Wee Mad Harold

Advertisers get scarier and scarier.

...

Or, even better, maybe your cell phone rings, you answer it and it's Starbucks offering you $1 off on a white chocolate, pumpkin and whiskey Frappuccino. Why that's what you always order, and you just passed a Starbucks a second ago. Thank the GPS in your phone, and Starbucks tracking your buying habits.

Of course, we're talking about a distant, hypothetical future here. And by that we mean they intend to have that exact program up and running in a year or two

What could be creepier than that? Well Google realizes all that data they're collecting is limited to web-surfing habits. Why stop there? Luckily they've got a prototype system that will listen to the conversation going on around your computer and add it to their database.

Really, what could go wrong?

...

So, say an attractive girl walks up to you in the street, tells you she's from out of town and asks if you would take a picture of her in front of a local landmark. As your brain desperately races to come up with something witty to say to her, you raise the camera to take the picture and notice that it's actually pretty damn nice. They just got you. That girl was hired by Sony to promote the new camera you're holding.

Sound paranoid? Well it turns out Sony has been doing it for years.

...

Maybe the probability that peak oil, peak freshwater,and peak food are going to destroy civilisation as we know it is a good thing. The middle ages had their problems, but seemed like a pretty fun place to live all round. At least 'big brother' was just a kid who would beat you up occasionally but loved you really.

In other news, Edinburgh is cool. More on that later.

Let's see if excessive drinking (my penultimate night was a pretty good one and I'm pretty wasted right now) can help with the whole insomnia thing...

I fucking hate Freecycle. I've used it twice now; the first time I was messed around when trying to pick something up and now I've been messed around while trying to give something away.

Bed, mattress, and bookcase were put up on Freecycle. The bed & mattress cost me £300 six months ago and is in excellent condition, but I can't exactly take it on the coach to Edinburgh with me and I couldn't be bothered to try and store it so I decided to give it away. The bookcase is an Argos cheapy but I threw it in with the bed to get rid of it.

One woman agreed to take them all. Her neighbour came round to pick them up yesterday. In a small car. How the fuck anybody expected a double bed to fit in there I don't know. He took the bed itself (which I'd dismantled) and said he'd come back with a van for the mattress and bookcase today.

Have I heard anything from them? Of course not. I told him I was going out around 5/6pm and he said he'd be here by 3, but as of now he hasn't even called.

I can probably fit the mattress into the storage space with my boxes of books (not that I've booked the van yet...or the storage space for that matter) but that's not the point. The point is that I'm doing somebody a favour by giving them a perfectly nice bed, and they're fucking me around. Gah.

My friend Greg took this idea one step further. If the police ever paid him any attention while he was driving to a rave in possession of illegal powders he would simply turn on Radio 4 before they asked him to wind his window down, 'because it formed an impenetrable bourgeois sphere that the police simply couldn't penetrate'.
~Dan Kieran, I Fought The Law

I love Amsterdam. In line with many countries these days, the Netherlands is banning smoking in cafes and restaurants. This includes coffee shops. However, the ban only applies to tobacco. You can still smoke cannabis, you just have to smoke it pure. As someone who loathes tobacco and loves cannabis, I see this rule as a stroke of genius. Get rid of the evil drugs and leave only the good shit. Goddess bless the Dutch.

I'm really retarded sometimes. I'm crazily sleep-deprived at the moment which doesn't help, but this is the kind of thing I tend to do anyway.

Yesterday I booked a Megabus coach ticket for Friday. Today I decided that going on Saturday morning would make more sense - give me an extra day to sort my stuff out, say my 'goodbyes' etc. So today I booked a National Express coach ticket for Saturday. Then I wondered why I hadn't checked if I could amend my Megabus ticket instead, and found out that I could have done that. Both tickets are completely non-refundable meaning I've paid £33.50 for the journey and if I'd been smart I could have paid just £2.00.

How Megabus can show a profit selling London->Edinburgh tickets for a couple of quid I don't know, but that's besides the point.

Still, a single on the train would have cost me £75 so at least I've saved a bit of money there.

I really, really wish I could sleep. I'm so tired (pun fully intended) of this insomnia. I have absolutely no problem getting to sleep, I just always wake up around four hours later. Which would be fine and dandy if I woke up feeling refreshed but I don't, I wake up feeling insanely tired but no matter how long I lie there I can't get back to sleep.

I bought some Kalms herbal sleeping pills yesterday (chemical sleeping pills don't seem to be available over the counter). The directions said to take 3 or 4 so I took 6, but they didn't change anything. I fell asleep just after midnight, woke up just after four, lay there until half-five (five-thirty for the foreigners amongst you) and then gave up and got up.

Oh well. It'll probably go away by itself. Either that or the continuing sleep deprivation will make me more and more ill until I drop dead. I'd prefer the former, but either way would solve the problem.

Sci-fi western is a pretty strange idea for a genre, but it works. It really works. Fuck me does it work. Firefly is one of the greatest TV series I've ever seen. I've somehow managed to never see an episode on TV (I haven't watched TV in years, but I used to watch quite a bit and have seen at least a couple of episodes of most recent sci-fi series), although it may not even have been shown in this country, which would explain that.

It's a shame Fox had to fuck it up. Joss Whedon designed the show to run for seven years, and I would have eagerly watched all seven of them. Alias and Stargate Atlantis aren't a patch on Firefly but I very happily sat through five seasons (four in the case of SGA but I will sit through the fifth) of those. Babylon 5 - the other series I've recently watched from start to finish - is a work of genius not easily comparable to mortal shows, but on many levels Firefly is up there with the greatness that is B5 (the major exception being the latter's epic story arc).

I say all of this while only having seen the first four episodes (the real first four episodes, rather than the first four that Fox aired. What kind of moronic network shows the pilot episode last, for Cthulhu's sake?) but I don't expect to change my mind.

Few of you will be interested, hence the cut, but Ginjer Buchanan (no, I don't know who the hell he/she (probably 'she'. They write like a woman anyway) is either), in Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's Firefly (it's up on Google books, although I may buy it. I'm definitely buying the Firefly comic books Whedon wrote) has an interesting view of ( Who Killed Firefly? )

The greatness of Firefly makes me want to give Buffy another chance. I've seen a few episodes of course, and thought that they were okay, but perhaps a more focused viewing is in order one day. Whedon's obviously a great writer.

Okay, I've procrastinated long enough, I should get back to packing. Although I still have three days before I move and I don't have that much more to pack. That feels quite strange, usually I don't finish until the morning of the move.

One last thing before I go: one of the reasons I always preferred Babylon 5 to Star Trek is that it had a more realistic view of humanity's future. There are homeless people on the Babylon station, there are power struggles within EarthGov, there is a political assassination... Star Trek's idealistic vision of a humanity without any of humanity's problems never felt quite right to me. Maybe I read too much John Gray. Talking about Firefly Joss Whedon said: "Nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today." That's one of the things that makes it great.

(One last last thing: I'm going to add 'shiny' (Firefly usage) to my personal vocabulary)

Watch George Carlin HBO specials at Guba and never forget what a fucking genius he was.

Although Scotland does have different levels of tuition fees, and a different system of grants etc. at first glance it does look like it's linked to the English & Welsh system and they would take into account my previous funds. However:

Previous study does not affect your entitlement to a student loan or to appropriate supplementary grants. You can apply for this help even if you have received previous support for a full-time higher education course.

So although I'd probably have to pay my own tuition fees I would still be able to get loans. Interesting.

Anyway, enough procrastinating: more packing!

It occurred to me earlier that, as Scotland has a completely different student finance system to England, I may be able to go back to university in Edinburgh without having to pay anything. I'm not sure if this is something I even want to do, but it's good to be aware of one's possibilities. And I do partly regret leaving Philosophy, that was a most enjoyable course.

I received my student loans statement today actually. I owe them about twenty grand. That's a ridiculously large amount of money. Luckily student loans aren't like real loans: the interest rate is around the level of inflation, nobody's going to seize your stuff or break your legs if you don't pay, and in fact you never even have to pay unless you get a job that pays reasonably well (a percentage of your wages is automatically deducted each week as soon as you pass a certain threshold: £18,000 a year I think) and if you never get a well-paid job then you never pay it back.

I've just booked my coach to Edinburgh, leaving 9am on Friday. Thursday night is going to be a piss-up with my London posse and I'll have to leave Greenwich at about 8am which could be hard. Although with the amount that I sleep these days it probably won't make any difference (I bought some herbal sleeping pills today; I'll shove a few of them down my throat tonight and see if they help).

It feels weird to be leaving. I have Transport For London's journey planner on my Firefox toolbar and I felt a little pang of sadness as I clicked on it to find out how to get to the coach station on Friday. I've enjoyed my time here and I'm going to be a little sad to leave, especially as I've made so many good friends. But I'm sure Edinburgh will be a lot of fun, and the move will do me good. And depending on how things go I may come back in a year anyway.

But for now it's London Bye Ta Ta.

A part of me thinks this is cool and a part of me thinks they're crazy fucking retards who give all cyclists a bad name. Watch it like it's a low-budget Hollywood chase scene - i.e. forget that they're really causing panic on the streets of London - and it's pure cool (love the taxi driver's shout at the end!).

LBe - now the longest serving member of staff in the pub - bought me some beer as a leaving present and left it in the fridge for me on Sunday. I met up with a few of the guys for marijuana in the park followed by beer in the pub yesterday and asked one of them to bring the beer with him. It wasn't there anymore. It seems like not only did BMa not get me a leaving present, but he also stole the leaving present that somebody else got me.

I appear to be moving to Edinburgh. And GTA IV looks absolutely amazing. No, those two facts aren't related.

Edit: The beer turned up. But the 'special beer' LBe bought me turned out to be a can of Special Brew. LBe is Colombian so it's possible he wasn't just taking the piss. Either way it's amusing.

As far as last nights go, that was fairly shit. BMa - our esteemed manager - didn't even bother to say goodbye. When SWi left he got given a bottle of cider (which BMa probably got for free, but still...) despite the fact that he'd been pretty shit in his last few weeks (I'm sure he would agree with that himself; he missed a couple of shifts, turned up late several times, and worked one shift still drunk and wearing clothes that he'd pissed in), when GCa and JPi left BMa loathed them (for shite reasons) but they still got a goodbye. What did I get? Nothing. His last words to me were along the lines of "I'm closing the kitchen now and there are some leftover chips in the lift but don't you guys eat them, find some customers to give them to." I wasn't expecting much, but at least a "Thanks for your hard work, goodbye, good luck" would have been nice. I didn't even get a leaving card. Fuckers. It makes me far less inclined to go back there, even if I do stay in the local area (and tonight moving out of London is the most enticing option, but that may well change by tomorrow).

Ahh, fuck it. At least I got to watch hot young brunettes dancing on chairs in Desperados. But even Desperados is not what it used to be. They used to open until at least 3am and often 4 or 5am. Now Greenwich council are sending them letters and making them close at 2:30. Which is their licensed time apparently, but so what? There's never any real trouble there. There's no longer anywhere open in the locality past 3am. That sucks. But still. Hot young brunettes. Dancing. With each other, Gyrating against one another. That's what Desperados is all about.

What a difference a night makes... Or not. This morning I emailed flatshares in Edinburgh, Manchester, and Nottingham. This evening I had drinks with TVi, FJa, and a uni friend of FJa's (and other people, but they're not as relevant). The uni friend of FJa's is somebody I rather fancy, both physically and mentally, and she makes me want to stay in London. This despite the fact that I barely know her, I'm not *that* into her (at least yet: she seems very cool and i see potential, but we've only spoken a couple of times and anything could happen. Or not), and I'm not even looking for anybody right now (JTr reaffirmed that girlfriends take up more time than I can really spare right now...which probably sounds weird to anybody reading this considering that all I ever talk about is getting stoned and watching science fiction TV, but with a full-time job and a girlfriend I have hardly any time to spend on poker and writing). The fairer sex can override all other considerations. It would be scary, if it wasn't so damned enjoyable.

The Deadly Syndrome are my favourite new band (new to me - I discovered them a couple of days ago when eMusic said they were similar to Arcade Fire - and fairly new all round). They rock. On toast.

The tracks on last.fm are from their live album rather than their studio album, so I've uploaded a couple of studio tracks for your listening pleasure. Check them out!

Eucalyptus
Animals Wearing Clothes

Imagine a film noir where everyone on the cast is a peace-loving transsexual drug addict who loves all people of all genders and even some people of no real definable gender. That's San Francisco.

I've only watched The Pilot, Act I so far but Break a Leg seems pretty cool. Well written and surprisingly well acted (shoestring budget web-based sitcoms often fall down on the acting front). Methinks I'll be watching my way through this show rather than sticking with Farscape. This is far more inspirational after all.

"The Bible is a blueprint of in-group morality, complete with instructions for genocide, enslavement of out-groups, and world domination. But the Bible is not evil by virtue of its objectives or even its glorification of murder, cruelty, and rape. Many ancient works do that - The Iliad, the Icelandic Sagas, the tales of the ancient Syrians and the inscriptions of the ancient Mayans, for example. But no one is selling the Iliad as a foundation for morality. Therein lies the problem. The Bible is sold, and bought, as a guide to how people should live their lives. And it is, by far, the world's all-time best seller."

~John Hartung

The invertebrates, representing perhaps 97% of all animal species alive today, took the ganglionic intelligence option. The earthworm is typical. Each of its many segments is almost an individual organism unto itself, having its own set of kidneys, muscles, sensors and so forth. Coordination is achieved by a thin latticework of nerve fibers crisscrossing from side to side and lengthwise. The ganglionic system resembles a ladder with bulbous neural tissues at the joints. Invertebrate organisms thus are comprised of a collection of sub-brains, each of which controls a separate part of the animal with fairly complete autonomy and no real centralized control. Sensors and their ganglia tend to cluster nearer the head, making not a true brain as we understand the term but rather a large bundle of distinct fibers. Such a nervous system is highly efficient for responding quickly to stimuli. Each clump of nerve cells becomes expert at some particular function–detecting and passing along sensory information, sweeping a leg or swing in wide uniform arc, opening and closing the jaws in slow munching motions during feeding, and so on.

Might extraterrestrials develop a high ganglionic intelligence that has, never developed on Earth despite hundreds of millions of years of opportunity? Many an evolutionary biologists believe the system is too complicated to scale up in size – invertebrates are much less intelligent than vertebrates, kilogram for kilogram. Also, ganglionic intelligence may be physically self-limiting. Typical invertebrate nervous systems just have room to accommodate mostly preprogrammed behaviors. Little space is left for growth of surplus neural matter that might eventually evolve into higher intellect. Finally, the endless cross-connections within the body can become so entangled that they actually begin to strangle other body organs. For example, massive head ganglia ringing the spider's gullet squeeze the throat so tightly that the animal must swallow its food in a thin trickle.

It is hard for us to imagine the mentality of beings with advanced ganglionic intelligence. Dr. H. Chandler Elliot, a neurologist at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, notes that humans normally disregard their internal organs. We respond to an empty stomach or a feeling of indigestion but normally we ignore its activities. Says Elliot: "The head of an insect apparently regards not only its viscera but also its legs, wings, and so on, with similar detachment. If one deftly clips off the abdomen of a feeding wasp, the head may go on sucking, obviously not distressed. The mind of such a creature, must be alien to us almost beyond comprehension."

...

Dr. Paul MacLean, chief of the Laboratory Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, believes that the evolution of the human brain involved the slow accretion of three successive neural strata. This "triune" brain, explains MacLean, "amounts to three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space, its own memory, motor, and other functions. Thus we are obligated to look at ourselves and the world through the eyes of three quite different mentalities." These three mentalities include the reptilian brain (evolved during the Age of Reptiles) which dominates in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritualism and the establishment of social hierarchies; the limbic brain (evolved later) which generates hormonal responses and appears to be the seat of emotion as well as short-term memory, sensitivity to pain and sexual interest; and the neocortex (developed mostly in the last 30 million years), largely responsible for deliberation initiative and caution, anticipation and planning, spatial perception, audio and visual and abstract thinking.

What if alien chordate intelligences evolve with a slightly different emphasis? One likely prerequisite for rapid neocortical development is stable internal body temperature. On another planet where warm-bloodedness had not yet been invented, the reptilian brain might predominate instead of the neocortex as in humans. Some scientists have proposed just such an intelligence among the dinosaurs, whose evolution was perhaps short-circuited by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago, causing the Great Extinction. ETs with advanced reptilian brains might display dogged aggressiveness and unyielding single-mindedness of purpose, and create societies having massive impenetrable hierarchical bureaucracies with individual actions heavily dictated by ritual gestures, elaborate ceremonies and dances, "turf" rules and highly stereotyped, emotionally cold behaviors.

A predominantly limbic intellect possibly could arise in an environment favoring the rapid development of the olfactory cortex the oldest and one of the most important components of the limbic brain in mammals. A small, hot, windy, perpetually foggy world located close to a dim red star would have little energy available for vision and any images would be wavering and distorted. Strong winds and faint air would make hearing useless, but molecules travel farther faster in a hot, thin, moving gas, thus favoring the evolution of olfaction over the other senses. A predominantly limbic-brain extraterrestrial intelligence would be heavily emotional, oriented toward pain avoidance and pleasure seeking, conciliation and altruism, and familial and sexual concerns. Their minds might be easily distractible due to a relatively short attention span.

~Dr Robert A Freitas Jr, Xenopsychology

I'd really like some nitrous oxide right now. Where's a 24-hour head shop when you need one?

This has been one of the least productive weekends of my life. I think I needed it though: my shitty mood has shifted ready for me to rejoin the world tomorrow.

I played a bit of poker and took some decent photographs (at least I think they were; I've yet to transfer them to the laptop and have a good look) while on a long walk on Saturday morning. Sunset and sunrise are my favourite times of day, but I rarely stay up late enough to see the sunrise. I've become pretty nocturnal this weekend (woke up at 7:30pm today) so I managed to make the most of it.

Other than that I've started watching Farscape on the recommendation of everlasting_day. It should fill the space before the next series of Stargate Atlantis quite nicely. I've only watched the first two episodes so far and it's pretty good viewing. A little heavy on the plot holes which often plague science fiction (the planet they land on in Ep2 has never had contact with alien races, therefore would not have any translator microbes, therefore would not have a clue what Crichton or D'Argo were saying. The translator microbes are a decent enough way around the language problem, but completely forgetting about them in the second episode is really lazy writing) but entertaining nonetheless. And with quite possibly the best theme tune ever.

The main use of my time over the past few days, however, has been playing what is quite possibly the greatest game ever made, Oblivion (yes, even better than Sonic The Hedgehog). I haven't played it for months as whenever I had time to play games it seemed far more productive to play poker instead. But this weekend was devoted to festering in my own existential juices, and a few heavy sessions (I think I've clocked up about twenty hours) of Oblivion was just what the doctor ordered. In tonight's session I plan on becoming a vampire. Wish me luck.

I've also done a little flat-hunting, although not really enough considering I have less than two weeks to be out of this place. I still vacillate between staying in London and leaving (at one point I decided to store my stuff, get on a coach, and head to Cornwall, hoping to find somewhere to live when I got there. That's still quite tempting actually), but I think I'll end up staying. There are a lot of good reasons to be here for a while longer, and it's going to be much easier to move to another room in London than to skip across the country.

I also wrote some more of my sketch show. I'm really liking the way it's going. I've ordered Machinima For Dummies and am really looking forward to the challenge. I'll be doing pretty much everything myself at first so it will be quite a learning curve, but it will be worth it. Eventually I want to just write it - and have some co-writers too - but it will be good to learn every aspect of the process at first. Also it'll be easier to find people to do everything else once a few episodes are up and popular. One thing I can't do myself is all the voices. I'm not sure yet if I can do any of the voices. I need to find a few voice actors who don't want much, if any, payment initially but are prepared to commit for a while (don't want a character's voice changing part-way through the series after all). Maybe adverts in local drama schools? I don't need to worry about that yet anyway.

Tomorrow I go back to work, even though last week was supposed to be my last week. They're trying to get me to stay, and even offered me a pay-rise, but I think I need a change. It's a shame as there's a pretty good dynamic there now and I'm really enjoying it again. But a year and half in one job is too long. Stagnation is never a good thing.

Who else remembers Eerie, Indiana?

Badgers? Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers.

Looking for some light entertainment to take me out of the slightly shitty mood I've been in since last night I downloaded Zombie Strippers. Low-budget trash it certainly is, but fairly entertaining and with a nice twist of satire.

6-handed turbo SnGs have a ridiculously high variance.

I hate existential angst. It really sucks. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life or why, and I think most people are in the same boat. We just trudge through our lives hoping that one day it might all make some vague sort of sense.

That's why religion is still so popular. People just can't bring themselves to believe that their lives are as shite and meaningless as they appear to be.

"Surely this has to mean something? Surely there must be a better life after this one? Surely there must be somebody up there who understands why everything happens?"

No, no, and no. This is all there is people, get used to it. And if that sounds too bleak and makes you want to give it all up then fuck it, go for it. It's not like it matters whether you kill yourself or not. But you may find that the self-preservation instinct is rather strong. Only the very intelligent animals - some humans, some dolphins (did you know that the dolphin who played Flipper killed himself? If that's not a metaphor for human existence I don't know what is), possibly a few others - can override the instinct for self-preservation and kill themselves. Suicide is a mark of intelligence. The rest of us are doomed to wander through this pointless existence fucking and eating, driven by our genes to perpetuate them for no reason whatsoever.

Even Richard Dawkins find himself unable to face bleak reality. In The Selfish Gene he shows that life is born of a random and meaningless process, and then tries to claim that humans are so intelligent that we can subvert evolution for our own ends. As if we had any ends other than simple survival and progention. As if we could have any ends beyond those of our genes. We our merely their survival machines. And the genes themselves don't even have any ends, for they are just molecules selected through random mutation. It all means shit.

That's your life. About as meaningful as a pile of shit. You may as well enjoy it anyway.

Still drunk and on my way to work yet again. It's my penultimate shift though, so whatever. And I have Relentless to help me get through it! Same 32mg/100ml caffeine content as Red Bull, same price as Red Bull, but the can is twice as big. Even more dangerously-high-levels-of-caffeine goodness for your pound!

(Incidentally, do you remember the newspaper report which said that people who drank vodka+Red Bull were twice as likely to get sexually assaulted? I've been drinking it ever since and I still can't get laid. Why must the media always lie to me?)

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom, the world's biggest natural-gas company, expects oil prices to reach $250 a barrel in the "foreseeable future" as competition for energy resources increases, Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller said.
Bloomberg.com

"Time is so much more valuable than money could ever dream of being."
~Dan Kieran, I Fought The Law

I haven't encountered it before today, but The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is rather interesting and sounds quite plausible, if a little crazy at first thought (humans evolved as aquatic mammals? What?).

Playing four turbo S'n'Gs at once is an exhilarating experience. Highly recommended.

"You have no values. With you it's all nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm and orgasm."

"Hey, in France I could run for office with that slogan, and win!"

I decided to throw the E-Jing-A-Ling Thing to get some insight into whether to stay in London or leave. The result?

Pi

Sometimes 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399 etc...

This is the only hexagram displayed here that was not in the I-Ching. We felt it was important to add a hexagram in case a stick or coin ends up on its edge. This Hexagram stands for uncertainty in the quantum reality. The authors of this sacred tome recommend that if you get this hexagram you either poison a cat or don't in a box where no one can see it to divine the correct path to take. Under no circumstances should you record the results of this experiment, or even try to discover for yourself the results of this experiment, since that will drastically change its outcome, and there will be a 50% chance that you will therefore be reading the results of the experiment incorrectly.

I should go back to rolling a die to decide where to go...

As far as season finales go, Ep6 of Peep Show was quite weak. The writers seem to be getting a little lazy and/or running out of ideas. Not that there weren't laughs - "So it's going to be born old?...or young? But then they're born quite young anyway." - but the episode as a whole felt like it had been thrown together at the last minute.

Now I'm downloading Sweeney Todd. I meant to grab it ages ago, but forgot all about it. It's Neil Gaiman's favourite Tim Burton film, and that's pretty high praise in my book.

Before I watch it I really need to find a place to live and get some packing done. And play some poker. Life is hard.

Wow! Being drunk several nights in a row meant that I completely forgot that there was another episode of Peep Show on Friday. Downloading it now. Bye-bye maudlinity!

Just finished my last night shift. It feels kind of weird, and not just because I'm now highly unlikely to fulfill my fantasy of having sex with somebody on the bar (I suspect it will be difficult to arrange during the daytime). Various people - KXa especially - like to bitch about various aspects of working there, and I happily bitch along with them, but my time there has actually been really enjoyable. Every person I currently spend time with I met in the pub. Every person other than JTr, that is. Who I may or may not be seeing again, it's difficult to say. I want to see her again, because I rather like her, but if I'm never going to see her again then it makes leaving London a much easier decision. I'd just like to know one way or t'other really.

Tonight was surprisingly busy. Who'd have thought that anybody would give a shit about Germany vs Poland? Most of the people watching it were Polish - including a group of heavily muscled tattooed skinheads - so of course I supported Germany, even singing Deutschland ueber alles several times. And then loudly saying twooooooooo niiiiiiil!! after Germany's victory.

I asked ACl tonight whether I should stay in London or fuck off and his reply was "Fuck off. London's shit." Succinctness is a virtue.

I feel quite maudlin now. Pooh.

It's sad how many accommodation adverts feature lines such as "Sky with 37” HD Ready television included (full package including Sky Sports, Sky Movies and all the Music channels!)" I'd be much more interested in a place if they proudly proclaimed "No TV!"

Damn, that was a weird dream. I'd travelled to Nottingham for a few days, to try and decide whether to move back there or not, and the Nottingham of my dream was completely different to the real Nottingham. There were hundreds of people cycling around - including JTr at one point, although she didn't see me - like Amsterdam, and as I turned a corner there were miles of fields and gorse. I'd left my camera in my hotel room but I made a mental note to take photos of that the next day to show to guys back in London.

Then I ran to get the bus back to where I was staying, and the bus was a prison van with all the other passengers being guys I'd gone to school with. As we drove off the driver started saying that the bus wasn't stopping anywhere, as he'd pointed out to everybody the week before. But obviously I wasn't on the bus the week before. We then started driving along a promenade which was very narrow in places. As soon as I thought "the left wheels are going to come off the path here" they did and we plunged into the sea, which for some reason was incredibly deep even right by the prom.

As the bus started filling with water there was much screaming and flailing of limbs and I thought "Shit, I really hope this is a dream" at which point I woke up. I fell back asleep almost instantly though and the dream picked up from being dropped off by the bus just around the corner from where I got on.

The next thing I remember is being in a vet's surgery. There was some complicated sub-plot in here about the animals all being intelligent and the vet keeping them prisoner. I was wandering around the vet's and there was something going on on the third floor, but I wasn't allowed up there.

The second floor, though, was a second-hand bookshop. I bought a few books, the titles of which I forget. Then one of the animals wandered by and the veterinary nurse, who was doubling as bookshop keeper, had to go upstairs. At this point I slipped an Austin Osman Spare book into my bag. It wasn't just any Austin Osman Spare book though, it was like a ritual in a book. And I don't mean it was a description of a ritual, it was like the book was the ritual. It had an aura about it, and it called to me. It was on its own little shelf away from all other books. I would have bought it but it was £10 and I didn't have that much cash on me.

The nurse came back downstairs and we were talking about the animal that had wandered by before. There was something to do with a bunch of cardboard being in the front pocket of my bag; the animal had put it there or done something to it. The nurse was rifling through this cardboard and I started worrying in case she found the AOS book, but she didn't go into the main section of my bag.

I started slowly leaving but still chatting to the nurse. She was small, blonde, with glasses, cute in a geeky way. Mousy like a librarian but with an edge, a delicious craziness to her. She was telling me some story about teenagers buying her drinks (when you get to our age teenagers buying you drinks becomes an amusing story I guess) and then she said I could keep the Austin Osman Spare book, because it was creeping her out a little. It had just appeared one day and she was never quite sure what to do with it. She actually said "You can keep one of the only three *** books" (I forget the title) to which I replied "One of the only three in the world? Wow." And then she asked me if I wanted to go out for a drink. I readily accepted, and as far as I remember that's where the dream ended.

An unusually coherent narrative for a dream. It would seem to be saying "Move to Nottingham, it's great, and you'll still meet really cool crazy women," although the drowning doesn't quite fit in with that theme. Interesting...

I never knew The Flaming Lips did a version of Yoshimi... for Friends called Phoebe Battles The Pink Robots. I don't know that I like this fact. I mean, Friends? It's hardly cool enough for Wayne Coin. They probably paid him well though...

Goddess bless the command line.

My heart is telling me to stay in London, although my head is telling me to leave. The Accountant is one of my least dominant personalities - usually he just sits in a corner of my mind shaking his head and crying - but The Idler is one of the most prominent (I can't really say dominant because dominance takes far too much effort for him to be bothered with) and he really likes the idea of only working twenty hours a week.

I want to move somewhere that has places open 24 hours a day. I've spent a ridiculous number of mornings wandering the streets lamenting the lack of places selling beer. Or burgers. In a way it's probably a good thing, as I'd carry on drinking until 9am if I could and my liver would complain later, but I feel as though I should have the option. Some nights stopping at 3am is fine, but on some (most?) nights I want to carry on later. Greenwich is shite.

Tonight I apparently met somebody who was a main character in The Bill for two years. I actually thought he was a cocaine dealer until somebody corrected me afterwards. He bought me a beer though, so whatever he does for a living he's alright in my book.

I finished Absolute Sandman last night. I'm very sad, as I haven't bought volume 2 yet and as I'm saving up for a new place to live I can't really justify splashing out. I might just reread volume 1 instead.

Searching for rooms has made me realise that the £108 per week I currently pay is actually quite a reasonable price. Scary.

Next weekend's Climate Forum looks like being pretty interesting. They were seeking volunteers for stewarding roles and I've just emailed to offer my services. It will mean getting up ridiculously early, and as the Friday is my last day at work I'll probably stay out late and get very drunk, but it's all in a good cause...

I heartily recommend half a bottle of vodka to help you get through a night shift. It really works :o) And I still managed to do my job, cash up the tills, lock up the pub etc. Responsibility and drunkenness can go hand in hand. Although it remains to be seen whether I did everything I was supposed to or not. I could get to work tomorrow and receive a bollocking for leaving the safe and front door wide open...

JTr dumped me today though, so I have a good excuse if I did fuck up. I'm not particularly cut up about it - don't get me wrong, I think she's an extremely cool woman, I very much enjoyed our time together, and I wouldn't have chosen to end it now, but it's not like it was anything serious - but my boss doesn't have to know that. As far as he's concerned she could have been the love of my life. Not that I think I fucked anything up tonight anyway, but it's always nice to have an excuse up one's sleeve.

Life is good.

I love it when you go into work still a little bit drunk from the excesses of a few hours earlier (following the dance students home was a good move) dreading your 13 hour shift, and the assistant manager tells you you're not really needed and you can come back five hours later. Living two minutes walk away from work is great.

I still feel pretty rough even after the four hours extra sleep, but I reckon I feel a lot better than I would have done had I been working in this interim period.

Anyway, I'd best get started on my eight hour shift. I'm still going to need buckets of tea to make it through...

Last night was mildly crazy. and involved playing truth or dare with a room full of dance students. And snogging a guy. I finished drinking about 5 1/2 hours ago. Now I have to work for 13 hours. I think I'm still drunk. Bleh.

It's a really dumb "three minutes playing with the GIMP*" thing, but it amuses me and so I share it with you.



*Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Linux's version of Photoshop. I can't resist an operating system which gives me regular opportunities to say "I've been playing with the gimp"

Kettlebell swings are a conditioning workout par excellence. I'm sure that five minutes of swings improves your fitness as much as an hour of jogging. One thing you do have to watch out for is the bell slipping out of sweaty hands. A 1 pood* kettlebell flying towards one's laptop at speed is a scary sight. Luckily it slipped out of my hands at a fairly low point in the swing and didn't gain enough height to reach the laptop, but my middle drawer seems to be a little fucked.

Five minutes of swings (alternating the swings with light jogging: five minutes of pure swings is way too much for me right now), three minutes of snatches (again with significant rest times) and a few Turkish get-ups left me sweating, panting, with rubbery arms.

Intensity is the way, especially if you're lazy and/or time-poor. When a ten minute kettlebell circuit (or other high-intensity workout) gives the same results as an hour of step aerobics** it's a complete no-brainer. Unless you like being in a room full of sweaty women in leotards of course, which is a different matter entirely.

Speaking of women in skimpy attire, I had breakfast with MGa (my Nigerian Muslim flatmate) today, although for him it was probably lunch, and the topic of films came up:

MGa: I don't like...umm...what's the name of Brad Pitt's wife?
Me: Angelina Jolie.
MGa: Yes, I don't like her.
Me: Why not? She's done some good films. (Thinking of Beowulf and Girl, Interrupted)
MGa: Yes, she's done some good films, but she is always getting nude.
Me: That's not a bad thing!

I can never completely empathise with him, we're just so completely different. I'm so glad I was raised an atheist.

Do Muslims watch porn? I should ask him. Presumably they must masturbate; there's no way several million guys are staying celibate until their wedding day and not even having a wank. I wonder if it's a sin for them to visualise naked women while they masturbate? Maybe it's okay as long as they're visualising dirty heathen women rather than good Islamic girls? I'm really curious now, but I suspect most Muslims would take offence if I asked them. Oh well, ne'er mind. People take offence much too easily these days anyway. One of my T-shirt designs is a simple stick figure with an arrow pointing to it and a caption saying "If I said that this was Muhammad would you start a riot?"

Hmm, I just noticed that the RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge, one of the main courses/certifications around) minimum is 12 minutes of swings, but rather than 'swing until knackered, then jog for a bit' like I was doing it's supposed to be more like do 20 swings then jog for the rest of that minute (so if 20 swings takes you 30 seconds you follow it with 30 seconds of jogging/jumping jacks/whatever) then 20 swings then jog, etc. Then after a week or two - or however long you need - you move up to 25 swings, then 30 swings, right up to 50. 50 swings per minute for 12 minutes is 600 swings. That's pretty damn impressive.

Moby Grape's 8:05 is a beautiful song. Go listen to it. Now, I tell you!

*It's a Russian thing. 1 pood=16kg=35 pounds.

**For example, see The Futility of Aerobic Exercise for Weight Loss

You know what I love? When you're starting your Wednesday as I finish my Tuesday. That's life.

This evening has been a very good evening indeed. Caught up with old friends, won some poker (I'm currently playing a 6-handed turbo SnG, which probably isn't wise given my state of inebriation but I was curious) then consumed much alcohol and marijuana with FJa and TDa (actually TDa didn't partake of the marijuana, just the alcolol). Although one of the things I was saying to FJa on the walk back to her place (nothing untoward, I was just walking her home) was that if all the people I know and love were to disappear tomorrow I would miss them but I would survive, because I'm pretty comfortable with the fundamental existential facts of existence, friends do make life rather more pleasant. To paraphrase Tom Hodgkinson, when you bring together good friends, good drugs, and good music, you have a magical combination.

I know hardly anybody who hasn't at least tried an illegal substance. The law is an arse.

I just busted out of my tournament in third place. Which means I bubbled it, as only the top two places paid. I may have been a little too aggressive at the end, but I don't think I played that badly. My Q-10 came up against AK. I raised, he reraised all-in, I called. But we were three-handed and he was quite a LAG player (a few hands later his A6o paired to beat his opponents AKs and giving him the win). The blinds weren't so high that I had to call, but I really don't feel too bad about the call.

I feel a little bad about even playing though. I've spent the last six hours drinking and smoking, and a couple of hours before that I had about four pints with GCa, SWi, and JPi. I've still played reasonably well, which is nice, but playing while fucked is a really bad habit. Which is why, tempted as I am to play another game, I'm going to go to sleep now. Although maybe I'll read some more of Sandman first. Goddamn that's a great novel.

Hmm, looks like Obama won the Democratic nomination. That's kind of cool.

Look at them all. The Christians. It's not fair; I could be that happy if I believed a load of rubbish.

I love Peep Show.

I also love Keemun tea.

That is all.

Browsing Gumtree Nottingham I see the following accommodation:

Two double rooms for rent; for £260pcm you get both rooms!

Fully furnished:
King size bed, two bed side tables, large chest of draws, two desks, 3 shelves, wardrobe, electric reclining armchair, large leather office chair, 28" TV.

All bills are included:
Gas, electric, water, council tax, TV license, virgin wireless or wired internet and sky plus (you can pause and record our TV!).

It is a really nice, spacious and very homely house that you would be sharing with three others; 1 girl and 2 guys aged 19, 22 and 30 respectively. Shared kitchen, bath and shower room, dining room, lounge and back garden (ideal for BBQs!). We have a piano you're welcome to use too.

That's kind of strange, but incredibly cheap. Especially if I found somebody else for the other room. Sixty quid a week all inclusive for one fully furnished double room is ridiculously cheap, so having a spare room thrown in is incredible.

Heading back to Gumtree London the first advert is £55 a week to share a double room. Which wouldn't be so bad if it was sharing with a hot intelligent woman, but unfortunately it's "a english boy", It doesn't even mention if bills are included or not.

Fuck it, this city's too expensive. If I'm pulling in a decent wage in a year or whatever then I can come back, but for now I should just leave.

I just had my first, and hopefully my last, root canal treatment. It really wasn't too bad at all. I've heard so many people say the words "root canal" with terror in their eyes that I expected something out of Edgar Allen Poe's most twisted dreams, but it was no more bothersome than a filling. Looking like a stroke victim and dribbling my beer (I popped into the pub on the way back from the dentists) is annoying, but I'll regain feeling in my mouth soon enough.

I have less than two weeks before I leave my job, and less than four weeks before I have to leave my flat. I have neither job nor accommodation lined up, and have no real idea what I'm going to do.

JTr was supposed to come to Greenwich today but she sent me a text this morning saying she wasn't feeling great, she has some 24-hour flu thing. We get on really well when we see each other, but she's pretty busy and is giving the impression of not being massively reliable (not just from not turning up today).

A large part of me wants to leave London, but if I do that then I am effectively ending things between JTr and I. And although we're nothing serious right now I do really like her and she seems to feel the same. And it would be nice to stick around and see what happens. But sticking around means paying London prices, and I'd really rather not do that. I want to be pulling a decent income from poker by the end of the year, and that's going to be so much easier to do if I can get a fairly cheap place and work twenty hours a week or so - which also gives me time for the novel, animated sketch show, and other things I'm currently working on. It's pretty much impossible to survive in London working twenty hours a week, at least on the wages I make.

Anyway, enough going round in circles. I'll pick an option and go with it at some point, and all will be good.

In other news, I'm a complete retard. For some reason I find it insanely difficult to remember events that I've bought tickets for. A few weeks ago I bought a ticket to Derren Brown's show in London, and stuck the ticket to the wall above my desk so that I'd see it every day and wouldn't forget it. The show was last night, and I remembered it while in the shower this morning. The ticket is still attached to my wall, taunting me. This is the second time in the past year that I've failed to make it to an event I've bought a ticket for. It's quite annoying.

I've been loving the album for a while, but I just noticed this video on YouTube's front page and it's pretty darn cool too: