Tidying Up the Place

Topic: BillyWorld


Having been throwing Gmail invites all around usenet, I have 8 spare invites. If you want one, leave an email address (if you mung it, please make it obvious) in the comments.



Big Brother is a bit boring at the moment, isn't it? Is it only me who prefers it when they're fighting [sic]? So much for their TV Psychs - a child with a poo fetish and a spare pack of Crayolas could draw more psychological insights from the programme than this lot of overpaid media whores did.
What I'd really like is an in-depth analysis of Jason and Victor. I know a lot of people like Victor, the Butter Knife Avenger, and I'm inclined to forgive, and look for clues as to whether his behaviour is motivated by nastiness or not. I think not. Jason, on the other hand, I find repellent. I'd gneuinely like to know if he represents a type of human who's common, or even acceptable.
In the meantime, if you miss a programme, and have broadband, as well as all the progs you miss, there's some really really funny clips on Kazaa and on bit torrent. Ways of downloading torrents are here, here, and here. Ways of watching them are here.
The BookClubBlog suggests an alternative. At least Wimbledon has just started.
And isn't there some football on, somewhere? ;o)

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Cyber Vassals
"Open letter to the woman I saw on the street yesterday:
I'm sorry. But if you can fit the word "DANCER" across your ass, you probably aren't one."

Bit too busy to blog just now

Topic: Lactose Incompetent


I spent this weekend hiking (well, it felt like hiking even if it was only gentle strolls) and chatting with brilliant mates in Derbyshire, and another thirteen hours of it driving up or down the country. I'm sat here force feeding myself caffeine, to shove my brain into activity, cos I'm meant to be the boss at work this week, which means getting there early, which has never yet been my strong point. After work today, I have to drag myself over to White City to watch a Rob Brydon monologue being filmed (he of 'Marion and Geof' fame; I have a spare ticket, so if you want to come, ring me), and I still haven't bloody rung back Second Dater, cos I've not had a minute to myself for a fortnight, it seems. Bloody good job I can't get any Big Brother feeds right now, or even the four hours a night of sleep I'm getting as it is would be under threat.

This is how I wanted it to be instead of having a blog. Big grin.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this detail - unexplored - about the offer on my house: it came in on the same day as what would have been my tenth anniversary with Tybalt.

Closure or what?

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Kitchentable
"We did a few shots of me in my massive boots unlaced, jeans, and with my top off, all that. Fairly innocent. Then some adding a biker?s jacket that he?d brought with him. All very Gay Icon, but I can live with that.
So once I was comfortable with posing in semi-nudity, he tipped out a bag of what can only be described as Things. Some of the things, I didn?t even know what they were!
There were wrist restraints, chains, (tweet, tweet, chirp chirp twitter) and handcuffs.
I put on the (twitter, chirrup tweet) and my friend helped me to fasten the (tweet tweet tweet chirp, faint sound of an aeroplane passing over) at the back. And to make my body glisten we (cut to outside of Big Brother house).
?Do you mind wearing this?? he asked, offering me a (cut to shots of the hose-pipe, followed by shots of the outside of Big Brother house, and then the oven).
?Actually, I?d better just rinse it under the tap.? he said."

Most Haunted

Topic: LondonLifer



Watching a documentary on people who have vivid dreams or walk / talk / move in their sleep, and I'm reminded that I used to be like that.
I often woke up in night terrors, or with strange bruises, or a partner informing me that I'd been chatting to them, and no memory. Looking at night vision footage of people in very disturbed dream states looks wild and unsettling - it's quiet a relief to realise the weird unnervingness of it all wasn't just a side effect of it happening to you. The worst thing is the slowness of waking up - with a really bad set of night terrors, you sometimes can't quite shake the feeling it was all so real even fifteen to thirty years later, I find.
I still recall a recurrent dream from when I was six years old, when (suddenly worries about posting this on a public weblog) I dreamt regularly that someone was forcing cutlery up my arse - knives, forks, spoons, as my family watched, uncaring. For weeks, it would alternate with the less memorable nightmare of brown bears chasing me through Hyde Park. I vividly remember the final sequence every time - of looking down at my buttocks (it's so vivid that I can remember the quality of the skin, the shape - wish my arse looked like that now) and seeing the skin distorted into the shape of the cutlery beneath, with the fork tines stretching the flesh almost to breaking point. I think even at six I knew this wasn't the sort of dream you talk about when you wake up.
(Another reason why the opening sequence of 28 Days Later is so freaky, is its captureness of that strange, unreal feeling that sticks around for so long after)

These days it never seems to happen - despite living in a dark basement flat surrounded by a family of foxes who howl and claw at the windows on a nightly basis (they had a taste of my cat once, and the memory calls to their stomachs, I think). Or perhaps it's just that there's no-one there to prod me and remind me that I need to shut the hell up if I ever want a leg over again.

One of the weirdest active sleep episodes I ever had was while staying for a week at Duch's house. I know Duch regularly has sleep terrors much like mine had been. Although the emotions experienced aren't what we'd call waking real, they're very real at the point of experience, and it's a heartbreaking thing to witness someone you love experiencing such horror.

She walks, talks and has conversations. At that point, so did I.
Four in the morning (is there any more desperately emotionally draining hour of the day to be awake?), Duch sleepwalked into the guest room, and screamed hysterically, sleep-seeing burglars in the room. I half awoke. In my narcoleptic state, I saw not Duch, but a primitive subhuman, crouching naked and screaming. I did the logical thing: sat bolt upright and screamed hysterically at the neanderthal at the door, who steadily morphed into a screaming Duch.
Which was nice for Tybalt. 4am, Lunatic either side.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Hackney Lookout
"Sat opposite a huge transvestite on the tube. Long blonde hair, tanned and cratered face, a pummeled nose: like an Aussi full-back on a hen night. Elbows held high, shielding eyes with a newspaper but highlighting legs like cabin logs."

News from the House!

Now Playing: BB webfeeds

Topic: Eurotrash

No, not that house, although I have to admit to being a shade knackered after watching listening to them break every item in sight till four this morning - from *my* house.

After five months on the market, I marched in and sacked the estate agent, got a new one last Saturday, and today I accepted an offer!
Of course, it's not that simple or that easy, but after shopping at Lidl, living in Penge, having lukewarm baths and walking to work since February, this was certainly a new-knickers occasion, I can tell you.

Two working days to get an offer. I'm jazzed and tired and soooooo relieved.

So I won't blog about how they offered me five hundred for all my furniture, the cheeky bastards. (or how I would have accepted, either.)

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far:OnePotMeal
"You couldn?t remember buying the suit, but there it was.
People came into your office sometimes but never asked about work, never knew about Yees, only about the shirt(s) you were wearing, and you wondered how long you could get away with changing shirts all day long and doing no work, how long until you could retire and commit full-time to the search for a poet named Yees.
Meanwhile the poet who rented your old bedroom downstairs got a sunburn because your old room had so many windows. The spines of his books all faded until the titles and authors were gone.
You rubbed aloe into his peeling back, asked if he knew the work of a poet of Yees, but he said, No, no, I?ve never heard of this Yees. Are you sure he?s a poet at all."

This page graced by sarsparilla at 4:30 PM BST
Updated: Tuesday, 22 June 2004 11:48 PM BST
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Pollinating via Subliminally Expressed Rage

Topic: Vic Jameson
Back! Here I am, with my #200 keyboard. Biscuit bits hoovered, and everything.



Every year since I moved to London in 1990 and began having to inhale seven tons of diesel fume each morning, I've gotten hayfever. It only lasts through June and early July, so I generally figure it's not too much of a problem. Since I learnt to drive in 2002, though, the snuffling and nose-drools and red-eyed weeping have increased.
Now I notice four hayfever periods a day - two coinciding exactly with rush hour, and two that occur within any enclosed airless space (ie, work, my flat, my car, a bus, a tube) about two hours after rush hour. Combine that with the fun experience of trying out a different anti-histamine every year, to see which one is going to work this time, and it all gets a little time consuming.

It's public knowledge that the pollution has added to the allergy load this year. (hence, I voted for Ken - anyone at all who reduces pollution in the capital has my vote forever - and hypocritically, there's no way I'm not using my damn car unless you force me out by hitting my pocket.) Most of the chemists are actually selling out of anti-histamines, as people are beginning to double and triple their doses to get the same effect.
What they tend not to bark on about is how hayfever affects your ability to see when you're driving. When I get a hayfever surge, my eyes go crimson red and boiled looking, they stream tears, and they itch like goddamn billy-oh, as if grit had gotten caught under a contact. Then, if you watch it in a hand mirror, the eyeball whites merge into a yellowish pink, with a bloodshot warning streak, and it actually starts to swell up.
I sat in my parents' garden once and watched it happen - a bulge about three millimetres deep slowly appeared.
If you're driving at the time, it's quite scary, because fifteen minutes into this weird flesh-swelling, and you lose the ability to focus, and around one minute after that, you pretty much can't see anything at all until either the air clears (meaning you get out of the car), or your anti histamine kicks in.
Happened to me on the M25. Heart thumping to a speed-beat, I swerved left and made the car kerb-crawl along the hard shoulder to the nearest exit, with about the same level of visibility as those tv camera effects when they try to show you the world from the point of view of the partially sighted (usually involves murdering someone who used to be on Melrose Place) (unless the bling person used to be on Melrose Place, in which case: DUCK! they're coming to get you).

The other thing they don't tell you is how a bad year's worth of hayfever lowers your tolerance to other allergens. Mozzie bites start hivng and looking weird. You start reacting to (or craving) food differently (no, it's not a virgin birth, thanks), and animals make your skin crawl.
Great opportunity for SkinnyCat to decide that my pillow is her personal territory, and wage a three month war to claim it, then. I'm sure unwitting hours of sleep with my face in a cat's crusty arse, inhaling fish fat, fluff, and dander are just what the doctor ordered.

So, you can imagine (or actually, it's probably better not to) how I'm looking at the moment. Rabid loud sneezing at unexpected moments. Snuffling like a junkie. And these bulging, prominent, boiled and weeping eyes, that every now and then turn yellow and swell to massive proportions. You can't dress it up with make-up, cos it's four minutes till you scratch the stuff off, in a desperate clawing frenzy.
Lovely.

Today, out of every anti-histamine (bar the useless herbal ones that so obviously don't work I dont even stress about taking eight times the daily dose), I went in to Superdrug to see which pills the pharmacist would recommend this time.
The swollen, painful, weeping itchiness which spreads over your entire skin surface, (including such hard to publicly cratch areas as pubes, arsehole, scalp, pits, gooey yellow eyeballs) means I can't stop myself from having enraged mental battles with any passing conversationalist, which so far, I've mostly been able to keep inside my head.

Pharmacist who looks like Jean-Luc Picard: Madam, how can I help you?
[Eh? Look at me. Look at me! Are you really in any state of confusion about what I want? Would I really be walking around with a crimson eyeball popping out of my tear strewn face on the offchance that you had some cough syrup?]
Gullible Twat: I want [heavy sigh] hayfever pills.
Jean-Luc: Aha!
[Oh right, the facial deformity clued you in, at last?]
Jean-Luc: This week we are recommending this product... [presents own brand packet from shelf]
[Oh, the own brand useless packet of shite right in front of my face, you mean? The crud that's so insipid you don't even need to stack it up behind the pharmacist, you put it right out on display for any five year old to tea-leaf? Shyah, yeah, rrrrrrrrrrright, I think that will work simply because you get a 0.000001% store commission on it. I mean, it's not like there's a FUCKING HUGE GROWTH on my GODDAMN EYEBALL, is it? Not like there's a PROBLEM here?]
GT: I've tried that, it's no good.
Jean-Luc: Ahhh, then maybe ..... [gestures expansively across the front display cabinet]
[JUST FUCKING CURE MY EYE YOU WEASELLY FUCKING NEWT OF A DOG-SIRED CUNT-PLASTER]
GT: Tried that.
[Are you blind?]
GT: And that.
[Do you think perhaps people really look like this?]
GT: And that.
[Stop palming me off with placebo relief - my eyeball is hanging out of its socket, and bouncing off my bloodied cheek, gently.]
GT: None of those work.
[And you ask me do I want the useless brand, have I really tried ALL the useless brands? Isn't there some sort of Hippocratic Oath that says pharmacists have to not be INCOMPETENT FUCKWITS?]
Jean-Luc: Are you sure? This is the market leader.
GT: [in floods of unbidden weeping, sure by now that the moisture is blood, not tears] Just give me the packet, okay. Quick!
[You bastard: I'm standing in front of you in obvious pain, and you're faffing about as if I were selecting a tie. Bastard. Bastardbastardbastardbastardbastard.]
GT: Thank you so much. Good bye.
[ I shall find you. I don't know how, but I shall find you, and all your little Picard children, and I shall infect you with the bulging eye, till you too feel like you just took off the wrong swimming goggles. I shall wait till you wake with yellow crust floating across the burning violent red of your distended eyeballs, and I shall laugh.
Until we meet again, "Picard".
And we shall meet again. Bwhahhahahahaha!]
Jean-Luc: Goodbye, Madam.

When did pharmacists turn into the bloody maitre d'?

By the way, free cash, endless perverted sex and unlimited supplies of Haribo for the one hundredth caller: 09011 21 44 02

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: ScreamingSeed
"So here I am surrounded by all these little girls in frilly party frocks, all smelling of cheap bubble bath and talcum powder, humming theme tunes to kid's TV shows and making their cheap rip-offs of Barbie dolls dance on the table between the sausage rolls. I've got my eye on the mouthwateringly sickly looking butterfly buns but I've been told I have to eat some salad first.
I don't really know why I put this whole tomato in my mouth. I guess I was just trying to be entertaining, but the other party guests look far from entertained. There's just no pleasing some people."

Got four minutes total and a mouse that doesn't work.
Firstly, the rumour that I am about to be sacked for blogging too much - too hilarious.
For one, blogging isn't actually yet illegal, although it possibly should be. Secondly, the nature of my job involves standing in a room interacting with people - I think they'd notice if I walked off down the hall, and sat at a bloody computer, thirdly, pffft, good luck getting anyone to do the job even an eighth as well as I do, fourthly, why would some bugger on the internet be the first to know? Chucklesome indeed.

Secondly, Watford's cabbies are lovely.

Thirdly, second date looms. Oh yipes, I may panic enough to not even go.

Fourthly, IT guy is trying to punish me for my lack of an A key by threatening to withhold my laptop for eight weeks from me. How can I change his mind? What do you give the geek who has everything except the influence he craves? He's already got all my photos.

Fifthly, I'm off to Derbyshire this weekend ("no madam, you cannot buy a return to Watford, because your destination is in inner London" - good advertising from the ... erm ... Middlessex borough there), with no money or resources, and a blanket ban from the vehicle recovery company from using their services for a month. If you see a red car broken down on the M1, do wave superciliously.

Sixthly, Big Brother is making me feel cruel. Those looked like panic attacks the bedsit inmates were having on Sunday's show. Are there no psychologists this year simply because they would object?

Seventhly, were I to have any sustained access to the web, this would have bcome my favourite site by now. Fortunately for me, some of it is WAP accessible.

There you go, seven day's worth of blog, in five minutes flat. Ta-daaaaa!

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far (added later): Peeling Wallpaper
"Simple pleasures. One of the baristas at my local Starbucks calls me "hon." She is probably fifteen years younger than me. "Hon" is a word of minimal endearment patented by aging waitresses in diners serving coffee from grimy carafes to truck drivers and high school kids too stoned to go home and face their parents. "Can I take your drink order, hon?" the barista asks me. I want to respond, "I'll have the usual, Flo. A cuppa Joe and a generous helping of your sweet smile." But she wouldn't get it. She's too young and she's nothing like the TV character Flo. She would never admonish me by saying "eat my grits." All I would get is a blank stare and my $3 latte and the satisfaction that I remember some really weird shit from my TV watching youth."

Fuck, I've Bloody Gorn and Done It Now

Topic: LondonLifer


I have to take my laptop to be fixed tomorrow, and I'm not sure when I'm getting it back. I've tried blogging from my work PC, but as I justify rarely taking work home by working intensely without pause from the moment I get there till the moment I leave (early!), experience tells me I can whack out around 200 very ill considered words per two days, if I'm lucky. I don't know when the PC will be fixed (if they find out how many US tv shows I've been downloading imagining, possibly never), so for the next week or two, this is auf wiederschreiben from me. And a brazenly inscrutable stare from them.
That should see off the rest of the readers (what? You haven't noticed the campaign to be offensive? Started way back).

If your life is a gaping void of pfft without me, then have a dekkers at some of the ten Blo'tes of the previous fortnight, or the remarkable stuff on here or over there on the blogroll. They're all strong, opinonated ranters.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Gia
"Cunt really, honestly, is my favourite word. I?ve been trying to use it at least once daily ? more often in polite company ? since I was introduced to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore?s album Come Again as a teenager in the late 80s. I had no feminist reasoning behind it then, I simply loved the word. I loved the reaction it got from people. I loved the fact that this word, those four letters strung together, those four letters that when spoken created that harsh and nasty sound, could make men and women, young and old absolutely disgusted. A word! Wow! It was the moment I realised the incredible power of words."

PS You want to guest blog? (That's me actually begging you, if you didn't realise)
E-mail me your post, (remember to include your URL so you get publicity!) and I'll whack it up here. Suggested topics - spiders, summer, magpies in puddles, driving like a lunatic, creases in your shirt, fat porky bellies, Watford, flip flops, penguins, pre-menstrual shopping choices, the shockingagic thinnifying mirrors in Oasis, body image, Derbyshire, buddhists, pikeys or music. That's all the posts I was going to write.

PPS How much do you bet they won't fix my Letter A problem?

Outdoors

Topic: Casino Avenue

It's been a whopping temperature high of Muggy here today, doing a nice sideline in Stuffy and Humid.

No air con where I work, are you kidding me? If you've seen either my work blog or my moblog, then you've seen the third world state of my office kitchen area; we're not even allowed to purchase fans, and offices generally contain thirty souls, plus hardware. In a darkened, airless room I had to lean over the back of a fearsomely heated monitor to give a presentation today - and then they complained about the handwriting on my discussion notes!
Fuckers were lucky they didn't get a bleared, lumbering monitor impacted in the side of a sweaty red cheek.

Indoors, the heat reached its crest of still, damp and inert; I existed, conserving effort beyond the attempt to stand in poses where the least amount of grubby dark fabric touches overheated skin.
Outside there were irregular drafts of feebly thermal air. The pollution hangs or the pollen drifts, and everybody's eyes are red raw or streaming pain. I've never seen so much pollution allergies - the shelves in the blessedly cool and white chemists are bare of anti histamine products, and most people in the city are on two or three times their RDA.
Lads in South East London with only minorly grey and flaccid pot bellies feel disencumbered, and bare them above garish sweat pants rolled to the knee, chain puffing on a dusty fag as they amble through exhaust fumes. Lacklustre leaden flesh constrasts against the gold of the neck chains, and the faded blue tattoos of a body that works outdoors. Nobody gives the slightest fuck if you think they look like a chav, mate.

The fat lady with the five children on the corner of the estate had hefted out a fleshy armchair to sit in comfort on the baking concrete step and watch the kids water battles. The chair is overpadded, corpulent, new, wrapped in industrial plastic. The thought of that film sticking and tearing away from blotchy swollen legs left me hotter than anything.
I ducked into a designer boutique, desperate to feign indecisive pauses in front of their tall fans. Pre-menstrual purchases glower. Neon pink striped satin jacket, bum-skinning italian jeans I have to peel up over my clammy swollen thighs. In the cool dressing room mirror, inflamed ruby eyes bleared back at me.

I need salt to cope with this. My dank, cool basement flat with a freezer full of iced fizzes had never looked so filthily welcoming. I'm sat burning saline into my tongue, blogging my way through vinegar crisps, caviar (an affectation I can't crack), chocolate chip and Marmite cookies. Tempted to lick the rock salt crystals in the salt grinder.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Sashinka
"So I've got this friend, right, and she's going out with some guy, and she really likes him, it's been a couple of months, and then she calls me up in a real state: he forgot to mention he's still living with his girlfriend. What should she do? (Of course, that should be "what should she do, girlfriend?") Obvious to me: no-one wants to be second choice, it's bad for your self-esteem, blah blah blah, these kinda people never change. She loves him. I can't help wondering how much he loves her. I keep schtum."

The Last Chance

Topic: Eurotrash

Be warned: this post will progress from honour, to shame, to the unspeakable. I never promised you tasteful.

This article, 'Honouring the Brave', memorialises the final celebration of fourteen different nations' effort to defeat Hitler in the D-Day landings.

THEY came together for one last walk with old comrades and the ghosts of their brothers who stayed forever young.

They're smaller now these survivors of the Longest Day. Frail, stooped, white-haired and wide-girthed are the great liberators today. They hobble more than march, deep breaths puff out their cheeks and many need a stick, an arm or a chair to fight the ravages of time.

But they still have razor-sharp creases in the trousers and shoes they can see their lined faces in. Their barrel chests still fill with pride at the medals they bear. Medals which set them apart from us lesser men who will never be tested the same. They still attempt a ram-rod back, the chins still jut. They may be slower of foot than they were when they raced from their boats 60 years ago into ferocious German fire but there is still the same determined steel in their stride.

Age cannot wither these legendary veterans of Operation Overlord.

And as the survivors, now in their 80s and 90s, defied the heat of the French sun to officially walk together for the last time in front of the sands of Arromanches, they still looked like the callow young men who landed here to free the world from an awful tyranny.
Read More

It was the first time the German chancellor was invited to the D-Day Landing ceremony, the men who survived are edging eighty now, and there will be no more large scale official ceremony in their honour in their, or our lifetimes.

I post the link not only to pay respect to the men who lost their friends, their family, their health and occasionally their peace of mind in the conflict. I post it also to point out to American readers the scale of heavily loaded references to Bush 'arriving late' - an obvious attack on American involvement in WW2.
[Context: Some time ago, I found myself on Anne's and Cyn's comments, having to explain the extent of anti-Americanism in Europe that stems not from Iraq, but is simply ever present and taken for granted at all levels. I felt real shock at the discovery that Americans weren't aware of this.
I mention this antipathy not to condone it, or to propagate it further - god knows, jingoism is execrable in any form - but because it dawned on me that American bloggers simply did not know about it, and were shocked when detected. Their shock, in turn shocked me.]
This sort of denigration is culturally unremarkable - so much so as to go unnoticed everyday in Europe, and nobody here has been 'invaded'. Essentially, any imperial power creates enemies - but it seems important to me that America lose it's feigned innocence about how the rest of the world perceives them. Nobody's happy with you guys. They never will be. You can't change that. Get over the shock.

Secondly, tomorrow in the UK is the first and last chance to see Venus cross the face of the Sun.
Nobody alive and in England this century will have had or will have again this opportunity. (The last occurrence ws 1882.)
At around half six tomorrow morning (earlier in the north, later in the south, according to the local rag), if you're outside, and you've not lost the art of making pinhole cameras, you can witness another ritual which won't be seen again in this generation. Try to see it with the naked eye, an' your eyes will be stuffed.

Edit: it's ok, I took the unspeakable references to poo out.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Bandhag
"What if, contrary to the popular saying, you can take it with you?
How gutted would you be to get to the Other Side and find that even there you were priced out of the property market and that it was only the pious fuckers who'd sunk all their disposable income into ISAs and bonds instead of pissing it up the wall on booze, drugs and thousands of impulse-purchases that could afford the biggest, fluffiest, whitest clouds and the fanciest gold harps, while you had to share a flimsy Cirrus with your mates and fight over who used up the last of the manna?
Aetheism - you know it makes sense."

Slumped

Now Playing: Intermittent birdsong,
after echoes of planes overhead,
scratching sounds of squirrels,
and the miniature heaves of
Topic: Empty Fridge Light

It's been a really gorgeous weekend, and I've spent it slumped in bed, slumped in the bath, or eating down my kitchen (ie, running out of food, so eating the dregs). I think a week of going out and partying was too severe a shock to my system - I rejected two invites last night, so I could lounge in my dirty flat in my underwear, eating marmite and cous cous.

Last day of my holidays. Still got a runny nose. So it goes.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Stefangeens
"Perhaps I should just start a new genre where I do not actually write a blog but just describe imagined blog entries that I have not written. Noncommittal writing, I would call it, and I would engage in it in the more transient phases of my life, when nothing is really certain or cherished notions are in a state of flux, when writing down thoughts would give them more permanence than they deserve, like putting shacks up on the World Heritage List. And there is something wonderfully Calvinoesque or Borgesian to it all. Maybe I should just post reviews of my imagined rants, pronounce them the work of genius, but report back inexpertly and confused, and depend instead on the imagination of readers to construct something of proper greatness out of them."

How to do a date, Vanessa style:

Topic: Empty Fridge Light


Make sure you're hungover and knackered, from spending the last few days shitfaced.

Say so, it's bound to pep up the conversation. In fact, make it your opening line.

On the way to the date, wreck your car in the middle of a four lane pile up on the North Circular.

Spend a few hours looking winsomely pathetic at the side of a virtual motorway, for the delight of eight million blokes in white vans, it'll make you smell delightful.

Don't take anything for your cold or for your hayfever, so then the stink of the traffic can work its way through your allergy list and fight to come out on top.

When your eyes start streaming tears, make sure you don't have time to find a toilet to repair the make up streaming with it.

Snot drooling unbidden out of your nose is so a good look. Don't pack a hanky.

Greet your date with a look of alarm and the words "oh shit". You'll make an instant impression.

Wearing size fourteen flip flops stolen from Havaianas' Brazilian builder is so a good look. No, you don't need to get rid of that dead skin. Make a feature of it by spreading your pinkies up across the railings of the theatre, as if you're a chav at the movies.

You can't do better on a first date than pick the most pretentious show you've ever heard of, then sit there quacking affectedly about Dario Fo, William Burroughs, expressionism. Everybody loves a big head.

Belch loudly during the sad bits.

Remember to say at the interval how much you like Elton John, for that low brow touch.

Show her all your pictures of France. No, a hundred and thirty isn't too many. Don't worry that they're mostly all close ups of Pernod.

After, act masterful and sweep her off in a taxi to a Hoxton niterie where the mullets come thick and fast, and the DJ pratting about makes it too hard to hear what she's saying.

That way she won't notice so much when you go on and on about Big Brother. (Do remember to say 'Oh, no, I don't watch the programme'.)

It's okay if you drop a really stinky fart in the pub, then claim it by dashing out for a protracted toilet break. Sure, she'll think it was that gay guy next to you.

Then take her outside to explain the freemason symbols on the local church and tell her about that summer you spent taking photos of remnants of Jewish communities in the East End. Ward off the dangers of sounding interesting by pointing out that you did in fact forget to take a camera.

Get lost on the way to the tube, like a true local.

When asking directions, your mastery of East End geography will be complete if every time you say 'what up there?', you shoot your pointy arm out into a passersby's eye.

Doing it repeatedly to see if you might be cursed is perhaps not your best move, although you may have in fact been vindicated when your finger connected with an eyeball every single time.

If she invites you back, say 'nahhhh', and proceed to spout on about your million cats. Nothing's sexier.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Reckless Writer

"I don't want to go into the touchy, weight issue territory but I just want to confirm my hypothesis about human behavior. I really wonder why I find fat men excruciatingly adorable but can't say the same thing about fat women? Fat men compensate for their chubbiness by being sweet and humorous. Fat women on the other hand compensate for the extra lipid by throwing their weight around by being arrogant bitches."

Ugh

Topic: Vic Jameson

Ugh. I feel like poo. Reformed biscuit based poo. Yesterday I took the ferry to France. It costs six pounds, cheaper than a London travelcard, but you need to get up at five in the morning to get there, so by eleven, you feel like you've done an entire day on a floating council estate already, and end up drinking. On an empty stomach.

I took humongous hordes of pictures, but by the journey home again, was drunk enough to be forcing people to prance about the train in my underwear, apparently pinching people on the arse, and losing at finger wrestling.
I fell asleep on the last train home, found myself lost in Penge (where does everyone disappear to so fast when they disembark from the last train? It's like cockroaches scuttling for cover - you never see where they go), being kerb crawled by a helpful turkish guy who was most concerned for my welfare, and walking for an indeterminate length of time to find a mini-cab firm. Perhaps that sense of safety and security was what possessed me to sleep with all the windows and curtains open?
Today, I possess, as ever, a face only the cat could love, a stinking cold, a camera full of close ups of French Fairy Figurines and blue rum babas, and my flat looks like there's been an explosion.
Yep, tonight, I have a date. Good timing.
The sharking technique of waiting till I'm drunk then asking out anyone within fifty feet radius proves scattergun but effective.
I got tickets for The Black Rider. So although my prospective datee has gone awful quiet when faced with my incredible taste in venue selection, at least there's a sizeable chance of pensioner nudity from Marianne Faithfull.
Ugh.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Casino Avenue
""Ah, this is the one we've been waiting for," said one of the little gang of bus fans outside. It's like a smaller, unrevamped version of the Routemaster, all wooden floors and springy seats. We set off up the Bow Road, a couple of mums-and-kids got on, past the church (as Steve Norris' campaign bus passed us) and up the Blackwall Tunnel approach road for a short distance as usual. Left at Old Ford, straight on... "Wrong way!" Oops. These all being run by enthusiasts, and the 8 being a tricky route, something had to go wrong... a quick bit of reversing, and back on course. Going on a bus going backwards seemed to make the kids' day."

BBheebeegeebee

Now Playing: BB live feeds (SHUT UP Michelle)

Topic: Yidaho

Famous blogger Mike suggested an obsessively BB influenced post:

I've been getting into the unfortunate habit of leaving a full screen Big Brother web feed on, with the volume down low as I sleep, or if I leave the house. Till I realised I've already pissed all my neighbours off by shouting half naked in the car park at stupid times of the morning on a weekday.

It has a weird effect - you start to get irritated by the housemates as if you actually have to share bed space with them, and it makes the Channel 4 show bizarrely distorted.

Given how often they mute the feeds to replace anything tasty they want saved for the TV show, you become convinced your house is haunted by birdsong at times.

Last night, I was drifting off to the weird accompaniment of

• Cameras zooming into extreme, pore opening close up of Daniel's nostril as he stares into space.
• Ahmed's scary dark open eyes on the night vision camera as he lies in his bed 'asleep'.
• Stuart rubbing the fake tan into his entire upper body in the den at 1am, his eyes closed, heavy sighs, and rather too much attention paid to the nip area (I counted twelve nip applications before I felt too pervy to keep watching).
• Another hour of Daniel sipping tea in the cold night garden, alone with his thoughts, while in the background, Kitten's animated indoor discussions (IQ level: "Brighton's brilliant, innit?") went completely ignored.

If you want to watch the uncensored web feeds, you need to sign up here - it costs about #4.20 a month by the time they charge you.
If you want to watch without all the assorted onscreen crap of realplayer, then Craig Pickles' BBviewer has been a nice simple bit of design for a few years now. You still need realplayer installed for it to work, but it's a much simpler interface, no adverts, and should they offer more than one camera stream, you can watch different feeds simultaneously.
If you're into betting on the show (not with money, but you can win a T shirt...), then Fantasy Big Brother is about to start - email Eddie before June 3rd to take part.
If you want to go to a BB eviction night, sign up here.
Alternatively, perhaps you just want to peruse some computer generated diagrams that reveal nominating patterns - and therefore spot which factions are forming before anyone else at the watercooler? Check out Igblan.
Finally, if you want to laugh at the contestants, the spectacular movie poster spoofs done by blogging's very own Yidaho have been meming the tabs for years now.

Yesterday, Ahmed was pissing me off - he let Jason and Victor wind him up, then toddled around the house doing their bidding, winding up Marco. Stuart was pissing me off - just for his naivety, by day's end - but for his manipulativeness earlier, in winding up Kitten and setting her off.

Kitten seems universally hated on lesbian messageboards - who needs a psycho lunatic like that representing their demographic onscreen? - but also appreciated - we need the mad ones to stay in, if we don't want some dull wanker like Cameron to win again. I read somewhere last year the cities with the highest density of gay inhabitants:

The highest gay populations in the UK are: 1 Brighton and Hove; 2 London; 3 Manchester; 4 Blackpool; 5 Bournemouth; 6 Cambridge; 7 Nottingham; 8 Bristol; 9 Oxford; 10 Lewes, East Sussex. Source

Add the BB house to that list.

My favourite stupid quotes so far (I've resisted the temptation to quote Emma, as she's growing on me):
Michelle Am a thrill seeker me
Victor Like what?
Michelle Whatever, anything
Victor What like Bunjee jumps?
Michelle Noah, ah doant like heights.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Madame Finistere
"Sometimes I completely forget the reason why I'm not calling you when I feel like it, or sending you a birthday present, or writing you a pretentious e-mail trying to display my so-called literary capacities and trying to make you laugh. I forget why I'm neither responding to nor deleting your cellphone messages.
The reason is love.
I try to tell myself that as long as I do not forget this, you will be ok."

Screaming Searches

Topic: Belle de Jour


Latest Searchengine Queries

30 May, Sun, 02:00:06 little twat
30 May, Sun, 08:18:19 time seeping vanilla bean in liquid
30 May, Sun, 09:11:40 Sarsparilla
30 May, Sun, 12:24:29 vanessa's blog
30 May, Sun, 15:24:09 bst starbucks beverage
30 May, Sun, 17:32:41 helen mirren's birthdate
30 May, Sun, 17:40:49 costa coffee mushroom bethnal
30 May, Sun, 18:02:06 sarsparilla
30 May, Sun, 18:47:52 alcoholic bevarage cat piss
31 May, Mon, 00:46:25 rod stewart + epping green
31 May, Mon, 01:51:14 Ophelia dahl
31 May, Mon, 02:40:40 "Ancient Taxi" serial
31 May, Mon, 03:44:24 "no voice"+"totally gone"
31 May, Mon, 12:05:30 lidl in london,catford
31 May, Mon, 17:13:02 helen mirren's big tits
31 May, Mon, 18:54:48 "scent of a woman" +essays +ethics
01 Jun, Tue, 04:05:22 "ophelia dahl"
01 Jun, Tue, 07:43:23 enema sex pictures
01 Jun, Tue, 11:48:12 I want to be vanessa's boyfriend
01 Jun, Tue, 12:11:14 vanilla
01 Jun, Tue, 16:48:40 evil dead a fistful of broomstick walk through

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Lost in Hype
"Obviously she'd been there before. Obviously she was smarter than me.
Then in the space of a second the following happened:
1. I realised where I recognised the girl from.
2. I remembered her face from her book.
3. I remembered her photo in City Life.
4. I remembered her voice from a radio interview.
5. I remembered her smile from a TV interview.
6. I knew that the girl was Gwendoline Riley.
7. I remembered that I actually had her first book, 'Cold Water', in my Technics bag.
8. I considered talking to her.
9. I remembered another interview with her where the journalist called her a 'sourpuss'
10. I considered asking her for help with the terrifying Easy-Internet ticket machine from hell.
11. I considered some sort of lame 'oh hello aren't you Gwendoline Riley?' sort of greeting.
And then, finally, 12. I completely bottled it, imagining that I would probably sound like some sort of deranged stalker, incapable of working the ticket machine, and Gwendoline would quote a line from a Russian classic at me and I would be forced to retreat to the Disney store and find solace with a life-sized Tigger."

Verboten

Topic: Looby

Do Not:
Go to Bellini anymore, it's gotten crap, and the service is awful. Clue to waiters: if you 'lose track' of where the customer is sitting, you're not really paying attention, are you?
Do Not:
Get pissed and lie down in the rain in Soho Square. Your soaking wet jeans aren't going to be funny five hours from now, when you're still trying to get home.
Do Not:
Run into the car park by your house at 4am in your t-shirt and knickers screaming directions into a mobile phone that isn't yours. Not only is it less pretty than your addled drunken mind imagines, but your neighbours hate you now.
Do Not:
Pretend that Urban Outfitters used to be on the King's Road, only now they only just moved it to High St Ken, nobody will believe you at all, and you just look stupid when you cling to the story that you fondly imagine makes your 'U' grade in Geography less apparent.
Do Not:
Buy those jeans you can't afford in FCUK just because they're the first pair of trews in that shop that ever fit you. If you can't afford the jeans, then you certainly can't afford the pink strappy sandals that you will feel could only ever go with them. And five pairs of blue jeans is enough, if all you're going to do is lie down pissed in the rain in Soho Square, surely.
Do Not:
Walk in the countryside on non-maintained woodland without real paths looking for wild deer if you haven't bothered wearing socks today. You're not immune to nettle stings just because you're no longer six, you know, it's not like school bullies or rhubarb crumble.
Do Not:
Get pissed and shout at your ex in public. Just don't, even if it sounds like a really really satisfying idea right now, by 8pm tonight you'll regret it already. Ditto making up lies about her. No joy, vengeance-boy.
Do Not:
Fuck up the next date. You done good not to go home with her already. Don't piss it away.
Do Not:
Go on the internetweb at 6am when you're out of your tree. You're only going to be rude to people and regret it the next morning when you find all the bread is mouldy and there's no solace in the world.
Do Not:
Forget that if it looked ugly in the changing room mirror, it doesn't look any less ugly after six vodkas in Revolution, no matter how foxy you suddenly feel.
Do Not:
Go to Revolution again. Gary Crowley isn't really the DJ.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Die Puny Humans
"A hyperlinked Sparkline would make webpages like superdense, fractal, layered, zoomable resources, and make the top-level of each topic look vital and organic like a terrarium of squirming data.
The next step would be to see Sparklines in the street, not just delivering data, but harvesting it - being it.
Crawling up lamposts as electricity consumption spikes during the ad-break of Coronation Street. Or infesting the wounds of a pigeon flattened by a delivery truck, updating the national epidemiological database and the air pollution record for that borough based upon trace metal readings in the carcass..."

txt msg frm ntrnt wrdo

Topic: LondonLifer


In the long and thumb numbing process of transferring old numbers to a new phone, it occurs to me that I should validate someof them by testing them. First ginger attempt at this procedure is Cheese, an ex girlfriend.

Message sent by user: Vanessa
Recipient: Sarah C M +44795!962*9!
Sent: 11:25:42 30.05.2004
Text: This still your mobile number, sarah? Love Vanessa

Sender: Sarah C M +44795!962*9!
Recipient: Vanessa
Sent: 11:37:15 30.05.2004
Text: who the fuk r u -- wat u want s this a jk

Message sent by user: Vanessa
Recipient: Sarah C M +44795!962*9!
Sent: 11:49:05 30.05.2004
Text: Erm, just checking this is still your number, cos I haven't seen you in 5 years. Vxx.

Sender: Sarah C M +44795!962*9!
Recipient: Vanessa
Received: 19:21:17 30.05.2004
Sent: Who in fucks name r u txt bk

Sender: Sarah C M +44795!962*9!
Recipient: Vanessa
Received: 08:26:39 31.05.2004
Sent: Wat u V txt bk

What do you reckon? You think my ex, a schoolteacher, a Literature graduate, is fucking with my mind by spelling like a moron?
You think this is a complete stranger, and the start of a long and beautiful relationship?
I so want to txt bk reply.

Best Blo'te of the Day So Far: Bastitch
"I don't give a fuck whether or not you give a fuck. You know why? I don't need to you validate my existence. I can only hope that the feeling is mutual. But honestly, I don't give a fuck. Fuck a blog."

< # 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

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."