Welcome to Acerbia; population: π
This is the archive of the many and fabulous adventures of . Like a hard-bitten son of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius taught to write by William S. Burroughs; continually reincarnated, debated over by intellectuals and literati at cocktail parties the author can't get invited to, the target of scorn and ire from women everywhere, frequently mistaken for a former member of the Warsaw pact, named after the Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi, slowly rewriting the Book of Cataclysm, this is postmodern fiction at its most playful and creative.
System Administrator
Your mailbox has exceeded one or more size limits set by your administrator.
Your mailbox size is 96458 KB.
You really don't care, do you?
You may not be able to send or receive new mail until you reduce your mailbox size, but you're not about to because you're too busy. To make more space available, delete any items that you are no longer using or move them to your personal folder file (.pst), as life would be much simpler if you listened to me. Items in all of your mailbox folders including the Deleted Items and Sent Items folders count against your size limit and we're really starting to crack down on some of you people abusing the system. You must empty the Deleted Items folder after deleting items or the space will not be freed, its the one that looks like a grey McDonalds fries carton, with a napkin sticking out the top. Look, if you don't do it, I won't be held responsible for you not getting any of those really important mails you worry you might miss. What do you mean you're about ready to quit? You can't do that. Who's going to look after your e-mails? I can't do it, I've got everyone else's accounts to worry about too! No, don't go!
Plot
If you're planning on ever writing a book, under no circumstances try and tell people who have lots of time to spare the plot.
In a conversation this morning when asked the plot, I started off with "So its about a guy who becomes disillusioned with his position in life and goes off to...(pause)"
Mark cut in with "...become a gorilla trainer in Brazil. He becomes so successful that an Alaskan circus owner who is having trouble with his Huskies sets off in search of the hero in the hopes of persuading him to come and train his dogs in the ancient ways of the Silverback Ape. The Alaskan guy has only ever lived in the snow and ice of the extreme north and the book is about how he crosses the Brazilian rainforest with a team of Huskies and a sled. It's like Call of The Wild meets Mosquito Coast."
I had to ask if he'd ever lived in Alaska. He said yes. And did he want to see the Brazilian rainforest really badly? Yes, he did. Right.
I tried it on Buffy who used to write and produce her own short films in Madrid. "So its about a guy who becomes disillusioned with his position in life and goes off to...(pause)"
She carried on with "...try and find the one woman he ever loved. He'd had a very sudden break-up because of his job and they never got a chance to say goodbye. He flies down to Cataluna and tries to locate her based on what little information he has about her. The rest of it is all road-trip type stuff as he travels through southern Spain. As he becomes more and more desperate to find her, he starts imagining conversations with her and how he'll say he's sorry only to finally track her down and lay flowers on her grave."
I didn't even ask about that one. Buffy might have serious problems.
Julie, our head of HR took it on a totally different spin last night, I started again with "So its about a guy who becomes disillusioned with his position in life and goes off to...(pause)"
She leapt in on cue "...join the mob. He works his way up through the ranks of the family from his first position as a landlord in a brothel. He keeps the whores and mobsters happy and the appartments roach-free. He makes connections deep into the underworld and learns the ropes. Eventually he gets promoted up to being a lieutenant and becomes the right-hand man to the family boss. During a hit by another family though he's wounded but survives to become head of the family."
Julie's from New York.
My book is not going to be like that at all. Its going to be about this guy who becomes disillusioned with his position in life and goes off to...
Ug
I wish to complain about a recent feature I tried to make use of which seems to have caused some sort of fault in my Carbon-Based Bipedal Operating System. It would seem that my Non-Committal Male Grunt does not have the desired effect.
I suspect that the problem is in the neutral alternator between the interested-but-occupied and uninterested-but-horny settings. It seems that the grunt just isn't fitting into those defining limits and is instead being interpreted in ways that the grunt was never intended. Somehow in the past few days the grunt was taken to mean "Yes, I'll move the couch all by myself" and on another occasion "Let me clear out your closet for you"
Is this a conflict within the operating system? I'm running Young-Healthy-Single-With-Girlfriend on my CBB OS and yet the grunt just isn't working the way I'd come to expect it would, ever since she moved in with me.
If you can get back to me on the problem I'd appreciate it. If not, well, eh...
Hullo London
Flying in over a dark London, the streets shimmering like fibre-optic cables and building towers glittering like encrusted diamonds, I imagined a variation of a conversation I'd read once.
Hullo London.
"Hullo again D."
How are you then London?
"Not bad, full of people. Dark and expansive, streets glittering like sand in sunlight."
Thats good London, now be nice and catch this plane as it tries to land...
Times Table
We got a lunchtime flight up to Glasgow to attend the wedding. In the seats behind Pixie and I were three young girls, none of them could have been more than ten. As the flight progressed they were coming up with ways to entertain themselves, pretending they were air-hostesses, hotel managers, waitresses, and finally a teacher and two students. The industrious girl who decided to be the teacher threw a sudden pop-quiz. The other two dutifully got out pencil and paper and wrote numbers one to ten down the side. The "teacher" started asking them to write down the answers;
"Three times five", "Three times seven", "Eleven times three", etc, etc...
When she got to number ten, and I'm guessing they had only learned the three times table so far, the "teacher" asked "nine times three". I heard one girl go "uuuuh" and start chewing on her pencil.
I hissed between the seats "twenty seven", she whispered back "thanks".
Luckily they didn't get bored enough to try the "kick the seats" way of entertaining themselves until landing.
Flame on!
One of the functions AOL Instant Messenger (Which is given the acronym AIM, rather than AOLIM because they're stupid) has is a warning button, so that users can have a rating of how much they swear or something. This is obviously a function carried over from their message boards, where flaming isn't just a daily chore, for some members its a way of life.
Each time a user hits the warning button of another person on their list, their warning percentage goes up. Eventually, when they reach over 80% or something, that user can no longer send, only receive. The percentage drops slowly over time back down to zero.
Combine that function with a team of seven people who are bored and all have IM windows open to one another.
So far, from being slick and really sneaky my warning level is still incredibly low. Other people in the team are not so lucky. Its amazing any work gets done around here anymore. This is however very informative towards the inner dysfunctionalities of the team, it reminds me a lot of the very early Simpsons episode where Homer sells the TV to take the whole family for psychotherapy and they get rigged up to those shock-chairs... hey! Just went up again, right, now I'm pissed.
Life Truths
Cats will always go to the people who don't like cats. Cats have this inate sense of who likes and who doesn't like cats. If you like cats, you go to them. If you don't like cats, they come to you. Doesn't work with dogs. Dogs are dumb enough to just approach anyone.
If you ever lose anything, ask your mother to find it for you. Mother's have this "lost objects tracking system" that can only develop if their time is more important than yours. It works with internal IT support people too. Basically, the person with the least time to spare will find the lost object fastest, simply because they didn't have the time to spare. So ask your Mum.
On the eve of an important meeting or interview, you will find a spot. It's usually right under your nose. Or in the middle of your forehead. Or both.
Squeeze a lemon. If the juice doesn't squirt in your eye there's a cut on your finger you've forgotten about and are about to be painfully reminded of.
From the other side of the "Mum Radar" thing above, the importance of your work is directly proportional to the number of interruptions you will have to put up with.
To become the right person for a promotion, you must already be doing the job you wish to be promoted up to, as well as fulfilling the duties your job spec requires. As such, as soon as you have recovered from the euphoria of being promoted, it becomes clear that you now need to scope out your new boss's job. This only applies to those of us with ambition however.
Jangle Bells
Sitting at my desk, staring intently at the screen something small round and white flashed by on the limit of my peripheral vision. I turned my head in time to see something dark and furry flash past along the corridor... with the horrific jangling sound that could only mean one thing. The dog is back.
Now every few minutes somebody stands at the end of the office and throws a white bouncy ball clear across to the other side of the building and the little rat runs after it like a demon possessed, grabs it in its mouth and trots back having a good look at everyone as if to say "See? I caught that ball. It was touch and go for a second there, but you can all rest easy, it's under control. Nothing to see here, go about your business. Yes, I fully realise that you were all worried about that bouncy ball getting away from us and causing everyone a lot of trouble, but you have to understand that, when it comes to chasing little rubber balls, I'm a professional."
If I wasn't a nice person inside I'd have taken that free kick... even with everyone around it and petting it. Mass hallucination, I'd have said. You all imagined you saw the dog fly.
I'm not sure what its called... some people are calling it "Precious", some people are calling it "Stinky" and I've yet to hear Sharon call it by name. Probably called something in-between like... Poopsie or something.
World's Wildest Shopping Trips
Something I've really missed about not having Cable are those "World's Wildest..." or "World's Scariest..." programs. Escpecially the cop ones. They're like Cops but with all the boring stuff cut out. You know how it goes...
Featuring the voice of retired Sherrif John Bunnell (If you don't know what he sounds like with his slow drawl, imagine Movie Trailer Voice-Over Man slightly drunk)
"State Trooper Joey Doe was first to respond to the call, the suspect greased past him at 110mph in a beat-up Chevy and the pursuit was on. Unknown to Trooper Doe, the perp is racing towards a crossing outside of a catholic school for girls. The beat-up old car speeds through, the driver not caring for the innocent children as he narrowly misses them all.
Brave Trooper Joey Doe has no choice but to speed his cruiser in hot pursuit, gunning the engine to dizzying speeds along suburban street. At any moment something could appear in front of him (but never does) bringing this hi-octane chase to a crashing conclusion.
Ahead of the chase a roadblock has been set up, the troopers will be using a stinger spike strip laid across the road. As the dangerous driver sees the additional cops, he spins wildly at an intersection, slamming on the breaks and clipping a truck.
[...]
The perp has finally given up trying to out-drive the police, jumping out of his car towards a hospital, he thinks he can out-run them. But this guy's about to find out that {insert American city name here}'s finest are fitter than he expects. He's run down almost immediately by the nimble state troopers and brought down hard on the pavement outside the ER before being cuffed. The speed-demon later confessed that he was late for an open-heart surgery operation and had been trying to alert the police to the fact he had MD plates on his car. But that sort of excuse doesn't wash... with the boys in blue."
John Bunnell could make a shopping trip sound exciting...
"After buying... the milk, the fleet-footed shopper heads for the dairy aisle, his trolley swerving dangerously close to knocking over a fruit display. With the store security guard watching, he picks at a bunch of grapes he had previously picked out and weighed, but this blatant display of rebellion doesn't impress his fellow shoppers... After picking out a yogurt he continues to eat the grapes, now speeding along the narrow gap between the shelves on his way straight to the freezer cabinets... little does he know that the store is dangerously lacking in frozen peas."
Some people listen to walkmans as they shop, I have John Bunnell on my shoulder.
Golden brown, textured like sun
A lot of my stories begin "walking out of Oxford Circus station", simply because there's this whole coming out of the rabbit-hole alertness around me as I step onto the wet pavement and the piles of... maple leaves?
Maple leaves? On Oxford Street? What the hell is going on.
Sure, living in Paris this was normal, they have these circular metal grates set into the wide pavements with sand underneath and a tree planted in the centre of this two metre diametre portal into the ground beneath... so a walk home in autumn was lots of fun. But maple leaves on Oxford Street?
Turned out that some ingenious leaflet maker had decided that the strangness of finding a maple leaf on Oxford Street would be enough to get Joe Public's attention. They had printed in white stenciled letters their message on the inside of the leaf... which is silly because leaves fall with the outside upwards, so all the messagers were obscured but one.
I read it and instantly forgot it, the strangness of finding maple leaves on Oxford Street was stronger than the message printed on them.
Exploding Caterpillars
After the pleasant coincidence that was The World She Wanted, more serendipity is afoot.
At the weekend Pix and I went into London looking for a rare and suitable book as a present for a friend who will be celebrating a birthday soon. I'm not sure if this person reads the site and its entirely possible, but if that person does, it's not you! Its for somebody else!
Anyway, on the way home we passed the Seven Dials monument and there was quite a row of street market stalls. One of which happened to be an extensive rare and exotic flower stall. Pix went into rapturous fits of delight as she proceded to document each type of flower to me. Yay. I noted the place was called The Wild Bunch, which I certainly appreciated.
I went off in search of a cash machine and came back, handing one of the stall girls a twenty and said "Help the girl pick out some flowers" (see, I'm not allowed to buy her flowers, but I can pay for ones she picks out) Pix then picked out various bunches and single flowers of innumerable types.
Turns out we got more than we bargained for. Pix has AIMed me to say that there are two caterpillars going about their business on the stalks. I have forbade her to harm them in any way, as, due to my resurgent interest today in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I want to forcefeed them everything the book's protagonist eats to see if they explode.
Update: The caterpillars have been named, Anson and Kendred. (As in Philip K. Dick and Robert A. Heinlein) Anson has already escaped, he ate his way through the cling-film covering the top of the transparent cup. Pixie wants to find him, I say we should release the dogs.
The Making Coffee Song
Does anybody want coffee?
If you do then you just have to tell me,
Offer expires now, I ain't no café.
Making coffee, making coffee,
White or black, sweet or strong,
Making coffee to the making coffee song.
Starts with a bean, nice and simple,
Grind it up and just add boiled water,
If too cold, add more to make hotter...
Making coffee, making coffee,
White or black, here or to go,
How do you like your cup of Joe?
Savor your cup like a fine Cava,
Sorry to say, there won't be another,
That was the last, of the java.
Making coffee, making coffee,
Sweetener or sugar, milk or cream?
None for me thanks, I know where its been...
I just made that up off the top of my head with a little help from Pixie (alright you try and rhyme something with sodding "java"!) It occurs to me that the last person I made coffee for complimented the cup, saying it was a fine cup, shame about the contents.
Update: This has been revised, refined and lengthened with a few more office-related verses and choruses, and is being printed out to be put up beside the kettle as I type. I might release it as The Director's Cut...
Buzz off
There's a fly in the office, reckons he's got it pretty good right now, he's just flying around, he's had a sip of the can of Coke I threw away a few seconds ago because of him, he's buzzed right into my hair which I'm wearing down because the ponytail was giving me a headache and the fluorescant lights are appealing enough for him to stay at head-height. Yeah, he figures he's got it good. Air conditioning, food for the weekend and enough IT equipment to keep a small country happy.
I've got the collected volume of Philip K. Dick short stories that's gonna prove him fatally wrong.
Worse
I arrived at my building and got into one of the four art deco elevators with the topaz trim effect that are genuine restorations or the real thing... which... I suppose means that they're just copies. Already in the elevator is a guy from the major world-wide mobile phone company that rents the third and fourth floors of our building, he's dressed casual. The four button is already lit and I light up seven and lean against the side of the burnished copper effect... mmm, plastic, walls.
Just as the doors are closing, a man and a woman in suits stride in, pushing the doors back open. He's barely out of higher education, and she looks like a temp who just got a lucky break. They're both holding clip-board folder type things and the creases in his trousers could be used to cut diamonds. Her skirt defines "knee-length pencil".
She hits the button for the third floor and we finally get on our way. To avoid eye contact I mess around with my security pass on it's recoil-string (you pull it out on the string then let go and a coiled spring inside the belt attachment causes it to recoil and hit you in the knackers), I notice out of the corner of my eyes that casual dressed fourth-floor guy is doing the same with his pass.
We arrive at the third floor and as the doors are still opening, the smart couple are out and into the lobby, turning intently one way before the man points to the glass double-doors with the stainless steel door rods that say "push" in engraved letters. They each take one and look as though they're about to perform a perfect "I am man, this is woman and we are professionals" entrance into the reception, except they haven't noticed the little black card slot to the left.
{FWUMP!}
Two over-paid monkeys slam into still-locked reinforced glass doors at the same time. Only then does the girl on the reception desk buzz them in.
I turn to the casual guy in the lift and say "Lawyers?"
"Worse," he replies, "clients"
Do you feel thirsty? Well do you, punk?
Going into the office kitchen for my early morning wake-up Coke, I noticed a memo taped to my office girlfriend, the Coke machine. "This machine should be filled up with two buttons for Diet Coke, one button for regular Coke and the rest for Orange Juice" and a bunch of scribbled comments underneath in a myriad of pens and pencils "I second that", "I don't", "More Dr. Peppers", "Your mother drinks Dr Peppers", etc, etc...
Hmm, I thought, as I pushed the top button for regular, caffeine-packed, sugar-intense vegetable extract with caramel flavoring. The LED display flickers to life;
SOLD OUT
I push the second button on the list, also for regular Coke.
SOLD OUT
Ah, this tells me something. I push the button for orange juice (which happens to be the bottom one out of eight)
ka-klunk
Yes, this tells me that people who write memos about things like putting orange juice in Coke machines need to be set on fire regularly until they stop doing anything whatsoever.
I've gone and added a new memo asking people what part of the giant image that makes up the entire front of the machine, showing a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke nestling in ice, with drops of condensation running down their flanks says to them "This machine should be 60% full of orange juice".
The irreplacable D
See lady, here's your problem, your Bulletproof Punk™ is all worn out after less than a week back at work from lack of sleep. Is he getting his usual diet of poorly cooked student food? No? Well that could be part of it also. Plus there's this bug scare going around and you say he's been looking up the symptoms of Anthrax? That's probably just him just trying to scare you into getting him an upgrade, like a network connection or something. There's something blocking up his throat, I'll just use a wire brush to clear it out...
Tell you what, why don't we clone you a new one? We can use any old bit of his DNA... yeah, dandruff is fine, just don't let him use medicated shampoo in the shower or he'll melt. Here's a price list. No, I don't recommend copping out and going for the Eddie Murphy option, he'll lose his loyal readership if you do.
Right, just let that incubate for forty minutes, quick-grow it to the right age, then perform a cerebral transplant from one to the other. You might want to keep a litter tray handy in case the transplant doesn't take immediately though.
Something Sweet
Okay, so the post below is somewhat... uh... male-oriented, so here's something else to read instead.
At lunchtime Justin and I went to Tottenham Court Road looking for PCI Network cards. I took the opportunity to visit the fabulous bakery that is on TCR that sells these gorgeous cookies. They've got the right ratio of crunchiness/squishness this side of the bakery on Mainstreet USA in Disneyland and the two flavors on offer today were either raisin and pecan nut (yuck) or double choc-chip. No contest. I got two and we made our way back to the office.
I told Pixie I had bought some of these cookies of which I'd previously told her about when I was working in the area before, and she'd been annoyed not to get to try them then due to... ooo, eight hours drive seperating me from her. Now that she's living in London thought I can bring the one I haven't eaten home for her...
Except... I'm sitting here, like a dog who knows he's not supposed to steal food from the table but he's eyeing up that pork chop all the same. The inner turmoil is tearing me apart here... do I enjoy the guilty pleasure of eating that cookie although I know Pixie will say "Bad boyfriend! No biscuit!" later... or do I take it home and let her share in the milk chocolate and white chocolate chippy mooshy-goodness of the cookie...
Or do I eat this one and go get another on the way home?
Kamikaze
No scratchy noises from through the wall last night. I think we scared it away with the liquid fear exuding from our pores.
When I was much younger I was afraid of the dark. To be fair though, I had no trouble with the dark, it was not being able to see the aliens or monsters that scared me. Plus I had a high bed that had previously been the top half of a set of bunk beds so there was like two cubic metres of space underneath, which is plenty if you're some minor spawn of Cthulhu.
I had a routine that went like this. Say goodnight, go upstairs. Climb into bed. Clutch covers tightly around neck (cause monsters can't attack you if you don't have any limbs showing) and listen to the cracks and groans of the floorboards and ceilings. Hear parents going to bed. Go get one.
Obviously this got a bit tiresome for my mother and step-father and I remember the night my step-father banished all fears of monsters forever. He came in and sat down on the edge of the bed and calmly explained how houses cool down during the night because they expand with the heat during the day. Everything was patiently explained and debunked about the chances of monsters somehow materialising under the bed.
Then, to strike some common ground, he told me about how as a child, he'd been scared of those stories of fanatical Japanese soldiers living on some Pacific island, refusing to believe that the war is over. He would stay awake, scared of a Japanese soldier charging into his room with a fixed bayonet, so my fears weren't irrational, just unlikely.
He left the room, lights out. You know those cartoons, when the light goes out and all you can see are the whites of the character's eyes? That was me. {blink, blink}
For the rest of my childhood I lay awake in bed at night and worried that a Japanese soldier with a fixed bayonet was about to come charging into my room. And I never went to my parents for any more words of comfort.
{scratch, scratch, scratch}
Lying peacefully in bed last night at about... two a.m. Pixie shushes me and says "I'm worried about that noise." What noise? "Shush, listen, its coming from the cupboard." We both hold our breath and sure enough...
{scratch}
Uh... what is that? Its coming from the cupboard... pigeon? Rat? (The cupboard backs directly onto the roof) Open it, I tell her.
{scratch}
Bravely, Pixie states quite clearly that she has no intention whatsoever of opening the cupboard door and letting a rat run across her foot. So, I clear away the stuff from in front of the door and prepare to open it. I put a desk lamp on the ground to dazzle any would-be escapee rats into submission and figure I can catch whatever it is in a towel.
{scratch}
I open the doors.
I spy my claw hammer. An ancient hammer passed down from generation to generation with surpringly little wear or tear... Oh, fine, so it was brand new and has only ever been used to build a few pieces of furniture. But it made a handy weapon, just in case I needed to play the real-life version of whack-a-rat, or in this case miss-rat-hit-toes-scream-loudly. No rat. No pigeon. No sudden flurry of soggy vermin rushing out of cupboard and heading for impossible to reach dark cranny under wardrobe. Nothing.
{scratch}
We both realise that the sound is coming not from anywhere inside the cupboard at all, but the empty space of the cupboard has amplified the sound through the wall from next door.
{scratch}
I remember the scene from The Matrix where the SWAT guy, brandishing his H&K mp5 shouts "They're in the walls!" and I exclaim "Its in the wall!" brandishing my hammer bravely and not at all like Thor even very slightly. I tapped on the wall, very, very delicately because, although I want the noise to stop, I'm not that eager to have the wall cave in and whatever is in there spill out over me.
{scratch}
Pixie starts to panic and does the nervous, shuffly, waddling, inept arm-waving thing she learned from Nu that is supposed to somehow help in a crisis. (You see it all the time. Right beside some tragedy there'll be a woman waving her arms like a distressed penguin trying to take flight, I have no idea why) I do my best to calm her down and get her to come back to bed, reasoning that if the sound is coming from through the wall it's probably next door's dog, his tail swishing against the wall as he dreams about chasing humans. He was no doubt attracted to sleep close to the wall because his owners had already gone to bed and all was quiet except for Pixie and my voices from through the wall.
{scratch}
"That's not the swish of a tail. He's scratching at the wall. See?"
She scratches at the wall but it doesn't sound the same. I swish my fingers against the wall lightly and it sounds kind of similar...
{scratch}
I repeat the action.
{scratch}
Okay... its replying to my scratches. Its not a sleeping dog. Its... its an awake dog and it thinks I'm another dog scratching at this side of the wall. If we stop altogether, be absolutely silent and just go to sleep it will stop altogether. And if it doesn't, I have my trusty claw-hammer beside me. We heard it again first thing this morning, we still don't know what it is.
The Cats I Have Known and A Warning About Dogs
I've never owned a cat, I have however been the surrogate parent of a few and the victim of others. Pixie wants to get a kitten, but will have to settle for a fish.
The oldest cat I ever knew was Fluffy and belonged to friends of the family. Fluffy was a very proud cat with very little to meow about. Black and fluffy (hence the name), Fluffy survived until the age of... Nineteen or twenty and was older than me when she died. Fluffy probably didn't get on well with the other cats in her human family, one of which was Hoolie (short for Hooligan) who licked all the plates of smoked salmon one evening and gave us all food poisonning. I'd never had puke come down my nostrils before. I was sad to hear or Fluffy's demise, less so about Hoolie's.
Topsy was another really old cat, that I would refer to as a chop-shop cat, as her front half was fine and unblemished, but the back half was battle-scarred and scraggy. She was like the front half of an Audi welded to the back half of a Skoda. Topsy didn't like me. I wasn't overly fond of her. I'll bet many children would see the approaching cat and want to pet it. Until they got close enough to see the back half. Poor Topsy.
Kaelie and Splodge were my step-sister's cats and Kaelie would sleep with me and bring me dead mice from time to time (everything a growing boy needs). Splodge couldn't care less and one night at three a.m. as my sister and I were watching The Shining for the first time ever Splodge decided to leap onto the back of the chairt I was sitting in during a rather scary bit. She probably was thinking "Oh look, Jack Nicholson with an ax, I'll go comfort the top of D's chair and land heavily on it."
Fred and Spike are Pixie's cats. Are because she took ownership of them but would never empty the kitty litter tray. So I suppose they're really her parent's cats. Spike is a very prissy and girly male cat. He likes to climb up into the bathroom sink and wait for you to turn on the tap. Any time you used the upstairs bathroom Spike would rush up to you and want to come in with you. Then, when you flushed he'd paw at the door wanting out again. I don't know what the thinking going on there was. Fred was craftier but not crafty enough to realise that if you put the laundry basket over him and SPike on top of the laundry basket he wasn't getting out anytime soon. Fred would take advantage of me tying my shoelaces to leap onto my back and settle down, claws and everything. I miss them actually.
Armangac and Ampersand were the cats in California. Armangac lived on top of the fridge and looked like Garfield. He's fall asleep above a fridge magnet sign stating "Warning! Attack Cat!" Ampersand got his name by, as a kitten, climbing into his litter tray and shredding up the newspaper lining it. The only recognisable character left amongst the kitty litter and shreds was a large printed Ampersand.
Cheaty was Nu's cat. Cheaty made himself popular with me one night as I slept on the floor by coming into the bedroom and deciding the warmest place to sit... was my face. I awoke from being smothered by a large fat cat, realising that claws were imminent. Cheaty also, one morning when everyone was asleep in bed apart from Nu, leaving for her riding class, got his claw stuck in Nu's eyelid. Nu's mother is a fabulous woman, but her reply to the excessive screaming coming from the Cheaty-impaled-Nu was a very weary and exasperated "Shut up!!!" It was up to my step-father, wrapped in a pink bedsheet charging down the hallway, to remove the cat claw caught in Nu's eyelid.
Otis the Wonder Cat was named Otis, not after the singer, but after the elevators. According to his owners he could climb drapes in a flash. We were cat-sitting him and one night very late into the night I was sitting, talking to people on Compuserve in the dark with headphones on, plugged into an extension cable stretched across the room. The headphones had a gold jack that could be used to change the size of the fitting for either amplifiers or smaller devices and this golden jack was swinging connecting two black wires in a dark room. Suddenly the music stopped as the headphones were torn from the back of my head and a very scared Otis ran, with the golden connector jack between his teeth as he hid under the couch. Both wires had been pulled free of the jack.
The latest batch of cats I've been adopted by to be a god-father to are Darla, Dru and Willow. Darla and Dru are balls of pure kitten energy wrapped in fur and Willow is a beautiful but very shy cat. The kittens play this game where they beat the crap out of each other, chew on each other, then disengage and run full speed under the massive hutch (sideboard for those of us in the UK) which has just enough room for a kitten to scrape-through under. Except the last time I saw them it was getting increasingly difficult for them to squeeze under. Willow tends to just watch, a bit bewildered as the kittens get on with the whole "being very energetic" thing.
The one dog story I have, other than being savaged by my uncle's Jack Russell, is one Christmas morning, while staying with my step-father's sister and family I came downstairs in shorts and funny reindeer antlers. Come on, you know the ones, a few years ago you either wore the Santa's hat or the reindeer antlers. Everyone loved those. Everyone, except the dog, Penny, who had distant Bloodhound origins and the sight of a tall antlered thing with hairy legs brought back all sorts of primordial instincts. Killer instincts. I had to leave the room very quickly.
And that, Pixie, is why we're getting a fish. Not a cat. And certainly not a dog.
Ye Olde Favorites
Its so good to be back and have no work to do at the same time. Means I can catch up on my reading...
Can you believe that I did the exact same thing while coming out from anaesthesia? Lying in a hospital bed in a hospital in Paris having just been butchered by a very professional and expensive surgeon with an annoying pressure on the end of my finger that, if I tapped my finger hard enough relented. It also however caused the nearby machine going "beep, beep, beep" to go "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep" I remember lying there in a daze thinking "Poor bastard, still I suppose he was drugged up when he went." before an orderly charged in with a crash cart.
Yeah, I got told off too. No, it didn't stop me from doing it again either.
Creator of the Beast
It was while watching the Channel 4 documentary on the Alien series that I was reminded of my encounter with H. R. Giger. While living in Paris I would go to one of the "American" comic book shops (by that they mean American style serialised monthly books, French comics are very different creatures indeed) called "Arkham", named after the asylum in Batman. I got wind of a signing that would be going on one Saturday and my sister and I waited in line like everyone else.
He sat in the Necronomicon chair, which, to be fair would make anyone look eerie, he pulls it off exceptionally well though. The guy in front of us had brought him white chocolate, white Swiss chocolate, of which he is very fond and I've kept that mental note for the next time I see him. Neil Gaiman likes sushi and ginger beer, James Marsters likes lollipops and Jerry Doyle does not appreciate being given Garibaldi biscuits. He will throw them back at you. As Giger doesn't speak English (or French) his translator had explained that dedications should be written down on a post-it if you had any particular requests. I did.
When it came our turn, I presented the books I had brought and bought and he opened the Art of Alien and asked his translator what the dedication I had asked for was. H. R. Giger, as well as being an imposing presence in a chair made out of black steel ribcages and skulls, also has the most imposing booming laugh. He leaned forward when he had finished and signed and dedicated the book, and that was how Pixie ended up with the Art of Alien book signed by H. R. Giger, and dedicated "Its behind you..."
Cold! Cold! Colder! Freezing!
I knew there was something suspicious when I went down to have a shower and lots of other people were still home. Our house has two boilers that heat up the water during the night. Use it all during the day and there'll be none left for later...
Sure enough, ten minutes under the water and I'm about to wash my hair. The water is a tad cold, so I twist the selector a gnat's wing breadth to the left and it hots up again.
For about five seconds.
There is a law of physics which dictates the amount of hot water remaining in proportion to the amount of hair you have to wash, factored in to the time it takes to adjust the temperature. This equation knows several limitations, firstly that the hot water is finite. The cold water is infinite. The amount of hot water added per degree of rotation of the selector is inversely proportional to the amount required. ie: The more you turn it the less time it takes before it goes cold again.
When hunger strikes
So I was enjoying just playing Risk on my computer and feeding the little World Dominating Dictator inside me, when Pixie mugged me for all the hard cash I had left, added it to everything she had left, then scrounged through my change bowl that I keep beside the door (everyone needs a change bowl, a large bowl that you drop your spare change into and when it overflows you do something worthwhile with it)
She's just back with Haagen Daz Mango Sorbet.
Yum...
Rihgt Siad Ferd
We have Cable (yaaaay) and I was last night reminded once again as to why The West Wing is the greatest television series ever to be produced. It was the one about the filibuster... which I learned later has nothing to do with beating an addiction to cream cheese.
Anyway, we also have plenty of music channels, and I was treated to the wonderful new video by Right Said Fred for their come-back song (after "I'm Too Sexy for Royalty Payments") "You're My Mate"...
...except the lead singer has "Your My Mate" written across his chest in red lipstick. Which, unless this is some in-joke, shows that not only do none of the band know decent grammar, but the make-up girl and the entire production staff didn't either.
Of the five senses...
Every morning as I wash my hair, for some reason, I yawn as I work the shampoo in, maybe to do with tipping my head back. I don't know. Here's a free bit of world knowledge;
Apple shampoo only smells of apple, it damned well doesn't taste of it.
Plugged in, hooked up
We got Cable yesterday. I have 96 channels to play with. I have CNN again, I have the Discovery and History Channels. I am very, very happy. I will probably not be posting until the high-speed Cable modem is installed next Monday, and besides, next Monday I'll be back at work and able to post during the day anyway.
I am very, very happy. {flip, flip, flip...} Damn, 96 channels and nothing's on...
When D went to V
The nice Net cafe was full, the nasty one was not... so we came to Camden and we're sitting in the basement of the new Virgin Megastore. I'm not too sure how the system works... this may be costing me a fortune and I won't know until I go back up to the desk. Tricky.
Pixie and I are supposed to be sorting out online Sainsburies shopping, but we're totally apart from each other and the machines don't have an IM or chat function between them. Its all very hi-tech though and I'm well impressed. The booths are comfy and the machines seem very nice and fast, my only complaint is that this keyboard feels like those old ones that came with BBC Home Computers in the Eighties.
Hail to you!
Pixie needed a desk, it had to be this big by that big, have room for a printer that big and a 19 inch monitor on top, have storage space for half of creation and a slide out thingy like so. We did eventually find one and bought it on the spot, then got a minicab with the world's smelliest man driving it to take us home.
As we head up the A1 a freak rainstorm starts up, the puddles are being battered by the raindrops as they fall, the road ahead is shrouded in a sheet of water that batters against the screen, its like the rain wanted to be on the ground the fastest way possible without any of this silly "falling in drops" business.
El Stinko turns to me and goes "sheesh" I feel like I'm about to heave but nod politely, yes, sheesh indeed, rain, never seen that before in this country. Then the hail started.
I'd have felt more confident if Pongy The Human Scent of Garbage hadn't had this massive crack in the glass around his rear-view mirror. The hail was not normal hail. Normal hail grows up as a drop of rain and is chosen to be frozen and sent to Earth as an envoy of impending nasty winter weather. This hail was what happens when bad hail takes over the cloud. This hail had a death wish and a desire to do as much property damage as it could. This was Kamikaze Hail.
And as soon as we arrived at my street, the sun appeared, the rain stopped and the hail gave up, birds started singing suddenly, and it was if we'd crossed into another dimension. Honky McStinky helped us move the furniture to my front door and I paid him, tossing a breathmint into the bargain. Damned if I know what the hell was going on, the weather's been freaky ever since Pixie moved in.
Ickle
Today, I'm ickle
Pixie moved in on Saturday and immediately took over the entire room. I have my comfy chair and about 50 square centimetres of desk space to live in now. We're going to buy furniture later today and I get to build it. Yaaaaaay. Adult LEGO! (which sounds so dodgy)