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.
The Bionic Gran
I see I'm in the minority this time.
As Eddie Izzard said; "My mum died when I was a kid, nobody gave a shit."
May the 4th be with you
The Star Wars geek in me has been awakened. Not only has he been awakened but he's had his bacon and eggs, washed and got dressed and has made his way to his place of work at Geek-central. And not a moment too soon, I finished Medal of Honor Allied Assault last weekend.
Continue"May the 4th be with you"
Bye Queenie
There was just something unnatural about the way she was still going, like an animatronic.
Pix says they'll have to beat her liver to death, it'll have become so fuelled by gin it'll have a life of its own.
Coff-ay?
First day of a long weekend and I realise I have become Odd Todd;
-It is nearly six in the afternoon and all I've eaten today is cookies.
-I am still wearing my bathrobe.
-I watched some tube to relax when the stress of being unemployed got to me.
-I thought about going outside because it was a nice day, and the fact that I considered being out in sunshine made me feel better for not going out.
-Pix is away for the weekend and I'm left home talking to turtles. No Philo you can't post an entry, be quiet and eat your pond weeds.
-I may have to unwind with some more tube to counteract all the stress that coding the new site has brought about.
Would anyone like some Coff-ay? Gotta go write a moov-ay script...
Stardate: 032902
The phone wakes me, its lunchtime on a public holiday, so everyone else is home too but I'm the only one asleep. Its Pix phoning to say she arrived safely in Glasgow and had to sit beside Carole Smiley. Unfortunately Smiley Smiley Carol Smiley arrived safely too.
I hang up and go and check on the turtles having already told her that they're fine. Time for turtle check. Usually when a large moving object appears before the tank they climb over each other to get to the glass. I'd like to think its because they understand who is boss, but I suspect this is turtle-language for "feed us you lazy fuck!"
One turtle... two tur... no, thats the same one again. Okay, one turtle... t... t... t... where's number two?
Call out the dogs! Man the watchtowers! Philo has escaped! All this time I was lulled into the false sense of security by his insistence to bash his head against the glass of the tank. I was figuring impending brain damage but the damned fool finally found a way to render himself intangible and phase through solid glass!
Oh. No, he's hiding under a leaf. Two.
I notice that one of the logs they like to climb up onto to sun themselves under the UV striplight has some hair on it so I fish it out of the tank and head downstairs to the bathroom to wash it. One of the housemates stops me halfway.
What? This? I was playing Star Trek, and this is my captain's log.
Why do people ask such stupid questions, of course its a log, it has fake leaves stapled to it, and I have a turtle tank, duh! One day I'll work out just who's toothbrush is who's and then I'll spinkle baking soda between the bristles.
Das Experiment
There's more to movies than Hollywood. Woody Allen has made a career out of not being Hollywood. Every so often you Yanks will see something by a bunch of Brits called Four Weddings and a Notting Hill in Gosford Park and notice it too.
Probably the first time I realised there was more than big budget out there was when I saw my first Luc Besson movie. Since then I've become an avid Independant lover, underdog movies that cry out to be seen call to me: Cube, Pi, El Mariachi, the list is endless, but does not include anything by Gregg Araki.
Tonight Pix and I went to see Das Experiment a film based upon the Stanford Prison Experiment where twenty men were divided amongst prisoners and guards and set strict non-violent rules. After a while emergent personality types took over and the whole thing took on a life of its own.
Despite the fact the movie was in german with subtitles (and at some points the subtitler was just being damned lazy) it was absolutely a thriller through and through. It all made sense, people reacted in ways I could fully vindicate. The free-thinker becomes the driving force behind the group assigned to play the prisoners and a control freak becomes the guiding force behind the guards. It was scary how realistic it all seemed, how the violence and humiliation was explained and justified as part of the experiment.
If you get the chance, try and see it, it goes quite a good deal towards proving that we're nothing more than sentient animals.
We got to install microwave ovens...
Last night as we ate dinner in the nearby Italian place that does a great Bruscheta one of the tracks they played over The Stereo That Must Never Know Recent Music (there must be a shop somewhere that sells these stereos with a built-in selection of really old songs somewhere, sometimes decent ones, othertimes not) was Dire Strait's So Far Away.
Ah-ha, I've struck a chord.
You know the album don't you. Everyone of the Digital Generation does. Brothers in Arms was the album that launched the CD format across America. You got a CD player just to listen to Brothers In Arms.
My step-dad brought one back from living in the States. A squat black box with a coffee-holder tray and a bundle of these flat silver discs. I must have been eight or nine at the time but I can remember listening to that silver disc with the turquoise designs over and over. So much so that I got told off for hogging the CD player.
There's that backbeat from Money For Nothing... you can hear it, can't you?
Just as The Matrix was marketed in such a way as to sell DVD players across the world, Dire Straits did the same for CD players during the eighties. Myst did the same for CD-ROM drives in the early nineties, and who knows what movie did it for VCRs... thats before my time, we're taking prehistoric here.
Can you hear Sting?
The point I suppose was going to be that even a decade and a half on I can remember where I was the first time I listened to a CD, or played a CD-ROM, or watched a laser disc or DVD. It was going to be about those geeky first times. Instead I've made you want to go listen to Dire Straits, haven't I? A-moova-moova.
The D Horror
My most recent dream, I was finally able to remember enough of it to put it up on the site. Take a stab at interpretation if you like.
I watched In The Mouth of Madness recently and I've been looking through Lovecraftian works a lot as research... maybe someone will buy me The Dunwich Horror?
Show some love
I don't know how to work Flash. It came as part of a bundle of software we got back when we thought we'd be doing freelance work as a couple and neither of us has ever touched it (although we've had our money's worth out of Dreamweaver and Fireworks three times over at least now)
This afternoon I decided I needed a flash banner.
I created all the elements I needed beforehand having a rudimentary idea of what an fla file contains.
I went online. I asked a few people for help. Gord suggested Shel might be able to help.
Shel is da man. I know Flash now. You will see it soon. But before you do you must go and help Shel with his naming competition.
Future Noir
{{fuzzy temporal displacement anomaly}}
Greetings from the future, I am D-X and I am blogging this from the future and back dating it using Moveable Type's backdating function to ensure that the people of the past know that they must not, under any circumstances vote for Grand Emperor Bush in the next Presidential elections.
Also, don't buy DVDs, they'll be replaced with Micro-DVDs within four years, buy shares in AMD, they're going to take Pentium to the cleaners, oh, and Episode 2 rocks. Episode 3 had those silly little... well, wait and see. Anyway, I have to go and watch The West Wing: The Next Generation and take a few food pills.
{{fuzzy temporal displacement anomaly disappears}}
Nice rack
Pix disclosed to me the other night that after careful measurement she could assure me she had FF cup breasts.
If only there was some sort of award or medal I could give her, I'm so proud...
Lost the funny
Geekman tried to convince me that he has less funny than I do in an IM chat last night. See what you think.
AcerbiaDave: I need a new job if only to put the funny back into my site. I feel like I'm just humoring people who come see it these days
MightyGeekMan: Hah! I think I lost the funny sometime in 99'.
AcerbiaDave: ha! I lost the funny way back in the 80's! Man there were some dark days back then... blogging wasn't even called blogging, it was called "e-mailing" and you only ever had an audience of one
MightyGeekMan: 80's? Pshaw. Doctors had my funny removed when I first exited the womb! And I was banned from ARPANET
AcerbiaDave: my father was treated to de-funny microwaves causing his sperm to be the least funny sperm ever to exist and I wasn't allowed to even look at anything by Texas Instruments
MightyGeekMan: My great grandpa was put in an anti-funny concentration camp in Slovakia. I'm banned from even being struck by lightening. Too much like using electricity.
AcerbiaDave: I've traced my family tree back as far as the 13th century when my family name was Not Funny and back then we weren't allowed to make smoke signals for fear of communicating with the outside world.
MightyGeekMan: In ancient Athens, my family wasn't allowed to eat bananas. Might lead to humorous situations, you see. And all their tongues were removed.
AcerbiaDave: Back in Biblical Times my forebearers were given an eleventh commandment; Thou shalt not be funny, and their eyes were gouged out to ensure they couldn't see if there was anyone nearby to gesture wildly at
MightyGeekMan: My forefathers were present when Moses dropped the tablets and they were slaughtered almost to a man for fear of attempting to make a joke about it. They were not allowed to grunt.
AcerbiaDave: the earliest cave paintings were censored and my ancestors burnt to a crsip for fear they would draw more cartoons. Then their ashes were trampled by bison.
MightyGeekMan: When the earth was a boiling mass of molten lava and the first protoplasmic lifeforms were formed in the depths of the ocean's, my ancenstral spooge was hunted down and eaten by every other gelatinous mass in a desperate attempt to salvage humor for the future of all living things in existance. We were smothered and genetically banned from ever communicating.
Eat your greens!
Since we got the turtles (which we're calling Philo & Choire for the moment) Pix and I have started demonstrating some decidedly odd behavior.
On their first night we switched off the light and settled down to watch A.I. only for her to get up and check in on them to see if they were sleeping. Are they? I whispered to her, to which she whispered back "yes"... only for the two of us to realise that there was no need to whisper.
Last night they were fighting. Choire bullies Philo for some reason and they'll fight over the same spot on the floating logs so we seperated them to opposite sides of the tank. The turtle equivalent of being sent to your room I suppose.
Today I noticed that as soon as I dropped a few of the smelly fish food pellets into the water they started to fight over them. In three of the four corneres of the tank floated the fresh spinach leaves I wash and tear up for them every day.
Hey you little dinosaurs! Eat the spinach!
And then it occured to me, why should they? If I had the choice between smelly fishfood pellets and spinach leaves I know I wouldn't eat the greens.
Fizzically impossible
Pix has this habit of storing food away, like she's some sort of human-sized hamster and she must have food available to her at all times of the day for a quick nibble. Since she was away for the weekend I went about tidying and destroying the evidence and I found two little packets of fizzy candy.
Cola and Berry, Strawberry and Orange.
Eat them on their own and they're pretty innoculous. But, as anyone who has seen the movie Urban Legend knows, if you microwave them after midnight they become Gremlins with a hook for a hand and family to feed in Sierra Leone. Or so somebody told me once.
So I took a big mouthful of the candy followed by a big mouthful of lemon Fanta and waited. My stomach didn't explode though, and now I am gutted to think that these truths we hold to be self-evident, that combining fizzy drinks and popping candy will cause your stomach to explode, aren't in fact truths at all, but carefully crafted lies perpetuated by the government to ensure that people don't experience life to its fullest.
Its like that staring at the sun for ten seconds thing, kids always claimed it'd make you go blind.
Crap. It does. Pass the fizzy candy. Where are you?
OS-ex
I have this theory about operating systems. You should always stay at least one OS away from the latest version available, that way you know you're using the most reliable one available to you. System packs, updates, bug fixes, all are immediately available, not so with the latest OS as you sit and act like a human guinea pig and the Microsoft engineers tally up your keystrokes in the secret laboratories beneath the Adirondacks.
As everyone struggled to get to grips with Windows 2000 I got on with using Windows 95. Out comes Windows XP and I move up to 98. The problem however is this; I can no longer have two large programs running simultaneously anymore for some strange reason. Its not memeory, or swap space, I have more than enough of that... so I suspect I need to move up an OS prematurely...
Windows 2000... {shudder} It sounds so final.
Nope, actually I take that back, it sounds like a product brought out in the 80's to replace glass.
Look Mommy!
Sometimes I get bored while browsing DVDs... I mean, sometimes I even end up checking out the kids section just to see if they've revived an old classic and put every single episode and documentary ever produced onto a double-disc set... but no, they never do.
So instead I take DVDs from other sections and tuck them into the kid's section. If you find yourself browsing through Barney, Teletubbies and Disney movies and you happen to find Marilyn Manson: Demystifying the Devil or Playboy: The Best of Jenny McCarthy then you'll have made my time worthwhile.
T-Rex
We recently got two baby turtles. Just what I need, another two mouths to feed. It was already pretty cool just having them. Then somebody pointed out that they're like baby dinosaurs and now they're even cooler.
Son of NASA
I love my new Teflon-coated frying pan. I like how the center goes a brilliant red color to tell me when the pan is ready to use. I love that the steak cooks on it and slides around without ever sticking. I love how I can flip the steak out onto my plate, run some hot water from the tap and the pan is instantly clean.
Most of all I love thinking that I could sit on it and drop down through the atmosphere if I had to...
The Choice
I found out today that the new housemate is a vegan. Which should mean she won't have much energy to argue with. However I suddenly feel the need to cook bacon more often...
"Cause meat tastes like murder and murder tastes pretty damned good."
-Denis Leary
Alien nation
Scotland is playing France in the Rugby Six Nations Championship at Murrayfield, their home turf, as I type this. I can almost hear my mother screaming encouragement to the Scots from here. The irony? She lives in France.
Curse you Jenett!
On behalf of all of the staff here (okay there's just me and the goat, but that makes up a pretty mean design team, aight?) at Acerbia Corp; the biggest commerical website around for purveyors of snappy banter, witty comebacks and esprit d'escalier get-out-of-jail free cards. I'd like to take this moment to thank Mr. Jenett for chosing Acerbia as Stoolcop of the day...
...on a fucking Saturday!!!
I was busy rearranging the bookcases and hoovering. I wouldn't even have known if I hadn't remembered to check for mail from Pix (Ann is away for the weekend, so I get to throw out all the stuff she won't let me cause she can't stop me)
Plus Joe's picked the weekend I've been doing the least browsing and the most redesigning since Acerbia went up two months ago. Two more days and it'd be a brand new even funkier looking site (okay, I didn't just say two days okay? I meant to say "an indeterminate number of days" but two just slipped out...)
{sigh}
Curse you and thank you Joe. Can I be Stoolcop of the day again in two days?
Tart
Another toasted bread success!
Vinegar toast!
Two slices of toast, and you pour a tablespoon of vinegar from a jar of pickled onions (pearl ones) into the middle of one slice. Allow it to soak it up before then inserting some small pickled onions into the slice. Add a slice of ham, a thin layer of mayo and the second slice of bread. You then have a sweet tart toasted ham sandwich.
D-lish.
Tomorrow: Salsa toast!
Retro D
Great goagly moagly (score one geek point if you know where that comes from) I've never seen this page look so bare!
Not like in the old days way back in the Nineties for instance when Acerbia was a hotbed of information and witty commentary on daily events... why I remember it as if it was only yesterday...
{{wibbly flashback lines}}
hairstyle reverts to hippy length, D's fingernails are filled in with black marker pen and he has an ear-ring in his left lobe
March 10th 1993
Well it would seem that the terrorist cell who bombed the World Trade Center last week weren't the brightest of sparkplugs in the engine-block. One of them went to get a refund on the rental van they used to set the bomb. You can just see the rental guy asking for the van back.
"What? You blew it up? You realise you're not getting your deposit back."
Jesus, what a shower of stupid bastards. Car rental people that is. Terrorists don't rate much higher though.
April 20th 1993
Some weird religious cult went and burned themselves to the ground in Waco. I wonder if that's pronounced Wake-o or Whacko... I think the former is probably more apt. Sheesh this nut-job religious cults freak me out. Some sort of standoff between these cultists who declared their property an independant state or something. I think it would be safe to assume that the FBI had them surrounded... with like... the rest of the United States.
April 9th 1994
Kurt Cobain blew his head open with a shotgun sometime yesterday. I've already managed to find a picture on Justmeat.com but my suspicions are all pointing at his skanky ho bitch wife. I think she just didn't like being called Coco anymore (Courtney Cobain... get it?) and left a few loaded shotguns around after he'd been drinking. Maybe ensuring that the trigger guards were big-toe sized.
June 17th 1994
O.J. Simpson? Does he have orange skin and four fingers?
I think I remember seeing him in a Naked Gun movie. Wasn't much of a getaway chase if you ask me, he kept driving in a straight line. Didn't he realise he was on every single channel and radio station while he was being pursued?
November 5th 1995
Holy shit, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been gunned down and killed after delivering a speech at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. A peace rally! The guy was up there asking for peace and he got blown away! Thats sick.
February 7th 1996
(Acerbia was entirely black today in protest against President Clinton signing the CDA: Communications Decency Act. Yes I realise what the purpose of the act is but I don't think it can be enforced properly this way. Kiddy porn is kiddy porn, we shouldn't be making sure that the wrong people don't see it, we should be making sure that nobody sees it. Burn the hard-drives, smash the movie making equipment, shred the photos; keep the kids safe)
March 13th 1996
I just heard about Dunblane. I know kids who go to that school. I spend my New year's eves less than ten miles from there at Nu's house. I need to make some phonecalls...
March 23rd 1996
Atlantis is scheduled to dock with Mir tonight, you can just imagine what the conversation is going to be like:
"Please, tovarisch! Take us home! We must return to the Rodina! This station is falling apart around us, we are global joke. Not like your Hubble telescope, it is magnificent... last we heard..."
April 23rd 1997
They managed to rescue 71 of the 72 hostages that were taken during the Japanese ambassador's party back in mid-December of last year. "Why Ambassador, with these highly armed and dangerous Militia terrorists you're really spoiling us" The started off with several hundred and have been releasing them in exchange for... I don't know, the latest episodes of Star Trek or something, I only care about this because I'm interested in Vero in my art class and she's from Peru... sheesh, how shallow is that?
{{wibbly flashback lines again}}
hair goes back to normal, fingernails are chewed but normal color
Wow, it seems like longer ago than I thought, especially since this was before Pix when I had that Compuserve account and all my friends were Star Wars geeks... that was just brief snippets of some of the more eventful moments of those years blogging... course back then we called it frequently-updated cerebral kineticism, or fucking for short... ah yes... those were the days.
is this thing on?
Oh shit Screenburn went live and I wasn't even paying attention.
I'm on the review team and likely to be picking all the US series since they're the ones I'll be able to review best. So 24, CSI, West Wing, maybe ER if I'm feeling desperate...
Very UK-centric and just starting off but you can expect some quality acerbic wit on there when I write something. In fact... I'm due for this weekend. Oh crap...
Also, as we pause Acerbia for station identification (okay I'm tinkering behind the scenes and looking to experiement with new design features) please bear with me. Posting this week may be sparse.
Acerbic like lemons
Acerbia will be down for some parts of today, Wednesday, due to necessary upkeep and maintenance. I'm having a sauna installed around back of the house.
In the meantime... and since if the site is down you can't see this... makes me wonder why I'm bothering...
Sorry, lost the flow there. New design at Tartweb. Lemons and Lenins. She's not bitter, she's just tart. (Lenin because she's a history teacher... being a designer I get to know these things about people before doing the design, like with Jill and her gyotaku)
Sploosh
On our way down the road for groceries we stopped off at Pampered Pets, because Pix wanted to check out hamsters.
She wants pets to look after because she misses her cats only the house has a "no pets" restriction so we have to stop in and look at the bunnies and gerbils and hamsters when we walk down for groceries.
No furry pets in the furry pet shop. Not a single rodent. Nothing but birds, and birds are pretty boring. If we wanted to keep birds we'd spread glue on the window ledge.
So I joked that the Wet'n Wild shop three blocks down had probably bought them all. Oh... the Wet'n Wild store sells reptiles and fish... I didn't mean any sort of Richard Gere hamster-insertion sex shop sort of implication there...
So we went to the Wet'n Wild store to check out the snakes and the fish and lobsters and suchlike.
Now we own two turtles. A naming poll will be announced soon, because we can't think of decent names.
D's Entirely Other Day
I aspire.
I aspire to be recognised for quality wiriting, for consistent humor and mirth. Oh sure, there's the odd spelling mistake and maybe some of the colloquialisms or vocabulary can be a tad... odd to you, but know that everyone is understanding 95% of the stuff I write no matter where they're from (providing they speak English, I could be doing this in French just as easily y'know you peons)
I have scripts and stories unfinished in a large folder on my hard drive. Ten minute scripts, ninety minute scripts, seven page stories and 250 page novels that need finished off. What they all have in common is that they need a decent editor to beat me over the head until I finish them properly.
Even before I started blogging, two years or so after Pix did (this was way before I was even the Bulletproof Punk) I liked reading sites like Swallowing Tacks and Davezilla, but immediately my web hero was Greg Knauss.
See Greg eat a bug. Find out his wife is pregnant *again*. Read how he fights the snarky elitism of convenience store clerks...
Pix bought me his book. I didn't even know it existed until this morning. Go buy it, for all the good reasons he lists and for any I may have listed here, for if you like Acerbia then know that I am just the poor man's Entirely Other Day.
Oh, she also got Joshua Allen's Strain 17 which I shall equally devour with enthusiasm. Joshua is also in that pantheon of superb writers who do it for the writing rather than the attention.
Doth beauty wilt?
Honey, your daffodils are wilting. I said as I opened up the curtains.
"Give them some water from the bottle" she replies
So I look around for the bottle full of tap water or whatever and as she's leaving the room she says "The Highland Spring bottled mineral water. Good soft Scottish water"
This would be the special mineral water she's supposed to be drinking to stay hydrated, the stuff we got in a six pack that nearly tore my arm off as I brought it up the stairs... and we're using it to water the flowers?!
Smoke and mirrors
Everybody has seen the old picture of the scene from ET with the gun, right?
But have you seen how well ILM have erased that shotgun on the left and replaced it with a Walkie-Talkie? Check it out.
Man, I wish I worked for a big Special Effects company...
Protection
Hey you, nice blog you got there. I'm just saying its a nice blog, thats all. No need to get defensive, I'm just saying its a nice blog and it'd be a shame if anything happened to it.
Very risky place the Web these days, all sorts of bad elements around the place. DNS errors, 404 messages, broken links, server failures... all on a daily basis. Then you've got your flamewars, trolls, stalkers, all your basic weirdos but they can all hide behind relative obscurity.
Yeah, it'd be a shame if a link broke, you might find the CSS has screwed up, man oh man, you wouldn't want all your readers seeing it and thinking you were just some rank amateur.
So I was thinking, me being your friend and all, y'know, I mean sure I have other readers but you, you're special, what if I looked after it in the meantime? Y'know? Just looked in on it from time to time, made sure things were running fine... and all it would cost you is your lunch money and a link.
Shame if anything bad were to happen to it while you were asleep... real shame...
I do declare!
I declare my latest invention a success! Lemon toast!
Pix is currently unable to eat bread so I'm going to be experimenting with various toast snacks in the meantime. Today I soaked two slices of bread with lemon juice (just enough to soak in, not enough to drip out) and toasted them, then added lashings of smoked salmon (there's no such thing as a slice of smoked salmon, you've either got lashings or you've got squat) and voila.
A lemon toast smoked salmon lunch!
Woohoo. And I thought being unemployment meant beans on toasts for the rest of my days.
Tomorrow: Tequila toast!
Those lazy Scotsmen...
What have the Scots ever done for us, eh?
I mean, they're up there north of England, in their hills and glens drinking whiskey and playing golf and... oh sure you get the occasional postcard with a self-adhesive stamp on it with a colour photo of some valley somewhere, or maybe you drive up there along the tarmaced roads on pneumatic types. You might stop off in some roadside cafe where they microwave something and maybe slather it with marmalade, but you pay for it with silly paper notes of money and you have to cross all those silly reinforced iron bridges to get anywhere...
It rains all the time so you're soaked unless you wear a Macintosh, if the electricity goes you're stuck using parafin lamps, maybe taking a bath in some enamel bathtub draining out through hollow pipes reading Peter Pan, Jekyl and Hyde, Sherlock Holmes or some fictional novel of some sort. Because the electricity is out all the food is going off in the refrigerator and the television doesn't work, so instead you can always turn to the telephone to keep you company... assuming you don't have a cloned sheep tucked away somewhere...
But other than just about every invention mentioned above, what have the Scots ever done for us? Eh?
And you though Buicks were American.
The day everyone woke up
There has to come a time in people's lives when they stop, hear the music swell up and suddenly wonder "what the hell am I doing here?"
You can picture it, right? Britney on stage, dancing girls to the left, dancing boys to the right, a crowd full of hopeful prepubescants and lecherous older men in the darkness before her and she's hearing the intro to Hit Me Baby one more time and she might pause, look down at what she's wearing and think "what the hell am I doing here? I could be a well-paid neurosurgeon if only I hadn't skipped class to be on the Mickey Mouse Club, I should just stop."
The third corner of the Australian Grand Prix, Michael Schumacher powers down to third gear, twists the wheel round and suddenly thinks "what the hell am I doing here? I've gone round this corner fifty-seven times already today, all I'm doing is burning up gas, I'm a 34 year old go-kart racer in an expensive piece of machinery, I should just stop."
hen King scribbles notes in the sideline of his fourth draft of another Dark Tower book, realises that there's never been a villain like Flagg since he wrote The Stand, that they're all just pale immitations and that the horror is gone and thinks "what the hell am I doing? I've made more money than I could ever need, I get a movie made every three months from one property or another. All I'm doing is rehashing my first six books over and over again with the same flawed characters and overblown horror villains, I should just stop."
George Dubya Bush looks over the reports in his ready room, sees that he's alienating every other nation on the planet, working hard and fast on redressing the economy no matter what the cost and seems to be ensuring new powers to the presidency whether he gets a second term or not, he pauses and thinks "boy, I sure am doing a good job."
The Score
It has come to my attention that I am subconsciously underscoring all of my actions with an imaginary soundtrack, the soundtrack to my life.
Beta Band and Boards of Canada play the smooth patches, The Stones and Who the rough. There'll be a Kosheen moment or a patch of Radiohead and then we launch into the David Arnold symphonic score between tracks that will make it onto the CD when it is finally released. 808 State and New Order provide a bit of nostalgia for the viewers who grew up during the same time as me, and then Elvis asks for a little less conversation and a little more action and I'll be back into some Reef beats and Whale screaming over my foots.
What plays in your head during the mundane moments? What about the exciting bits?
Fitter, happier, more productive
We use this program called Digiguide that updates through the web to have accurate TV guide listings. You set reminders for things like "Farscape" or "West Wing" and select "new episodes only, repeats, all instances" sweeten to taste, and the computer will tell you when the show is on.
And I really do mean tell you. hen Hawking reminds me when Buffy is on at 60 second intervals counting down from fifteen minutes.
Lunch at Ed's
I sat in Ed's diner and waited.
The red vinyl seats around the reflective circular tables and the barstools aligned perfectly with the curved counter top. Behind the counter men in white kitchen uniforms with little paper hats prepared plates of burgers and fries.
And I waited.
50's Americana adorned the walls, pink neon strips around the luncheonette area, a small box of Hershey's bars and Reece's Pieces available for the kids behind the cash register by the entraceway. In the red vinyl booths parents with their kids cooed at the kitchness of the place.
And I waited.
A tall curved bottle of Coke and a thick tall glass with a straw were placed in front of me, from a wide metal shaker chocolate milkshake was poured into the glass causing the straw to bob up and down. The viscous beige liquid frothed at the top of the glass and settled. A burger wrapped in paper sitting in the middle of a plate was placed before me and a bowl of fries drenched in cheese sauce.
And I waited for Pix to smile at me for the first time today. But she didn't.
Ave
How geeky am I? I got all excited about being linked to by Caesar... Yes I realise it isn't *really* Caesar... but the despot inside of me is barking his delight to all his troops and planning further Web conquests and projects akin to this. Bloggus Caesari remains one of my favorite non-blog uses of a blog, which is why I have it in the links category with the other professional serious writers like Neil Gaiman, Sarah Bunting and Chuck Palahniuk (two of those three I've met in person by the way)
Easy to follow, crafty and concise, I recommend it to everyone who ever enjoyed their history lessons at school.
I should probably do a better job of reading D as well as Caesar from now on... but I get confused when I see those signatures since I don't remember writing those posts. Duh.
The Oddest of the Toddest
Well it turns out lunch with David Soul was off, instead we went to see him guesting on the Gloria Hunniford Show in the Channel 5 studios.
Okay, to set the bar here... Channel 5 has the lowest budget of the 5 channels you get for free in this country, Gloria Hunniford is a washed out old lady who hasn't had a decent TV show since the Eighties (if even) and lets not forget this is daytime television, so pretty much everything cheap and cringe-worthy about television encapsulated in one place.
Gloria wasn't even hosting the show today, she had Mark Curry and Kaye Adams guest hosting... and man was it arduous. David was good though, he foiled Mark's attempts to write him off as nothing more than an actor from a 70's cop show, and was by far the most interesting of the four segments we had to sit through. Although considering his competition was a cookery segment, a fashion segment and a guy who got lost in Siberia... thats not saying much. I could feel myself slipping into a coma during the fashion segment...
Average age of the floor crew was probably 27 or 28. Average age of the audience had to be closer to 60 or 70. One notable presence was Betty from So Graham Norton. Yes, that old lady from the front row of his audiences. She's famous in her own right now. Smells funny though, that "old granny" smell, y'know?
Nothing says unemployed better than daytime TV and nothing says suicidally unemployed better than appearing in the audience of daytime TV.
Suicide is painless...
It would seem that my most popular search string is "painless suicide" and to the people who get here through Google and Yahoo and all those other search engines looking for painless suicide methods I'd just like to point out that its probably not as bad as you think, whatever it is thats driven you to seek this information out.
For those of you who know otherwise, try sticking your head in a gas oven without lighting it, or pills will cause a sleepy euphoric end. Sitting in your car while running the engine with a tube running from the exhaust inside the car will work just as well.
If you're really so serious about suicide though what do you care if its going to be painless or not? It'll be over pretty quick if you eat a bullet or fall from a tall building to be liquified on the sidewalk (and you stay conscious all the way down, no matter what the popula myth is. Oh, and your guts let go mid-way down, so you're going to be smelly human soup by the time you're dead)
Cutting hurts but it works, remember to go up and along the veins of the arm as well as transversally. Blue Suicide is right out, because you'd have to be a pretty shallow and selfish prick to get a cop to shoot you. Your life may be over, but you'd also have ruined his. Jumping in front of trains is messy and not guaranteed to kill you outright. Plus you cause delays.
So is it worth reiterating that whatever it is, it can't be that bad?
We're inside our hearts...
I was in a desert, the horizons stretched out as far as I could see and the cooling sands were causing heatwave distortion patterns around me making it feel more like the inside of an aquarium than a desert.
The shifting sound of footprints in the sand caused me to turn and see the approaching koala bear, it was weather-beaten and slightly mangy, most certainly the runt of its litter. It dropped down into a sitting position at my feet and looked up forelornly.
You're going to tell me you're my spirit-animal and this is all in my head, aren't you, I asked it.
"Don't be so fucking stupid. It should be blatantly obvious to you anyway, whats the use in me saying so?"
And why am I here?
"Oh some cosmic bullshit about reaffirming your drive and motivation after another life experience setback. Don't ask me, I didn't ask for this job"
Is the desert a metaphor for the emptiness of professional advancement and goals in my life?
"Probably. You ask me its cause there's not a lot inside your head worth visualising, but then its the same with most spirit animal meeting places. You'll be conjuring up some creature comforts in a minute or two when your mind adjusts to the idea"
And with that we sat down at the white iron garden furniture table and chairs and I nibbled on a stick of celery while the koala gobbled down some eucalyptus leaves.
Aren't you supposed to help me through this? I asked him.
"Huh. Oh yeah right. Chin up boy, you'll do fine, the world is your oyster and all that crap"
Very encouraging. I expect you're my spirit animal cause you're lethargic, mangy and the runt of the litter, yes? Talk about wrapping the moral of the story in an anvil.
"Well you're the one who thinks deep down inside that you look like Clive Owen"
I do. If he can be the next James Bond why can't I?
He chased after me as I climbed the steps up the Mayan-style pyramid to the triangular prism at the top, a single glaring open eye rotating within. In the far off distance I could make out a young woman riding a white stallion, her robes flowing in the wing. Over to one side a man grasping a dolphin's dorsal fin dived in and out of the dunes, cresting the surf.
"Look, its like psychotherapy right? This is a self-involved exercise where you try and make yourself feel better after a bit of self-pity about being turned down for two jobs in one morning. I show up and sprinkle pixie dust around and say everything will be alright and you get on with the arduous task of chasing agencies and websites"
Sure, best way to make me feel better is to remind me that I've brought you upon myself.
"Well if it'll make you feel any better I do have one little bit of good advice. It has helped in the past"
Hit me.
"Slide"
Jealousy and ivory
She gets to be Blog Babe of The Week. Harrumph.
Plus I'm pretty sure I remember her being naked when that picture was taken... and if not naked then the word "skimpy" was in there somewhere describing her outfit.
Back! Back I say!
In other news I was turned down after my interview for being "too confident" and "too technical". And those are bad things? You wanted a nervous inept monkey?
Pink is his signature color
Looks like Acerbia is back after a painful weekend of DNS errors and Page Not Found messages. Hmm, and very few of you complained. I suppose that'd be a shocking and hurtful revelation if I hadn't already established that I don't tend to blog at weekends. And my ailing traffic reports.
Michele, control freakiest of the control freaks was kind... nay, superlatively kind enough to give me a login for asmallvictory (no other blogger on the planet has that kind of access) so I wrote a few pieces over there and may continue to... if I want to bitch more about America, Republicans or Natalie's New Boyfriend.
In the meantime, while I think up some decent content, Todd was silly enough to admit here that he likes Steel Magnolias. So here's Todd Magnolias.
I shouldn't do this though because Davezilla knows I have a fondness for The Bridges of Madison County
Pull me out of the crash
> Run Acerbia bootup process
>>Install core functions
- green background
- row of background houses
- links framework
- credits sidebar
>>Fill core functions
- main archives reinstalled
- individual entries archives reinstalled
- random rotating house image selected and displayed
- links icons added
- request for monkeys sent
... ERROR, ERROR, ERROR
>>An unknown element was requested during the boot-up process. Acerbia will not load correctly. Do you wish to continue?
- Abort, Retry, Fail, Go Somewhere Else?
>>Retrying
- Heres some light muzak while you wait. What you don't like The Girl From Ipanema? Heathen
>>Processing direct user request for monkeys
- No monkeys found
- Install will continue in safe mode without monkeys present. To ensure a proper boot-up in future please include monkeys.
>>Resuming boot-up in safe mode.
- Vaguely humorous drivel about a guy named Dave installed.
- User installing new content
- Monkeys found. Displaying...
Skating the edge
Update:
Okay, with the Director's Cut vs Original Cut argument bypass firmly in place we skip straight to the recent Channel 4 documentary where Ridley Scott answered point blank that yes, Deckard was a Replicant.
Funny, Harrison Ford claims that Ridley told him to play the character as a human almost convinced himself that he might be more human than human as the Tyrell slogan went.
Red glowing eyes; Oh please, I get red glowing eyes in just about every picture that's taken of me.
Performance: Deckard's a Replicant? He can't out fight Pris or Zhora, he can't out-smart Leon and he can't jump as far as Batty. Pretty substandard Replicant if you ask me, and he's supposed to be this new model with bad breath, real skin, undetectable from the real thing? What is he, the Drunken Loser model?
Deckard is the Sixth Replicant: Nope, in Ridley Scott's own words Stacey Nelkin was cast as "Mary", a Replicant who dies in the presence of the other five, prompting them to break into Tyrell. The scene wasn't shot for budgetary reasons. You could argue that as the scene wasn't shot it's not relevant to the story, but since its in the shooting script and the rest of the script is relevant the sixth Replicant remains Mary, even if we don't see her at any point.
But Ridley specifically says that Deckard is a Replicant: Come on, after twenty years of being asked by people who can't make up their own minds? What would you expect him to eventually say? If Deckard doesn't talk like a duck, act like a duck or leap tall buildings like a duck why should I believe that he is a duck? In an interview fourteen years on from the filming he was still telling Paul Sammon that Deckard was a "soulless man" mirroring the artificiality of the Replicants.
So, not a Replicant. Unless you can argue otherwise?
The most boring tradesman in Britain
The guy checking the gas heaters is *still* here three hours on. If he tells me one more "amusing" story about losing tools in strange places or trapping cats under floorboards then I am going to take his stupid electric screwdriver and get Driller Killer on his ass.
So far he has checked out the two hotplate clusters, sorted out the oven (which is electric and has nothing to do with why he is here) dismantled kitchen cupboards that "looked a bit shoddy" and given me all the advice I could possibly need about kitchen sinks and outlet valves for radiators.
Not only could the guy cure insomnia but he could be left beside people in vegetative states to persuade them to snap out of it and ask him to shut the fuck up. The slightest thing reminds him of "this job I was on a few years back" and the punchline is usually "well, anyway, yeah, so that was that".
If he's still here in an hour you might as well alert the authorities and give them a head start.
Courtesy coffee
Because I'm invariably close to home during the days now the landlord will phone up and say "I've got a Mr. So-and-so coming round to check the electric meter/gas/phone/etc" and its up to me to make sure the guy doesn't... lay demolition charges or something, I don't know.
But I always offer coffee. The guys who installed cable, the guy who came round to check the electrics, the guy who came round to reconnect the phone after we were cut off, the guy here right now checking the gas heaters. Are there no women working in domestic repairs and services?
Not one of those bastards has said I make a decent cup of coffee. Not one.
Next one who asks for one sugar and a splash of milk is getting a teaspoonful of rat poison and dash of piss. Bastards.
Disappeared *poof* just like that
Pix and I live in a split-level house with a number of other people. Mid-January two of those people who had become an item in their time together here moved out and the collective household sighed a sigh of relief. When it came time to chose replacements I will admit that the housemates and I were somewhat lax in our vetting.
And so it was that Graham moved in.
Graham obviously wasn't too worried about locking up after himself, so Fran and Ursula had a good look around his bedroom while he was out one day. His DVD collection included Spartacus and Dancer in the Dark, he kept a bowl of pot pourri on the mantle-piece above his fireplace and when he arrived the bathroom suddenly bred a myriad of peach bubble-baths and cosmetics. I'll leave it up to you the reader to conclude what all of that means.
Graham was the polar opposite from Matt. Matt would run a fat baseline sample through his speakers at two in the morning, have wild passionate sex with Adele for three minutes (from first grunt to final gasp, the walls are thin here) and cook greasy food in the frying pan. Graham would listen to easy listening music on wireless headphones, never made a sound after midnight and cooked well-balanced meals.
So I'm left wondering why the hell, in his mad rush to escape the household on Monday night at about eleven p.m. he made off with the best frying pan in the house, the bastard.
Footnote: My mother and -dad and their circle of university friends tell the greatest stories about midnight flits (when you move out without telling your landlord and without paying or leaving a forwarding address) but they must have raised me right because I see the practice as somewhat rude.
Should I be telling the truth?
Are there ethics to a job interview? Is the theory lie, cheat and steal to get the job you want?
Three seperate times during the course of my interview I forgot rather important people's names. My former European Director of Operations name, and the names of the two people working at the company I refused to go and work for after DoubleClick (I can remember them now just fine). Worse still I introduced myself with the wrong name and muttered "I was expecting a man" when the interviewer introduced herself as Sacha. Had it been Sasha I'd have been in no doubt, but Sacha is the Russian name for Alex.
Okay so once the interview was in full swing I knew what to say, but I'm sure there are trick questions that are unanswerable inserted into all interviews. I mean, for instance, what is the correct answer to "What part of your previous job did you find most fulfilling?"
a) The arguments with my co-workers.
b) Being left to listen to music and get on with the work having switched the phone to voicemail.
c) The sense of accomplishment at the end of the day knowing just how appreciated my contribution to humanity is.
d) The money you fool, the money.
Of course I said c) but meant d) with a touch of b). But to be fair, how many people work in a low-key technical job because they "love the sense of fulfilment it brings"? Too cynical?
Great oxymorons of our time
#117 in a series.
In Highlander an American plays the highlander and the pre-eminent Scottish actor plays a Spanish-Egyptian Conquistador.
Yes, Christophe Lambert is American, he was born on Long Island. Whenever I hear Sean Connery ask "what is haggis?" I cringe. Likewise for the Freedom speech from Braveheart. Don't even talk to me about Rob Roy.
You want true movie Scotland? Watch Shallow Grave or Trainspotting, those are accurate.
Spell "autumn"
On my way down from the Tube station I had to stop at a pedestrian crossing and wait for the lights to change. Beside me two British telecom engineers were blocking most of the pavement with metal gates surrounding an open manhole in which the two of them were sitting. Bundles of grouped-together wires six inches in diametre snaked out from the hole and one of the engineers was attaching the yellow connector wires with crocodile clips to various wires before then checking against a multi purpose volt-meter about 8x12x1 inches with a single line LCD display and various option keys, the whole thing surrounded in a yellow plastic case with rounded corners.
The older one looked to the younger one and said "I don't get it, what am I doing wrong?" as the lights changed and I set off to cross the road I mumbled "Spell aw-tum" The older one gave me a blank look but the younger one obviously owned a Speak'n Spell as a kid.
Blasted germs
You'll excuse me for the week as I'm rather anxious about an up-coming interview and trying to fight off a cold in time.
Traffic's been low anyway so I doubt anyone really minds that much. Back with more as it happens.
The jam in my jelly donut
Hi there, I'm the jelly donut sitting on D's desk. I've struck an agreement which allows me to blog for him and in exchange he's going to "take bights" out of me. I didn't realise I had bights but I'm glad he's going to get rid of...
Oh fer crying out loud! Would you mind not licking the sugar off me? I need that to protect me from direct sunlight. That's bett...
Argh! 911! Donut in distress! I'm bleeding bad, apply pressure, apply pressure! Get a tourniquet!
That's not a tourniquet! Those are your teeth! You bastard! I'm losing a lot of jam, I feel so cold... my vision is blurring... oh God he's broken through to the middle, all my guts are being spilled out over his chin.
**cough** **cough**
I'm fading fast, there's not a lot of me left... my precious lifesblood is smeared all over the place, my protective sugar coating has crumbled and proven useless against this assault on my person... Tell my baker that I loved him... goodbye cruel Baking Produce world...
Wipeout
The current advertising campaign for Wipeout Fusion uses a pretty clever trick to catch the public's eye; the game has been marketed as if the product were real instead of virtual. TV commercials with Japanese businessmen telling us that this dangerous and illegal sport is now available to the public. In the London Underground however public service posters have been put up using this image and a brief explanation of the impending urban modification plans to accomodate the new track being built.
Obviously there is no track being made, its just to get kids excited about the game. But kids and teenagers aren't the only ones on the Tube. At my nearest station as I was waiting for a train I saw an old couple standing, staring at the image, reading the text and shaking their heads.
So I have to wonder if the next time they saw their children and grandchildren if they mentioned this eye-sore track being built across London, and the noise pollution and the dangers of one of those atomic-powered anti-grav new-fangled vehicules driving off the edge of the track.
It wasn't marketed for anyone over thirty, but thats who's seeing it.
Clear the shingles
Ten straight attempts at the incredible Medal of Honor Normandy Landing mission.
My boots haven't hit the beach yet. This is how realistic games should be. The longest I've survived against the Nazi defences of Omaha beach is probably about 90 seconds, I suspect if I'd been there for real it'd have been a lot less than that.
Digitalis
The cardinal sins to be avoided when making and marketing a DVD;
1. For there to be a Special Edition, a regular edition must exist first.
2. The Warner Bros. cardboard cases are evil! They are evil! Use plastic!
3. When using the plastic cases, ensure that the release pins at center of disc actually release disc when depressed.
4. Sleeve notes. Puh-leeze! Embrace the technology you monkey!
5. A Special Boxed Set must unfold along the natural progression of the movie or TV series contained therein from first to last, not resemble the bastard spawn of an origami Lament Configuration Box
6. Interactive Menus and Scene Selection are not Special fucking Features.
7. Region encoding. Puh-leeze, who do you think you're kidding? Personal Import companies are my friends.
8. Audio Commentary; unless its the star of the movie, the writer or one of the few director's who takes any pride in finishing a film then you're just wasting storage space. Put a few Itchy and Scratchy episodes on the disc instead.
9. Rereleasing the same disc with new documentaries is an offense punishable with being strangled with your own constricting anal ring.
10. The 2-disc Fight Club ruled. Make your DVDs like Fight Club. In fact, make the movies like Fight Club.
11. Easter Eggs. Puh-leeze!
12. Indiana Jones trilogy and Star Wars holy trilogy: When?
13. Putting pan & scan on one side and widescreen on the other is another waste of time, this is the new millenium, anybody asking for pan & scan should be ridiculed, tarred and feathered and run out of town with their shitty 4:3 TV set.
14. Putting an artist's videos onto a disc and then selling it as a new DVD/CD only works if it has boobs, or a similar reason to use the very veeeeery slow scan forward and back function.
15. Battlefield Earth on DVD: hahahahahaha, good one, but do we really need more landfill filler? Isn't that what real garbage is for?
Thats all for now. Got any suggestions?
Note to self;
If I do persist in walking around with only one sock on then it should come as no surprise to me that the kitchen floor is cold and causes me to squeal like a little girly-girl. But it does... again
Bond, Dave Bond
The reason yesterday was such a light blogging day was because I had an interview arranged yesterday lunch for this morning so my mind wasn't on much other than "my hair looks terrible, I have a zit, I don't know how to iron my shirt, my God I've forgotten how to speak English!!!"
But the interview went so well in fact I could swear the interviewer saw my CV and then tailored two job specs especially for me, so perfect are these roles. I've agreed to go through the interview process for both. If you thought me working for DoubleClick was evil, then imagine the irony in my mouth when she said who these two companies were.
That alone made it worth my while. The suit was a bonus.
I've never worn a suit before. Sure I tried it on in the dressing room when I bought it, but I've never been out in public wearing one before, and I swear with the haircut and a shave I looked sharp, I looked fine, I looked £705,032.54 ($1,000,000). I was starting to get paranoid about the amount of female attention I was getting on the Tube and on my way to see Pix at her place of work.
If you read AE regularly you'll know that she works for the Royal National Institute for the Blind, who are an equal opportunities employer and have many people with disabilities working for them. Its humbling to see them perform as well as any able-bodied professional would in the same role.
I arrived, said my hellos and sat down. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I felt the need to point out to Pix that I had noticed I was getting quite a bit of attention from one of her colleagues. The girl had been blatantly staring at me with a smile on her face for ages and sure I knew I looked good, but there was social etiquette to consider.
"That girl's been checking me out for ages now" I whispered to Pix, but she didn't bat an eyelid;
"She's blind."