricted.

I don't believe it, she whispers. Imperceptibly, a flicker.
Somewhere deep in the bios, a line of static fuzz.

I don't believe it.

Apologies to John Wyndham

Why Journos are Toss, a continuing saga

Topic: Lactose Incompetent

Headlines from the front page only of Sunday's paper:

Wise before the event Posh slums it in secret The birth of the teenage dream The dark heart of America Why wronged fathers are right Shock for teenage drinkers Iraquis lose right to sue troops When we were young Michael Moore and me New mystery of Conan Doyle Does Iraq have a future? Riches to rags The sage of cricket The complications of passion for the over-60s Cocaine deaths double as price crashes Sara Payne opens up about her murdered daughter Military win immunity pledge

I'd rather read blogs than that lot.

Moments from the Weekend

Topic: BillyWorld

Three much cherished ex-pats revisited Blighty this weekend, so it was busy, seeing them and seeing everyone else as well. I'm like a mole blinking in the sunlight when I go out, right now, so it was nice, but exhausting, particularly with a stinking cold borne of walking to work in an extremely skimpy t shirt and jeans on the rainiest day since Easter.

Moment: rushing past The Clink, trying to find an anonymous wine bar, my German was just resilient enough to overhear the bored campy tour guide directing his party of pensioners along the less salubrious banks of the Thames. Pausing in a dark cobbled tunnel by the old skeleton in a steel cage above the Clink, he stretched his arms wide, and declaimed imperiously: "Old. Cold. Lovely."

Moment: an argument I stirred once upon a time resurfaced to bite me on the bum. I was handed an old email from several years back. It was bitchy and nasty and the writer of the email was plainly too stupid to see that they were unhappy with their life. It was pointlessly offensively troublesome in content. It was written by me. I might as well commit genocide now, my karma's shot to fuck.

Moment: instructing a waiter in a garden cafe to Bring More Stuff, I noticed that the reason I was having to be so fucking insistent was there in his toffee coloured steady eyes. They didn't change focus at all, not when he said yes, not when he said no, not when he listened, not when he ignored. Bloody waiters, mashed off their heads to cope with the boredom. Wonder if Jennifer Aniston was like that once?

Moment: Arriving at a frou frou wine bar with fingers so cold they'd gone a waxy dead looking yellow, Melons insisted on vigorously rubbing them between her palms until they were entirely shocked pink spots, and the feeling returned. Turning to Lettuce, I made the second stupidest remark of the evening, just as it went rather quiet. "That's the most sex I've had all year."
Seeing the widened eyes, realising it wasn't the most, erm, inviting comment to make to someone warming your fingers up, and hoping to laugh it off, I dug the hole miles deeper.
"Oh don't worry, by next week the most sex I'll have will be holding onto a safety pole on the tube."

Moment: Talking to an old university friend of an ex of theirs - 'yes he's addicted to your blog'. Different day, different bar, talking to an old friend about an old ex of an old university friend, and his ex - 'yes, he was in stitches over what you wrote about x's fit about y on your blog'. Strange. Yet I haven't spoken to one of these people for ten years, and the other I've only said hello to and made party chat to in the past five or so. Very strange feeling.

Moment: The moblog is making me a public nuisance.

And I blame Rose Madder for telling me I should shove the camera into people's faces without fear of their reprisals. I can't bloody walk anywhere without dropping to one knee to capture the sun on the dog turd glistening by the wayside. The poor bloody three fellas trying to eat their Sunday breakfast in peace in a Walthamstow deli this morning suffered around an hour of me trying to quell hangover shakiness to take something in focus of their snarfing.

Best Blo'te of the Day so far: CGP

"I understand that it is necessary to have a penny, because it is the smallest unit of currency, but why-oh-why a coin that represents two of the smallest unit? It's useless as I have yet to find a price that ends in .98 and, worst of all, the two pence coin is huge. As the second most valueless coin, it's also the third biggest"

Erm. Who said that? I'm not bigheaded really.
MONKEYS took over my COMPUTER #NEIN

Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Yesterday's Tomorrow
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: Would you love the opportunity to tell me to shut the hell up about my damn blog?

Harv: Not really. Everyone needs a reality check every so often. Very hard to get though. For example, this survey will have response biases. (In an ideal world you would make it anonymous so that people had more freedom to write without fear you'd be offended - not my situation since I haven't read the blog)
Rose Madder: no, keep going, it's extremely entertaining!
fmc: Cliched ? but whose reality. Come to the Gower.
Vic: I could do, in those comment boxes filled with gushing good-will. I don't want to though. I must point out though, if somebody is annoyed with your blog getting them to do a k-length questionnaire may not improve matters.
jatb: No, never.
Vic: Perhaps the non-respondents will speak volumes. You can always ring me up if you want a reality check ;)
Looby: Yes, you're right, I'm getting a bit bored with this now :)

## END INTROSPECTION ##

Anyway, FINALLY, can we just stop all this talk about ME and really FOCUS on the ISSUE of ME for a second, here? #8

Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Push It Over
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: What do you think of the comments that are on there? Do you find their effusiveness embarrassing, or do you think it's our cultural discomfort with compliments that makes your toes curl when you read the comments?

Vic: I'm jealous of your comments. I want comments filled with hate and venom but those readers never comment, bastards. It's not often I read your comments, but then they are YOUR comments, not mine. It's just noseyness if I do.
fmc: I don?t think that you have blog-imented me so can?t say my toes curled in discomfort at the effusive comments.
Looby: No, I think when people pay you compliments, most of the time they are genuinely meant. I realise you're after a bit of helpful criticism though.
Rose Madder: sorry, haven't read the comments (but the admiration is justified, I think)
jatb: I like reading the comments, they rarely pick up the aspects of the post upon which I would comment and it can be instructive to see other people's perspective. (And the poems were fantastic.)
Looby: The only thing about comments boxes is that they can sound a bit show-offy sometimes. I don't know if people feel they have to make a witty one-liner. I know I do. I find myself thinking "how can I make this funny"? Stupid habit. Must stop it. Also if loads of people have commented I often don't bother, because it feels as though your comment's just going to be lost.

Vanessa: Do you think my blog makes too much of my sexuality? Do I go too far, ever? Is it a sad-fuck pity party? An ego boost? Do I need to get out more?

Rose Madder: nah, I like those bits (but I'm most certainly biased) No comment on the ego trip, though...
fmc: It is part of who you are ? or part of what you want to be seen as ? it?s up to you. I make too much of the size of my arse and people tell me to shut up ? so if people don?t like you harping on and on and on about your sexuality I suggest they read elsewhere.
Vic: You can't get away fom your 'sensible shoe' wearing ways, it's your blog, so of course it's going to be filled with lesbianistic mentionings. I wouldn't say you go too far, you could call the blog Lesbo-Vee's-Same-Sex-Relationship-Blog. Is it a sad-fuck pity party?
fmc: Oh yes. Oh boy oh yes. SOOOOO much. But aren?t all writers after some justification for their existence as we all are so what?s wrong with that?
Vic: An ego boost? Do you need to get out more?
jatb: No. Yes (and why else would one have a blog?). Yes, you definitely need to get out more - are you free tomorrow?
Vic: I dunno, that doesn't seem to me to be the case, but all those comments have to make you happy otherwise why link-whore so much?
Looby: No. As a voyeur (visual + literary) no-one can ever go too far for me. You have to work that one out for yourself - I know I post utter bollocks when I'm pissed (which is all the time) and am often hurriedly deleting stuff at 7am. It's great having your own words to gaze upon. Yes, it is a Narcissistic activity - great!
fmc: Get out of London, out of the South East. The rest of the world is different and less oppressive and introspective and navel gazing. Peoples eyes get short sighted from navel gazing and after a while all you can see is the blue fluff. You might find it interesting to meet the rest of them and find that they don?t give a damn about the micro details and are actually out looking at the sun and trees and sky and quite happily empty headed enjoying themselves. Or you might prefer the bountiful nature of the shops?ah, the shops?

to be continued ...

They LOVE it! We all LOVE it! We can ANALYSE our every move till the arse end of FOREVER! #7

Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Losing You
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: Do you ever write? When do you write? What medium do you write in? Who reads what you write? Has your writing style changed to fit your audience ever?

Vic: Hehehehe. I blog madness that's really intended to offend more than anything else due to my general displeasure at the world in general (see my non-commented on 9-11 post that I really liked a lot), I get at least five visitors a day. I write films, television series (-ish), books and short novels, all in Word, and all in 10 point to save space, but you know all this. Who reads it? Although you should, you don't, but then neither does anyone else so I'm not bitter ;) I don't change my style for readers, only for literary experimentation purposes. I am beginning to see why I only get five visitors a day.
Looby: Only blogging. Oh, and I do a guide to the town's pubs. I'm aware that left to my own devices I'd have quite a formal, stilted, and pretentious style, which I'm forever revising to make it more chatty and colloquial.
jatb: I write: a diary, send text messages, write postcards and informal letters to my friends, and compose formal letters, legal documents, academic articles and secondary legislation for work. I prefer to use pen and ink, or pencil, but I also type and text. Who reads what I write depends on what I am writing, and yes, my writing style always changes to fit my audience. Insofar as I have a writing style only my diary reflects it, everything else conforms (to a greater or lesser extent) to the style I think my audience desires.
Harv: I write as part of my job - marketing concepts, copy writing for brand related publications, etc. for these, my style varies depending on audience.
Rose Madder: I write academic stuff for books and journals, articles, book reviews, a diary and the extremely occasional poem. And yeah, the style always changes depending on the audience (or the absence thereof).
fmc: I use to. I got old and busy and ? rather less introspective. Diary?s and post cards and emails. On holiday. Read by the people I write to. And me.

to be continued ...

What, you think they're blogging with a GUN to their heads? Someone's FORCING them not to be DIFFIDENT about NAVEL GAZING?
Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Heartbeat
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: Do you think I've treated any of our friends in common badly via the blog? Did you say anything at the time? By email, in person, on the phone, or in a public comment? Do you think I give enough right of reply?

jatb: You were hard on Tybalt sometimes. (Does she count as a friend in common?) And I commented to that effect once. Right of reply? Well, there are comments but no one would ever come across well using that as a right of reply - imagine Tybalt trying to put her point of view...
Vic: No ill-treatment yet, but you have plenty of time. If you did I'd just spam your comments box until I achieved satisfaction, that does me for a R-t-R.
jatb: But anyway, doesn't this depend on what your blog is? A diary? A lightly fictionalised diary? Fiction? Commentary? It doesn't strike me as the kind of fora (for want of a better description) where a right of reply is necessarily going to be appropriate.

Vanessa: When we meet up or socialise, does having read my blog inhibit your conversation ever? Do you feel like you know me better for having read my blog? Do you ever refer to things I've written?

Looby: No. On the contrary actually. It's helpful as it gives you a few things to ask about to get the conversation going. A bit, not much.
fmc: I have known you since before you had pubic hair ? like I?m gonna be inhibited!
Looby: I still count actually face-to-face meetings as the source material for how you get to know someone. I would refer to things you've written, 1) when it's particularly well-written and other people to see it, and 2) occasionally when you've raised an interesting subject. I feel I ought to find my own ideas, though, so I try not to do this.
Rose Madder: Oh yeah, just a glance at the blog and one knows you better - even if it's all made up.
jatb: Knowing about the blog doesn't inhibit conversation, and yes, I do sometimes refer to things you've written when we meet and even to things other people have written. I don't feel as though I know you better for having read your blog but I do feel I know more about things which have happened in your life. Events, not feelings.
fmc: I might do, I don?t get to see you much these days and it would be good to see you more and so I should use the blog to contact you and care about you from the distant dragon lands that I now inhabit.
Vic: Is it bad to treat peoples' blogs with a pinch of salt? I don't consider it real, like a diary, because a blog is a public forum. I would probably learn more about you by inspecting your stool than reading your blog, am I wrong?

to be continued ...

This page graced by sarsparilla at 12:43 PM BST
Updated: Saturday, 22 May 2004 4:25 PM BST
Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

Leastways I'm HONEST about it... #5

Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Could you Love Me
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: Did you have any say in what pseudonym I gave you online? Do you wish you had a different one? Do you worry that I gave you that pseudonym for some unfathomable reason that reflects badly on you or me? Way back when I started, I used to whack up photos of my friends on there, without asking. They're still in the archives, actually. Did you object to that?

fmc: Photos ? of me. Where!!
Looby: I think some of these questions relate less to me than people you know better.
jatb: I had no say in the moniker; I don't mind; and if I did I'd have fmc to blame, not you, as she came up with it. (And if I'm not going to hold it against her, I'm hardly going to hold it against you.)
Vic: I didn't even have any say in the address Jaynair in the first place, and I always thought I was Vic, that'll just confuse the Wrights even further.
fmc: I am getting bored of the questions now ? short attention span.
Vic: I don't think you have ever put a pic up of me. You hate me, obviously, and it is that which I would object to, were I that objectionable.
Vanessa: I have put up a picture of you. It's your fault I didn't repeatedly do it, stop looking like an older, dishier Gareth Gates, and grow a manly beard, and you'll be plastered all over the net.

to be continued ...

Politics? Pffft. Culture? Oh, please. It's all about ME ME ME ME ME with blogs. ESPECIALLY when they pretend it isn't. #
Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Forever 14
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: Do you mind being featured in my blog, as if you're an imaginary character? Do you object publicly? Do you *like* it when you come across references to yourself, or are you tolerating my intrusion? Does the information about you on the 'profile' page upset you, or don't you mind? Do you hate it if I repeat a conversation we've had? Are you one of the people who asks when we meet up if I'm going to blog it?

fmc: Am I am imaginary character? In whose imagination and why were they not more imaginative ? this is the Thatcher education for you. Please imagine me a perter arse and bigger boobs.
Looby: No, not at all - I trust your sense of discretion.
jatb: Oooooh, I had no idea I was in the profile section.
Vic: This has so many subquestions it's like a Physics exam question.
fmc: I think I need to read your blog more.
Vic: I love being mentioned.
fmc: I guess it would depend on the conversation ? I trust you to use your planet sized brain and not deliberately offend me.
Vic: Especially when it means a link to my blog as I invariably get visitors from it. I'm a whore for fame, no matter how meagre. Is it bad to only just now be aware of the profiles page?
Looby: Didn't know there was any! Oh, there it is! No, not at all.
jatb: I don't mind the information in the profile, though I do tend to the view that the jatb who appears in your blog is a fictional person and not me at all, so there isn't anything to mind about.
fmc: I just looked myself up?I am NOT always on about how shit London is?am I? [...] Now that I am in Swampy Swansea I miss the shops ? I will concede that point in London?s favour. I pine for the shops.
Vic: Either way, you wrote niceness about me and tess, that's always good. Repeat what you want, if you dare. My latest annoyance is Gabrielle and the shame she has for her own boz-eye that requires her to wear sunglasses no matter where she is. Are you going to blog about it now? ;)
Rose Madder: Crikey, don't suppose this is relevant - but coming across someone else's description of oneself / perception of events would inevitably be a touch disturbing... And do note, I didn't ask if you'd blog it last week!
jatb: Honestly? I hold my breath and read it very quickly in case it isn't very nice. And then I re-read it more slowly when I know it's safe to breathe again. (Please don't ever write a really long entry, I might suffocate.) And that's despite knowing it's not about me, it's about jatb, the fictional character. Just as well I don't mind, eh?
fmc: No. Never imagined that anyone else would be interested ? god, do I have to read this thing everyday? It feels like a lot of commitment ? are you a cult and should I be afraid, very afraid? Heavens, apparently on the 22nd of July it will die and I hardly had the chance to get to know it ? I am grieving and may need time off work for the stress.
Looby: I like coming across references to myself, because I'm an egotist. But I always check your blog specially carefully after a meet-up, because I'm interested in seeing if you've written anything about it. I realise that there's no necessary connection between an event's importance for you and the likelihood of it appearing, but it's interesting to get the other person's perspective if it is blogged about.

to be continued ...

This page graced by sarsparilla at 2:07 AM BST
Updated: Saturday, 22 May 2004 4:31 PM BST
Post Comment | View Comments (7) | Permalink | Share This Post

I mean WHAT THE HELL do you think all those OTHER BLOGGERS are chatting about at such length, anyway?? #3

Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Doesn't Matter
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: What do you read? Books, papers, the sides of buses, magazines, messageboards, letters, cereal packets, blogs, other people's mail?

Harv: Books, papers, occasionally magazines
jatb: I read every scrap of text I catch sight of: packaging, adverts, road signs, books, legislation, websites, text messages, newspapers, the small print.
fmc: Books yes, papers not much any more ? I don?t commute anymore (hahahaahaha, just had to get that in for you saddo Londoners), the sides of buses the backs of buses, magazines I thought they were only there for the pictures ? at least that what the boyfriend tells me about Pammie?, messageboards what are they?, letters from the bank, cereal packets only in the supermarket to look for the GM ingredients label (I had a job interview once and told them that I was an avid reader of cereal packets ? I didn?t get the job), blogs duh, other people's mail NEVER.
Looby: Modern and classic fiction, (lately: Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote), books about modern European history and politics, (a history of contemporary Italy, a book about Russia since the fall of communism) memoirs (Norman Manea's autobiography about life in Romania from 1935 to the present day); The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Private Eye, Good Beer Guide, Eurovision Song Contest Handbook, What's Brewing (CAMRA newspaper), the dictionary.
Rose Madder: I read all sorts of stray text, papers etc, and books when I have to (and occasionally for pleasure).
Vic: Booooooks, and lots of them, and the occasional message board that pertains to my activities (xdcuk.net, dogging.com and the like)

to be continued ...

Whaddaya mean it's too POMPOUS and SELF CONGRATULATORY? I'm only FOCUSSING, on ME, all the time?! #2

Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Change
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

Vanessa: Do you read any of the other blogs that I've linked to? Is there a difference in how you feel about reading about someone you know compared to someone you don't?

Rose Madder: no, but it would be very different to read about someone I don't know.
Vic: I occasionally skim select ones, but with so many you link to I've only seen a small fraction. With respect to me knowing the blogger, of course it makes a difference, but only in the quantity I read as opposed to considering it a secret view into the mind of the blogger etc...
fmc: I had no real interest in reading about someone I have never met (and never even heard of ? it isn?t like reading a biography of Pepys, who at least you have heard of ? these people have no connection at all with my life). I was interested in reading about you ? it felt like a way of finding out what is going on in my friend?s life (who I rarely see and should call more often).
Looby: Yes - Lemonpillows, Another Sarah, Tess's blog. I suppose there's a bit of added interest in that you can compare the online persona with the real one. I see blogs as simply another type of meeting or interaction really - pub, cinema, lunch, read blog.
jatb: I read some of the other blogs, far fewer than I used to when I was blogging. And now almost entirely restricted to the ones which are work safe. There is a slight difference because I know more about you and feel I can perceive a subtext to your blog which I can't have the remotest idea about in others. But that only applies when your blog handles absolute reality, and anyway it's only my feeling about my perception. How far removed that might be from your perception of reality is anyone's guess.

to be continued ...

Can we just stop all this talk about ME and really FOCUS on the ISSUE of ME for a second, here? #1

Now Playing: Lemonpillows: Angel
Topic: Creepy Lesbo

The atmosphere was tense, crackling with expectation and sexual electricity as we made our way across the hotel lobby.
A blog convention with a difference, and not just in the smouldering intensity of the attendees' long lashed limpid eyes. No, this room, this gilt edged bejewelled velveteen palace was to hold a select panel for the next few hours.
The anticipation was already unnerving us all, and introductions proved somewhat hurried and flirtatious. All eyed and sized and appreciated the intellectual and physical prowess on display. This was no mere blog meet. This was to be a Convention on the Future of Vanessa's Blog.

First, the attendees: Harv, a six foot darkly intense young executive of a mid European marketing firm, known for his artistic dilletantism, and his culinary skill. Debonairely dressed from head to toe in discreet armani, travelling businessman Harv felt very much at home in the expensive hotel surrounding. Harv was first to arrive, and, noticing the youthful yet stooped, serious professorial figure entering after him, Harv registered an interest with a flash of his mahogany eyes, and was quick to order drinks for the party gradually gathering. His smoothly delivered choice of mojito cocktails all round was approved of by all, save he of the defiantly radical tastes, cutting a pose reminsicent of early Kerouac as he slouched against an ottoman, scuffing it carelessly against his artfully distressed footwear, Vic.
Vic had travelled down from his academic pursuits in the frozen wastes of the north, where he had tensely allowed his underlings to pursue the guarded secrets of the universe, of extreme physics. His intelligence and learning shone through his blue-gray hooded eyes, and his hunched, Beat poet manner, as he crouched edgily over a cigarette. Vic's attention wavered from his pursuit of a more manly aperitif as six foot swedish intellectual and artiste Rose Madder made her accustomed dramatic entrance to the lobby. Rose Madder's faded dark clothing lent her a boho chic, while her long sinuous blonde limbs were given vitality by a sharpness of gesture, a directness that revealed itself as she sat, brusquely greeting first the sophisticate, Harv, then the saturnine Vic, and crossed her legs beneath her.
Rose Madder's entrance was quickly and loudly followed by a bright energetic explosion of a woman, bursting into the lobby in a hurricane of wide full lipped smiles, breathless apologies, as she leant in close to allow her widely set and strikingly brilliant aquamarine eyes to make her introduction for her. This was fmc, and her sudden, insistent familiarity broke the tension briefly. She busied herself darting about the group, between long folded legs, and insouciantly crossed ankles with an ease and near arrogance - if arrogance can be drawn as a form of perfection, a perfect confidence that invites a trust - which instantly set the group at ease. An illusory trust, perhaps, as she reveals in her perceptible distaste for th mojitos the keen eye and I turned to the little band of artists, radicals and the sharp tongue of the engineer.
It was time for me to reveal myself, and establish why we were gathered. I turned to the company from the lobby desk where I sat, calling gently to the company of five to focus their assembled incisive wit upon the gleaming flat screen inlaid into the low carrera marble occasional table nestled tastefully by fmc's perfectly contoured knee.
Five, you say? Yes, five. The deep, dark chesterfield recliner creaked steadily about to face us and the strong silent presence it contained (which had hitherto gone unnoticed as we fluttered and jabbered our suburban introductions) made himself known with an imperceptible truculent nod from his craggy manly features, cast into shadow by his sinewy taut frame. Looby was among us.
Looby's deep set, inscrutably masculine visage eyed the two other men warily. Harv's elegantly manicured hands, his dashing long legs were noted, as was the contrast of Vic's rugged furrowed complexity, his rough hewn yet simple clothing belied by the affectedness of the Gitanes in his hand.

A clicking sound on the onyx tiled floor of the PomPom Hotel Lobby distracted Vic from his nicotine crutch, as a latecomer arrived; jatb, renowned pentathlete, tapped in her choos across the icily reflective inlaid stone flags. Wordlessly she took a seat on the arm of Looby's chair, the gold flecks in her clear, deep indigo eyes acknowledging us with the briefest of nods.
Rose Madder's attention snapped towards the screen, eager to interrogate the mystery placed before us. fmc paused from her effusive, intensely physical greetings, and Looby restrained the impulse to suck meditatively on his cuban cigar, as Harv's discreet cough directed all attention on me.

Vanessa: Do you read my blog at all? A lot? A little? You just skim? Why/not? Does my blog embarrass you?

Looby: Every entry, entirely.
Vic: I skim unless I hit across a post that grips me, like when you get livejournal to say your cat got run over, I almost prepared another "my rabbit has died" reply :-/ I'm not embarrassed by it though, it's only a blog.
Rose Madder: I read it a little.
jatb: I read almost every entry because I enjoy reading it. It doesn't embarrass me at all.
Looby: 1) Curiosity to see how you're doing, 2) for the pleasure I derive from reading, because you write well (oops, sorry - that was a bit supportive, wasn't it :) 3) curiosity at how someone else negotiates the privacy/revelation balance. I look to you and other bloggers for some examples about how to do this and 4) to see who'll be the first amongst us to find a point for the bloody thing. Oh yeah, and to click randomly on your blogroll to find interesting blogs.
fmc: I don?t read it much ? in fact, today is the first time that I have successfully managed to get onto the site (last time I looked was admittedly around 6 months ago because you threatened me with publishing my supersonic squeals). I skimmed a little. There were a lot of words ? now don?t laugh ? if you are a wordy person and have time to sit at home, on your own computer and read a blog in the same way as you would read a letter or a book then you will be fine. If however you are at the other end of the spectrum ? only use the web for speed dialing for flights, get bored if a connection is made in less than a millisecond, and get interrupted by your boyfriend every time you try and read a book, and keep finding washing and ironing and lawn cutting and STUFF to do instead - then reading reams and reams of pages about someone elses life, whilst sitting in the office ? is a bit unlikely. No your blog doesn?t embarrass me ? should it? Should I be embarrassed that my friend pours her heart out on the page or should I be worried about what she says about me?
Harv: Don't read the blog because I keep forgetting to. What's the web address again?

to be continued . . .

I dunno when I'm s'posed to learn ...

Topic: Looby

That staying up till 2am picking out old photos for my Moblog is a waste of oxygen?

More deeply weirdo searches

Topic: Eurotrash

lovely colourful teddy's greetings
how to wank a boy
sarsparilla vanilla
sarsparilla vanilla
arsehole shaggy
'can't do it now either (at the age of 22)'
'charlotte dymond' poem
+enema + shop +london
fish allergy weal on chin
'weird places to live'
belly button sex blog
sidsel endreson
video of Berk decapitation
Nanna's beautifully rich recipe for yoghurt
peter andre having sex with katie price
self brease exam male
Ass smells bad...any medicine?
ophelia dahl lesbian
chilli rose spider
Vanessa
when a dog lifts leg in affection
enema receipt
sexi calendars 2004
embarrassing story wank
definition 'flirting thrills'
ex-girlfriend slag knickers
amy handcuffs blog
boring idiotic give me fun website
drama queen - Vanessa - No Angles
cooked tits boiled girl
'vanessa's lunchbox'*

*think I've had that one before....

< # Girls Blog UK ? > Powered by RingSurf! < # Gay Diary ? > < L DykeWrite3 # > < # Blogging Brits ? > < # BloggingBitches ? > << # Gay Brits ? >> Technorati Profile Read THIS blog:

online This is my blogchalk: United Kingdom, London, East London, Bow, English, German, Vanessa, Female, 31-35, Literature / Movies, Food / Eating / Drinking. Rate Me on BlogHop.com! help? Is my Blog HOT or NOT?

powered by bravenet.com i say, "FUCK!" The Weblog Review