LOL! I'm actually laughing, thank God. And what did it? An old friend of mine that I occasionally get in touch with. He's in his mid-thirties, and he's finally so desperate to find a boyfriend that he's just found a counsellor. At £50 for fifty minutes. And this counsellor sounds to be of the NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) school, because on the first session she emphasised how she would focus on his coping mechanisms. No, she's not even going to go anywhere near the root of the problem, which is the fairly common one you find in gay circles - he had a very negligent and in fact a wife-abusing father. Oh man, I am so gunning for the entire counselling and psychotherapy professions. £50 an hour to talk about how he might find love. That's more than many people in London earn in a day. Oh it might seem cheap if you've already moved on to an ecstasy or cocaine habit, but it really pisses me off that the counselling profession is effectively in collusion with "the gay scene". Let them squander their youth on drink, sex, substances, and superficial relationships. When they realise that age is descending upon them, they'll need counselling, and so long as they have £50 an hour to pay out, they'll be ok.
Fuck London. Love is not a marketable commodity here, so they ignore it. And even when you've learned to love yourself, someone will try to take that away from you and make you think there's something wrong with you.
Ok, so here you are on a blog called Love and the City. Do you know what Love is? Can you distinguish between the kind of Love that a baby feels for its mother, and the kind of Love that a mother feels for its baby, and the kind of Love that a couple feel for each other? Do you know that Love is not just about a feeling, but about being able to care for somebody in a physical and pragmatic way? To care for their survival, and to care for their future?
I'm not even going to go into the answers here. I drafted them up back in March when it all became deadly clear to me, as I walked home from Hospital after visiting my Dad the first time he got close to dying. I never published it on this blog. It was too close, and too powerful. And now, I myself need to focus on surviving. Because loving yourself costs a lot less money. And London and Britain today has little love to spare except for cats and dogs and horses and cars.
The Greatest Wealth is that of All the Species of Life on This Earth. Save it for Ever and Always.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Metropolitan Police Careers - Finance Officer
Metropolitan Police Careers - Finance Officer
When you're jobhunting, life is always shit, but sometimes you can be so amazed by how surprisingly shit it is.
So this job ad at the Met Police was in Metro yesterday. By the time I phoned them today, they had already stopped sending out any more application packs, because they had already taken 500 calls. Of course, the application packs are NOT available online, since this is a government job and you can expect expensive, wasteful, inefficiency. In any case, you can't help wondering how you could compete against them all, even if you had got one, and how on earth would you possibly be chosen? You might as well be auditioning to be on X-Factor.
And the government tells us unemployment is low? Where? In Morecambe Bay? I just want to live in a society where complacent people face and tell the truth. If they don't, I might be forced to join an organized religion that helps to insist that people do tell the truth. Because to me, living a lie is like being dead. And people who tacitly accept a world of lies, are murderers.
When you're jobhunting, life is always shit, but sometimes you can be so amazed by how surprisingly shit it is.
So this job ad at the Met Police was in Metro yesterday. By the time I phoned them today, they had already stopped sending out any more application packs, because they had already taken 500 calls. Of course, the application packs are NOT available online, since this is a government job and you can expect expensive, wasteful, inefficiency. In any case, you can't help wondering how you could compete against them all, even if you had got one, and how on earth would you possibly be chosen? You might as well be auditioning to be on X-Factor.
And the government tells us unemployment is low? Where? In Morecambe Bay? I just want to live in a society where complacent people face and tell the truth. If they don't, I might be forced to join an organized religion that helps to insist that people do tell the truth. Because to me, living a lie is like being dead. And people who tacitly accept a world of lies, are murderers.
Monday, December 06, 2004
Honour Killings
From today's Evening Standard:
Police today warned they fear a rise in so-called "honour" killings, particularly within London's newest immigrant communities.
The warning came as figures show an honour kiling is being committed every two months in the capital.
Police believe 12 women were murdered last year nationwide - six from London.
Detectives anticipate a huge rise in the number of victims from central and eastern Europe, especially the Bosnian, Kosovar, Turkish and Roma communities, as people from those regions settle in Britain.
Commander Andy Baker, Scotland Yard's head of homicide, said: "As more cultures come into the UK they will bring bad aspects of their culture with them. We are talking about murder in the name of so-called culture."
The typical victim is a young woman from an Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi community. But cases involving women from Arabic and eastern European backgrounds are now emerging.
Commander Baker revealed police in London were being approached by an average of four women a week who feared for their safety.
Motives for murder include having relationships outside the community. Victims have often been forced into marriage against their will, imprisioned by their families or assaulted in the home.
A series of cases have highlighted the issue, including that of Heshu Yones, 16, from Acton, murdered by her father Abdalla - a Kurdish Muslim jailed for life over the killing -- after a relationship with a Lebanes Christian.
Detectives are re-examining 81 cases they suspect may have been honour killings.
The Met and hte Crown Prosecution Service are also staging a conference at Scotland Yard today to find ways of tackling the issue.
Nazir Afzal, director of the CPS in west London, said: "We believe women are being killed to maintain social order within communities and many of these communities are in denial."
In six minutes and five seconds, I estimate that at 18 lines x 19 words/line = 342 five letter words, giving a keyboard speed of about 55 wpm.
So my typing speed hasn't fallen too badly. Here I am, with a university engineering degree, an I.Q. over 135, loads of work experience, once again falling back on my keyboard skills to look for a job. That bastard X never appreciated how hard I've had to try for almost every goddamn job I ever got. No, he just thought I was some kind of old-age pension for him. Although he is 5 years older than me. And despite being an Oxford graduate, he still walks around with that nightmare of the Nineties: victimisation culture. He thinks he is a Victim, despite the fact that he has had the benefit of every kind of government help at every level for his so-called disability. And of course, having gone into the Counselling religion, this self-centred justification of Victimisation is reinforced every week in the most touchy-feely and jargonised way.
There's my bitching for today done. Anyway, where's the Women's Liberation Movement gone to? Why don't they apply their liberating activities to the Immigrant communities in Britain, and fight some of the silently accepted abuse of women that goes on? What's more important, the protection of the women, or the protection of so-called culture?
Police today warned they fear a rise in so-called "honour" killings, particularly within London's newest immigrant communities.
The warning came as figures show an honour kiling is being committed every two months in the capital.
Police believe 12 women were murdered last year nationwide - six from London.
Detectives anticipate a huge rise in the number of victims from central and eastern Europe, especially the Bosnian, Kosovar, Turkish and Roma communities, as people from those regions settle in Britain.
Commander Andy Baker, Scotland Yard's head of homicide, said: "As more cultures come into the UK they will bring bad aspects of their culture with them. We are talking about murder in the name of so-called culture."
The typical victim is a young woman from an Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi community. But cases involving women from Arabic and eastern European backgrounds are now emerging.
Commander Baker revealed police in London were being approached by an average of four women a week who feared for their safety.
Motives for murder include having relationships outside the community. Victims have often been forced into marriage against their will, imprisioned by their families or assaulted in the home.
A series of cases have highlighted the issue, including that of Heshu Yones, 16, from Acton, murdered by her father Abdalla - a Kurdish Muslim jailed for life over the killing -- after a relationship with a Lebanes Christian.
Detectives are re-examining 81 cases they suspect may have been honour killings.
The Met and hte Crown Prosecution Service are also staging a conference at Scotland Yard today to find ways of tackling the issue.
Nazir Afzal, director of the CPS in west London, said: "We believe women are being killed to maintain social order within communities and many of these communities are in denial."
In six minutes and five seconds, I estimate that at 18 lines x 19 words/line = 342 five letter words, giving a keyboard speed of about 55 wpm.
So my typing speed hasn't fallen too badly. Here I am, with a university engineering degree, an I.Q. over 135, loads of work experience, once again falling back on my keyboard skills to look for a job. That bastard X never appreciated how hard I've had to try for almost every goddamn job I ever got. No, he just thought I was some kind of old-age pension for him. Although he is 5 years older than me. And despite being an Oxford graduate, he still walks around with that nightmare of the Nineties: victimisation culture. He thinks he is a Victim, despite the fact that he has had the benefit of every kind of government help at every level for his so-called disability. And of course, having gone into the Counselling religion, this self-centred justification of Victimisation is reinforced every week in the most touchy-feely and jargonised way.
There's my bitching for today done. Anyway, where's the Women's Liberation Movement gone to? Why don't they apply their liberating activities to the Immigrant communities in Britain, and fight some of the silently accepted abuse of women that goes on? What's more important, the protection of the women, or the protection of so-called culture?
Office Angels recruitment, secretarial jobs uk, temporary office jobs
Social stats on an office worker, by Office Angels Gem! Eg. You will meet 832 people in your working life, but only become long term friends with 5. Why didn't they tell me these things when I was 21, bastards!
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Oh, the arrogant ignorance of British youth today
Post on a random blog I just happened on
In England, kids today enjoy material wealth the origins of which they understand nothing. And there is so little visible manufacturing in Britain nowadays, that they must think it just appears out of the sky, because they are so superior that they GO TO BUSINESS SCHOOL.
In England, kids today enjoy material wealth the origins of which they understand nothing. And there is so little visible manufacturing in Britain nowadays, that they must think it just appears out of the sky, because they are so superior that they GO TO BUSINESS SCHOOL.
Grey, grey, grey, grey * Cornelius
This must be at least the fourth totally grey day in a row, and it's amazing that I haven't gone berserk. My brain is just starving for the sight of a radiant blue sky and geographical features for my eyes to settle on. TV is not good enough, photos on the computer are even more ridiculous. Gigantic cinema screens are a help, but gosh, I know at this time of the year, if I stepped off a plane into even just the winter sunlight of Southern Spain, my head would explode with the things that I'm struggling to keep alive.
Much as I hate the decorating I'm struggling with, the necessity of using a halogen worklamp is genuinely helping my SeLLIC (Seasonal Low Light Intensity Condition). I've had moments when I think I'm going down, but for this time of year, I'm actually relatively more alive than usual. But not by any means happy.
Beer is a big, big help. At the Angel on Friday night, 3 cans of Stella were enough to get me to the point where I actually took in the gaudy Christmas decorations, could have a dance, enjoy the present, and then depart into the past. What a bizarre effect that is: it is a very tame version of the maudlin state. Tame because of my usually self-limiting genetic tolerance of alcohol.
So at the end of the evening, in the company of Col and Nick, and the reckless assortment you find in an East End joint, where did my mind disappear to? In that moment when suddenly I remembered something that made me aware that I have nowt in common with anyone else in the bar?
To Toronto in 1983, at Cornelius, a bar upstairs above the Gas Works, on Yonge Street a block or two north of Wellesley. The Gas Works was a totally rocking straight bar, full of young baseball-cap-wearing long-haired blue collar workers. In this era, Yonge Street was a cruising strip of vice and iniquity, and the industrialized Great Lakes were still focussed on mind-numbing, dirty, intensive, semi-skilled-labour manufacturing. Heavy metal music was all the life that some of these people could cling to, after their weeks of soulless Metropolis-style factory drudgery. And into Toronto, to Yonge Street they would head on a Saturday night, driving their trucks with furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror, looking for trouble, alcohol, a woman or two to do, and even harder stuff like heroin.
Above this, a gay bar that was the most sexy, (without being seriously sleazy like the others), Cornelius was the dancebar destination for the early Eighties clone in Toronto. They were averaging in their 30's, with moustaches and sometimes beards, and many of them were stunningly, stunningly handsome. They were after all, gathered from not just Southern Ontario, but often visiting from Montreal, New York, and the dreary sprawling towns around the Great Lakes.
And they all could dance, just as in Andrew Holleran's book, Dancer from the Dance. And they all were genuinely celebrating the freedom they had, because behind them were conservative, restrained upbringings, and outside was a social structure that was still so homogeneously effective and nurturing, that they could AFFORD to rebel against it.
I doubt many of them are still alive, for they were the ones that were most knocked down by AIDS. Their good looks and pleasure-seeking lifestyles, their mythical Seventies belief that Doctors could cure anything with antibiotics, meant that they were the among the first to be affected. And if I had been born any earlier, and more good looking, neither would I be here today.
So give me sunshine, a blue sky, and something to look at, and memoirs are unnecessary. By the way, nothing in Toronto today remains of that pre-Aids celebratory indulgent atmosphere. If you find a social holdout anywhere, it will only be ridiculous nostalgia, like Cliff Richard.
Much as I hate the decorating I'm struggling with, the necessity of using a halogen worklamp is genuinely helping my SeLLIC (Seasonal Low Light Intensity Condition). I've had moments when I think I'm going down, but for this time of year, I'm actually relatively more alive than usual. But not by any means happy.
Beer is a big, big help. At the Angel on Friday night, 3 cans of Stella were enough to get me to the point where I actually took in the gaudy Christmas decorations, could have a dance, enjoy the present, and then depart into the past. What a bizarre effect that is: it is a very tame version of the maudlin state. Tame because of my usually self-limiting genetic tolerance of alcohol.
So at the end of the evening, in the company of Col and Nick, and the reckless assortment you find in an East End joint, where did my mind disappear to? In that moment when suddenly I remembered something that made me aware that I have nowt in common with anyone else in the bar?
To Toronto in 1983, at Cornelius, a bar upstairs above the Gas Works, on Yonge Street a block or two north of Wellesley. The Gas Works was a totally rocking straight bar, full of young baseball-cap-wearing long-haired blue collar workers. In this era, Yonge Street was a cruising strip of vice and iniquity, and the industrialized Great Lakes were still focussed on mind-numbing, dirty, intensive, semi-skilled-labour manufacturing. Heavy metal music was all the life that some of these people could cling to, after their weeks of soulless Metropolis-style factory drudgery. And into Toronto, to Yonge Street they would head on a Saturday night, driving their trucks with furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror, looking for trouble, alcohol, a woman or two to do, and even harder stuff like heroin.
Above this, a gay bar that was the most sexy, (without being seriously sleazy like the others), Cornelius was the dancebar destination for the early Eighties clone in Toronto. They were averaging in their 30's, with moustaches and sometimes beards, and many of them were stunningly, stunningly handsome. They were after all, gathered from not just Southern Ontario, but often visiting from Montreal, New York, and the dreary sprawling towns around the Great Lakes.
And they all could dance, just as in Andrew Holleran's book, Dancer from the Dance. And they all were genuinely celebrating the freedom they had, because behind them were conservative, restrained upbringings, and outside was a social structure that was still so homogeneously effective and nurturing, that they could AFFORD to rebel against it.
I doubt many of them are still alive, for they were the ones that were most knocked down by AIDS. Their good looks and pleasure-seeking lifestyles, their mythical Seventies belief that Doctors could cure anything with antibiotics, meant that they were the among the first to be affected. And if I had been born any earlier, and more good looking, neither would I be here today.
So give me sunshine, a blue sky, and something to look at, and memoirs are unnecessary. By the way, nothing in Toronto today remains of that pre-Aids celebratory indulgent atmosphere. If you find a social holdout anywhere, it will only be ridiculous nostalgia, like Cliff Richard.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Out'n about
Exhausted now! It was exciting getting about everywhere, dressed up as if I was a member of the working world. I was at Ilford, Romford, Ilford again, then the City, and Canary Wharf and Stratford and in between catching weird buses that go all over the shop - that one that wanders all over Wapping and ends at Shadwell, as well as walking down whatever street happened to catch my eye.
There were mixed signals of encouragement and discouragement. I can't say I'm any closer to having any kind of a job, but by God it was good to get out and have people to talk to, instead of just looking at the damn dead Internet websites. Even the most rebuffing, facetious and idiotic receptionist cannot be as disheartening as the faceless, soulless Internet.
And now I am so exhausted. So what caught my eye. The Skanska building in Moorgate is STILL being finished. They obviously don't have any tenants desperate to get in there, at the rate they've been going. The food fair on Stratford Station forecourt, where I bought dried sausages. The overly richbitch Thameside neighbourhood in Wapping - hard to believe it is a short walk from the wretched hulk of Watney Market and Shadwell. The boarded up look of the Tobacco Dock shopping centre - I wonder if they've shut down for lack of footfall. Romford looks just as down and out as Manor Park on weekdays, when all the jobless and middle-aged wander the streets in dejection that looks to border suicidal. Oh the London phenomenon of "if you have a job, it's because you're young, healthy and attractive, and you commute every day and don't get to see the ones that are left behind to trawl the streets in unutterable despair". I thought it just affected the ethnic boroughs like Newham and Waltham Forest, but no, it is even very, very obvious in Romford when you step off the train station and go walking up and down the high street.
Oh enough, I'm yawning... gimmea a beer.
There were mixed signals of encouragement and discouragement. I can't say I'm any closer to having any kind of a job, but by God it was good to get out and have people to talk to, instead of just looking at the damn dead Internet websites. Even the most rebuffing, facetious and idiotic receptionist cannot be as disheartening as the faceless, soulless Internet.
And now I am so exhausted. So what caught my eye. The Skanska building in Moorgate is STILL being finished. They obviously don't have any tenants desperate to get in there, at the rate they've been going. The food fair on Stratford Station forecourt, where I bought dried sausages. The overly richbitch Thameside neighbourhood in Wapping - hard to believe it is a short walk from the wretched hulk of Watney Market and Shadwell. The boarded up look of the Tobacco Dock shopping centre - I wonder if they've shut down for lack of footfall. Romford looks just as down and out as Manor Park on weekdays, when all the jobless and middle-aged wander the streets in dejection that looks to border suicidal. Oh the London phenomenon of "if you have a job, it's because you're young, healthy and attractive, and you commute every day and don't get to see the ones that are left behind to trawl the streets in unutterable despair". I thought it just affected the ethnic boroughs like Newham and Waltham Forest, but no, it is even very, very obvious in Romford when you step off the train station and go walking up and down the high street.
Oh enough, I'm yawning... gimmea a beer.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Suits
Well I haven't worn a suit in 3/4 years, except at two funerals! According to British Hollywood, I should have had Eight Weddings in there as well, but hey, this is East London, and the weddings are Bollywood, and I have yet to taste one.
So I dusted out my suits today, and tried them on, for practice. The psychology of wearing a suit, on yourself as well as other people, is not to be underestimated. It's also because I have been recovering some kickass survival skills since Dad finally died. It was scary at first getting the suits out , but with the full length mirror, I was soon quite into it, critically and complimentary. You'd think I was putting on a chain mail suit of armour, the way it affected my confidence. Ridiculous, that modern man should need such fabric trappings to go about the world and try to earn a living. But I didn't invent this stupid world, and I'm getting too old to fight the things that never seem to change. So off I go to the office temp agencies tomorrow. God give me strength. I'll walk into them, and the young ladies will figure out I'm gay as soon as I open my mouth, and pop me into that pigeonhole. Ain't no pigeon here honey, so you better join the RSPB and hope to learn otherwise.
So I dusted out my suits today, and tried them on, for practice. The psychology of wearing a suit, on yourself as well as other people, is not to be underestimated. It's also because I have been recovering some kickass survival skills since Dad finally died. It was scary at first getting the suits out , but with the full length mirror, I was soon quite into it, critically and complimentary. You'd think I was putting on a chain mail suit of armour, the way it affected my confidence. Ridiculous, that modern man should need such fabric trappings to go about the world and try to earn a living. But I didn't invent this stupid world, and I'm getting too old to fight the things that never seem to change. So off I go to the office temp agencies tomorrow. God give me strength. I'll walk into them, and the young ladies will figure out I'm gay as soon as I open my mouth, and pop me into that pigeonhole. Ain't no pigeon here honey, so you better join the RSPB and hope to learn otherwise.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Ex - X : Some Bridges SHOULD be burnt
So X sent me this message in an email thread which I didn't start, and didn't want.
"Well, you'd be thriving better if you hadn't broken up with me"
The pompous, conceited, selfish, egocentric whore. I've barely tolerated keeping in touch with him since we broke up 18 months ago. And I learned in my early twenties of the rule, "Don't Burn your Bridges". But damn, some bridges should be blasted to smithereens and replaced by arsenals of nuclear warheads.
He found this blog in August, much to my consternation, but I really don't care anymore. I had already decided back in May, that enough of my life was wasted on him.
So that's the last email from him I'm ever reading. I've never used the Blocked Senders feature on Outlook Express till now.
You get to choose your friends, and it's a shame you can't choose your Ex's, but you can block them out of existence. He'll be fine. He has the entire counselling profession to run to, when he isn't charging other people £30 an hour for the privilege of his arrogance and ignorance. Don't ever, ever marry a counsellor.
"Well, you'd be thriving better if you hadn't broken up with me"
The pompous, conceited, selfish, egocentric whore. I've barely tolerated keeping in touch with him since we broke up 18 months ago. And I learned in my early twenties of the rule, "Don't Burn your Bridges". But damn, some bridges should be blasted to smithereens and replaced by arsenals of nuclear warheads.
He found this blog in August, much to my consternation, but I really don't care anymore. I had already decided back in May, that enough of my life was wasted on him.
So that's the last email from him I'm ever reading. I've never used the Blocked Senders feature on Outlook Express till now.
You get to choose your friends, and it's a shame you can't choose your Ex's, but you can block them out of existence. He'll be fine. He has the entire counselling profession to run to, when he isn't charging other people £30 an hour for the privilege of his arrogance and ignorance. Don't ever, ever marry a counsellor.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
State Visit weekend and Piano-moving Day
Winter lasts 91 days and began around the 6th November (refer). So there are only 48 more days of winter to come that will be worse than now. Encouraging.
And I had R and his partner up from Somerset staying with me this weekend. It kept me busy all week, as I strove to get on with the mess in this house in preparation for their State Visit. It was a very productive week: I had no reason to be depressed. I got things done, but of course I still didn't get as much done as expected. I had to resort to opening up the sofabed downstairs to accommodate them, since the spare bedroom was unfinished. The foam mattress in the sofabed had not been opened out for over 5 years, and I think it has been squashed into permanent and useless disfigurement.
We headed into town last night, stopped to look at the beautifully lit courtyard of Somerset house with its skating rink (which could do with being bigger), then had a bite to eat in Chinatown. The West End was heaving with tourists. I have not seen Central London so busy since before 9/11. In Covent Garden, what I think used to be the TGI Friday's has now been converted into a very theatrically camp dining hall called Papageno's. It was impossible to get into any restaurants without having to queue. We drank at the King's Arms, which was packed with hirsute men of all shapes and sizes. They love their drink more than exercise, to say it kindly.
This week followed Piano-moving Sunday, which sat on my mind all week. Why? X finally moved his piano out of my house last Sunday. His tall lanky friend came to help, and that friend of his is one of those gay men that I can do without. Attention-seeking, self-absorbed, always subscribing to some new form of pretentiousness, and unable to hold down a relationship of any duration. If you're a couple, and you have "friends" like that, you may as well be alone. Because such "friends" have no interest in the welfare of your relationship, either because they are unable to help, or because they harbour envy.
So the piano-moving proceded smoothly, and my feathers were unruffled until the end. X had a tragic story to relate to me on the doorstep.
The background is this. When X and I had the mother of all rows, the one that finally broke us up 18 months ago, the irreconciliable row, it was started at a party. This party was thrown by a couple to which we were acquainted, in X's circle of "friends". I'm not fond of parties anyway, because I find there are too many people acting in pretentious manners, and I see no need for any of that.
At this party, I was infuriated by the self-centred, emotionally ignorant attitudes of some of X's friends. The kind of people who like to bounce around like grasshoppers in summer sunshine, and who when winter comes, fly south while other grasshoppers die off or beg food from industrious ants.
The row escalated rapidly to a key failing in our 9 year relationship. The issue of loyalty. Within a primary loving partnership, loyalty to each other should exceed any other loyalty (except to the children, if there are any). Well, when I'm being told once again that I would never be placed above X's "friends", and it seems clear to me that these are friends that are unworthy.... I really have to wake up and realise that X is incapable of ever understanding Love, let alone delivering it. His ability to say "I love you" in the context of "I need you" is as easy as having a shit, and with the same useful end product.
Back to Piano Moving Day: X announced that the couple who threw that party, had broken up since, after many years together. And after they broke up, one of them committed suicide.
I was appalled by the tragedy, and I despise the expectation that I should adopt the reaction of sadness to such an event. Sadness might seem the prescribed response of a Church of England vicar, but then they don't really change the world that way, do they? I was angry, angry, angry. How many "socially aware" and "new age" types were at that party, ignorantly revelling on the Titanic bow of this gay couple's partnership? And where were they to lend an ear after the couple had split up?
Amidst my feelings of anger, I also felt vindicated. After all this time, tragic proof that X's circle of friends weren't any more use as human beings than any new stranger you could chat to at your local pub. It is as well that I broke off my relationship after all. There really isn't a sufficiently widespread understanding of Love in this day and age, for the likes of our relationship to have had the nourishment it needed.
And I had R and his partner up from Somerset staying with me this weekend. It kept me busy all week, as I strove to get on with the mess in this house in preparation for their State Visit. It was a very productive week: I had no reason to be depressed. I got things done, but of course I still didn't get as much done as expected. I had to resort to opening up the sofabed downstairs to accommodate them, since the spare bedroom was unfinished. The foam mattress in the sofabed had not been opened out for over 5 years, and I think it has been squashed into permanent and useless disfigurement.
We headed into town last night, stopped to look at the beautifully lit courtyard of Somerset house with its skating rink (which could do with being bigger), then had a bite to eat in Chinatown. The West End was heaving with tourists. I have not seen Central London so busy since before 9/11. In Covent Garden, what I think used to be the TGI Friday's has now been converted into a very theatrically camp dining hall called Papageno's. It was impossible to get into any restaurants without having to queue. We drank at the King's Arms, which was packed with hirsute men of all shapes and sizes. They love their drink more than exercise, to say it kindly.
This week followed Piano-moving Sunday, which sat on my mind all week. Why? X finally moved his piano out of my house last Sunday. His tall lanky friend came to help, and that friend of his is one of those gay men that I can do without. Attention-seeking, self-absorbed, always subscribing to some new form of pretentiousness, and unable to hold down a relationship of any duration. If you're a couple, and you have "friends" like that, you may as well be alone. Because such "friends" have no interest in the welfare of your relationship, either because they are unable to help, or because they harbour envy.
So the piano-moving proceded smoothly, and my feathers were unruffled until the end. X had a tragic story to relate to me on the doorstep.
The background is this. When X and I had the mother of all rows, the one that finally broke us up 18 months ago, the irreconciliable row, it was started at a party. This party was thrown by a couple to which we were acquainted, in X's circle of "friends". I'm not fond of parties anyway, because I find there are too many people acting in pretentious manners, and I see no need for any of that.
At this party, I was infuriated by the self-centred, emotionally ignorant attitudes of some of X's friends. The kind of people who like to bounce around like grasshoppers in summer sunshine, and who when winter comes, fly south while other grasshoppers die off or beg food from industrious ants.
The row escalated rapidly to a key failing in our 9 year relationship. The issue of loyalty. Within a primary loving partnership, loyalty to each other should exceed any other loyalty (except to the children, if there are any). Well, when I'm being told once again that I would never be placed above X's "friends", and it seems clear to me that these are friends that are unworthy.... I really have to wake up and realise that X is incapable of ever understanding Love, let alone delivering it. His ability to say "I love you" in the context of "I need you" is as easy as having a shit, and with the same useful end product.
Back to Piano Moving Day: X announced that the couple who threw that party, had broken up since, after many years together. And after they broke up, one of them committed suicide.
I was appalled by the tragedy, and I despise the expectation that I should adopt the reaction of sadness to such an event. Sadness might seem the prescribed response of a Church of England vicar, but then they don't really change the world that way, do they? I was angry, angry, angry. How many "socially aware" and "new age" types were at that party, ignorantly revelling on the Titanic bow of this gay couple's partnership? And where were they to lend an ear after the couple had split up?
Amidst my feelings of anger, I also felt vindicated. After all this time, tragic proof that X's circle of friends weren't any more use as human beings than any new stranger you could chat to at your local pub. It is as well that I broke off my relationship after all. There really isn't a sufficiently widespread understanding of Love in this day and age, for the likes of our relationship to have had the nourishment it needed.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
The new Bridget Jones
Went to see the new Bridget Jones last night, and still feeling lovely. It was funny, and packed with everything that has to do with the search for perfect love. And so be it. If it makes me feel good, enjoy it. It's all fantasy, but wow, does it work! I mean, I felt I was glowing when I woke up this morning.
Was with Tom, at the UGC West India Quay, and he made good company.
It's hard to be on a computer when you're feeling really good. Which says a lot in general about writers, journalist and bloggers, and their product.
Was with Tom, at the UGC West India Quay, and he made good company.
It's hard to be on a computer when you're feeling really good. Which says a lot in general about writers, journalist and bloggers, and their product.
Friday, November 19, 2004
I could do that! Expanding Foam Filler and Double Glazing
Expanding Foam Filler. You might have seen a tradesman use it, when installing windows, (or a bit of plumbing through a wall). Great! It comes in a can, you spray it. What could be easier? You could easily do that, couldn't you?
And those people who have never done a stick of mechanical or building work, would play one of the dumbest games that London people play. A monkey could do that! Any Sun reader could do that! What's the fuss, and why should I have to pay you any money for it at all! Indeed, I'm so much better than you, I drive a BMW and I'd never ever dirty my hands, but if I had to, doing what you do would be a piece of cake! So lick my ass or I'm not even going to pay you!
Even the use of Expanding Foam Filler has to be learnt as a careful skill. You have to be aware of ambient room temperature and moisture conditions, you have to know how much water with which to spray the substrate and the foam itself. This you have to know to predict how much the foam will expand until it finally sets solid, and therefore determines how much you apply it, how quickly etc. You have to know how close to the surface you place the nozzle, and then the perfect trigger pressure and movement to get a perfectly adhering bead. And all this affects how much foam you get out of a can. You might get 5 times more final expanded foam volume out of a single can when you know how to use it economically.
I was wondering why my window glazing company had been a bit stingy with the foaming around my new windows. ALL window installers in the double-glazing business are self-employed contractors. Even the overpriced ones like Anglian, BAC, or Everest which so wonderfully manage to extract as much money as possible from prissy Chelsea Housewives and the many other varities of precious middle-class snobs, and then successfully give as little as possible of that money to the window installer. No, it mostly all goes to prosperous office managers, salesmen, executives, and owners. So your window installer, being a contractor, has to economize on the amount of expanding foam he uses. Because it isn't cheap, as building materials go, and these guys are not expense-accounted suits who are lunching at a hotel by the M25. They have to pay for most of their own tools and consumables.
GRRR!. Some of the worst aspects of the English class society live on in the hearts and minds of the middle-class people who happily exploit those who do all the work for them, yet constantly refuse to acknowledge it. I really hope their ignorance one day earns them their just desserts.
And those people who have never done a stick of mechanical or building work, would play one of the dumbest games that London people play. A monkey could do that! Any Sun reader could do that! What's the fuss, and why should I have to pay you any money for it at all! Indeed, I'm so much better than you, I drive a BMW and I'd never ever dirty my hands, but if I had to, doing what you do would be a piece of cake! So lick my ass or I'm not even going to pay you!
Even the use of Expanding Foam Filler has to be learnt as a careful skill. You have to be aware of ambient room temperature and moisture conditions, you have to know how much water with which to spray the substrate and the foam itself. This you have to know to predict how much the foam will expand until it finally sets solid, and therefore determines how much you apply it, how quickly etc. You have to know how close to the surface you place the nozzle, and then the perfect trigger pressure and movement to get a perfectly adhering bead. And all this affects how much foam you get out of a can. You might get 5 times more final expanded foam volume out of a single can when you know how to use it economically.
I was wondering why my window glazing company had been a bit stingy with the foaming around my new windows. ALL window installers in the double-glazing business are self-employed contractors. Even the overpriced ones like Anglian, BAC, or Everest which so wonderfully manage to extract as much money as possible from prissy Chelsea Housewives and the many other varities of precious middle-class snobs, and then successfully give as little as possible of that money to the window installer. No, it mostly all goes to prosperous office managers, salesmen, executives, and owners. So your window installer, being a contractor, has to economize on the amount of expanding foam he uses. Because it isn't cheap, as building materials go, and these guys are not expense-accounted suits who are lunching at a hotel by the M25. They have to pay for most of their own tools and consumables.
GRRR!. Some of the worst aspects of the English class society live on in the hearts and minds of the middle-class people who happily exploit those who do all the work for them, yet constantly refuse to acknowledge it. I really hope their ignorance one day earns them their just desserts.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Cmos, LILO, NT passwords - Data recovery
Cmos, LILO, NT passwords - Data recovery
Well, well, the following debug sequence really DOES clear the CMOS Setup password
DEBUG [Enter]
O 70 2E [Enter]
O 71 0 [Enter]
Q [Enter]
Ok, so a Pentium 233 Mhz is now considered to be as antique as a Reliant Robin. In fact, whole PCs of this ilk go for about £30 on Ebay. Well, what surprise is that when brand new PCs with all bells and whistles are available at Staples and at Dell for under £400?
They're disposable items nowadays. Anybody who used to be a Computer Engineer might as well be a Television or VCR Engineer. Waste of intelligence. But then, they never tell you at school that intelligence has a shelf life and a sell-by date, do they? Probably because the teachers are past their own.....
Well, well, the following debug sequence really DOES clear the CMOS Setup password
DEBUG [Enter]
O 70 2E [Enter]
O 71 0 [Enter]
Q [Enter]
Ok, so a Pentium 233 Mhz is now considered to be as antique as a Reliant Robin. In fact, whole PCs of this ilk go for about £30 on Ebay. Well, what surprise is that when brand new PCs with all bells and whistles are available at Staples and at Dell for under £400?
They're disposable items nowadays. Anybody who used to be a Computer Engineer might as well be a Television or VCR Engineer. Waste of intelligence. But then, they never tell you at school that intelligence has a shelf life and a sell-by date, do they? Probably because the teachers are past their own.....
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Need a Sauna
Woke up yesterday morning feeling blissful after my Sunday evening out. The kind of blissful where you know you don't even want to open your eyes, because whatever happens out there would ruin it. Baby bliss, I guess is what it is, and for that I suppose I have to thank my parents for a safe and suitably provided babyhood.
Well, the day went on okay, until I tried to use Mark's number that I had recorded into my mobile, only to find that I had missed out a digit somewhere. How useless am I? Those buttons on a Nokia are for cybertwits, not for disorganised incompetents as me. You can't hear their confirming beeps over the DJ's loud music. How am I ever going to have friends that I click with on my level, if I can't even get this right? Oh well, so I'll have to live with myself, myself, and only myself. Wow, that's at least three of us, how kinky!
Of course, a bike ride, dancing, and drinking take its toll at my age, and the pain to be paid for the pleasure only reaches its peak 24 hours after. I should expect this by now, which is why I might as well write about it so that I'll remember to expect it next time. So this morning, I had a nightmare, quite a sophisticated one, and when I awoke, I felt awful, with a bit of a sore throat threatening as well. And as usual, after an hour, it becomes apparent to me that my body is aching and complaining and muscles are stiff tight and sore in a way that I had not been aware of yesterday. Hence the nightmare. I'm such an animal.
Oh give me a sauna. There's something I would have if I were rich. My own, personal wooden sauna hut with attached outdoor jacuzzi under conservatory glass, in a small gentle valley and bunny rabbits hopping around in view. It's not just the Beckhams that need one, just because he gets paid for physical exertion.
**
Chatting to a very bright and suburban woman around my own age at Queeruption brought me some validation that was worth a million half-witted counsellors (ahem..). I was telling her how I feel more relieved than in 3 years, now that my Dad finally died, and she was saying that was exactly what happened to her when she lost her father a few years ago to cancer. As she said, "it's as though you've got your whole life on HOLD, just waiting for it to happen". Oh she is very cheerful and bright this one, and as she pointed out, now her Mom is getting seriously ill. Well, I wondered, will it be easier this time? Not entirely, says she, because she's had to contemplate what it is like to become an orphan!
I always try to anticipate these things and then imagine them in the hope of being prepared for when they happen. That's how I do things, it's not necessarily the best way. So the orphan reference also hit home. I've been very aware of it. And I figure it's an essential part of growing up. Everyone, eventually, has to get orphaned, unless they die before their parents do. You can imagine it before it actually happens, and even act it out (eg kids who run away from home and start up their own lives on the street), but only when the real orphaning becomes imminent, can you ascertain whether your imagination has been accurate and comprehensive.
Enough talking for me, my sore throat means that I have to cut short this speaking engagement. Good evening, and please remember to keep on laughing, and attending charity balls. After all, the richest people seem to do nothing but.
Well, the day went on okay, until I tried to use Mark's number that I had recorded into my mobile, only to find that I had missed out a digit somewhere. How useless am I? Those buttons on a Nokia are for cybertwits, not for disorganised incompetents as me. You can't hear their confirming beeps over the DJ's loud music. How am I ever going to have friends that I click with on my level, if I can't even get this right? Oh well, so I'll have to live with myself, myself, and only myself. Wow, that's at least three of us, how kinky!
Of course, a bike ride, dancing, and drinking take its toll at my age, and the pain to be paid for the pleasure only reaches its peak 24 hours after. I should expect this by now, which is why I might as well write about it so that I'll remember to expect it next time. So this morning, I had a nightmare, quite a sophisticated one, and when I awoke, I felt awful, with a bit of a sore throat threatening as well. And as usual, after an hour, it becomes apparent to me that my body is aching and complaining and muscles are stiff tight and sore in a way that I had not been aware of yesterday. Hence the nightmare. I'm such an animal.
Oh give me a sauna. There's something I would have if I were rich. My own, personal wooden sauna hut with attached outdoor jacuzzi under conservatory glass, in a small gentle valley and bunny rabbits hopping around in view. It's not just the Beckhams that need one, just because he gets paid for physical exertion.
**
Chatting to a very bright and suburban woman around my own age at Queeruption brought me some validation that was worth a million half-witted counsellors (ahem..). I was telling her how I feel more relieved than in 3 years, now that my Dad finally died, and she was saying that was exactly what happened to her when she lost her father a few years ago to cancer. As she said, "it's as though you've got your whole life on HOLD, just waiting for it to happen". Oh she is very cheerful and bright this one, and as she pointed out, now her Mom is getting seriously ill. Well, I wondered, will it be easier this time? Not entirely, says she, because she's had to contemplate what it is like to become an orphan!
I always try to anticipate these things and then imagine them in the hope of being prepared for when they happen. That's how I do things, it's not necessarily the best way. So the orphan reference also hit home. I've been very aware of it. And I figure it's an essential part of growing up. Everyone, eventually, has to get orphaned, unless they die before their parents do. You can imagine it before it actually happens, and even act it out (eg kids who run away from home and start up their own lives on the street), but only when the real orphaning becomes imminent, can you ascertain whether your imagination has been accurate and comprehensive.
Enough talking for me, my sore throat means that I have to cut short this speaking engagement. Good evening, and please remember to keep on laughing, and attending charity balls. After all, the richest people seem to do nothing but.
Monday, November 15, 2004
Queeruption
Squish, squidge, and amorphous and amoebic and the blog world shifts about like a mist. Bye to Cybersatan, who has left the blog habit and taken all his erudite writing with him.
So on AJ's suggestion, I biked down to the Queeruption Tea Party at Whitechapel. Oh I shan't bleat about how alternative it is... I don't want to be a purveyor of Cool and Alternative, unless I'm being paid for it...
Arriving by myself, since AJ had to cancel suddenly, I wasn't sure at first if it was my cup of tea, although they amazed me by having Hibiscus and Cinnamon, which was exactly what I had in my mind. It wasn't busy, maybe 40 people max, and the atmosphere was alien to me until the ice was broken by Mark, and then the rest of the evening was fun. We seemed to click somewhere on a head-level, which is an infrequent event for me. There was all sorts of music, but his friend Bridge put a lot of house on after lots of punk and eclectica by the previous DJ's, and then dancing just had to be done. Actually it was that angelic Nineties French song Voit le Voyage or whatever it is she says in French, that really stirred up my spirit. Diaphanous whirling sensuous connection to the heavens.
And truly, if Gay Men have had their day and are now universally as dull as dishwater, then Queeruption proved to me that we live in the Golden Age of Young Lesbians. There has never been a better time to be a lesbian, and like all things, that time will eventually pass. But tonight, the lesbians were the truly stunning people who were making the dress-up effort and having fun and making the fun exploratons that gay men were making 12 years ago. I was rather challenged in my perception of the difference between men and women. These were some of the the cutest and handsomest lesbians I have met in a London pub: they were attractive regardless of their gender or sex. Gosh, I wouldn't mind being a young lesbian today!
At lunch I ended up at the Golden Fleece with S and P after attending the minor hitch with his broadband installation. Gosh, is that all there is to ADSL, now? No wonder I don't have a job. Everything is such a basic commodity these days; I'm just waiting until commoditisation finally reaches the legal, medical, accounting and political professions. Disposable items, not requiring the investment of expensive expert knowledge.
Anyway, the food was terrible but the Adnam's Fisherman ale that they have on tap was utterly wonderful. A fluid beer, pleasant and convivial. It was P's birthday week too.
So on AJ's suggestion, I biked down to the Queeruption Tea Party at Whitechapel. Oh I shan't bleat about how alternative it is... I don't want to be a purveyor of Cool and Alternative, unless I'm being paid for it...
Arriving by myself, since AJ had to cancel suddenly, I wasn't sure at first if it was my cup of tea, although they amazed me by having Hibiscus and Cinnamon, which was exactly what I had in my mind. It wasn't busy, maybe 40 people max, and the atmosphere was alien to me until the ice was broken by Mark, and then the rest of the evening was fun. We seemed to click somewhere on a head-level, which is an infrequent event for me. There was all sorts of music, but his friend Bridge put a lot of house on after lots of punk and eclectica by the previous DJ's, and then dancing just had to be done. Actually it was that angelic Nineties French song Voit le Voyage or whatever it is she says in French, that really stirred up my spirit. Diaphanous whirling sensuous connection to the heavens.
And truly, if Gay Men have had their day and are now universally as dull as dishwater, then Queeruption proved to me that we live in the Golden Age of Young Lesbians. There has never been a better time to be a lesbian, and like all things, that time will eventually pass. But tonight, the lesbians were the truly stunning people who were making the dress-up effort and having fun and making the fun exploratons that gay men were making 12 years ago. I was rather challenged in my perception of the difference between men and women. These were some of the the cutest and handsomest lesbians I have met in a London pub: they were attractive regardless of their gender or sex. Gosh, I wouldn't mind being a young lesbian today!
At lunch I ended up at the Golden Fleece with S and P after attending the minor hitch with his broadband installation. Gosh, is that all there is to ADSL, now? No wonder I don't have a job. Everything is such a basic commodity these days; I'm just waiting until commoditisation finally reaches the legal, medical, accounting and political professions. Disposable items, not requiring the investment of expensive expert knowledge.
Anyway, the food was terrible but the Adnam's Fisherman ale that they have on tap was utterly wonderful. A fluid beer, pleasant and convivial. It was P's birthday week too.
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Bridget Jones Diary
It came out on TV tonight to help promote the sequel. When the first one came out in the cinemas a few years ago, I didn't really get caught up in the hype.
So here I was exhausted and impoverished in spirit from hanging my door yesterday, and then installing the door set and latch, and wallpapering around it today.
All that planing and chiselling and drilling and screwing,
and filling and sizing and cutting and glueing.
Flaked out on my sofa, and wondering why the success of my hard work was not enough to stop me feeling crappy.
And now, after watching Bridget Jones, I feel all smiley inside. I'm such a girl sometimes. Is that sexist of me?
It's a feel good movie, but why? Because Bridget makes all the mistakes, and hilariously so, but still there is a happy ending? No, there is more to it than that. It's because Bridget carries with her throughout the ideal of love.
It's quite difficult to remember the ideal of love and the young innocence that it was learned with. And then of course there are the bitternesses of the mistakes that are made. But remembering the ideal of love, just sets the inner smile aglow. And what a timely, timely reminder. Just when I was wondering what was missing.
I wonder how people survive the drudgery of hard working lives without the luxury of carrying this ideal. I know I do not survive it well, and I am reminded.
(funny Freudian slip, I mistyped drudgery as drugdgery. Freudian slips answer your own questions, don't they? London has until the last two years been famous for its drug depending youth, who have for years been coasting on diets of Ecstasy and Clubbing. i.e. They have been surviving the drudgery with drugs. Or am I the drugd gery?)
So here I was exhausted and impoverished in spirit from hanging my door yesterday, and then installing the door set and latch, and wallpapering around it today.
All that planing and chiselling and drilling and screwing,
and filling and sizing and cutting and glueing.
Flaked out on my sofa, and wondering why the success of my hard work was not enough to stop me feeling crappy.
And now, after watching Bridget Jones, I feel all smiley inside. I'm such a girl sometimes. Is that sexist of me?
It's a feel good movie, but why? Because Bridget makes all the mistakes, and hilariously so, but still there is a happy ending? No, there is more to it than that. It's because Bridget carries with her throughout the ideal of love.
It's quite difficult to remember the ideal of love and the young innocence that it was learned with. And then of course there are the bitternesses of the mistakes that are made. But remembering the ideal of love, just sets the inner smile aglow. And what a timely, timely reminder. Just when I was wondering what was missing.
I wonder how people survive the drudgery of hard working lives without the luxury of carrying this ideal. I know I do not survive it well, and I am reminded.
(funny Freudian slip, I mistyped drudgery as drugdgery. Freudian slips answer your own questions, don't they? London has until the last two years been famous for its drug depending youth, who have for years been coasting on diets of Ecstasy and Clubbing. i.e. They have been surviving the drudgery with drugs. Or am I the drugd gery?)
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Mushroom Day
What a very beautiful day it was today, despite last night's rain. Blue, blue skies.
It has made me feel so bright that I'm actually having difficulty remembering what the beginning of the week was like, and have just been looking back at my blog to figure out what's been happening. What the hell did I do on Monday? I must have been in a right funk That must have been the day I brought the PVC roofing sheet back on the train from the Wickes in Goodmayes. Oh yes, after posting the letter at Seven Kings, having earlier been looking at banks in Wanstead.
Anyhow, I zipped out in the early morning to look at these mushrooms, as mentioned before, and decided to leave the extraordinary specimens for the daytime walkers to view. Like flowers, mushrooms have their ornamental life. I reckoned these could last another day. And if nobody had picked them, then I would have them after dark.
So indeed I took one, after doing a night shoot. Tapped the spores along all the grassy areas on the way home. I am pragmatic after all. Allow a beautiful mushroom, like a mushroom, to be enjoyed by everyone for its ornamental value while it is in its prime. But then give Nature a helping hand, to compensate for all the abuse Man gives Her in a place like London, and in the Industrialized world. Took it home, discovered that I had dropped my film camera somewhere, and went all the way back to find it lying on the ground where I had used it. At home again, I examined my mushroom in detail to confirm its type, and indeed it was at its age limit, as proven by the fleshy part going soft and spongy, as Carluccio described. Tasted some of it raw, which was very nice. Broke half of it into chunks and tossed it in the frying pan with a bit of chicken fat and salt. After 2 to 3 minutes on low heat, it shrivelled up to maybe half the size and was giving off that gorgeous mushroom smell. Ate the chunks. GORGEOUS. I WANTED MORE. Thank you Andy, and Antonio Carluccio, for introducing me to a new food. It gets difficult to find simple good food these days. I am no fan of tescoasdasainsburymorrisonisation. Not all of us get to live like my hero, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, who was on TV tonight, or like Rick Stein.
In between, I spruced up a general version of my CV and took it down to the Theatre Royal Stratford East, with an interest in being a casual Box Office assistant. Although I did not feel encouraged by the two that were at the time manning the Box Office. Oh well. Stratford was generally bothering me, but probably because I am actually starting to act on my instincts instead of just feeling I must endure. To Morrisons, where there were no nuts in shells at all. There seems to be a general shortage this year in Brazil Nuts especially, because Tescos had none of them, not even in their Mixed Nuts bags.
On my bike ride home I hailed another cyclist who was towing a commercially-made bicycle trailer. I was amused by the device, not having seen one quite like it. Always a comfort to meet other people who are even more fanatical than I am in their opposition to being car sheep or society sheep.
And then at home, I had a nap attack, when Michael from the double-glazing company came knocking on the door again. He must like the coffee. He had the prescribed wood resin, tested it on some unfinished pine, and decided that it was a clear over-lacquer, and that a coloured stain was needed underneath it. Oh well, no further at a finished installation, but at least he saved me from lapsing back into double Circadian cycles.
So then I finished the wall preparation around my Cloakroom doorway. And then dropped off a little food present at S's for his birthday week.
So where am I again? Can we please have more sunny days like this in an English Winter? I think they do the business. Next job: hanging the damn door that I bought all the way back in June.
It has made me feel so bright that I'm actually having difficulty remembering what the beginning of the week was like, and have just been looking back at my blog to figure out what's been happening. What the hell did I do on Monday? I must have been in a right funk That must have been the day I brought the PVC roofing sheet back on the train from the Wickes in Goodmayes. Oh yes, after posting the letter at Seven Kings, having earlier been looking at banks in Wanstead.
Anyhow, I zipped out in the early morning to look at these mushrooms, as mentioned before, and decided to leave the extraordinary specimens for the daytime walkers to view. Like flowers, mushrooms have their ornamental life. I reckoned these could last another day. And if nobody had picked them, then I would have them after dark.
So indeed I took one, after doing a night shoot. Tapped the spores along all the grassy areas on the way home. I am pragmatic after all. Allow a beautiful mushroom, like a mushroom, to be enjoyed by everyone for its ornamental value while it is in its prime. But then give Nature a helping hand, to compensate for all the abuse Man gives Her in a place like London, and in the Industrialized world. Took it home, discovered that I had dropped my film camera somewhere, and went all the way back to find it lying on the ground where I had used it. At home again, I examined my mushroom in detail to confirm its type, and indeed it was at its age limit, as proven by the fleshy part going soft and spongy, as Carluccio described. Tasted some of it raw, which was very nice. Broke half of it into chunks and tossed it in the frying pan with a bit of chicken fat and salt. After 2 to 3 minutes on low heat, it shrivelled up to maybe half the size and was giving off that gorgeous mushroom smell. Ate the chunks. GORGEOUS. I WANTED MORE. Thank you Andy, and Antonio Carluccio, for introducing me to a new food. It gets difficult to find simple good food these days. I am no fan of tescoasdasainsburymorrisonisation. Not all of us get to live like my hero, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, who was on TV tonight, or like Rick Stein.
In between, I spruced up a general version of my CV and took it down to the Theatre Royal Stratford East, with an interest in being a casual Box Office assistant. Although I did not feel encouraged by the two that were at the time manning the Box Office. Oh well. Stratford was generally bothering me, but probably because I am actually starting to act on my instincts instead of just feeling I must endure. To Morrisons, where there were no nuts in shells at all. There seems to be a general shortage this year in Brazil Nuts especially, because Tescos had none of them, not even in their Mixed Nuts bags.
On my bike ride home I hailed another cyclist who was towing a commercially-made bicycle trailer. I was amused by the device, not having seen one quite like it. Always a comfort to meet other people who are even more fanatical than I am in their opposition to being car sheep or society sheep.
And then at home, I had a nap attack, when Michael from the double-glazing company came knocking on the door again. He must like the coffee. He had the prescribed wood resin, tested it on some unfinished pine, and decided that it was a clear over-lacquer, and that a coloured stain was needed underneath it. Oh well, no further at a finished installation, but at least he saved me from lapsing back into double Circadian cycles.
So then I finished the wall preparation around my Cloakroom doorway. And then dropped off a little food present at S's for his birthday week.
So where am I again? Can we please have more sunny days like this in an English Winter? I think they do the business. Next job: hanging the damn door that I bought all the way back in June.
Wetherspoons Pubs
It's raining again. But as I walked home from Ilford train station, because the 23:32 was delayed (why, oh why did FIRST lose their GER train license, unless it was because of the perverse ignorance of the Labour Government about Engineering, first demonstrated by their Railtrack fiasco? GER has for almost a year now been owned by ONE, whoever the fuck they are), I consoled myself:
In the globally overheated Sahara, they would be so thankful for this rain, that they would probably fuck camels to show the heavens their gratitude
So in the British winter climate, pub drinking is a survival trait. Which is why I decided to go drinking at the Wetherspoons in Goodmayes.
And dead (spirtitually) as Goodmayes may appear on a Wednesday night, I cannot, on my life, fault Wetherspoons. This chain of English pubs, although it can be criticised for being the MacDonalds of Real Ale pubs, always impresses me on one, insurmountable fact. Where the hell do they manage to get such professional staff? No matter what Wetherspoons you walk into, in England, their staff, for the pittance that they are paid, are saints. If I were Human Resources director at Goldman Sachs, I would insist that all newbies must have slaved through the Wetherspoons vetting and training process. I would place that qualification above any half-rate first class degree from Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, or Bristol.
Wetherspoons, for the first time since its birth (was it in the early 90s or late 80s), is for the first time, reporting slowing profit growth. Their pub philosophy is pure. No music. No Sky sports. Every booze you can want, but most importantly, the guarantee that several real ales will always be available. And drinks prices that try to compete with supermarkets. Sometimes their guest ales are divine: I once had a Snow- something ale in February. It was as good as a Real Ale experience can get. Ever diverse. For real Ales, when you drink them, promise an unending diversity of tastes and effects.
Sadly, the days of rebellion against international monotony and monopoly are waned, or maybe even gone forever. Today, walk into any bar in London, and you will most likely be faced with that most vile of drinks, the one that shames the description, "duck's piss". I mean, Budweiser, the American beer. What are Americans good for, if they dare to sell this rubbish all around the world? Nothing. Budweiser neither offers alcohol nor taste. It is for spotty Puritans who grow up into mullet-wearing Marlboro-smoking non-voting social wastrels.
What's happened to CAMRA? The Campaign for Real Ales, that once raged through every square foot of this island in the Seventies and Eighties? You tell me. Even the Guardian doesn't mention them much. They live on in Devon. They fade away, like the English Apple.
Which brings me to the feature on BBC Newsnight yesterday by George Monbiot on the disappearance of apples. I have never seen him on television, and was surprised at his youth, and his inability to express anger. What a waste of time. Did he teach me any intention that I didn't already have about apples in England? Like where I can buy some real ones in London? I mean, I last picked a real apple from a wild tree on a "wasteland" bank in the Docklands of Beckton. And even at the Audley End English Heritage gardens (gosh, isn't a blog great for reminding you of a summer that seems like it was 500 years ago, even though it was only 3 months ago?) I noted the apple collection.
Enough of my own self-righteousness. George is too academic. The world doesn't need more academics, informed and educated and correct though they may be, to get the message across to the Masses. Instantly, the distance between George Monbiot, and any man-on-the-street who cannot afford to become scientifically absorbed in any single-issue, leaps out from the television and tells you: "This man is living in a world of his own. Yeah, and so when are these apples going to be on sale at Asda?"
So, I pity the English Apple. I think it would have been served better if I had simply spread a rumour like, "Have you heard that Wayne Rooney's Mom walked into his bedroom, and found him stuffing a rare English Apple up his own arse? "
In the globally overheated Sahara, they would be so thankful for this rain, that they would probably fuck camels to show the heavens their gratitude
So in the British winter climate, pub drinking is a survival trait. Which is why I decided to go drinking at the Wetherspoons in Goodmayes.
And dead (spirtitually) as Goodmayes may appear on a Wednesday night, I cannot, on my life, fault Wetherspoons. This chain of English pubs, although it can be criticised for being the MacDonalds of Real Ale pubs, always impresses me on one, insurmountable fact. Where the hell do they manage to get such professional staff? No matter what Wetherspoons you walk into, in England, their staff, for the pittance that they are paid, are saints. If I were Human Resources director at Goldman Sachs, I would insist that all newbies must have slaved through the Wetherspoons vetting and training process. I would place that qualification above any half-rate first class degree from Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, or Bristol.
Wetherspoons, for the first time since its birth (was it in the early 90s or late 80s), is for the first time, reporting slowing profit growth. Their pub philosophy is pure. No music. No Sky sports. Every booze you can want, but most importantly, the guarantee that several real ales will always be available. And drinks prices that try to compete with supermarkets. Sometimes their guest ales are divine: I once had a Snow- something ale in February. It was as good as a Real Ale experience can get. Ever diverse. For real Ales, when you drink them, promise an unending diversity of tastes and effects.
Sadly, the days of rebellion against international monotony and monopoly are waned, or maybe even gone forever. Today, walk into any bar in London, and you will most likely be faced with that most vile of drinks, the one that shames the description, "duck's piss". I mean, Budweiser, the American beer. What are Americans good for, if they dare to sell this rubbish all around the world? Nothing. Budweiser neither offers alcohol nor taste. It is for spotty Puritans who grow up into mullet-wearing Marlboro-smoking non-voting social wastrels.
What's happened to CAMRA? The Campaign for Real Ales, that once raged through every square foot of this island in the Seventies and Eighties? You tell me. Even the Guardian doesn't mention them much. They live on in Devon. They fade away, like the English Apple.
Which brings me to the feature on BBC Newsnight yesterday by George Monbiot on the disappearance of apples. I have never seen him on television, and was surprised at his youth, and his inability to express anger. What a waste of time. Did he teach me any intention that I didn't already have about apples in England? Like where I can buy some real ones in London? I mean, I last picked a real apple from a wild tree on a "wasteland" bank in the Docklands of Beckton. And even at the Audley End English Heritage gardens (gosh, isn't a blog great for reminding you of a summer that seems like it was 500 years ago, even though it was only 3 months ago?) I noted the apple collection.
Enough of my own self-righteousness. George is too academic. The world doesn't need more academics, informed and educated and correct though they may be, to get the message across to the Masses. Instantly, the distance between George Monbiot, and any man-on-the-street who cannot afford to become scientifically absorbed in any single-issue, leaps out from the television and tells you: "This man is living in a world of his own. Yeah, and so when are these apples going to be on sale at Asda?"
So, I pity the English Apple. I think it would have been served better if I had simply spread a rumour like, "Have you heard that Wayne Rooney's Mom walked into his bedroom, and found him stuffing a rare English Apple up his own arse? "
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Bright Day
Blue skies in the morning, clouded over in the afternoon.
Very productive day. Felt it even before I opened my eyes. Fixed the PVC roofing over the back patio. Was up and down the ladder. Michael from the double-glazing company turned up to put on my window handles, but they gave him white ones, which was the wrong colour, although they thought I'd accept it? In any case he fixed the trickle ventilator for the bathroom window, which delighted me. And at least I can now open my wooden windows, until they can change the handles.
Didn't eat a thing till 5pm and felt full of energy all day. Michael is a great guy, this is the second time he's been here and he makes excellent company. Why can't I know more of these types of people? It has nothing to do with love or sex. Even high minded notions of friendship don't come into the equation. He's the kind of person whose company I enjoy. Maybe menopausal middleage has the advantage of allowing me to explore these platonic relationships. After all, there has got to be more to life than unreliable love and short-lived sex!
Very productive day. Felt it even before I opened my eyes. Fixed the PVC roofing over the back patio. Was up and down the ladder. Michael from the double-glazing company turned up to put on my window handles, but they gave him white ones, which was the wrong colour, although they thought I'd accept it? In any case he fixed the trickle ventilator for the bathroom window, which delighted me. And at least I can now open my wooden windows, until they can change the handles.
Didn't eat a thing till 5pm and felt full of energy all day. Michael is a great guy, this is the second time he's been here and he makes excellent company. Why can't I know more of these types of people? It has nothing to do with love or sex. Even high minded notions of friendship don't come into the equation. He's the kind of person whose company I enjoy. Maybe menopausal middleage has the advantage of allowing me to explore these platonic relationships. After all, there has got to be more to life than unreliable love and short-lived sex!
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Surviving a November Day
Today's weather: Solidly dull and gray. Chilly, but not windy and not rainy. This is classic English November. You don't see it in tourist brochures.
Today's Bright Spots:
Today's Bright Spots:
- A walk in circles on the Wanstead Flats. It starts of as an aimless wander, and perks me up after half an hour. What light there is, you have to be outside that it may fill your vision. The long grass is sopping wet, but catching a skyful of gray daylight beats the hell out of being indoors. And out of a grassy bit I spotted Two Gigantic Mushrooms, each 9 inches across, side by side and their hats kissing in communed fusion. Today's pleasant surprise. I don't have a digicam, but I might take a film photograph of it yet.
- Going to Tesco's supermarket. This seems ridiculous at first, but as soon as I enter the Tesco's in Goodmayes, I feel better. Their lighting makes all the difference. Fluorescent light is making a comeback, because in Shoreditch a new hotel on the High Street features it in their exterior lighting scheme. Fluorescent light may not be the same colour as sunlight, but when spread out in quantity, it can emulate the light coming from a bright sky. I decide that S.A.D. is wrongly described as a Disorder. I'm going to call it SEasonal Lack of LIght Condition. SeLLiC. It wasn't a human disorder until electric lighting was invented. Under natural circumstances, the hibernation response brought upon by winter darkness is an advantage to survival through a long, cold winter when less food is available. I refuse to be labelled as having a disorder in our modern technological civilisation for a condition which once was a natural biological advantage.
- On my way home, having stopped off at the Wickes to buy some Wood Preservative, I'm waiting at a train station. A fellow coming off work, with a Hi-Viz Vest that mentions something to do with Cable Prep, arrives on the platform with a salty older colleague. He is genetically handsome, cranially and physically, fit, ruddy with health. On the train, just for the sake of comparison, I look around at the many people in the car, and it is obvious that he is about 200% more attractive than any man or woman there. I can't understand why women don't just walk up to him and insist on bearing his children, even if they know that he won't be able to stick around. I would! As it happens, while he chats on his mobile phone it sounds like he is happy and has a happy wife at home. God bless, I was worried that he'd be wasted. Hope they have thousands and thousands of grand children one day.
- Trying to convince the Tesco's Manager to improve the pedestrian access. They're refurbishing the supermarket and the car access. But just on two days this week I have witnessed some sad old folk struggling to get down the unfriendly stairs. There is NO pavement on that side of the main road, so they are forced to walk down some stairs to the supermarket level. They have the alternative of a very long zigzagging wheelchair access ramp, but without a wheelchair, it takes three times as long to go down the ramp as to struggled down the stairs. Wheelchair access is another madness of Political Correctness: most wheelchair disabled people arrive at a supermarket front door by taxi. But loads of money is spent on providing wheelchair access ramps like these, while your generally infirm arthritic, rheumatic, walking-stick-using, crumbling old people suffer on badly designed pedestrian access. The Western World needs to go back to Common Sense. But the Tesco's Manager actually took my point, after some persuasion, and promised to mention it to his superiors. At least the idea has been planted in one man's brain. Which is more than this blog achieves, methinks.
- Chocolate. It is the only thing that compensates for the serotonin deficit of SeLLiC. It works. If only the West African farmers were paid a fair price for their cocoa. Perhaps they should form a Cocoa Cartel, and force their local price up, before they sell it to the International Monopolies. Perhaps they should email me and ask me to become their spokesman. I wouldn't mind business trips to Accra or Lagos in the middle of the British Winter!
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Fury against Alcohol on Alcoholics
Wandered into town and into Shoreditch, and was pleasantly surprised at how it was rocking. Not just cool (which is boring), but actually rocking, eclectically.
And then I went to the Joiner's Arms, and my heart went to fury.
Transformed into something nondescript and soulless, just by revamping it's back and side walls. Grimly unhappy barstaff. I knew there was something terribly wrong, and in a rage, I looked for the owner. There he was at the bar. Unrecognizable. Withered. Shrunken. Shrivelled. Like any alcoholic that has lost the fight against their foremost vulnerability. He reminded me of my Dad on his deathbed.
For those of you who think drink is just a pleasure, and deny that for some people, it is a disease: so angrily do I feel against the callousness towards primary alcoholism, that I would prescribe Islam if necessary, if that is what it takes to rescue them from your ignorance.
I vented my rage at him, but since he was drunk, it was like water off George Bush's hairdo.
This in a week where David Morley was murdered in a queerbashing by London TEENAGERS. This outraged the London gay community enough so that there was a candlelight vigil in his memory. Why? Because finally some people realise that London is atomised and contains some dangerously unhappy people. Your average fragile pensioner in London knows what a hazardous and hateful place this city can be. But when cowards seek out a gay man and murder him, it agitates other gay men who happen to know that there are so many gay men in London who are SO self-destructive, that a brutal and savage murder is horrifically uncalled for.
And the most cynical and dangerous people of all will think: Well, if some gay men are so self-destructive, then better that they be the ones that get murdered, than any others........
For indeed, these people know that the measure of success in a population is not whether you have lots of money, lots of so-called friends, lots of so-called good looks, lots of so-called sex, but whether you have lots and lots and lots of children, and are doing so with minimal expense to yourself, and maximum expense to the society at large. And they really don't give a damn if someone else gets murdered, whether or not they were a feeble old-age pensioner, or a gay man.
This is why London is about survival, and not about being cool, or rich, or more intellectual. Welcome to London. Spend your money on your airfare to get you home.
And then I went to the Joiner's Arms, and my heart went to fury.
Transformed into something nondescript and soulless, just by revamping it's back and side walls. Grimly unhappy barstaff. I knew there was something terribly wrong, and in a rage, I looked for the owner. There he was at the bar. Unrecognizable. Withered. Shrunken. Shrivelled. Like any alcoholic that has lost the fight against their foremost vulnerability. He reminded me of my Dad on his deathbed.
For those of you who think drink is just a pleasure, and deny that for some people, it is a disease: so angrily do I feel against the callousness towards primary alcoholism, that I would prescribe Islam if necessary, if that is what it takes to rescue them from your ignorance.
I vented my rage at him, but since he was drunk, it was like water off George Bush's hairdo.
This in a week where David Morley was murdered in a queerbashing by London TEENAGERS. This outraged the London gay community enough so that there was a candlelight vigil in his memory. Why? Because finally some people realise that London is atomised and contains some dangerously unhappy people. Your average fragile pensioner in London knows what a hazardous and hateful place this city can be. But when cowards seek out a gay man and murder him, it agitates other gay men who happen to know that there are so many gay men in London who are SO self-destructive, that a brutal and savage murder is horrifically uncalled for.
And the most cynical and dangerous people of all will think: Well, if some gay men are so self-destructive, then better that they be the ones that get murdered, than any others........
For indeed, these people know that the measure of success in a population is not whether you have lots of money, lots of so-called friends, lots of so-called good looks, lots of so-called sex, but whether you have lots and lots and lots of children, and are doing so with minimal expense to yourself, and maximum expense to the society at large. And they really don't give a damn if someone else gets murdered, whether or not they were a feeble old-age pensioner, or a gay man.
This is why London is about survival, and not about being cool, or rich, or more intellectual. Welcome to London. Spend your money on your airfare to get you home.
Friday, November 05, 2004
What is the point of the Internet
Gosh, even Madame Tytania has disappeared from the blogworld. What is the point of the Internet? Did Homer Simpson vote Republican in Arizona? Is November the darkest month? Am I rambling? How many fireworks does it take to make a Guy Fawkes night in London? When does the world actually change?
How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Went to a local pub on Wednesday night. It is a straight pub, of course, and I had a delightful time. It was quiz night, the atmosphere was friendly, the beer was cheaper than in town, the people were eclectically varied. The quizmaster was a dead ringer for that Karl what's his name who used to star in Brushstrokes. I had a good time, the first in over a month.
Why blog, when you can go to a pub? Unfortunately it is much cheaper to drink at home, and money rules everyone's brains, so the pubs are fewer and much less busy. England used to be built around pub culture. Now I don't know what it is built on, but the Internet really doesn't matter, does it?
I mean, I was amazed to discover that someone found my blog through the following Google search:
prostitute zones in ilford in the daytime
I wish it weren't so late, I'd be off to the pub otherwise!
How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Went to a local pub on Wednesday night. It is a straight pub, of course, and I had a delightful time. It was quiz night, the atmosphere was friendly, the beer was cheaper than in town, the people were eclectically varied. The quizmaster was a dead ringer for that Karl what's his name who used to star in Brushstrokes. I had a good time, the first in over a month.
Why blog, when you can go to a pub? Unfortunately it is much cheaper to drink at home, and money rules everyone's brains, so the pubs are fewer and much less busy. England used to be built around pub culture. Now I don't know what it is built on, but the Internet really doesn't matter, does it?
I mean, I was amazed to discover that someone found my blog through the following Google search:
prostitute zones in ilford in the daytime
I wish it weren't so late, I'd be off to the pub otherwise!
Thursday, November 04, 2004
R.I.P. United States of America
R.I.P. United States of America
(1776 - 2004)
I'm so sorry to hear about the death of your democracy. It must be a very trying time for you. In these difficult times, may God light your way. You must not give up faith in Him. And if you want someone real to talk to, you can always message me.
I came upon these peculiar references in an archive in one of the antiquated molecular memory cell storage systems. I wondered at what was the United States of America bit. I have heard of the Republican States of America, which existed for a short time in the early 21st century, as a precinct ruled by the Global Coalition of Corporate Monopolies. They were famous for their obese people who roamed the North American plains freely until they were hunted into extinction by our great ancestors. Shame. Wonder what they tasted like?
So I did some research. It took me ages, (over 35 minutes!) to reactivate the even older Optical Data reader systems. Apparently there used to be a United States of America until 2006. In that year, it was split into the Democratic States of America and the Republican States of America. This apparently resulted from an election at the end of 2004 which tragically restored a Bio-Muppet by the name of George Bush as President of its country.
Gosh, weren't people stupid in those days. I ran through some videos of their entertainment systems and feeding systems and I couldn't stop laughing at their civilisation. They must have been genetically hybridised with sheep! Even worse than the Bio-Muppets, who at least made some contribution to the genetic design of the worthy opponents of our ancestors.
Oh well, I better get back to work. I have another deadline in 25 milliseconds.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
In search of a more Useful Condolence
Condoling?
"I'm sorry to hear about your Dad", in the standard condolence tone of voice, is getting on my tits now.
Yeah, well, he's dead now, so he doesn't care now does he? And while he was dying slowly and painfully, I wasn't getting as much sympathy as projected fear. And when the help was needed it wasn't much there. So what is the point of condolences NOW?
Only one person so far has had the intelligence to say: "I suppose you are all eager to get on with your lives now.." She is 75, so SHE knows the difference between people who are bereaved suddenly or bereaved gradually.
Indeed. If I were so stupid to have not done most of my painful mourning before he died, having had so much time and warning, I wouldn't need condolences anyway! I'd need a brain transplant! So, yessirree I want to get on with my life. I don't need condolences NOW. I needed them while he was dying. NOW I'd rather have a job. Even a blow job. Or just filthy amounts of cash would do. Or even just a smattering of useful intelligence would be preferable to:
"I'm sorry to hear about your Dad", in the standard condolence tone of voice, is getting on my tits now.
Yeah, well, he's dead now, so he doesn't care now does he? And while he was dying slowly and painfully, I wasn't getting as much sympathy as projected fear. And when the help was needed it wasn't much there. So what is the point of condolences NOW?
Only one person so far has had the intelligence to say: "I suppose you are all eager to get on with your lives now.." She is 75, so SHE knows the difference between people who are bereaved suddenly or bereaved gradually.
Indeed. If I were so stupid to have not done most of my painful mourning before he died, having had so much time and warning, I wouldn't need condolences anyway! I'd need a brain transplant! So, yessirree I want to get on with my life. I don't need condolences NOW. I needed them while he was dying. NOW I'd rather have a job. Even a blow job. Or just filthy amounts of cash would do. Or even just a smattering of useful intelligence would be preferable to:
"I'm SO SORRY to HEAR ABOUT YOUR...."
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Drole One-liners
From the entertaining but unfortunately titled movie "White Mischief" showing on TV on Sunday night (I'd only seen the second half before), starring Charles Dance, Trevor Howard, Greta Scacchi etc. About aristocratic Brits living decadently in the Forties in Kenya, while back in Europe life was deprivation and War, War, War..
- What happens to a woman after she loses her looks? Nothing.
- He's got the bitch back, so he might as well have the kennel too. (He was being cuckolded, so killed his wife's lover and then bought the house of the dead rival).
- Why are banks so happy to lend you an umbrella when the sun is shining, only to ask for it back as soon as it starts raining?
Monday, November 01, 2004
F**king 56k V.90 and V.92 Modems
V.92? V.90? V.34? 56K Modems? Baloney? Winmodems = Controllerless Modems and assign controller functions to the computer processor. Controllerless modems are cheaper. There is one lower level yet, and that is the Softmodem, where the both the controller and Data pump functions are handled by your Windows Software, leaving only the Data Access Arrangement on the tiny little modem card.. The U.S. Robotics website doesn't admit to selling a Softmodem, but their model USR5660A is listed on there. They seem ashamed of it.
Being a softmodem, it was dirt cheap: equivalent of £7.00 in Canada after rebate, so I bought one. Waste of time.. The V.90 and V.92 standards that allow 56k connections are only possible on good quality telephone lines, namely ones where the telephone company runs digital links to an analog converter in your nearby neighbourhood. And then your ISP has to have V.92 capability, and there must be no more than one Analog to Digital Converter between your ISP's servers and your PC.
In Toronto, this meant that I couldn't even get a V.90 connection. Her e in London, I can get V.90 and even V.92 connections, but only at connection speeds of 44000 bps. Unfortunately the connections are horribly unstable - they lose carrier within 2 to 15 minutes. On forcing the US Robotics Softmodem to V.34, I actually get a reliable connection, but because it is a softmodem, where ALL the modem functions are carried out by the PC's processor, I was getting better performance on my original 7 year old 33.6k modem.
What a waste of time? Another failure by me, although I now know more about modems than I used to... And more reason to never buy on Brand name alone. So that's why those external modems cost so damn much..
Being a softmodem, it was dirt cheap: equivalent of £7.00 in Canada after rebate, so I bought one. Waste of time.. The V.90 and V.92 standards that allow 56k connections are only possible on good quality telephone lines, namely ones where the telephone company runs digital links to an analog converter in your nearby neighbourhood. And then your ISP has to have V.92 capability, and there must be no more than one Analog to Digital Converter between your ISP's servers and your PC.
In Toronto, this meant that I couldn't even get a V.90 connection. Her e in London, I can get V.90 and even V.92 connections, but only at connection speeds of 44000 bps. Unfortunately the connections are horribly unstable - they lose carrier within 2 to 15 minutes. On forcing the US Robotics Softmodem to V.34, I actually get a reliable connection, but because it is a softmodem, where ALL the modem functions are carried out by the PC's processor, I was getting better performance on my original 7 year old 33.6k modem.
What a waste of time? Another failure by me, although I now know more about modems than I used to... And more reason to never buy on Brand name alone. So that's why those external modems cost so damn much..
Sunday, October 24, 2004
China Rising - Globe and Mail Special Feature
Saturday's Globe and Mail (Canada's major national newspaper) was entirely dedicated to "their single largest undertaking in their history", which was a special report on The Rise of China.
It's like going to China and checking out how much it's changed in the last 6 months, as well as in the last 25 years. For example, there are now 300 million cellphones there, which work in elevators, underground garages and in the wilds of Tibet, and all on a cheap Pay as you Go system. And country dwellers aren't allowed to move to the cities, so to get work, they have to do so illegally, whereby they are exploited as cheap labour by bosses who don't pay them for months and then don't pay them at all!
Only the blindest idiot would not have noticed that the buying power of their salaries has grown because the goods they buy are manufactured ever more cheaply with Chinese Sweat.
In Britain, you hardly get journalism like this. There isn't much focus on the Far East unless you catch a short feature on BBC2's Newsnight or watch an Open University documentary in the wee hours of the morning. Everything is about the West Indies, Africa, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pakistan countries. In other words, ex-colonies. Consider that even the Eighties Lefties on the Little Island that Was are perhaps in self-indulgence, only capable of perversely mourning the long-lost Empire? And that is scarcely a balanced Global View, is it?
Well, it's not a balanced view in Canada either. People from the Far East (China, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines), now are the dominantly visible immigrant groups in Canada. Indeed, most of the other Canadians, those here for several generations and those more recently from other countries in the world, are actually openly expressing their concern about being swamped. Vancouver, in particular, is supposed to be a suburb of Hong Kong. In Toronto, "whites" (I hate that word because it is so crudely racist, and forgive me for using it for anything other than to make this statistical point) are supposedly now under 50% of the city's population. And they tend to be the ageing, childless type of people.
But other countries still like to think that Canada is full of Mounties and Lumberjacks. (and especially gay men who live in their Clouds of Sexual Fantasy as they continue to seek out the international circuit designed to keep them subsisting in their day-dreams.)
It's like going to China and checking out how much it's changed in the last 6 months, as well as in the last 25 years. For example, there are now 300 million cellphones there, which work in elevators, underground garages and in the wilds of Tibet, and all on a cheap Pay as you Go system. And country dwellers aren't allowed to move to the cities, so to get work, they have to do so illegally, whereby they are exploited as cheap labour by bosses who don't pay them for months and then don't pay them at all!
Only the blindest idiot would not have noticed that the buying power of their salaries has grown because the goods they buy are manufactured ever more cheaply with Chinese Sweat.
In Britain, you hardly get journalism like this. There isn't much focus on the Far East unless you catch a short feature on BBC2's Newsnight or watch an Open University documentary in the wee hours of the morning. Everything is about the West Indies, Africa, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pakistan countries. In other words, ex-colonies. Consider that even the Eighties Lefties on the Little Island that Was are perhaps in self-indulgence, only capable of perversely mourning the long-lost Empire? And that is scarcely a balanced Global View, is it?
Well, it's not a balanced view in Canada either. People from the Far East (China, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines), now are the dominantly visible immigrant groups in Canada. Indeed, most of the other Canadians, those here for several generations and those more recently from other countries in the world, are actually openly expressing their concern about being swamped. Vancouver, in particular, is supposed to be a suburb of Hong Kong. In Toronto, "whites" (I hate that word because it is so crudely racist, and forgive me for using it for anything other than to make this statistical point) are supposedly now under 50% of the city's population. And they tend to be the ageing, childless type of people.
But other countries still like to think that Canada is full of Mounties and Lumberjacks. (and especially gay men who live in their Clouds of Sexual Fantasy as they continue to seek out the international circuit designed to keep them subsisting in their day-dreams.)
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Anti-consumerism
The Rebel Sell out of THIS magazine is an article about Anti-consumerism. From the city that spawned Naomi Klein. It drifts a bit, but it seeks to distinguish Rebelling against Consumerism from Rebelling against the Masses. It points out that rebelling against the masses, tends to feed the cycle of consumer fashion. People consume in order to seek distinction from the perceived masses, not to conform to them. It suggests that the only society-wide solution to rebelling against consumerism is to adopt legislative action, for example against advertising.
It's a pity that they don't actually take further the discussion without getting bogged down into self-congratulation at discerning between rebelling against the Masses or Consumerism. Toronto is a fascinating study in consumerism, for those who know it. Canada was one of the first countries in the world to achieve a high, wealthy standard of living, and consumerism here has long been at a level of umbilical cord dependence. There is endless retail space here, yet none of it is exciting. All of it is bland, most of it is chain stores and franchises, and the same globally marketed merchandise that can be found anywhere in the world can be found here in neutrally-decorated surroundings.
Strangely, the appearance of Torontonians has never been more conformist and bland. They don't even seem to be interested in shopping for things that set themselves apart from "the Masses". This is consistent with the trend in London, but probably more apparent yet.
This either means that Torontonians are ahead of the World in terms of being truly Anti-Consumerist, in the sense that they resist the temptation to rebel against the Masses and begin another cycle of Consumer Fashion. Or it means that the Author's theory is wrong, and that people do in fact consume in order to Conform to the Masses, and those who seek social distinction have become socially extinct.
I'm not sure I'm any the wiser because of this article, but I do feel that there is something here that I need to think about..
It's a pity that they don't actually take further the discussion without getting bogged down into self-congratulation at discerning between rebelling against the Masses or Consumerism. Toronto is a fascinating study in consumerism, for those who know it. Canada was one of the first countries in the world to achieve a high, wealthy standard of living, and consumerism here has long been at a level of umbilical cord dependence. There is endless retail space here, yet none of it is exciting. All of it is bland, most of it is chain stores and franchises, and the same globally marketed merchandise that can be found anywhere in the world can be found here in neutrally-decorated surroundings.
Strangely, the appearance of Torontonians has never been more conformist and bland. They don't even seem to be interested in shopping for things that set themselves apart from "the Masses". This is consistent with the trend in London, but probably more apparent yet.
This either means that Torontonians are ahead of the World in terms of being truly Anti-Consumerist, in the sense that they resist the temptation to rebel against the Masses and begin another cycle of Consumer Fashion. Or it means that the Author's theory is wrong, and that people do in fact consume in order to Conform to the Masses, and those who seek social distinction have become socially extinct.
I'm not sure I'm any the wiser because of this article, but I do feel that there is something here that I need to think about..
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Buttercup
Isn't Buttercup just the cheeriest, most human blog you've ever seen? It's been on my roll for over a month, and it's just the perfect thing sometimes... like a scrumptious piece of chocolate after a grand dinner. Makes me want to pick up a teddy bear and be a kid again!
Oh life has to be lived. Sod the misery, I need a man. With all these sisters I've had around here, I can't even believe I had a heterosexual inclination just two months ago.
A female friend of mine who was blessed with being sexy cute and spunky just makes me envious of her husband. He's a builder. Not a very big one, but a very nice one. And since they got together almost 15 years ago, she's been doing quite well from it, although she would never admit it, OF COURSE! They even built their holiday cottage up in the vast lakelands of wild Ontario. The real Canada, not the boring city stuff, with the drab city people.
Two weeks in Toronto, and I'm eager to go home to London, with all its problems and sociocultural chaos. But if I had a boyfriend like hers, someone to share the Great Canadian Wilderness with, and one who's a builder!...... Then I could be here, nearer to Mom, which would make her quite happy, though she would never say it.
What the hell, I'll dream... It's got to be better than surfing the Internet and being a city-slicking turniphead. And it's way better than getting depressed at the insoluble problem of the Atlantic Ocean.
Oh life has to be lived. Sod the misery, I need a man. With all these sisters I've had around here, I can't even believe I had a heterosexual inclination just two months ago.
A female friend of mine who was blessed with being sexy cute and spunky just makes me envious of her husband. He's a builder. Not a very big one, but a very nice one. And since they got together almost 15 years ago, she's been doing quite well from it, although she would never admit it, OF COURSE! They even built their holiday cottage up in the vast lakelands of wild Ontario. The real Canada, not the boring city stuff, with the drab city people.
Two weeks in Toronto, and I'm eager to go home to London, with all its problems and sociocultural chaos. But if I had a boyfriend like hers, someone to share the Great Canadian Wilderness with, and one who's a builder!...... Then I could be here, nearer to Mom, which would make her quite happy, though she would never say it.
What the hell, I'll dream... It's got to be better than surfing the Internet and being a city-slicking turniphead. And it's way better than getting depressed at the insoluble problem of the Atlantic Ocean.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
No jet plane crashed into the Pentagon
No jet plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th 2001
Seen this yet? This feature is better than a Michael Moore sentimental money maker. Notice the Cable spools outside the bomb site. They suggest that part of the building was already being reconstructed, and therefore available for the whole theatre show..
Seen this yet? This feature is better than a Michael Moore sentimental money maker. Notice the Cable spools outside the bomb site. They suggest that part of the building was already being reconstructed, and therefore available for the whole theatre show..
Monday, October 18, 2004
What was this blog all about again?
At last, something a little more in keeping with the original title of this blog than recent events have allowed:
Toronto would seem a suburban desert except for the dissolute liberals still wandering about in the downtown ghettoes. Although they are dying out since they tend not to have children. The free weekly paper called NOW has for years been the only worthwhile voice of Alternative culture in Toronto.
In it I found this amusing story of love and sex, by one Sonya Cote, which I think Madame Tytania (see my blogroll) would approve of. Of course, such experiences are afforded only people who are fortunate to be born A-list sexy, beautiful, and gorgeous. And not everyone comes out unscathed from such dangerous and risky flings. But perhaps despite having more average looks, you may be able to sympathise with her conclusion: ''Once you've had someone read you like that and look at you that way while you're at your most vulnerable, you never recover. You're spoiled for life.''
Makes me wonder which is worse: to be unspoiled, or to be spoiled.
Toronto would seem a suburban desert except for the dissolute liberals still wandering about in the downtown ghettoes. Although they are dying out since they tend not to have children. The free weekly paper called NOW has for years been the only worthwhile voice of Alternative culture in Toronto.
In it I found this amusing story of love and sex, by one Sonya Cote, which I think Madame Tytania (see my blogroll) would approve of. Of course, such experiences are afforded only people who are fortunate to be born A-list sexy, beautiful, and gorgeous. And not everyone comes out unscathed from such dangerous and risky flings. But perhaps despite having more average looks, you may be able to sympathise with her conclusion: ''Once you've had someone read you like that and look at you that way while you're at your most vulnerable, you never recover. You're spoiled for life.''
Makes me wonder which is worse: to be unspoiled, or to be spoiled.
Toronto Marathon Day
Today was the Toronto Marathon. A route that started at the North York Civic Centre and ended up at Queen's Park, downtown.
I headed down to Yonge & St.Clair and walked down the hill towards Rosedale to meet R and her sister. The weather at last is autumnally cool but overcast with showers, which is unusual.
At 10.30A.M on a Sunday morning, the Toronto subways and streets are devoid of people. At Yonge & Summerhill, the renovated railway station which is now an LCBO liquor outlet (in Ontario, alcoholic beverages are sold only through government owned LCBO outlets) stands very impressively with a fountain front court and a continental style Timothy's cafe. I think it is just about the most (or maybe even the only) architecturally attractive spot on the whole 15 mile length of Yonge Street. Further down the hill, on the left hand side, is an oasis of civilization: a delicatessen shop selling superb croissants, pastries and breads. I had an almond croissant, and complimented them profusely on their shop.
We met at Rosedale, near where the Marathon route crossed Yonge Street into Rosedale Valley road. We had a good time: it was cold, but R and her sis were having a riot cheering on the runners by their names, (which were emblazoned under their Numbers).
Afterward we repaired to a Starbucks at nearby Summerhill, and I overheard some dissipated sixty-something-year-old Canadian intellectuals lavishing praise on the Guardian Unlimited website, the quality of its journalism and all, and how it was preferable to buying real newspapers. Yet being far away from the country where the Guardian is spawned, do they have any understanding of how it is slanted?
Their attitude seemed consistent with an alarming ignorance and apathy that surrounds Canadian print journalism. Nobody here seems to ever challenge or demand much from their newspapers. There is the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. The Globe and Mail is national, and thin.
The Toronto Star is sentimentalist-liberal: it skews news towards the lowest common denominators of sentimentality. For example, on Friday they headlined their newspaper with yet another article on the submarine Chicoutimi. This time about how the sub was running with the hatches open. The press have relentlessly covered the tragic death of the submariner for weeks. By contrast, the Boeing jet crash at Halifax Airport the day before, which killed all seven crew, was quietly reported on an inside page. This was a commercial cargo flight for an airline registered in Ghana and operated from Sussex, England, carrying a load of seafood to Spain. Although seven people died in Canada because of a runway error at Halifax airport, they weren't Canadian. Presumably because they induce less sentimentality than the submariner on the Chicoutimi.
I can't even think when last I saw a newspaper article in Britain commemorating a British soldier who died in Iraq. (Editorial slant comes in many angles?)
The saintly glorification that the Guardian seems to earn internationally, just because it emanates from the home country of the English Language, is worthy of my suspicious concern. And so it should be, because it's vital to keep all journalists on their toes.
I headed down to Yonge & St.Clair and walked down the hill towards Rosedale to meet R and her sister. The weather at last is autumnally cool but overcast with showers, which is unusual.
At 10.30A.M on a Sunday morning, the Toronto subways and streets are devoid of people. At Yonge & Summerhill, the renovated railway station which is now an LCBO liquor outlet (in Ontario, alcoholic beverages are sold only through government owned LCBO outlets) stands very impressively with a fountain front court and a continental style Timothy's cafe. I think it is just about the most (or maybe even the only) architecturally attractive spot on the whole 15 mile length of Yonge Street. Further down the hill, on the left hand side, is an oasis of civilization: a delicatessen shop selling superb croissants, pastries and breads. I had an almond croissant, and complimented them profusely on their shop.
We met at Rosedale, near where the Marathon route crossed Yonge Street into Rosedale Valley road. We had a good time: it was cold, but R and her sis were having a riot cheering on the runners by their names, (which were emblazoned under their Numbers).
Afterward we repaired to a Starbucks at nearby Summerhill, and I overheard some dissipated sixty-something-year-old Canadian intellectuals lavishing praise on the Guardian Unlimited website, the quality of its journalism and all, and how it was preferable to buying real newspapers. Yet being far away from the country where the Guardian is spawned, do they have any understanding of how it is slanted?
Their attitude seemed consistent with an alarming ignorance and apathy that surrounds Canadian print journalism. Nobody here seems to ever challenge or demand much from their newspapers. There is the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. The Globe and Mail is national, and thin.
The Toronto Star is sentimentalist-liberal: it skews news towards the lowest common denominators of sentimentality. For example, on Friday they headlined their newspaper with yet another article on the submarine Chicoutimi. This time about how the sub was running with the hatches open. The press have relentlessly covered the tragic death of the submariner for weeks. By contrast, the Boeing jet crash at Halifax Airport the day before, which killed all seven crew, was quietly reported on an inside page. This was a commercial cargo flight for an airline registered in Ghana and operated from Sussex, England, carrying a load of seafood to Spain. Although seven people died in Canada because of a runway error at Halifax airport, they weren't Canadian. Presumably because they induce less sentimentality than the submariner on the Chicoutimi.
I can't even think when last I saw a newspaper article in Britain commemorating a British soldier who died in Iraq. (Editorial slant comes in many angles?)
The saintly glorification that the Guardian seems to earn internationally, just because it emanates from the home country of the English Language, is worthy of my suspicious concern. And so it should be, because it's vital to keep all journalists on their toes.
Friday, October 15, 2004
Can't think of a Title
Dial-up access here in Canada, is clunkier than in the U.K., and Internet access speeds have been diabolically slow in the evenings. This is the first time in days that I've been able to get to Blogger.com
Well, 1 week in the hell that is North America and I'm just raring to get back to living. Hmmm... Even desperate for making some levity.....
So let's start with this one: It is after dark, after suppertime, on the evening of the funeral. Sister Number 2 is talking on the phone in the bedroom, telling someone about my Dad's passing. Suddenly she shouts for Sister Number 1, who goes upstairs. Then I hear Sis1 talking loudly, " Hi Pa, how nice of you to visit. Don't go away. (natter, natter, natter..)".
I am wondering what's going on. On investigating, I find Sis1 is having a full conversation with the Bedroom ceiling lightbulb, which is dimly, spookily, glowing orange. (There is no dimmer switch). Apparently the lightbulb started flickering as though it was going to fail, and then settled into this dim and darkened state.
Almost as scary as the possibility of ghostly spirits, is the state of mind of sisters who start talking to lightbulbs. You HAVE got to laugh. Sis1 was insisting that we do not switch off the light.
Well, my job here is obviously to keep posthumous mourning within the bounds of earthly sensibility. Being an intelligent scientific kind of guy, I had to launch into an explanation of how, when a lightbulb filament fails, it could easily settle into a steady state where it has a high resistance constriction at the point where it starts to break. With this higher resistance it has a lower current, so the overheating effect that was causing the filament to fuse, subsides and the lightbulb will glow dimly and steadily. It is slightly unusual, but far from impossible.
And then I had to accompany this with a reminder that by all means keep faith with Catholicism if you must, but at least choose the good parts of the religion, while dispensing with the rubbish of miracles and apparitions.
**
On Wednesday to escape from this claustrophobic environment, I attacked Toronto. That is, I decided to buy a day pass and go wherever necessary to shop for a pair of trainers, and to try including shopping centres that were completely new to me.
Toronto is very boastful of its public transportation system, which in the Seventies, was still way ahead of many. The TTC, as it is known is still efficient, but nothing to talk about. An off-peak day pass costs C$7.75, which allows you to go anywhere by bus or subway train within Toronto.
So to cut a long story short, I went to Yonge & Sheppard, then I went to Yonge & Finch, then I went back to Yonge & Sheppard, then I went to Yonge & Eglinton, then I went to Yonge & Bloor. Finally I took the Spadina line up to the Yorkdale shopping centre, which I've never deigned to visit, and I finally found a pair of Reebok trainers at a clearance price at Sears.
Throughout this entire journey, I saw nothing worth looking at in Toronto. Nothing new or of note. Nothing that I would recommend to a tourist for sight-seeing. Very few interesting people. Nothing worth buying that is not sold in every city in the world by the International Corporation of Chain Stores.
Toronto has been a very uninspiring place for a lot of its history, but especially in the last decade and some years, it defies description. It is a good city for eating out in restaurants, and driving everywhere in straight lines.
**
The weather has been ridiculously warm. Fall/autumn is almost four weeks behind normal. Today is overcast but very mild. There have been warm sunny days during this week which were suitable for sunbathing topless.
Global warming? Oh for god sakes, yes. Climate change? Well, this is not the normal pattern of weather in Southern Ontario, so climate change, yes certainly. And while the daft intellectualizing pseudo-scientists are bent on assuaging their egos to console themselves against their failures, Humanity continues to fuck Mother Earth.
**
Oh never ever allow a funeral home in the North American style to be exported to your country, wherever you live. Six Feet Under was produced in a very timely fashion.
The architecturally bland Seventies style building in North Toronto was typical. Neither a home, nor a temple, nor a church. Just a place of business. Its "chapel" had a ceiling height reaching nearly 3 stories, but was such a plastic place: clean, neutral colours, finished everywhere with varnished oak trim. This is the North American aesthetic for "quality interior"? The music playing throught the speakers was a loop tape with only 3 poorly performed versions of "religious classics". Even Classic FM plays better versions of these works. The rendition of "Pachelbel's Canon" was disgraceful, as was the "Ave Maria".
A few "organ pipes" were mounted on the wall as a decoration! Six foot wide by 5 foot high, painted in silver or something, sitting above one of the wooden box speakers. Fake, fake, fake. This is North America. The Las Vegas effect, some would say.
The fabulous oak casket that my Dad lay in was quite impressive. Hard to believe that such a fine piece of cabinetry was going into the ground.
He was withered beyond belief. I had last seen him in July. Now he looked like he was mummified. Skin and bone only. Not because of anything the funeral home had done. This was how he was in his last week. People tell me this is normal for people who die of cancer. It was amazing that my other family having watched his decline, seemed unable to predict that he had little time left.
It didn't trouble me terribly, because I knew he was dead now. But some people need to see the body in the casket, so that they can be convinced that it's time to let go.
All the hoohah about "In five minutes, I will be closing the casket for the last time, so any of you who wish to pay your last respects should do so now..." This all orchestrated by the master of ceremonies, a spotty, spotty man barely out of adolescence, who somehow very successfully trod the tightrope between professionalism and funereal gravity.
**
The Catholic monseigneur giving the service must have been having a laugh. His sermon ended up being an anonymous dirge on amateur CELL BIOLOGY. "The uniformity of life, the mitochondrial soup, the DNA, the Golgi bodies, blah, blah, blah... Humans are like ants, they farm fungi and they raise aphids like livestock..."
I was astounded, and wanted desperately to burst out laughing. I looked around at my niece, who being in high school, is studying this stuff right now, and we just registered our incredulity.
So a Catholic priest has finally got around to reading what first appeared as Seventies Popular Science? It was certainly an effective distraction from grief, in any case.
**
Into the hearse it went, in the funeral procession to the cemetery. A very austere cemetery worthy of Puritanical churches. Into the vault, and then left to go into the ground by the cemetery workers. Again, for people who need to be convinced that the Death was final, and it's time to let go.
**
And now, I'm bored, and waiting to go back to England. I'm more worried about having a job, and living. And whether to fruitlessly chase my own dreams, or come back here and be of future help to my Mom. Life goes on until it goes off.
Well, 1 week in the hell that is North America and I'm just raring to get back to living. Hmmm... Even desperate for making some levity.....
So let's start with this one: It is after dark, after suppertime, on the evening of the funeral. Sister Number 2 is talking on the phone in the bedroom, telling someone about my Dad's passing. Suddenly she shouts for Sister Number 1, who goes upstairs. Then I hear Sis1 talking loudly, " Hi Pa, how nice of you to visit. Don't go away. (natter, natter, natter..)".
I am wondering what's going on. On investigating, I find Sis1 is having a full conversation with the Bedroom ceiling lightbulb, which is dimly, spookily, glowing orange. (There is no dimmer switch). Apparently the lightbulb started flickering as though it was going to fail, and then settled into this dim and darkened state.
Almost as scary as the possibility of ghostly spirits, is the state of mind of sisters who start talking to lightbulbs. You HAVE got to laugh. Sis1 was insisting that we do not switch off the light.
Well, my job here is obviously to keep posthumous mourning within the bounds of earthly sensibility. Being an intelligent scientific kind of guy, I had to launch into an explanation of how, when a lightbulb filament fails, it could easily settle into a steady state where it has a high resistance constriction at the point where it starts to break. With this higher resistance it has a lower current, so the overheating effect that was causing the filament to fuse, subsides and the lightbulb will glow dimly and steadily. It is slightly unusual, but far from impossible.
And then I had to accompany this with a reminder that by all means keep faith with Catholicism if you must, but at least choose the good parts of the religion, while dispensing with the rubbish of miracles and apparitions.
**
On Wednesday to escape from this claustrophobic environment, I attacked Toronto. That is, I decided to buy a day pass and go wherever necessary to shop for a pair of trainers, and to try including shopping centres that were completely new to me.
Toronto is very boastful of its public transportation system, which in the Seventies, was still way ahead of many. The TTC, as it is known is still efficient, but nothing to talk about. An off-peak day pass costs C$7.75, which allows you to go anywhere by bus or subway train within Toronto.
So to cut a long story short, I went to Yonge & Sheppard, then I went to Yonge & Finch, then I went back to Yonge & Sheppard, then I went to Yonge & Eglinton, then I went to Yonge & Bloor. Finally I took the Spadina line up to the Yorkdale shopping centre, which I've never deigned to visit, and I finally found a pair of Reebok trainers at a clearance price at Sears.
Throughout this entire journey, I saw nothing worth looking at in Toronto. Nothing new or of note. Nothing that I would recommend to a tourist for sight-seeing. Very few interesting people. Nothing worth buying that is not sold in every city in the world by the International Corporation of Chain Stores.
Toronto has been a very uninspiring place for a lot of its history, but especially in the last decade and some years, it defies description. It is a good city for eating out in restaurants, and driving everywhere in straight lines.
**
The weather has been ridiculously warm. Fall/autumn is almost four weeks behind normal. Today is overcast but very mild. There have been warm sunny days during this week which were suitable for sunbathing topless.
Global warming? Oh for god sakes, yes. Climate change? Well, this is not the normal pattern of weather in Southern Ontario, so climate change, yes certainly. And while the daft intellectualizing pseudo-scientists are bent on assuaging their egos to console themselves against their failures, Humanity continues to fuck Mother Earth.
**
Oh never ever allow a funeral home in the North American style to be exported to your country, wherever you live. Six Feet Under was produced in a very timely fashion.
The architecturally bland Seventies style building in North Toronto was typical. Neither a home, nor a temple, nor a church. Just a place of business. Its "chapel" had a ceiling height reaching nearly 3 stories, but was such a plastic place: clean, neutral colours, finished everywhere with varnished oak trim. This is the North American aesthetic for "quality interior"? The music playing throught the speakers was a loop tape with only 3 poorly performed versions of "religious classics". Even Classic FM plays better versions of these works. The rendition of "Pachelbel's Canon" was disgraceful, as was the "Ave Maria".
A few "organ pipes" were mounted on the wall as a decoration! Six foot wide by 5 foot high, painted in silver or something, sitting above one of the wooden box speakers. Fake, fake, fake. This is North America. The Las Vegas effect, some would say.
The fabulous oak casket that my Dad lay in was quite impressive. Hard to believe that such a fine piece of cabinetry was going into the ground.
He was withered beyond belief. I had last seen him in July. Now he looked like he was mummified. Skin and bone only. Not because of anything the funeral home had done. This was how he was in his last week. People tell me this is normal for people who die of cancer. It was amazing that my other family having watched his decline, seemed unable to predict that he had little time left.
It didn't trouble me terribly, because I knew he was dead now. But some people need to see the body in the casket, so that they can be convinced that it's time to let go.
All the hoohah about "In five minutes, I will be closing the casket for the last time, so any of you who wish to pay your last respects should do so now..." This all orchestrated by the master of ceremonies, a spotty, spotty man barely out of adolescence, who somehow very successfully trod the tightrope between professionalism and funereal gravity.
**
The Catholic monseigneur giving the service must have been having a laugh. His sermon ended up being an anonymous dirge on amateur CELL BIOLOGY. "The uniformity of life, the mitochondrial soup, the DNA, the Golgi bodies, blah, blah, blah... Humans are like ants, they farm fungi and they raise aphids like livestock..."
I was astounded, and wanted desperately to burst out laughing. I looked around at my niece, who being in high school, is studying this stuff right now, and we just registered our incredulity.
So a Catholic priest has finally got around to reading what first appeared as Seventies Popular Science? It was certainly an effective distraction from grief, in any case.
**
Into the hearse it went, in the funeral procession to the cemetery. A very austere cemetery worthy of Puritanical churches. Into the vault, and then left to go into the ground by the cemetery workers. Again, for people who need to be convinced that the Death was final, and it's time to let go.
**
And now, I'm bored, and waiting to go back to England. I'm more worried about having a job, and living. And whether to fruitlessly chase my own dreams, or come back here and be of future help to my Mom. Life goes on until it goes off.
Monday, October 11, 2004
Thanksgiving Day
Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada.
Saturday was one of relief. Clearing out the palliative-care-provided hospital-style bed that Dad was using since March. Shifting the proper beds back into place. Cleaning out. Everybody is relieved that all that pain of the dying is finished. There is still mourning going on, but it tends to be about forgetting the day-to-day routine of the past few months, and remembering the odd amusing moment.
It's overcast here in Toronto, and today is at last autumnally cool. There was an Indian summer over the weekend. There hasn't been much rain for ages, and not much leaf fall yet either.
We're waiting for the funeral tomorrow morning. In the meantime, there has been talk of spirits, and re-visitations by Dad. Such conclusions arising from the raw feelings of dread, which accompanied the trying months past, and are now working themselves out of the sub-conscious. They are a manifestation of the process of relief. Such is my task, to be here to moderate the "mourning", to be witness to their stories of my Dad's last weeks, and thus to alleviate their experiences. So even though I wasn't here for the ending, I'm still involved.
Three of my sisters are here and are driving me bananas with their childish quarrelling and squabbling and their tragically misguided emotions. At middle-age, you would think they would all have a little more intelligence and understanding about what is going on in each other's heads. But no, enormous rows have erupted over things such as "what shoes to wear to the funeral". Fights over superficial irrelevancies, that stubbornly conceal each their own insecurities and the jealously-guarded alternate coping mechanisms that their very different lifetimes have engraved in them.
And now with their father dead..., it's their strange way of coming to terms with the vacuum from having lost somebody to fall back on, or to rebel against. By gossipping and quarreling they attempt to find some community of strength and reserve. I'm not sure it's working, and to me it looks like it's creating more trouble, but then, I 'm only gay, and the older I get the less I seem to know.
Need some men around here, some solid, stolid emotionless men. Ones who drown themselves in drink, even... Ones who live only for football... Ones who could effortlessly ignore the antics of these women: none of the nonsense would even enter the periphery of their vision enough to be worthy of attention.
There may be no such men here, but I can still dream, so maybe I should have my jet-lag nap after all.
Saturday was one of relief. Clearing out the palliative-care-provided hospital-style bed that Dad was using since March. Shifting the proper beds back into place. Cleaning out. Everybody is relieved that all that pain of the dying is finished. There is still mourning going on, but it tends to be about forgetting the day-to-day routine of the past few months, and remembering the odd amusing moment.
It's overcast here in Toronto, and today is at last autumnally cool. There was an Indian summer over the weekend. There hasn't been much rain for ages, and not much leaf fall yet either.
We're waiting for the funeral tomorrow morning. In the meantime, there has been talk of spirits, and re-visitations by Dad. Such conclusions arising from the raw feelings of dread, which accompanied the trying months past, and are now working themselves out of the sub-conscious. They are a manifestation of the process of relief. Such is my task, to be here to moderate the "mourning", to be witness to their stories of my Dad's last weeks, and thus to alleviate their experiences. So even though I wasn't here for the ending, I'm still involved.
Three of my sisters are here and are driving me bananas with their childish quarrelling and squabbling and their tragically misguided emotions. At middle-age, you would think they would all have a little more intelligence and understanding about what is going on in each other's heads. But no, enormous rows have erupted over things such as "what shoes to wear to the funeral". Fights over superficial irrelevancies, that stubbornly conceal each their own insecurities and the jealously-guarded alternate coping mechanisms that their very different lifetimes have engraved in them.
And now with their father dead..., it's their strange way of coming to terms with the vacuum from having lost somebody to fall back on, or to rebel against. By gossipping and quarreling they attempt to find some community of strength and reserve. I'm not sure it's working, and to me it looks like it's creating more trouble, but then, I 'm only gay, and the older I get the less I seem to know.
Need some men around here, some solid, stolid emotionless men. Ones who drown themselves in drink, even... Ones who live only for football... Ones who could effortlessly ignore the antics of these women: none of the nonsense would even enter the periphery of their vision enough to be worthy of attention.
There may be no such men here, but I can still dream, so maybe I should have my jet-lag nap after all.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Dad died
Friday 8th October
3.15 pm ** I'm having a shower getting ready to go over to David's to look at his central heating problem.
Phone rings, and Big Sis intones: "Aunty says come over now, because Dad is shutting down.."
5.00pm ** I am at Manor Park train station on my way to Heathrow Airport. In that time, I've found on Opodo the cheapest flight for only 250 pounds, on Air Canada, leaving at 9.00pm. I've packed what I need, including a funeral suit, and shut down the house. From the time of the phone call received in London, I will be at the house in Toronto in 13 hours. Rueing the irony of 21st century life: that I have spent 5 weeks jobhunting and yet have not secured one interview, let alone been economically productive. Yet for what is not much more than 1 week's wages, I can cross the atlantic door to door in half a day. Put it another way, it's so easy to add to global warming because oil prices are too, too, low, yet at the same time human energy is wasted
on slothful underoccupation.
My first journey at rush hour on the Underground for several years. By the time I reach Kings Cross, I am homicidal, and my shoulders and backpack are set in a rugby tackle posture. There are so many sleepwalking zombies in the trains, on the platforms, in the stations. Some are tourists, some are office robotpersons on their way home. I suddenly am reminded what a different London it is from being an unemployed person spending all day in a Zone 3 suburb. A London just as undesirable, but even more remote from any universal reality worthy of Man the Animal.
I have forgotten none of the battle strategy on London Transport. Get as far as you can on any train, so long as it is heading in the right direction and running well. So if one or the other Tube services up ahead is delayed, you can always exit for the street and catch a taxi the rest of the way. My cleverness has allowed me to avoid the Central Line blockage that had just started at Liverpool Street.
So now I jump on the first Piccadily Line service, though it's heading for Rayner's Lane, not Heathrow Airport, and hot with exasperation, I sulk on the trundling train.
6.20pm ** I reach Baron's Court, which being an open air station, is ideal for changing to a Heathrow train. My mobile phone beeps into range. I jump onto the following Heathrow train, and find out that sis in Europe wants to know what flight arrangements I have found. So I ring her back.
On the seat to my left is a classically attractive Irish girl with luscious dark borwn hair and clear complexion. She is nattering with girlish enthusiasm at all manner of silliness. The train car is full but there is plenty of standing room. With my mobile phone to my left ear, side by side with the Irish girl's..
Me: "Hi J.. It's me...I'm on my way to the airport"
J: "Oh! You got a flight already?! *breaking voice* Did you hear? Dad died ten minutes ago."
Me: *euphemistically* "Oh so he's gone is he? Already? Well it's too late to worry then.."
And the people around me are nattering, or cold, or sullen. They are Londoners. This is a Tube train. If you are tired of Life, it is because there is none on a Tube train.
I felt so cheated. I had decided I wanted to be there when he passed away. And now I was too late.
And no private space to shed my tears.
So my wishes earlier in the week for his speedy exit were heeded. He still took some food and water yesterday, but today he has died. Rotted away from prostate cancer, there was little of him left to die in any case.
Prostate cancer metastasizes into the bones, and when he was diagnosed three years ago, it had already done this to an advanced stage. Then it affects the bone marrow, so that there is little red blood cell production, which is why his haemoglobin levels were already critical in June (see archive). Starving of oxygen, and unable to take new blood transfusions, and regardless of the canned oxygen available, his death did not linger for weeks beyond the last intake of food, as it can do with some other cancers.
And so Dad you are gone
Where to, it matters not.
It is the end of an era
And the beginning of many more endings
Until at last I meet my own.
We reach Acton Town, and I suddenly spy Dom walking past the train. Eager to seize some contact, I shout, "DOM !!!". I don't care anymore what people think of me.
D (from the train door): Oh it's you! What are you doing over here?"
G (shouting): I'm on my way back to Toronto. MY DAD JUST DIED!"
And my fellow passengers just wavered a bit.... Especially the bubbly Irish Girl on my left..
9.08 pm ** Now I'm on the plane. It stinks of oil fumes. It is Air Canada. Air Canada stinks. (See March Archives). I could have flown in comfort on My Travel for 50 pounds less, but it was not leaving till tomorrow afternoon. How was I to know that Dad would be dead already?
There is no seat back TV. The uphostery is an indescribably drab grey. The leg room is minimal, and the seat width is just acceptable even to my slim butt. It's a Boeing, B767-300, and the whole interior is ugly. (MyTravel has lovely bright Airbus 330's.) I think I'll need to get drunk.
And then some bland canned chill out music plays in the background with some vacuous coral reef film imagery sloshing around on Vaccuum-tubed Televisions. Air Canada is so shit.
An imperfect father. He was that. Yet the world seems a lonelier place now. The bubbles of mourning that have welled up throughout the year all came from this reservoir of loneliness. One less person who was part of my past. Gone forever, undeniably, and irreversibly. I wish I were not on this plane, amongst alien strangers. I should like to mourn now, free to sob and shudder and shed more tears.
At last, we are in the air, and dinner finally arrives. A lamb curry and a Bloody Caesar with clamato juice lifts my spirits. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkhaban starts to draw my attention.
Our attentions are incessantly torn by distracting entertainments from the deep dark wells in our souls. This is a characteristic foundation of modern, commercialised, Westernized cultures.
3.15 pm ** I'm having a shower getting ready to go over to David's to look at his central heating problem.
Phone rings, and Big Sis intones: "Aunty says come over now, because Dad is shutting down.."
5.00pm ** I am at Manor Park train station on my way to Heathrow Airport. In that time, I've found on Opodo the cheapest flight for only 250 pounds, on Air Canada, leaving at 9.00pm. I've packed what I need, including a funeral suit, and shut down the house. From the time of the phone call received in London, I will be at the house in Toronto in 13 hours. Rueing the irony of 21st century life: that I have spent 5 weeks jobhunting and yet have not secured one interview, let alone been economically productive. Yet for what is not much more than 1 week's wages, I can cross the atlantic door to door in half a day. Put it another way, it's so easy to add to global warming because oil prices are too, too, low, yet at the same time human energy is wasted
on slothful underoccupation.
My first journey at rush hour on the Underground for several years. By the time I reach Kings Cross, I am homicidal, and my shoulders and backpack are set in a rugby tackle posture. There are so many sleepwalking zombies in the trains, on the platforms, in the stations. Some are tourists, some are office robotpersons on their way home. I suddenly am reminded what a different London it is from being an unemployed person spending all day in a Zone 3 suburb. A London just as undesirable, but even more remote from any universal reality worthy of Man the Animal.
I have forgotten none of the battle strategy on London Transport. Get as far as you can on any train, so long as it is heading in the right direction and running well. So if one or the other Tube services up ahead is delayed, you can always exit for the street and catch a taxi the rest of the way. My cleverness has allowed me to avoid the Central Line blockage that had just started at Liverpool Street.
So now I jump on the first Piccadily Line service, though it's heading for Rayner's Lane, not Heathrow Airport, and hot with exasperation, I sulk on the trundling train.
6.20pm ** I reach Baron's Court, which being an open air station, is ideal for changing to a Heathrow train. My mobile phone beeps into range. I jump onto the following Heathrow train, and find out that sis in Europe wants to know what flight arrangements I have found. So I ring her back.
On the seat to my left is a classically attractive Irish girl with luscious dark borwn hair and clear complexion. She is nattering with girlish enthusiasm at all manner of silliness. The train car is full but there is plenty of standing room. With my mobile phone to my left ear, side by side with the Irish girl's..
Me: "Hi J.. It's me...I'm on my way to the airport"
J: "Oh! You got a flight already?! *breaking voice* Did you hear? Dad died ten minutes ago."
Me: *euphemistically* "Oh so he's gone is he? Already? Well it's too late to worry then.."
And the people around me are nattering, or cold, or sullen. They are Londoners. This is a Tube train. If you are tired of Life, it is because there is none on a Tube train.
I felt so cheated. I had decided I wanted to be there when he passed away. And now I was too late.
And no private space to shed my tears.
So my wishes earlier in the week for his speedy exit were heeded. He still took some food and water yesterday, but today he has died. Rotted away from prostate cancer, there was little of him left to die in any case.
Prostate cancer metastasizes into the bones, and when he was diagnosed three years ago, it had already done this to an advanced stage. Then it affects the bone marrow, so that there is little red blood cell production, which is why his haemoglobin levels were already critical in June (see archive). Starving of oxygen, and unable to take new blood transfusions, and regardless of the canned oxygen available, his death did not linger for weeks beyond the last intake of food, as it can do with some other cancers.
And so Dad you are gone
Where to, it matters not.
It is the end of an era
And the beginning of many more endings
Until at last I meet my own.
We reach Acton Town, and I suddenly spy Dom walking past the train. Eager to seize some contact, I shout, "DOM !!!". I don't care anymore what people think of me.
D (from the train door): Oh it's you! What are you doing over here?"
G (shouting): I'm on my way back to Toronto. MY DAD JUST DIED!"
And my fellow passengers just wavered a bit.... Especially the bubbly Irish Girl on my left..
9.08 pm ** Now I'm on the plane. It stinks of oil fumes. It is Air Canada. Air Canada stinks. (See March Archives). I could have flown in comfort on My Travel for 50 pounds less, but it was not leaving till tomorrow afternoon. How was I to know that Dad would be dead already?
There is no seat back TV. The uphostery is an indescribably drab grey. The leg room is minimal, and the seat width is just acceptable even to my slim butt. It's a Boeing, B767-300, and the whole interior is ugly. (MyTravel has lovely bright Airbus 330's.) I think I'll need to get drunk.
And then some bland canned chill out music plays in the background with some vacuous coral reef film imagery sloshing around on Vaccuum-tubed Televisions. Air Canada is so shit.
An imperfect father. He was that. Yet the world seems a lonelier place now. The bubbles of mourning that have welled up throughout the year all came from this reservoir of loneliness. One less person who was part of my past. Gone forever, undeniably, and irreversibly. I wish I were not on this plane, amongst alien strangers. I should like to mourn now, free to sob and shudder and shed more tears.
At last, we are in the air, and dinner finally arrives. A lamb curry and a Bloody Caesar with clamato juice lifts my spirits. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkhaban starts to draw my attention.
Our attentions are incessantly torn by distracting entertainments from the deep dark wells in our souls. This is a characteristic foundation of modern, commercialised, Westernized cultures.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Signs of London Today
Here's a lovely example of a Job advertised on the UK Government's expensive yet crappy official website for jobs. I think it's a lovely indication to USA persons that London, England is not the land of Mary Poppins or Hugh Grant. (Ilford is in London, in Zone 4 of the six concentric zones that demarcate the Public Transport Fare system of London, but is officially still part of the county of Essex). There are rather a lot of people who are recently arrived native speakers of these languages.
Job Title TECHNICAL ASSISTANT-LINGUIST/PROGRAMMER QIB/17239
Location ILFORD, ESSEX
Hours 40 PER WEEK, DAYS AND HOURS TO BE AGREED
Wage £1,200-£1,550 PER MONTH
Duration TEMPORARY
Must have 3 years or more experience in software development or educated to HND, or
equivalent, standard and two of the following languages:- Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian,
Slovak, Czech, Slovenian, Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian
together with good English, together with MS Office skills for preparation
of test documentation. Your role will be developing stemming rules and noise
word lists for the languages of the countries that have recently joined the
EU, testing and develop existing products and research into other language
products.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
Curriculum Vitae or Resume
In North America, a resume. In Britain, it's a C.V., or Curriculum Vitae.
I have always hated looking at my own C.V. How many times I have had to edit and rearrange it, throughout my life, and although it has gotten me jobs sometimes, it never ever got me the jobs that I really wanted.
And when I say hate, I mean I have often felt near mortal dread at the thought of even approaching the computer with the damning document.
No, not even when I have been sickly and ghastly have I ever dreaded looking at myself in the mirror, as much as I dread looking at my C.V.
One's desired self-image and one's actual image are two different things. I'm relatively comfortable with my physical image: I'd much rather be a chameleon or shape-changer so I could morph into anybody I wanted to be, but I know how to live with the body I've got. How other people see me, is more of a problem for me, but I think I'm used to that.
The CV is another story. My desired CV and my actual CV are like two different universes. I could more easily become a lying Member of Parliament than I could exaggerate my career history.
There's something about looking at my CV which makes me feel like a total utter failure. This was not the life I intended. This was not the future that I had expected as a boy. Catastrophic disappointments and disillusionments are amassed in a reservoir of self-dread condensed into two or three pages of A4 on Microsoft Word.
Quite apart from which, even if I had a CV that came close to what I had expected out of my life, I would hate with enormous passion being pigeonholed and trapped forever in its stream of history. The greatest liberty afforded to a man is the chance always of starting from a blank, clean slate, unfettered by his past. It's impossible to achieve this, of course, and it will never ever happen, but that is the ideal. And this ideal shrinks away into the distance ever more, as the technocivilization juggernaut bulldozes through our society.
So there, I've said it. And my God, this is what blogging is for. I hate C.V.'s and the entire system of selection for a job. I have no other system to suggest. I just hate them, because they have never ever gotten me what I wanted, but only occasionally got me barely what I needed. And I know it's not just the C.V. At the interview, it's me: my body, my voice, my looks, my values. And I'll never be able to change how people see them, or how some will like what they see, and some will not. Which is why all I can do is blog about it. But goddamnit, that's got to be better than letting it infect me with thoughts that "there's something wrong with me, and thus I shall hate myself for it".
**
After nearly two days of Zombified moroseness and maudlin eruptions of mourning, I napped yesterday afternoon, and awoke feeling normal again. Another mysterious phase of mourning vented, thank goodness. I may go to watch my Dad die, after all, instead of waiting until he's gone, and then going for the funeral. People die, and yes, his is the shitty, slow, painful, worst way to die. If I go, it will be because I might as well face it now. It won't lessen his pain. It won't make me a saint. It might not enlighten me any more than what I have so far reached. But I'm thinking about it.
Spoke to P in Dublin yesterday, and he was helpful as usual because his Dad died slowly of lung cancer only 2 years ago. Spoke to Sis in Europe and she is a little more confused about what to do. Bro will be starting his first ever job in over 10 years, and it will be at a call centre. Financial reality. This is indeed a time of family upheaval. The contortions of a middle aged family make an unanticipated landscape for me.
I have always hated looking at my own C.V. How many times I have had to edit and rearrange it, throughout my life, and although it has gotten me jobs sometimes, it never ever got me the jobs that I really wanted.
And when I say hate, I mean I have often felt near mortal dread at the thought of even approaching the computer with the damning document.
No, not even when I have been sickly and ghastly have I ever dreaded looking at myself in the mirror, as much as I dread looking at my C.V.
One's desired self-image and one's actual image are two different things. I'm relatively comfortable with my physical image: I'd much rather be a chameleon or shape-changer so I could morph into anybody I wanted to be, but I know how to live with the body I've got. How other people see me, is more of a problem for me, but I think I'm used to that.
The CV is another story. My desired CV and my actual CV are like two different universes. I could more easily become a lying Member of Parliament than I could exaggerate my career history.
There's something about looking at my CV which makes me feel like a total utter failure. This was not the life I intended. This was not the future that I had expected as a boy. Catastrophic disappointments and disillusionments are amassed in a reservoir of self-dread condensed into two or three pages of A4 on Microsoft Word.
Quite apart from which, even if I had a CV that came close to what I had expected out of my life, I would hate with enormous passion being pigeonholed and trapped forever in its stream of history. The greatest liberty afforded to a man is the chance always of starting from a blank, clean slate, unfettered by his past. It's impossible to achieve this, of course, and it will never ever happen, but that is the ideal. And this ideal shrinks away into the distance ever more, as the technocivilization juggernaut bulldozes through our society.
So there, I've said it. And my God, this is what blogging is for. I hate C.V.'s and the entire system of selection for a job. I have no other system to suggest. I just hate them, because they have never ever gotten me what I wanted, but only occasionally got me barely what I needed. And I know it's not just the C.V. At the interview, it's me: my body, my voice, my looks, my values. And I'll never be able to change how people see them, or how some will like what they see, and some will not. Which is why all I can do is blog about it. But goddamnit, that's got to be better than letting it infect me with thoughts that "there's something wrong with me, and thus I shall hate myself for it".
**
After nearly two days of Zombified moroseness and maudlin eruptions of mourning, I napped yesterday afternoon, and awoke feeling normal again. Another mysterious phase of mourning vented, thank goodness. I may go to watch my Dad die, after all, instead of waiting until he's gone, and then going for the funeral. People die, and yes, his is the shitty, slow, painful, worst way to die. If I go, it will be because I might as well face it now. It won't lessen his pain. It won't make me a saint. It might not enlighten me any more than what I have so far reached. But I'm thinking about it.
Spoke to P in Dublin yesterday, and he was helpful as usual because his Dad died slowly of lung cancer only 2 years ago. Spoke to Sis in Europe and she is a little more confused about what to do. Bro will be starting his first ever job in over 10 years, and it will be at a call centre. Financial reality. This is indeed a time of family upheaval. The contortions of a middle aged family make an unanticipated landscape for me.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Sky Captain (Film)
I met up with a new acquaintaince last night at the West India Quay cinema. We went to see Sky Captain. Tom would make a nice friend, and frankly I didn't care about anything else beyond that. I guess I was already spiralling downward into this new phase of mourning mentioned in my last post, which was precipitated when I got home by talking to my sister.
The movie is very original visually. But there are two things wrong with it. It lacks humanity: computer-generated films like Shrek and Toy Story have more humanity than Sky Captain. The second thing wrong with it is that its visual density flashes by too quickly. Some of its beautiful, laboriously-constructed images barely have time to register on your retina, before they move or change. It seems such a waste, that an imaginative vista, which has so much potential for escapism, is allowed less time on a film than would be allowed on a music video. I did actually doze off for 5 minutes midway. Gwynneth Paltrow shows off her hair very nicely in the film, and Jude Law is starting to look like Niles Crane in Frasier.
Afterward we repaired over a footbridge over the dockwater to a pub called the Cat and the Canary. The views in the Canary Wharf Docks are beautifully lit at night. I was quite surprised, as I really like that sort of sparkly night time thing. As we sat at the tables outside having our pints, looming over us, across the water, was the slinky 20 storey tower with the Marriott Hotel in the bottom, and extravagantly expensive New York Style apartments above. Over half of the flats and hotel rooms are clearly empty, and you wonder how these economic realities never seem suggested by the Labour Government's statistics.
Tom is interesting enough and has handsome bone structure, though he has let himself become portly at his young age. We managed to chat for hours, as he is erudite and intelligent. But then, I suppose he is clearly of the chattering classes.
Today, I rotted. I even felt ill this morning, undoubtedly tipped over by depressed feelings of mourning. Channel 4 has excellent daytime programming these days, I was astonished! There was a superb documentary on the history of immigration in Britain, followed by another on the U-Boat's role in World War 1. Then Cheers and a double episode of Frasier. And surprisingly, all episodes that I had missed. One of them involved Frasier being publicly mistaken as being OUTed as Gay, and then being pursued as a trophy boyfriend by Patrick Stewart, of all people! Patrick Stewart does indeed have a glorious voice, as I've mentioned before, and doesn't he know how to use it.
Fortunately, the weather and I picked up in the afternoon. Chocolate for serotonin, the Internet for chat, but most of all a march into the wind. For once I ended up at the West End of the Wanstead Flats, and got to examine close up the new Jubilee Pond, constructed as a wildfowl replacement for its broken concrete predecessor (which according to the sign, was the Model Yachting Pond first opened over 90 years ago).
I was surprised to learn that the Wanstead Flats have in fact been treeless since the 12th century, and mostly used for sheep grazing. The soil is so poor, the growth is so slow, that I would have thought it were poorer grazing than the Yorkshire Moors.
But my dear Mother cheered me up immensely. She was feeling very chuffed and prepared because she has over the weekend picked out THE most expensive casket she could buy for my dad. It is ridiculous to me that money is wasted on death when it was conserved with such niggardly austerity during life. But then their values are so different from my generation's. And it made her very happy that she would be giving him a nice comfortable bed to lie in his grave. Why not cremation? He is that much afraid of fire? I defer to irrationality, when it obviously achieves consolation more successfully than my logic.
Dad was able to say a few words on the phone, but is losing coherence. It is even harder for me to know what to say, when he has reached the state where the meaning of words seems to conjure up little in his mind.
Death is a funny old business, which is no wonder that Six Feet Under was conceived to become such a hit. And I misuse the word funny very deliberately.
The movie is very original visually. But there are two things wrong with it. It lacks humanity: computer-generated films like Shrek and Toy Story have more humanity than Sky Captain. The second thing wrong with it is that its visual density flashes by too quickly. Some of its beautiful, laboriously-constructed images barely have time to register on your retina, before they move or change. It seems such a waste, that an imaginative vista, which has so much potential for escapism, is allowed less time on a film than would be allowed on a music video. I did actually doze off for 5 minutes midway. Gwynneth Paltrow shows off her hair very nicely in the film, and Jude Law is starting to look like Niles Crane in Frasier.
Afterward we repaired over a footbridge over the dockwater to a pub called the Cat and the Canary. The views in the Canary Wharf Docks are beautifully lit at night. I was quite surprised, as I really like that sort of sparkly night time thing. As we sat at the tables outside having our pints, looming over us, across the water, was the slinky 20 storey tower with the Marriott Hotel in the bottom, and extravagantly expensive New York Style apartments above. Over half of the flats and hotel rooms are clearly empty, and you wonder how these economic realities never seem suggested by the Labour Government's statistics.
Tom is interesting enough and has handsome bone structure, though he has let himself become portly at his young age. We managed to chat for hours, as he is erudite and intelligent. But then, I suppose he is clearly of the chattering classes.
Today, I rotted. I even felt ill this morning, undoubtedly tipped over by depressed feelings of mourning. Channel 4 has excellent daytime programming these days, I was astonished! There was a superb documentary on the history of immigration in Britain, followed by another on the U-Boat's role in World War 1. Then Cheers and a double episode of Frasier. And surprisingly, all episodes that I had missed. One of them involved Frasier being publicly mistaken as being OUTed as Gay, and then being pursued as a trophy boyfriend by Patrick Stewart, of all people! Patrick Stewart does indeed have a glorious voice, as I've mentioned before, and doesn't he know how to use it.
Fortunately, the weather and I picked up in the afternoon. Chocolate for serotonin, the Internet for chat, but most of all a march into the wind. For once I ended up at the West End of the Wanstead Flats, and got to examine close up the new Jubilee Pond, constructed as a wildfowl replacement for its broken concrete predecessor (which according to the sign, was the Model Yachting Pond first opened over 90 years ago).
I was surprised to learn that the Wanstead Flats have in fact been treeless since the 12th century, and mostly used for sheep grazing. The soil is so poor, the growth is so slow, that I would have thought it were poorer grazing than the Yorkshire Moors.
But my dear Mother cheered me up immensely. She was feeling very chuffed and prepared because she has over the weekend picked out THE most expensive casket she could buy for my dad. It is ridiculous to me that money is wasted on death when it was conserved with such niggardly austerity during life. But then their values are so different from my generation's. And it made her very happy that she would be giving him a nice comfortable bed to lie in his grave. Why not cremation? He is that much afraid of fire? I defer to irrationality, when it obviously achieves consolation more successfully than my logic.
Dad was able to say a few words on the phone, but is losing coherence. It is even harder for me to know what to say, when he has reached the state where the meaning of words seems to conjure up little in his mind.
Death is a funny old business, which is no wonder that Six Feet Under was conceived to become such a hit. And I misuse the word funny very deliberately.
The dying days
The dracula days are over. Now even my sister concedes he is on his way out. It could be days, it could be a month. I don't really want to see the last bit. Although maybe it isn't as bad as imagining it, which is awful. I get it over the phone, and I think I'd rather just wait for the funeral. I just wish it could be over quickly for him. It's a lousy way to die. Really lousy. And though everyone and myself is ready for it, and thinking beyond it, it hangs like a cloud. And imagining the pain is just dreadful. It really is no way to die. All the money that is donated to cancer charities makes little difference to the end game, which is all about slow, lingering death.
My poor Dad. I wish you a speedy exit, while you can still hold a sensible memory before you close your eyes for the last time. I wish you could be me, so that you could just lie in the forest out in the cold and be gone by the morning. It's the very least dignity that any animal gets, and the very least that any man should be entitled to.
My poor Dad. I wish you a speedy exit, while you can still hold a sensible memory before you close your eyes for the last time. I wish you could be me, so that you could just lie in the forest out in the cold and be gone by the morning. It's the very least dignity that any animal gets, and the very least that any man should be entitled to.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Self Confidence
Overcast, raining, gusty, vile weather - but not yet cold.
Con = With
Fides=Faith/Trust
Have faith/trust in yourself. That's what self-confidence actually means.
So why don't people just say self-trust or self-faith? The word self-confidence is one of those in the English language that is bandied about so loosely, that its meaning has become bastardized to near uselessness. Most people are taught it in the context of a celebrity or a cocky schoolmate. For example, a child might hear Wayne Rooney described as self-confident. So a child thinks that when they need to be self-confident, they need to be like Wayne Rooney. They emulate him in a superficial manner, and think that emulation gives them self-confidence.
And what happens when the Upper Year school drug dealer is the model of Self-Confidence?
Without the teachings from a Church or a surrounding strong social community, how will anybody learn the right kind of Self-Trust? Through trial and error? Through the luck of being born with all the right things ( money, good family, superlative genes, good looks, healthy, fit athletic body, intelligence)? How can an asthmatic, for example, be expected to teach themselves self-confidence, when they know that every so often their body fails them perilously?
Self-faith in the face of challenge and self-encouragement when faced by failure are fundamental essentials to survival. Those who cannot foster it in others, must be shamming their own self-confidence.
Con = With
Fides=Faith/Trust
Have faith/trust in yourself. That's what self-confidence actually means.
So why don't people just say self-trust or self-faith? The word self-confidence is one of those in the English language that is bandied about so loosely, that its meaning has become bastardized to near uselessness. Most people are taught it in the context of a celebrity or a cocky schoolmate. For example, a child might hear Wayne Rooney described as self-confident. So a child thinks that when they need to be self-confident, they need to be like Wayne Rooney. They emulate him in a superficial manner, and think that emulation gives them self-confidence.
And what happens when the Upper Year school drug dealer is the model of Self-Confidence?
Without the teachings from a Church or a surrounding strong social community, how will anybody learn the right kind of Self-Trust? Through trial and error? Through the luck of being born with all the right things ( money, good family, superlative genes, good looks, healthy, fit athletic body, intelligence)? How can an asthmatic, for example, be expected to teach themselves self-confidence, when they know that every so often their body fails them perilously?
Self-faith in the face of challenge and self-encouragement when faced by failure are fundamental essentials to survival. Those who cannot foster it in others, must be shamming their own self-confidence.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Feeling fabulous
Aaah.. Nothing like chewing on a pork hock. Tastiest part of the pig, to be sure, to be sure.
This after a mini-workout where the body just seemed to sing without effort, which is not to be taken for granted in middle-age!
I blame having gone out to the Barcode basement for a boogie last night. It wasn't the sexiest crowd there last night, but it was good enough. The music wasn't the most electric there either, but it did almost become challenging in a few places. I was in enough mood to thrash a few guitars, if I had been so lucky to have a job as rock star. And if the music were hot enough.
But my body loves the dance. It always tells me so. And for the first time in my life I realised that I am so fed up with tall guys. I don't mean the monsters who are over 6' 2" who are so tall that they have developed embarrassment at their own height. I mean your average 6-foot-tall-full-of-himself-good-looking-and-had-it-all-easy faggot who gets onto the dancefloor and then by their body language, clearly doesn't have the class to give elbow space to shorter neighbours. No wonder some straight men can't stand gays. When gay men are like that, you really can't wait for them to finally have to face a little challenge in their life. Thank goodness they'll get old and lose their looks, and by then no fluffy little twink will be stupid enough to ever imagine that an elder gay man is like a "Daddy".
Well, I was almost ready to start a brawl, but damn it, this stupid town is so suffocatingly "civilized" these days. "Son you don't have to fight to be a man. Walk away from trouble if you can....". Yeah, Tony Blair, so true to your heart, isn't it? Can't even have a fight in a bar here now. No, we have to join the army and go to Iraq if we really want to have a fight. Whoopee! It seems to suit the fatly-pensioned peasants of the Legal/Judiciary classes.
No, I went there just for a dance, and thank goodness. Not looking for Love, and not looking for Sex. They seem both like such a waste of time! In fact, lately I've been thinking of renaming this blog to Life and the City, because frankly, Love is just not on the menu. Not for starters, main course or dessert. It gives you indigestion, whichever way you eat it. As for sex, well.....unless you're a prostitute, after a day, you never have anything to show for sex except an unhappy discovery.
Magic FM is playing on the radio. What a pleasant change of Feel-Good-Factory. The other day I was listening to one of the little children that play at being DJs on XFM. This one is male with a thick accent. He was being a snob and making jokes about Magic FM. Silly kids. Playing the game of "I'm so cool because I DJ with the hottest newest hippest kind of music". It makes you want to slap nincompoops like John Peel and Jo Whalley, or better yet, make them do REAL jobs, like stacking supermarket shelves. Where are good old Communist Party re-education methods, just when you need them?
But yes, dancing makes my body sing. Well, might as well sing before I get old and die. Could do worse, couldn't I?
This after a mini-workout where the body just seemed to sing without effort, which is not to be taken for granted in middle-age!
I blame having gone out to the Barcode basement for a boogie last night. It wasn't the sexiest crowd there last night, but it was good enough. The music wasn't the most electric there either, but it did almost become challenging in a few places. I was in enough mood to thrash a few guitars, if I had been so lucky to have a job as rock star. And if the music were hot enough.
But my body loves the dance. It always tells me so. And for the first time in my life I realised that I am so fed up with tall guys. I don't mean the monsters who are over 6' 2" who are so tall that they have developed embarrassment at their own height. I mean your average 6-foot-tall-full-of-himself-good-looking-and-had-it-all-easy faggot who gets onto the dancefloor and then by their body language, clearly doesn't have the class to give elbow space to shorter neighbours. No wonder some straight men can't stand gays. When gay men are like that, you really can't wait for them to finally have to face a little challenge in their life. Thank goodness they'll get old and lose their looks, and by then no fluffy little twink will be stupid enough to ever imagine that an elder gay man is like a "Daddy".
Well, I was almost ready to start a brawl, but damn it, this stupid town is so suffocatingly "civilized" these days. "Son you don't have to fight to be a man. Walk away from trouble if you can....". Yeah, Tony Blair, so true to your heart, isn't it? Can't even have a fight in a bar here now. No, we have to join the army and go to Iraq if we really want to have a fight. Whoopee! It seems to suit the fatly-pensioned peasants of the Legal/Judiciary classes.
No, I went there just for a dance, and thank goodness. Not looking for Love, and not looking for Sex. They seem both like such a waste of time! In fact, lately I've been thinking of renaming this blog to Life and the City, because frankly, Love is just not on the menu. Not for starters, main course or dessert. It gives you indigestion, whichever way you eat it. As for sex, well.....unless you're a prostitute, after a day, you never have anything to show for sex except an unhappy discovery.
Magic FM is playing on the radio. What a pleasant change of Feel-Good-Factory. The other day I was listening to one of the little children that play at being DJs on XFM. This one is male with a thick accent. He was being a snob and making jokes about Magic FM. Silly kids. Playing the game of "I'm so cool because I DJ with the hottest newest hippest kind of music". It makes you want to slap nincompoops like John Peel and Jo Whalley, or better yet, make them do REAL jobs, like stacking supermarket shelves. Where are good old Communist Party re-education methods, just when you need them?
But yes, dancing makes my body sing. Well, might as well sing before I get old and die. Could do worse, couldn't I?
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