pedants are revolting
oh dear. i just became irrationally furious because someone, in their travel blog, wrote we traveled throughout florida, went to every town and city. we skipped miami. and i wanted to shake the poor woman and yell unless they moved miami (and with dubya in charge, anything is possible) you didn't visit every city, then, did you?
i am ridiculous. i should vanish in a puff of smoke up my own arse. i can live with growling at ten items or less signs, but this? this is something up with which i will not put.
11/30/2002 10:05:07 AM #
can't sleep, won't sleep
it's the middle of the night. which would be a damn good time to go to sleep. he is snuffling gently beneath the duvet. she is wide-eyed in the darkness, with leonard cohen singing it's four in the morning... in her head, mockingly.
she wonders whether, if she ignores the fact that she is awake and thinks about something else, some mundane thing, inventing a new thing for dinner perhaps, rather than the thoughts that sneak around the corners, you have no job, you have no talent, you have no purpose, if she could concentrate but not too pointedly on such a thing, she might go back to sleep.
spinach and chickpeas (a little cumin, much ground coriander seed and the teensiest bit of chilli) are not soporific. soporific is a word she learned from peter rabbit. this brings her to wally the wordworm, a book about a book worm who eats the dictionary. a book that was responsible for her first reading the dictionary, and also her first deliberate eating of paper.
if she reads a book, she will wake up properly now, and not go back to sleep at all. what she needs is something not quite interesting enough to keep her awake.
11/30/2002 04:09:31 AM #
all that glitters
proof that there really is gold at the end of the rainbow.
11/29/2002 10:14:58 AM #
what i learned from nanowrimo
aside from i did it! i did it! i did it! i did it! i did it! which may well be the important part of it.
- stop saying you are not a morning person. 500 words written before 10am = good day. 0 words written by noon = bad day.
- plan what you're going to write before hand. there is nothing worse than sitting down to write and realising you ran out of plot yesterday.
- don't plan what you're going to write. the best bits of plot are spontaneously generated on the spur of the moment.
- take regular breaks. it's better to properly blog-surf for ten minutes every hour than to sneakily switch between windows every other sentence.
- when you are stuck, open the golden bough at random. incorporate something you see there into your story. this always works.
and... i don't want to go and get another fucking job. i want to do this. forever. 
11/27/2002 02:56:10 PM #
scarily difficult
can you tell the difference between fringe and minge?
11/22/2002 05:12:32 PM #
am i shocked yet?
last night, the first ever autopsy live on british television was shown on channel four, courtesy of professor gunther von hagens, a man who is determined to take anatomy out of the closed halls of the medical establishment, and into the public arena.
b. and i had tried hard to get tickets for the live show, and failed dismally, so i was delighted to hear that it was to be televised, even if the woman announcing the fact on radio four (tagline 'intelligent talk', not 'sensationalist bullshit') did sound as though she was about to puke. tip for programme controllers in future: get presenters who are able to deal with the material they are asked to present.
krishnan guru-murthy did a rather better job, though it is unfortunate that channel four, once the shock jocks of british television, were so obviously running scared of prosecution. von hagens' introduction explained that the autopsy procedure took between one and two hours; the television programme itself was less than one hour long, and (i estimate) less than half of this was spent on actual anatomy. instead, airtime was given over to two surgeons (one liberal-ish, one most emphatically not) and a religious journalist, discussing (1) do we think we're going to be shocked? and (2) are we shocked yet?
the big complaint about von hagens' work seems to be his "showmanship". i am suspicious of all the complaints using this one same word anyway, but especially so because no one seems to be able to explain just what they mean by it. i see a man who is dissecting a human body. "now i cut the top of the skull off; the inner layer of the bone is softer, so i can tell when i have nearly cut through" seems to me to be explaining the procedure, just like everything else he says. the real hype with this comes from the television camera men, who would rather show shots of audience members with their hands over their mouths, than actually get in and look at the body.
because when we did get anatomy, it was largely from the perspective of behind von hagens' and co.'s backs; i certainly learned much more about how a surgical gown fastens up than i did about the structure of the human body. as the good professor muttered "where is the camera?" and moved, so that said camera could get a good shot of the brain in situ, the camera moved with him, resolutely behind his back. i can only assume that either the cameraman was also not equal to his task, or that his bosses had decided that the less medical footage they showed, the lower their chances of legal action.
as a milestone of television history, then, this was vaguely significant, probably less so than kenneth tynan saying fuck. i am sad to say, that it failed on both educational and entertainment grounds. when the germans and the one brave british doctor throwing his career to the wind were allowed to comment, on the structure of the body, on the procedures they were performing and how these related to common autopsy practise, i was rivited. who knew that diseased lungs actually stick to the ribcage? or how a heart under stress will grow itself larger, and the implications of this for the rest of the body? not i. but there was just not enough of this.
who are the managers of the media, to tell me that i cannot choose to watch a dissection? the medical establishment to tell me that i, untrained, should not watch an autopsy because i will "smell the vomit and the faeces"? or the government, to say that a man's donation of his own body to von hagens' institute is irrelevent? that same government, i might add, is quite happy to use pictures of internal organs if for its own purposes. the question of the consent of the autopseen is an interesting one, of course: does one continue to own one's body after death? irrelevent here, as both the man and his next of kin had fully consented to the procedure. a lot of emotional stuff was talked about 'respect for the body' too, without anyone quite explaining what this means. dead bodies rot; we might as well talk about respect for yesterday's milk.
humans are physical beings. we piss and shit and sweat, we fuck and give birth and breast-feed and bleed. and then we die. what the hell is shocking about that?
11/21/2002 08:38:49 AM #
fun with numbers
34,009 is 68% of 50,000. 15,991 to go. if i write 1 more word today, expand a didn't or a hadn't (because shouldn't is too close to home and it's too near the bone), i'll have then to write 1,599 words on each of the remaining ten days. except that i'm terrified the server will crash and i won't be able to confirm my word count so i want to finish a day early. this, if i write 7 more words today, will leave me with 1,776 to complete on each of nine days, allowing a full twenty four hours for me to keep trying.
the added bonus is that the server, on which the word-counting software lives, is in san francisco. i am in london, eight glorious hours ahead. i am thinking that that may just give me eight hours cheating time. on a good day, i can type 70 words a minute. that would be 4,200 words per hour. 33,600 words in eight hours.
fabulous. i can stop now then...
(if you need an explanation, where've you been for the last month? it's here.)
11/20/2002 05:13:03 PM #
don't click here
let's say you had this silly idea that during the month of november you would write a 50,000 word novel. let's say you were just about on target but really needed to get your arse into gear. let's say also you had a photography project going and about 100 photographs that ought to be scanned. not to mention, no food in the fridge and a ton of housework to be done. in that case, you would definitely not want to start reading slytherin rising. oh my goodness, no.
11/17/2002 01:34:44 PM #
hroom
one of the things i've been most dreading about the two towers is treebeard. i know so very well what he looks like, anything anybody else did would surely be wrong. no, they got it exactly right. (link via graham.)
11/15/2002 11:03:08 AM #
nano, schmano
okay, so i have written precisely no words in the last two days. i have to write 5,392 words today to catch up with my target... what to do, what to do...? ah yes. i have three major sex scenes to write; should be able to do them in a day. mmm... i'll see you later...
11/15/2002 10:10:04 AM #
nano, php, grr
i started work on a little php script to take my nanowrimo word count from their server and post it up here. for some reason, their server doesn't seem to want to let me do this. or possibly i am just more stupid than i thought. if anyone's managed to do it, would they please let me know it's possible so i can try some more? and if anyone wants my rather lovely word count, it can be found here.
update: i am currently third in london. woo-hoo!
11/12/2002 02:06:23 PM #
spies like me
according to the bbc, i could be a spy. they forgot to ask if i went to cambridge.
11/11/2002 10:58:57 PM #
i am joining the dark side
first severus snape, now lucius malfoy.
other things to look out for. daniel radcliffe's huge spot disguised as a basilisk-wound. uncle vernon referring to hedwig as "a ruddy pigeon". one of the moving photographs of gilderoy lockhart, being, i am almost certain, a still from henry v.
11/9/2002 12:46:34 AM #
online quizzes know me better than i know myself
which founding father are you?
11/8/2002 09:37:23 AM #
not recommended
it was, i thought, a simple enough question. which number bus is it that goes from east finchley to highgate, because if it's the 263, i need to go this way out of my front door, but if it's the 143, i need to go that way. half an hour on the transport for london website, and i'm going to walk down the road and look at the bus stop. when i type "high road, n2", i certainly don't mean "balham high street, sw12". nor do i want my 15 minute bus journey turned into a cross-london tube tour.
11/7/2002 11:14:45 AM #
the end of the world as we know it...
i just found exit mundi's collection of apocalyptic scenarios through a link on the wrimo boards. i vote for mass insanity, or for zoroastrianism (anything that would simultaneously piss off the christians and the muslims is good in my book).
11/5/2002 09:25:43 AM #
what do you mean, it's only 10%?
do i get a prize for making 5000?
11/4/2002 07:06:08 PM #
anyone? anyone? bueller?
with an eye on the weather in london, does anyone fancy a trip to highgate cemetery this week? any day is good for me...!
11/4/2002 10:40:35 AM #
cemetery update
amongst all that, i forgot to mention a bunch of new cemeteries we visited at the weekend.
charlton is small and has a lovely country churchyard feel, which considering it is surrounded on two sides by fairly busy roads, is surprising. two tombs to look out for: a medieval-style effigy of a young girl, and the huge white ediface of a memorial to the owner of the local greyhound track, complete with sleeping dogs. the chapels are an elongated gothic style (i'm sure there is a more architecturally correct term) which is unusual, but very attractive.
greenwich is perched on the edge of a hillside in an absolutely classic situation. sadly, it was founded too late to have many interesting memorials; a few of the local great and good cluster under lumpy marble between the chapels, but mostly what i thought here was that it needed more trees, and to stop raining.
wealdstone and harrow, the first of sunday's, were not terribly exciting in terms of monuments, but peaceful and quiet and green, and even in november, full of butterflies. i'd visit places like this even if i didn't have a camera.
pinner is an archetypal twentieth century municipal cemetery: acre upon acre of knee-high marble slabs, in neat rows ready for the council motor mower. breaks your heart when it's on a hillside site that the victorians would have -- ah -- died for.
eastcote lane is described in the book as "small, modest and dull". well... yes, yes and maybe. not the most exciting cemetery i've ever been in, no, but if we're going to say that cemeteries in general are worth preserving on any terms, then this is the sort of place we're going to have to look after. i managed a whole roll of film, so it can't have been that dull.
hanwell was fantastic. i thought we'd run out of affluent mid-victorian cemeteries and were pretty much left with making the best of the boring stuff, but i was wrong. there was a lot here that really reminded me of brompton -- strangely box-like mausolea and more angels that i know what to do with -- but plenty of more unusual detail too. and best of all, someone else taking photos! (hello if you're the black guy taking close ups of the bronze plaque by the chapel -- i'm the one with red hair and glasses).
just across the road was kensington, another mid-victorian production, perhaps not quite so affluent in its monuments but denser in its planting, so that the whole thing felt very much like a country churchyard. not-to-be-missed include a crazy gang of angels all around the chapel, and a huge shell atop the grave of a conchologist over to the south-west corner.
and finally, to acton, which will have to be revisited because just as we arrived, the rain started pouring down again. i think i have a rather good shot of a raindrop falling off an angel's nose, taken from beneath a very dark tree, but that's the lot.
11/4/2002 08:34:31 AM #
what the hell is going on around here?
(in case anyone was wondering. apologies that it will involve some explanation of english employment law.)
a couple of months ago, the project that i was running at work came to an end. no fault of mine or anyone else's there, shit happens. in this situation, an english employer must either offer the employee a "suitable alternative", or provide redundancy. the latter can involve quite a substantial payment, depending on how long the employee has worked for them (find out more).
the world doesn't need to know the ins and outs of why i hated the new position. take my word for it. (unless you happen to work for the same company i used to, in which case none of you were very surprised, were you?) i asked the directors, in a very emotional scene (like halle berry after the oscars, i'm not terribly proud of that) on thursday if they would make me redundant from my old position rather than force me to accept the new one. incredibly, on friday morning, they agreed.
so, to answer anonymous' question below, i'm not immediately worried about making $, or even £. i have a little money in the bank. i had two job offers before i'd even been unemployed for 24 hours. i'm intending to chill and destress for a while, take a couple of weeks off, maybe get a job in a shop or a bar over xmas, something which will remind me that working can be fun and not just a daily grind.
more importantly than the money, i feel so happy, so free, as though my life once more is filled with potential. if anyone else is thinking about it, let me tell you that nothing makes the people you've worked with be nice about you so much as leaving them, nothing makes you realise how much people value you as their losing you. when the man says "you know the door's always open" to you as he's handing you the cheque, that's got to feel good.
so for now, i'm hanging out, visiting cemeteries, getting drunk. this week i'm going to clean this flat like it's never been cleaned before, go back to highgate, skin this site, keep on writing... the world is my lobster.
11/3/2002 09:09:44 AM #
happy
i am writing this from the desk that is soon not to be my desk, waiting for the accountant to arrive to write my lay-off cheque. the man has finally agreed that my utterly, utterly loathing the new position is reason enough that i should, instead, be laid off from the old one. and i am more happy than words can possibly express.
and rather conveniently, i can now do
(check my word count.)
11/1/2002 09:12:07 AM #
