then I'll MAKE it my party...

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity


Blegh. I made my own London Bloggers blog. Now I'm going to vote one off each day till at long last after a weary battle, it's me, Saltation and Unlucky Man battling to the death at dawn with razor sharpened toothbrushes, graoning and bleeding over the haplessly strewn corpse of Random Acts of Reality.

So there.

Watch your goolies, lads. I could blog below the belt. But in a fluffy way.

Yesterday's Scores~ UnluckyMan: 7/10, Sal: 0/10, Reynolds: 7/10, Sarsp: 3/10. Two people not really trying! Suddent death: London Metblogs, for its photos of Soho Square.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Feeling Listless
"Will it really have power to sway the voting habits of a country?
What is startling for me is how little Moore has changed the way he presents the story. Although I missed the original release of Roger and Me (I was reading about robots in disguise at the time), for some reason I caught all of TV Nation when it turned up on BBC Two and that took me into my university years. Considering the controversy, it's interesting to note how close the new film is to the short ten minutes stories which appeared on television and his previous work.
Throughout, there is still the mix of old tv footage, stunts and illustrative contemporary interviews. The proportions of each have been reduced and increased depending upon the story being told but it is very much Moore's style and just as distinctive as latter day Woody Allen."
[...]
"I saw the film at a Saturday 3:45 showing and it was full. Many journalists and writer who have been to see the film with the public to see their reaction have talked about the heckling and the applause. At my showing the only time anything happened was when a clip of Britney Spears appeared in which she was asked about the Iraq war From out of the darkness deep male voice shouted: "Whore!" He was utterly silent through everything else ..."

Ways to self medicate a bout of blues:

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity


Alcohol - not that effective, though uses up time; definitely a depressant.
Seeing friends - very effective, especially if you talk to them about it, rather than pretending you're a chipper little squirrel.
Asking people out - not very effective. Starts off fear on top of the dour determination that everything will go wrong.
Videos - the entire series of Wonderfalls is an appropriate replacement for BB, is transparently stupid and meaningless enough not to worry if any get skipped (not my taste, sorry, Rev and Billy), but ends up losing you sleep. So, no, a depressant.
Concerts - Gorecki's symphony of Sorrowful Songs - not the best choice in the world. But the London Sinfonietta surprised me by first playing my current favourite piece of music - Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa.
Museums - photographing dead animals, skeletons and stuffed animals takes your mind off things while doing so, but is a bit of a bummer when you later look at what's in your pictures folder. Going roung central London taking pics of statues and Chinatown was better.
Admitting what's really bugging you - took me a while, but I'm stressed out about the coming summer. Last summer was the shittest summer of my life (which was why I was so incredulous when I got shit from everyone I know that I appeared to be living life to the full, according to the blog), and I just couldn't bear to experience anything that dull ever again. It would *end* me. Yet I haven't enough money to leave SE26. Pah. But knowledge is power, and now I know where the strop is coming from.
Checking the calendar - one thing I've noticed is that single people, while paying forty two times the price in any outbranch of the tourism industry - we sure do filling up the calendar well. It's getting hard to shoehorn anything in. Hopefully, this isn't a temporary blip.
Having a sickie - I'm utterly sleep deprived, everything in my body aches for some weird reason, and I'm turning into a clumsy, stupid oaf who mooches. I patently need to recharge. There's nothing to do at work right now anyway, certainly nothing that takes precedence over my health. Result.
Cuddling cats - they've decided to wage a war, a campaign, a battle to the death, to gain rights of access and control over my pillow. I wake up every morning with a cat's sphincter in my face, and a pillow full of horrible wiry black hairs and cat dander. This is the battle to end all battles. There will be no cuddles or snuggles or schnuffly shakes. There will only be scratches, arguments, and with holding of anything but dirty looks till it's over. Downer.
Reading blogs - it's ages since I properly went through bloglines, kinja, and the blogroll. There's some really truly beautiful writing out there, you know. If you're becoming bored of blogging, just start reading more. Inspiring.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Muscle 68
"...bullshit, that was a great pour." She just laughed at me. Whatever, she was just jealous. "So we're going to another bar, it's ladies wrestling night." Well, you know me. Anything involving alcohol and girls wrestling and I'm there. So we finished the last of our beers and headed over. It was only a 30 second drive and...
...the hell not, I asked myself. Jager's always a fun choice, so I told her, "Sure, jager shots, let's go." She poured and we all took a shot together. Good times. It's a very bonding experience, drinking with someone. You don't ask people if they wanna go and grab a water, or go and grab a soda, but you can always ask someone if they wanna go and....
...off my chest." Kinda awkward, seeing as how her husband was right there. But who am I to argue? She laid on the bar, smashed her fakies together, and I sucked the Jager shot down. She stood up. "You missed some." And she then lowered her shirt more. So of course, I had to lick off the...
...had no idea where the girl in the luchador wrestling mask came from, but there she was, imitating oral sex on the other female bartender. Then she screamed. Seems the luchadora chick bit her thigh. Seeing a girl put ice down her pants is pretty funny, especially in a ghetto bar after drinking a shitload of...
...the dude's birthday, I had to buy him a drink. I also had to yell at his girlfriend to set me up with one of her sisters or hot aunts or something. I mean, if they looked anything like her, I'd be happy. So we both cheered ourselves, and we took a shot of Jager. "Happy Birthday my man." "Well thank you, it was really nice of...
...timate cheeseburger, sourdough jack, and 2 tacos, thanks." Me and B were going to eat like kings on our way home "Shit man, do you have any money?" He grabs his pockets. "You know, I don't think..."

Nemesis

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity


I didn't mean to blog again today, but I have to fucking externalise, or I'll end up knocking on neighbour's doors to tell them to fuck off, like I did all my colleagues' offices today. Yeah, right, calming down and going back and apologising, that was fucking fun.

Day started with cat puke all over the kitchen. Feh. I'm wise to that by now. You just wipe up the stuff on non absorbent surfaces, and step over the stuff that's soaked in. Damn cat was disgusted, and spent the day fastidiously ripping things up and tugging them into the kitchen to cover the old puke with. Me, I'm not bothered. Houseproud? I can't even be bothered to look at the place I live in right now. It's just a shell, a cover from the rain. Soon as it's brighter, I'm moving on. Long as I don't step in it, it's not my concern. And I wonder why those subsequent dates are so hard to come by.

Next, I ripped a chunk out of my cheekbone. I've got one of those cuts that's dark, still opens a bit, like a stab wound, and is dark - too dark. More blueish purple than blood coloured, just so you know there's muscle under there, and it's half way to hanging out. I woozily took my concussion off to the nearest nurse and gained twenty minutes of numbing ice pack, which I then felt guilty for bleeding all over, then get back to work, love, we've decided you're covering all the extras today. Clients all pointed at the weeping gash, and red blush spreading across one side of my head and asked what I'd done to myself. Yup, they got the entire story. I asked them to let me know if blood ran down the side of my face, and they helpfully agreed.
The cut's right on the edge of my cheekbone, so apparently, I won't get noirish panda eye in the morning, but the right side of my face is already lifting off from the skull and sponging itself outwards in a pink swollen mass. The extra plumpness and blush went through a moment or two of actually looking quite attractive, although the contrasting deathly pallor and unfocussed gaze of the left hand side doesn't really help. And I suppose the open wound on the bone line is less Princess Fiona, more Shrekish.

Staggering about with my head injury, I was more than delighted to give up all my tea and lunch breaks to deal with the client overspill from Uber-Boss's pisspoor planning. And it was just yummy that my own appointments were supplemented by Hippy Boss sending me a coachload of Russians who'd come to see how 'differently' we do things over here.
A coachload of Russians.

I mean, we all have bad days, right, we all have the odd accident that gets triplicated and magnified till we feel like shit. But a coachload of Russians is no fair.
A coachload of sodding Russians is rubbing salt into the wound then pissing on it.
Take the worst day you've had this month, go over it in your head, then try to imagine a scenario in which adding a coachload of bloody fucking Russians would ease the strain. You get me?

No matter how many panicky memos I sent scrawling 'I don't think this is the right place for them to be, hint hint', 'do you really want visitors to see this shambles?', or 'I had no warning for this!', 'take them away early, at least', they were all greeted with a strangely Dystopian scribble 'they have no agenda; please accept them.'
It can't have been in anyway instructive for the Russian hordes, either - unless they have #7K worth of technology available in every office back home, there's no way they could reproduce what I was doing. Although judging from the cherry red elastic jumpsuits, heavy gold chains and inexplicable gold vaseline-shimmer smears across the bridge of each Russian's nose, they may possibly do it with more style.

So now I have to blog it all out like a bloody saddo, 'cos I find out now that one of the things of being single is there's nobody there to say 'oh you fuckwit', or 'oh shit, you didn't?', or even perhaps 'yeah, you're right, that looks like it needs stitches'.



I didn't tell you how I cracked open my cheekbone, did I? Oh the usual fuckwit simpleton style stupidity. I slammed a car door on my face.

I'm my own bloody court, judge and jury, I am. And a hanging judge at that.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Fuck Everything
"Google search: how to perform an autopsy pics
This... Is really disturbing. I don't think anyone should be taking a DIY approach to autopsies. And I had better not be seeing Autopsies for Dummies on the book shelves anytime soon.
"Autopsy? Autopsy?! I can't WHACK off to Autopsy! Orrrr can I?!?"

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?"

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."

Pissing bloody bollocks to the blog

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity

Fuckin stupid ... grrrr ... grumble, moan ...

It's a shitty shitty week - I've been getting in three hours late from work, eating something foul tasting, then collapsing by seven or eight o clock, and not waking till forty minutes after the alarm the next morning, which leads to ethical crises extraordinaire: a little late and no coffee, or a lot late, but awake? (clue: actually, no, you don't need a clue, nobody would be surprised which was the damn answer).

Also shitty: fell asleep and didn't go to a lesbobookclub discussion of my favourite book ever, even though I had spent three months underlining natty quotes, rehearsing my speech about why the heroine was a thinly veiled roman a clef representing yours truly, and also pinned every last shred of dignity and hope upon it being the final opportunity ever to ensnare a woman who can actually read or converse without gulping "gosh you're so intelligent, I find it hard to keep up with you" (clue: never true; other clue: basically an insult; another clue: never going to be taken well unless you're looking for a Top Dog for your prison ward).

Still shitty: It's summer. It's hot. And there's no way it's not going to get much hotter than this. I'm pasty skinned, pale and celtic looking - kinda grey, kinda lumpy, kinda oatmeal, sorta tones of wet cement with an undercoat of blue - and that's after twenty five hours on a sunbed this spring. Clutching a warm bottle of water, plastering myself with sticky fly attracting sunblock and running from shade to shade to get to my non-air con workplace is somewhat less than a thrill a minute. I like Autumn. Roll on frigging autumn. My clothes are wrinkled (no iron), and sweaty (no car) and grubby (no washing machine). This was never going to be pleasant, but I'd at least hoped for hygienic.

The shit it shitteth all day long: hayfever. Taking double the max dosage of hayfever tabs, but still spend half the day wandering around with a mouth like a fractious anus, one finger hesitantly laid a centimetre below my nose, intoning the hayfever sufferers' mantra, 'ah ... ahh ... ah, ah ... ah'.

It shitteth nightly also: In Liverpool, I sneaked a look at Sarah's weighing scales, and it turns out I weigh fourteen pounds more than I should do. That makes me a fat lardy munter overcompensating for my turdy lardiness by eating willy nilly. This must stop. There have to be limits set (clue: biscuits). Deadlines established (clue: bikini). (hah! bikini! What bikini?!) (clue: exactly. Get off your lardy arse).

Even shittier: I had hard-won tickets for a poetry recital (fuck off, okay, I like it), where Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter, Tony Harrison (that's three living eternal geniuses - poets, for the uninitiated) and Vanessa Redgrave and someone called Balcon (actors, ah buh-leeve) were reciting the poems of Stephen Spender (mate of Chris Isherwood, whose book 'Goodbye Berlin' was filmed as 'Cabaret' - dead good, possessor of big feet, ex boyf of one of my uni profs, and well into artistically arranged nude Nazis - oh do keep up at the back, there, we'll be testing you on this later), discussing his work, and reading works of their own inspired by Spender. It took me forever to secure a single ticket at the very furthest end of the auditorium, and guess what? (clue: involves snoring, in bed, at home).

Yet shittiest: My fucking ever-reliable car, with the broken glow plugs, with the broken brake light, with the flat battery, with the used up battery cell, with the impending MOT in two week's time, and the garage twenty miles away across the river in Barking .... (clue: kranken. Again).

Solution? Went to boss and asked him to help do my work. Decided to go to work late every day, in jeans and trainers (I speet on your dress code), and play classical music extremely loudly at all times to distort colleagues' sense of absolute entitlement to my attention. Allowed myself with perfect impunity to lose my rag completely at least twice a day. Spent this evening in a mad effort to paint my fingers and toes a violent and repulsive purplish pink, phone several friends, plan a weekend of socialising, and bought some scales to go on a diet. Yumlicious.

The semantics of torture?

Now Playing: Democracy Song, Leonard Cohen

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity

Things that spring to mind when I look at the images of our boys torturing their boys as casually as we rail against 'terrorists' and ask the kindly government to please to bring in ever more repressive devices of social control to protect us...

The War of the Words

One of the chief problems with the current exciting adventure in Iraq is that no one can agree on what to call anyone else.
In the second world war we were fighting the Germans, and the Germans were fighting us. Everyone agreed who was fighting who. That's what a proper war is like.
However, in Iraq, there isn't even any agreement on what to call the Americans. The Iraqis insist on calling them "Americans", which seems, on the face of it, reasonable. The Americans, however, insist on referring to themselves as "coalition forces". This is probably the first time in history that the United States has tried to share its military glory with someone else.
Hollywood, for example, is forever telling us it was the Americans who won the second world war. It was an American who led the break-out from the prison camp Stalag Luft III in The Great Escape; the Americans who captured the Enigma machine in the film U571; and Tom Cruise who single-handedly won the Battle of Britain (in his latest project, The Few).
So I suppose it's reassuring to find the US generals in Iraq so keen to emphasise the role played by America's partners in bringing a better way of life to Iraq.
Then there's the problem of what the Americans are going to call the Iraqis - especially the ones that they kill. You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks "fanatics and terrorists" only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat.
Similarly it's fiendishly difficult to get people to accept the label "rebels" for those Iraqis killed by American snipers when - as in Falluja - they turn out to be pregnant women, 13-year-old boys and old men standing by their front gates.
It also sounds a bit lame to call ambulance drivers "fighters" - when they've been shot through the windscreen in the act of driving the wounded to hospital - and yet what other word can you use without making them sound like illegitimate targets?
I hope you're beginning to see the problem.
The key thing, I suppose, is to try to call US mercenaries "civilians" or "civilian contractors", while calling Iraqi civilians "fighters" or "insurgents".
Describing the recent attack on Najaf, the New York Times happily hit upon the word "militiamen". This has the advantage of being a bit vague (nobody really knows what a "militiaman" looks like or does), while at the same time sounding like the sort of foreigners any responsible government ought to kill on sight.
However, the semantic problems in Iraq run even deeper than that.
For example, there's the "handover of power" that's due to take place on June 30. Since no actual "power" is going to be handed over, the coalition chaps have had to find a less conclusive phrase. They now talk about the handover of "sovereignty", which is a suitably elastic notion. And besides, handing over a "notion" is a damn sight easier than handing over anything concrete.
Then again, the US insists that it has been carrying out "negotiations" with the mojahedin in Falluja. These "negotiations" consist of the US military demanding that the mojahedin hand over all their rocket-propelled grenade launchers, in return for which the US military will not blast the city to kingdom come. Now there's a danger that this all sounds like one side "threatening" the other, rather than "negotiations" - which, after all, usually implies some give and take on both sides.
As for the word "ceasefire", it's difficult to know what this signifies anymore. According to reliable witness reports from Falluja, the new American usage makes generous allowance for dropping cluster bombs and flares, and deploying artillery and snipers.
But perhaps the most exciting linguistic development is to be found away from the areas of conflict - in the calm of the Oval Office, where very few people get killed for looking out of their windows. Here words such as "strategy" and "policy" are daily applied to the kneejerk reactions of politicians and military commanders who think that brute force is the only way to resolve difficult problems in a delicate situation. As Major Kevin Collins, one of the officers in charge of the marines in Falluja, put it: "If you choose to pick a fight, we'll finish it."
In the past, one might have used a phrase such as "numbskull stupidity" rather than "strategy". But then, language has a life of its own ... which is more than one can say for a lot of innocent Iraqis.

? Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python Source

What's pathetic about the horrific images of what our boys are capable of abroad, is that it surprises none of us. War is all about propaganda, it's all about dehumanising your enemy. It's not as if history hasn't taught us this, over and over again. We send people over there to kill, to maim, to die for our principles no reason, then we act all shocked and surprised when they do as we ask.
Al Jazeera's angle.

Democracy Song

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on ...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Thanks to Casino Avenue and Lemonpillows for breaking the UK blog No Politics Round Here Mate Ooh No hegemony.
I'm not reproducing links to the US and UK pictures, because they make me feel sick.

Edit: I was wrong: there are some UK bloggers who live in the same world as the rest of us, and aren't afeared to talk about it. [swiftly glosses over how many of these are expat blogs...]

Chill' Sos

Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity

In other news, I finished work at midnight today, and got a kebab on the way home. Slavering and wolfing, I spilt a drop of chilli sauce on the back of my hand. I was at that messy, wet, meaty tasteamonguous bit where you can't stop to lick up what you drop, you have to keep on shovelling, so I allowed it to sit there.

Four minutes later, the stinging of the raised, purplish weal gets my attention. Did I cut myself? A scratch? Inspection. It's the sauce.
Angry red welt forming on the back of my hand, swollen and painful.

The stuff is smeared all over my mouth, nose and chin, that sauce. Uh-oh.

Bollocks

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity

The Whimpering

Now Playing: Anything I can ever find anywhere by Sidsel Endreson
Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity

So much for sleeping early - I don't call 7am on the first day of my holiday any kind of a lie in.

I was going to blog about my feelings of unrequited rage, a post called 'The Loathing', which was largely about:

a. I don't like pretending to be nice all the time. I'm not fucking nice even some of the time. It gets wearing;
b. The spurious (and ultimately doomed) idea that blogs have to have manners about each other (as FM puts it, one of the killer apps of the web is libel);
c. The London Blogmeet. I mean, really. Capping the munbers unless you're 'Someone Important'? Pfft;
d. (mostly) Tybalt.

But jatb proofed it and inferred I'd gone over the top.

So I'll do some sort of diary post to cover the last week, and the events leading to the loathing instead. Later.

Between the Lines

Now Playing: Velvet Underground: 'Perfect Day'

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity
Quick exchange with Cyn yesterday, via blog, underlined the fractured, distorting nature of understanding others through this refracted lens of an online journal. Cyn's a solid silver superstar, so she kept my identity anonymous, but I freaked out a little.
Typically. Cuh.

Here's what Cyn wrote:

Between The Lines

Last night (or more accurately this morning, as I keep a vampire's sleeping schedule) I spent several hours perusing the archives of a blogger whom I've only known of for a few months.
In that time, I've read of her continuing emotional and financial recovery from the dissolution of a relationship of nearly a decade.
The writer has not detailed what happened that caused the relationship to founder, so in hopes of gaining perspective I went searching though her blog's archives to get some background.

One sentence.

That's what she wrote initially and for some time thereafter of the break up.
What she did write of in a rather profuse manner was of virtually drowning in food and drink--an attempt she later acknowledged, at getting though this bleak time. Her writing during this post break-up period to be charitable, was unremarkable. She alluded to having often been either hung over or drunk when making some of the entries so this sums up the why of it pretty neatly.

The writer I know of--the writer of the present--is easily among the best of the bloggers I've read. Her writing is of a caliber far beyond that of many scribes who are regularly published in books or magazines.

So in reading of those dark days, I was rather surprised that despite having had so much material for her blog, that she used none of it. Only months later did she write in an overt way about how much she didn't reveal of herself--ever.
This acknowledgment came within an entry that mentioned the emails she'd received in the previous months. Some of her readers made allusions to her being a "party girl," while others looked deeper, connected the dots, and saw that she was in great pain.

Thankfully, the writer seems to be past the worst of her recovery from becoming single again.
Having waded through so much of her documentation of her life, I feel I "know" her better. She seems more vulnerable--there's less bravado (though her kind of bravado must be read to be appreciated). I know more of what she wants me to know.
Though I lack her sharp writing skills, we do have in common a desire to not document the depths of our psyches and only apologetically do we offer the mundane details of our lives. Sometimes I wonder if I'm shortchanging myself by not exploring my feelings in more depth. I've come to the conclusion that what I write is within my comfort zone.
And I strongly concur with the writer--one only reveals as much as they wish--the blank spaces are for the reader to fill in.

(I added the link to the post I think she meant)

Here's what I replied:

My blog's relation to truth is allusive; I have a row, I write about the Iraq war; I feel deserted by all my friends, I write about the noises in the attic; if I want someone to know that I've slept with someone else, I blog about everyone I ever shagged, and leave a telling gap that they'll notice. You can bet your life that if it's truly truly important, I can't put it on my blog, because it would hurt people.
For one thing, my job is emotionally and physically consuming, but if I blogged about it, it would break the terms of my contract, and I'd be disbarred. So two thirds of my life becomes unbloggable, right there, just like that.
At least three exes read the blog, and so do their friends, as well as my entire family.
There is a recording of the penultimate conversation I ever had with the ex, and publishing it on the blog was her supposed excuse for splitting up with me, but we both know it was a catalyst - knowing all the inside info of how much you can grow apart in a year means that many of the entries for the two months prior to that indicate unease and conflict in my relationship with her. She always always had a problem with my level of self disclosure online. I couldn't say to anyone that it wasn't their right to object to that. But one of the many splinters of glass that opened the wound was the blog, and her reading into it what I hadn't meant to put there.
She was the one who thought that my blog described one long party. And her friends, too. What my blog is actually documenting is my journey between two nervous breakdowns, but apparently I'm not supposed to say this in public arenas. Another splinter. One of millions.

So, there's no blog entry that comes right out and says what happened with my ex partner. There's two that I find most revealing, but you'd have to be me and know the code to feel what they're saying. Life is in code, and nobody knows anyone else's key.
This one I wrote at some godforsaken hour of the morning, when I was rolling drunk. I had the feeling I was about to be dumped, but was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt for 14 days. Unfortunately The Doubt wasn't going well, and I felt like an actor in someone else's drama. Fortunately, I was so drunk you can barely tell.

This was a coded message to someone whom I'd rejected, whose absence I couldn't bear any longer, whose lack in my life was, for me, so painful it was physical, wholly engrossing, blocking out everything else with its enormity.

D'you see what I mean? I know which post tells more of a truth, but you couldn't hope to without that background, that swell of emotion behind the words. There's no way a reader could read meaning into the second post, yet for me it represents a flood of emotions I can barely comprehend, let alone verbalise.
If I haven't told it to my closest friends because it's too threatening, too sodding scary for me to confront what happened, then it's damn stupid of me to blog it.
The only realistic record of my relationship online is the one that my memory unlocks.

The trouble with blogs is that for the reader they're entertainment. For the writer, they're anything but - attention seeking is the closest it gets. I frequently want to shake Creepy Lesbo, hug her, or take her out to the pub. But if I did that, if I turned up in real, offline reality and presumed to know her, she'd probably never blog again. I know lots of people from (usenet) online whom I've met in real life. I'd hate to meet fellow bloggers, somehow.
For me, the blog isn't entertainment.
It's practise. For reality.
For a life that's in part not being lived if one is spending so much time blogging. For the day that the obstacles that prevent me from going out and living it without a safe, online buffer zone arrives.

Anyway, I wanted to give a response to your post. I'd noticed that someone had read the archives (there's actually text files of them on the site, because I didn't want anyone to worry I'd notice - okay, by anyone I mean exes, yeah.) I clicked onto your blog today as usual, as it's one of my top daily reads. I read a paragraph, realised who it was about, felt my heart leap into my throat with panic and went off to get a valium inside me so I could continue. I was grinding my teeth involuntarily all the way through reading it.
When I did, it wasn't so bad as I'd expected. Thanks for that. [?] Ack, I'm probably a paranoid fucker anyway. You're probably talking about Wil Wheaton.

I'm publishing this on here because I need to be less cowardly in the line I tread about what I allow to get out there. It's cowardly to pretend that nothing happened, or that I wasn't equally at fault in the general disintegration I was trying not to blog.
I don't want Cyn to think I minded her post - I'm glad of it, it made me think. It was more than a little flattering, too - always good. But more than that; replying in my usual paranoid fashion to Cyn's post reminded me of a few things. Firstly, it reminded me it's always good to post a regular disclaimer - "The truth is vague, incomplete and embellished, and subject to all of my usual distortions. So are the lies."

But mostly, it reminded me of what I've been reading lately of disturbances between cliques* in Brit Blogpuddle (only the yanks have a blogosphere), and the hurt feelings that have ensued as all parties have felt themselves judged, and critically at that.
* Oooer, hope they don't mind me calling them a clique - not very nice, is it?
Made me realise something: all these blogs are crap. I mean that in the kindest sense ... they're not truthful in the slightest. They make sense, if ever, only to ourselves.
And, conversely, if we publish our personal crap on the interwebnet, we deserve to dissected.

Blogging: At Your Own Risk.

Whingeing Pom Alert

Mood:  smelly
Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity
My 302nd blog entry since I started in July 2003.

I'm feeling very sorry for myself - very poverty stricken, very cold, very hard done by. My savings are going to paying the rent on the new place, while I'm also paying the mortgage on the old. Suddenly, Tybalt thinks this is not a shared expense (unlike when it seemed likely to be her expense, I might point out. )
Said savings run out at the end of March. Complicated, now, by the fact my car is broken and I can't afford to get it fixed, which means I have to walk for forty minutes along a traffic clogged road to work. It's not so bad in the mornings, although the empty stomach doesn't help, but the evenings when I can't cadge a lift from peachykeenyboy are freezing, particularly since I left my ski jacket in Belfast airport for someone to nick, and I can't afford a new winter coat, and I don't have a hat or gloves. (JatB gave me a coat, but the arms are too short, so I'd be a frozen stick wristed scarecrow.) Whinge. Whine.
It means I have to get up at the same time as I did when I lived the other side of the Thames, twelve miles away. Moan. I'm getting deep and meaningful looks at work for wearing trainers, but the size of the blisters and cuts on my feet mean I have a fairly putrid looking get out clause. Whimper.
It makes stomping out to the Internet Palace to blog a little arduous, involving stepping out from a barely heated flat into a freezing bone cracking gale of sleet as it does. More Whine. Whingeosity.
On the upside, it'll help me to walk off all those choccy biccies I've stolen off peachykeenyboy instead of paying for lunch, lately. (The man can afford it, stop giving me that reproachful look, you.)
I managed to buy a hat and gloves for #3.50 from the hypermarket tonight (although my abnormally small head means the hat looks fucking awful). And best of all, this morning, the point along the final hill when I got to tired to walk with energy and fall into a defeated trudge was a good quarter mile further along than yesterday.

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity
Yeah, I'm getting broadband, me. Famous last words.
I am superwoman, honestly I am. I fixed the bars that fell out of the window. I dealt with the toilet blockages (ew). When all the curtain rods fell down, I put up new ones. I called the AA about the car refusing to start. I found the cat that wetn missing, and deflected them from the new slamming the wardrobe door all night game by judicious use of stinky perfume.
I sorted out the estate agent's leaflets on my old flat, and learnt to live with how their fish eye lens had made my sky blue walls look vomit inducing turquoise. When Duch went ape at me for no reason on the answerphone, I politicked my way out of it.
I wore four sweaters so the raging blast of chill winds racing through my flat would not harm me. I spent the weeekend under a blanket. I retrieved a coat of sorts. I even tried to go buy a hat and gloves, without too much success.
I tried to walk the two miles uphill to the internet cafe to blog.

But I failed. The wind was whipping a new parting in my hair and I couldn't get up that damn hill. And sought refuge in my duvet. Sigh.

Grounded

Topic: Hurtling to Obscurity
Fuck!

Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck

I missed the FUCKING plane.

You know I thought I'd experienced road rage before.
Nuh-uhhhh.

Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck