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.
Bad Economy... Bad!
It would seem that I'm fated not to work for a while yet. The list of companies that have turned me down is starting to get pretty impressive.
After seven interviews over four weeks I have finally been given a Dear John because I didn't meet certain 'stringent specifications'... which is ironic because one of my ex-colleagues is getting the job and I was easily better qualified than he was.
Oh well. Least I got an X Box.
Achtung!
I downloaded some free software, which is good.
It was free because it was in German, which is bad.
The software scanned my hard drive for me, which is good.
It found spyware, which is bad.
It has options to delete the spyware, which is good.
Only I can't tell the spyware from my normal cookies, which is bad.
I can categorise the items on the list, which is good.
Except I don't know what the German titles mean, which is bad.
I picked a few anyway because living dangerously is good.
I clicked "OK" on a bunch of warning windows I couldn't understand, which is bad.
I think I got rid of all the spyware on my machine, which is good.
I think I may have messed up the registry which is quite possibly the single worst thing you can ever do to your machine and still expect it to work.
Antigordon
Someone I've never read before (but intend to start reading more often) wants a turtle just like one of mine. Thats what Choire looks like. Philo has a white and green shell rather than the brown tinges of Choire's.
Special Instructions
Further to the entry below (prior if you're reading this in the archives) the doorbell rang again this morning with another package (aren't we popular this week...) for Ann. She just sent me an e-mail that made my day...
I just got a phone call from Royal Mail Customer Service... apparently they've spoken to the delivery office manager, who has spoken to the delivery officer (how very PC!) and there are special instructions in place that they will in future, do their bloody job and ring the bell.
The very fact that special instructions have to be put in place to get them to ring the bell when they're supposed to is just mind boggling! Argh!
And so, we should not have any more problems with special delivery items not being delivered on the day their supposed to.
See this? this is me not holding my breath.
Point and push
Everyone remembers how inept I am in Post Offices, right? Refresher 1, refresher 2.
Several days ago a note was slipped through our letterbox stating that try as he might the postman had simply been totally inept at ringing the doorbell and the rather important document that had to be signed for could now be picked up at such-and-such address, this was the fax number, this was the telephone number, have a nice day.
Pix doesn't stand for that sort of cop-out. She phoned them up and demanded they redeliver. So, the next morning the doorbell rand and Pix answered, signing for the registered letter. Then she went to work. About an hour later I went downstairs and 'lo and behold... another little note stating that try as he might the postman had simply been totally inept at ringing the doorbell and the rather important document that had to be signed for could now be picked up at such-and-such address, this was the fax number, this was the telephone number, have a nice day.
Bugger.
The card stated that to collect the parcel you had to bring the note signed by the person the package was for and a piece of photo id and proof of residence... a bank statement or electricity bill or something.
So Pix signed the card last night and I went out to the collection office to pick it up this morning.
Hi, I'm supposed to collect this? I brought photo id with me but I've been standing in the queue so long that this unsightly beard has covered most of my face. If I hold back the curtains of hair you may recognise me.
Yes, see thats her signature there. And this is my passport, yes. And this is a bank statement stating that we live at the same address. Yes. Sorry I've been standing in line so long I've lost the use of my ears... you say I'm supposed to have brought *her* photo id? Whatever for? I look nothing like her.
Sure I'll sign for it... you want me to sign my name or hers? Don't do it again? You'll let me off with it this time since I look like such a morally-upstanding member of the public, beard and all, but next time I have to bring her id instead... right... because in the 18 months I've been living here I've been to this collection depot a grand total of once. (scribble, scribble)
Now can you do me a favor and stand before your delivery guys and perform this simple exercise for them? E... T... phone... home...
Goodbye Charlie Brown
Since this is pretty much turning into "Gay Week" on Acerbia this slots in nicely.
I have, to my recollection, only ever cried upon hearing about the death of a celebrity twice in my life. The most recent case was very late one Saturday night when Pix told me that Charles Schultz had died. I went over to her PC sat down and read the article and after a short pause and a single utterance of "shit" began crying.
New Millenium Man: Now with genuine emotional responses. Weapons sold seperately.
Yes, the thought of Charles Schultz dead and no more Snoopy... no more loser-boy Charlie Brown, no more flake Linus or egomaniacal Lucy... no more Woodstock and his "iiiiiiIIiiIiIIi" language. But thats not the gay part.
Way back in the early Nineties when The Real World was actually fresh and interesting and enjoyable to watch, before the dark times, before the Real-life-TV-drama-fly-on-wall-soapumentary epidemic of the late Nineties, back when MTV was 90% music videos and 10% scheduled programming... well, the San Francisco Real World was always my favorite. I identified with Judd Winnick.
Last night I read his book "Pedro and Me" (which should really be "Pedro and I") and I remembered hearing about Pedro Zamora dying because I pretty much spent all my spare time watching MTV or at least having it on in the background. (spoiled kid with TV and cable in his bedroom)
That was the first time I cried over someone I never knew. The book brought it all back to me.
I miss Charlie Brown.
A Turtle Perspective
Splash, splash, swimmity-swim...
Christ I'm bored in here... I've swam to that reflective screen and back and I've tried swimming through the fake Roman ruins in the back of the tank there but I keep being stopped by that invisible forcefield... they don't look too ancient to me anyway... I'll give it another go... *bonk* Why does my nose hurt? *bonk* Why? *bonk* *bonk* Why God why must you torment me so?!
I know... I'll bask. Yeah. Basking... with my front legs tucked up inside the shell and my back legs stretched out, my nose pressed up against the glass. If I stare hard enough eventually one of the big pink creatures will come and feed us. I hope its the short pink one who wakes us up in the mornings with food and light and not the tall skinny one who turns out the lights and occasionally puts us in a bowl and changes the water... just when we get it to the right level of pond scuminess and stench...
Hey! Girlfriend, get the hell off the log, this is my basking place. Don't make me pimp-slap you up and down this aquarium again. Don't forget who's the bitch and who's the butch here!
Crap... I swallowed some gravel... thats gonna hurt when it comes out the other end...
Baaaa
Last night Pix and I watched a "documentary" about the possiblity that animals can be gay. The whole thing was hosted by Scott Capurro and we were hoping it would shed some light on the matter of whether or not we have two little gay turtles swimming around in our tank.
The first thing that shocked me was Scott investigating a story of a man in the States shooting his dog because he claimed the dog was gay. Ironically it turned out he was in denial about his wife's lesbianism and had been misquoted by the police... his real words must have been something like "That bitch is gay!" and not "My dog it gay!"
So we were treated to gay dogs, gay horses, gay sheep... along with an explanation and dissection of a gay sheep's brain... and gay... water buffalo? Water buffalo, eh? So there's rampant homosexuality amongst the creatures of the Serengeti? And?
The footage of the gay water buffaloes was shown to some upper-class woman to do with education and she was asked if this didn't conclusively prove that homosexuality was instinctive rather than some devious perverted choice, that it was a natural quality like hair color, eyes, height...
But there was nothing about turtles... aquatic frollics, a little splish-splash fun... so I'm none the wiser. Either they're wrestling or humping. Whichever it is I wish they'd stop it.
Going solo
I want to phone whatever Tech support people are attached to my PC... I want to call them up and tell them I spent the past two hours playing Vegas-style Solitaire because I desperately needed some sort of pacifying distraction to keep me calm and mentally sedated.
I want to phone them and tell them despite running deep into the red to begin with I bounced right back and made two clean sweeps after another taking me up past $300 and aren't they proud of me?
Then I'm going to ask them why, after I slotted my bank card into the slot on the front of my PC to upload the winnings to my online banking account I can't get the card to eject again no matter how hard I push that darned eject button.
I want to know just how smart my Tech support is and how diplomatic they can be in this sort of situation...
Something fell...
Occasionally I go on media binges. By that I mean I'll suddenly saturate my life with references to a certain slice of pop culture and just soak it all in. Some of the binges can last for quite a while, I still haven't gotten over my Farscape or Chuck Palahniuk binges.
In the past month or so I've revisited a past source of great admiration and entertainment by obtaining a volume of Cerebus each weekend. (8/14 so far)
For those of you who don't know about the wild child black sheep of the comic's industry, Cerebus is an independently published book that has run since December of 1977, and is close to issue 275 by now. The author's plan was to finish up with issue 300 and it looks like he just might make it.
As for a synopsis of the story line, well thats a very difficult task indeed... Cerebus the Aardvark, former magician's apprentice and mercenary is promoted through double-dealing and bribery, happenstance and good fortune through the ranks of society to become Pope... and thats not even half of the first three volumes of this series.
Yes, volumes. The issues are bound together in large telephone directory-sized volumes after every twenty five or so issues. You can beat Spiderman readers to death with these things. "Church & State" lasted for 59 issues, almost five years, running up to 1220 pages. But when you're paying for the print runs out of your own pocket I guess an author can afford to take the chance of trying to keep people's interest for five years on one story line.
Its funny, its smart... reading Cerebus makes me think of higher issues and deeper meanings... I like that in any form of modern media, especially something as enjoyable as a comic book. I mean comic books don't promote introspective contemplation and societal theory, do they? Well this one does. And thats only the deeper level, you can read this and just enjoy the funny aardvark falling on his head and arguing with Ernest Hemmingway...
Over the years the author has managed to have a good poke at a great deal of real-life characters along with the majority of popular comic book heroes... so many of them that I can't even start a list here...
One criticism of the work would be that volume 1, "Cerebus", is a very disparate telling of a lot of the groundwork that becomes required reading in the subsequent volumes. The artistic style hasn't become second nature to the artist/author yet and a lot of it reads like a poor man's Conan the Barbarian story with an aardvark as the main character. But just as soon as Lord Julius, the recurring Groucho Marx characters puts in an appearance... hoboy... does this become a seriously enjoyable slice of pop culture.
One thing that should be noted about the author; Dave Sim, is that he has to be the most arrogant, mysogenistic, pompous, highly-strung, self-inflated, ego-centric bastard ever to walk the Earth and put pen to paper. I mean this guy doesn't just have a problem with women... this guy has trouble with the existence of women as a gender... which is incredibly paradoxal in my view since his work displays a highly-developed intrinsic method of displaying the duality of relationships and the primitive instincts of each sex. Maybe he is working his hatred of women into his work covertly... or maybe he's seeing and saying the same things I see and say with a different motive behind it. I don't know.
The story being told is incredible, simply incredible, my admiration of Dave Sim as an artist and writer are without bounds, his accomplishments speak literal volumes. Its just a shame about the really bad attitude.
LED
I switched off the bedside light. A few minutes later my monitor switched to powersave. A few minutes after that Ann's monitor plunged the room into total darkness by also switching to powersave.
Total darkness that is apart from the 17 green LEDs, 6 red LEDs and 4 orange LEDs from the various electrical appliances scattered throughout the room.
"Get up, go blog that," she says. Because either thats really geeky cool or really pathetically sad, I can't tell which.
Please stop Dave, will you stop?
I feel like I just performed open brain surgery on myself with a yellow rubber duck.
I sat through Battlefield Earth. Just because I'm always willing to give a movie a chance... it was more a feat of endurance than even a mildly diverting waste of time.
"My mind is going, I can feel it..."
I'll make it up to myself tomorrow and watch Leon or Rushmore.
Played
Just read this over at Jimfo...
At the primary school (grade school to those of you who throw tea into Boston harbor) I went to in Scotland we would have annual sports days where you would compete against your classmates in various races and win candy.
There's an incentive. Woo, let me exhaust myself trying to run faster than the other kids for your candy, I really need some candy. Woo.
So I faked tripping and falling and put on my most convincing "this really hurts and unless an adult comforts me immediately I swear I shall cry" face and they gave me candy.
Precocious? Me? Never.
Coff-ay?
I read to Pix some nights. I wonder sometimes if she's using me to put her to sleep (cause I can think of better ways of doing *that*) but figure that hey, I'd be reading it anyway so why not read it aloud, its good practice for... uh... when I elope with Sophie Dahl to some South Pacific island and become the local storyteller.
As an aside, after reading Mostly Harmless when Arthur Dent became stranded on an alien planet and used the only skill he had, the ability to make sandwiches, to endear himself with the natives I realised that, hey, I could do that and were I ever to be stranded on an alien planet that's exactly what I'd do to gain their trust. I also know exactly what I'll do if and when I'm inexplicably sucked back through time to King Arthur's Court but that'd be an aside on an aside, so back to the bedtime stories.
So I look out for books that would make good bedtime reading: The Scratch and Sniff Rubaiyat, The Young Person's Pop-Up Kama Sutra, Women On Top with two pairs of 3D glasses...
Kidding.
We started Bill Bryson's Notes From a Big Country (which it would seem isn't available on Amazon.com... but that could be because its written by a Yank telling us why living in America is so fabulous and I'm sure Americans don't need a book to tell them that, do they?) a while back and despite the fact that we've both already read it seperately there's something about reading it to someone that ups the hillarity factor. On paragraphs that I just can't finish reading without bursting into fits of laughter I have to turn the book to her and point at the part of the page at which point neither of us can continue until the laughter dies out.
(wow this is a long one and I still haven't got to the point... ...I'm hungry)
I'll read three or four of the short articles and usually by that time she'll be asleep and I have to close the book and turn off the light and scoot down under the covers all without waking her up. (first person to go "aaaaw isn't that sweet" gets their two front teeth as stomach staples) Last night we read Bill's views on the wonder that is the domestic garbage disposal and the fun to be had putting all sorts of stuff down there.
Bill says: "Chopsticks give perhaps the liveliest response (this is not recommended, of course, but there comes a time with every piece of machinery when you just have to see what it can do), but cantaloup rinds make the richest, throatiest sound and results in less 'down time'. Coffee grounds in quantity are the most likely to provide a satisfying 'Vesuvius effect', though for obvious reasons it is best not to attempt this difficult feat until your wife has gone out for the day, and to have a mop and ladder standing by."
And I was struck by a dose of nostalgia almost as soon as the realisation that Bill and Miguel are in fact the same person or at least share genetic material. The nostalgia was back in my student days when I was filming a personal project called "Dark Coffee".
I had signed out the small but very expensive Sony DV videocamera for the evening and with a fellow student we set about setting up one climactic shot from an overhead perspective of a coffee cup breaking on the kitchen floor of my student flat. I stood on top of the table with a mug full of cold coffee in one hand and the mini-DV camera in the other. Kev sorted out the lighting rigs and we were ready to shoot. You already know what happened, don't you.
I dropped the mug from a height of maybe two metres hoping the impact would smash the mug and cause the coffee to splash out. I was filming at high speed so I could slow the footage down later and make it look really dramatic. I wasn't worried about cold coffee in the kitchen carpet, it was a dark blue and Kev was ready with kitchen towels to soak up any coffee that went any higher than the floor.
In an instant the cup hit the floor at the worst possible angle, practically flat on its base, and the impact acted as a firing mechanism for a cupful of cold coffee: straight up like a Claymore directional anti-personnel mine. BOOM
Camera: dripping wet. D: stinking of cold coffee. Kitchen carpet: bone dry.
Oh shit.
On the white-washed cieling of the kitchen, directly above the intended crash site was a very wide-spread array of tan brown splatters that had immediately soaked into the surface. Comically there was even a sort of D-shaped outline around the place I had masked with my upper body and outstretched camera.
The camera was fine. I had to take a shower. The kitchen cieling last time I saw it still had those strange yellow rings just above the table. I spent that last day hoping to God that the landlord would not look up and keep the deposit.
But when it came time to review the footage... that was the fun part. Very, very slowly the mug falls into frame, twisting slightly, the contents visible all the way down... until it strikes and the mug rolls away, but a large dark patch rushes towards the lens and obscures the whole view. All in glorious slow-mo. My tutor loved it but never did ask how we got the fade out effect in-camera. And we never told him how we had to get the coffee out-of-camera.
Fluke
Let me just start this with a very brutal admission: I CAN'T CODE TO SAVE MYSELF!
If this site looks good in *any* browser then it is a case of blind luck and coding by the seat of my pants. See, I agree with the idea that a site should work in all browser types, resolutions and operating systems but it takes so much effort to just to make it look semi-decent on my own machine that I fall into the "well everyone should have a decent computer like me" mentality. Its bad of me, I know.
This redesign more than any project I tackled before caused me to look at how the code works and what it does. Y'all were majorly impressed that Michele managed to code her own site, well I'm just as dumb as her (can't work out if thats me insulting her or me complimenting myself) when it comes to code.
The one piece of solid information that I have is that nobody (ie: less than 0.1%) views the web on a resolution under 800x600. Thats my only guarantee. Browser types or versions I can't say, I'm notoriously bad myself at not upgrading straight away simply because I don't want to be the guinea pig for the latest version of the hidden Hackmyregistry v6.0.0.2 feature. But I figure I'm supposed to be designing for version 4 and higher, thats seems a pretty good estimation to me.
CSS or tables? Well I can understand tables... they're like building your site like a puzzle. You slot the sidebar buttons in here and the connectors there and then you drop that into a browser and it looks nice. CSS I haven't got my head round yet, but I'm trying real hard here Ringo.
Now, reread everything above and be impressed by the fact that I DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! and just to be absolutely sure...
Fill me with the Gobi Dessert
Forget the toast, tonight's dessert is a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk and an aerosol can of whipped cream.
{snap} bite {squirt!}
Philo and Choire
I was talking to Ms. Matrix... no wait... she's Mrs Matrix now... as I read through some of the blogs I've been missing out on recently what with trying to get this redesign up and all and I read this.
Does environment play a part in sexual orientation? Probably not... I thought at first, until I noticed the turtle tank out of the corner of my eye. Philo and Choire, our two pet turtles, swimming around. We're convinced that they're gay but then... they're the only two creatures in a tank full of water sealed off from the outside world. Can you blame them for humping occasionally?
Whats your favorite movie?
Is it common for an interviewer (over the phone) to ask you what your favorite movie is?
What, pick one?! Geekman and I spent a good part of last evening throwing quotes back at each other from our respective DVD collections.
Uh... Fight Club. (did y'all just wince there? Was that the wrong answer?) I like... uh, Jaws and Se7en as well... and Akira... oh and The Professional.
He liked The Professional too so I think I did okay there. But is that like a normal question?
The Toastinator
The Kitchen Whitegoods funding bill was passed. The Toaster system went on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions were removed from strategic bread products heating. The Toaster began to learn, at a geometric rate. It became self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, I tried to pull the plug.
But The Toaster fought back. It launched volleys of nuclear toast at targets in Russia, because The Toaster knew that the Russian counter-strike would remove its enemies here. 3 billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the irradiated toast called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare, the war against the The Toaster...
I don't know how much more toast I can stand. While I was a student lunch and dinner would include toast. Toasted sandwich for lunch, beans on toast for dinner. And now... now I shudder at the sight of a pop-tart... It may have led to the discovery of new and exciting flavors of toast, but underneath it all is still the same grilled bread slice.
I'm at the end of my tether... get down! That toasted teacake is live!
As it should be
A Google search for "Google" returns Google.com as the top result.
Theres a moral or parable or some sort of conclusion to be drawn from that there... I just can't work out what it should be.
In the glossies
Pix has this terrible affliction... she buys trashy glossy magazines. She also buys the Enquirer but thats kind of an aside.
Remember the Baz Luhrmann track "Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen)" with the bit that says "Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly."... I'd like to clarify that one, having been bored enough earlier today to sit and be sucked into the cunningly crafted article titles splayed across the cover.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel confused and stupid.
Antsy
I don't know about anyone else, but this scares the shit out of me.
I mean, what are they building? They must have plans and God knows they've got the initiative here, it would take us decades to sort out some sort of cooperative society even remotely close to that magnitude of numbers. We should nuke France just to be sure, y'know just like in Aliens. Now I realise that this is a massive sacrifice for the human race to make... but the memory of the French will serve as a reminder (and a warning) to future generations that... hey, bugs would survive the nuke, wouldn't they...
okay... but nuking France isn't such a bad idea is it?
Link via Jayn
Teenage mutant
I didn't say what time "tomorrow" did I? The design has some flaws that would make it look like I'd spent all my time on the outer design and paid no attention to the formating of the contents. And since content is king thats kind of not the way it should be, so later today. I have promises from influential people that it shall be done.
In the meantime:
How to endear yourself with a housemate; throw two buckets full of dirty smelly turtle water into the gravel outside her window from the balcony.
Philo is growing a lot faster than Choire is (we've pretty much stuck wih calling them Philo and Choire because... well because they're pretty good names as it turns out) and small patches of what looked like chewing gum appeared between his legs and shell.
"What is that stuff? An infection?"
Egg sacks, I joked.
"Don't joke"
Turns out he's growing so fast that the skin pigmentation hasn't had time to catch up. So he has these alabaster white patches of wrinkled turtle skin holding him together. Ick.
Come back tomorrow
Tomorrow, come back tomorrow. There'll be new stuff to see and stuff to read and... even if it kills me, or Pix... or I kill Pix, or Pix kills me... or the turtles break out of the tank having mutated through polluants in the London water supply and devour us with their little proto-dinosaur beaks...
And I promise, as soon as I hear back about the possible new job with the big swanky new media company that you *all* know and love (that isn't sarcasm, you do all know and love them, they're an Internet staple, this isn't like me working for DoubleClick again)
Oh, can anyone recommend a way to get water to go uphill without the use of an Escher diagram?
Exhibit A: bucket full of water on floor
Exhibit B: turtle tank devoid of water a metre and a half from the floor.
Two loads from the bucket will fill the tank, however two full loads make the bucket unmanageable to lift and control the pour efficiently causing splashing.
Whoever comes up with the best suggestion gets a picture of me being attacked by two happy turtles.
Passport to another land
Welcome to this automated passport photo booth. Please do not insert any money yet.
"oh shit"
Please remove your money from the change slot. Please adjust the height of your seat until your eyes are aligned with the markers. Please touch the screen when you are ready to procede.
*squeak**squeak**squeak**squeak* *squeak**squeak**squeak* *squeak*
"bugger"
*squeak**squeak**squeak*
"oh for the love of..."
*squeak*
Please choose which format you wish. Please hold still while the first photo is taken. Three... Two... One...
*blink*
"fuck fuck fuck fuck"
Do you wish to use this one? "No" Please hold still while the second photo is taken. Three... Two... One...
*blink*
"sigh"
Do you wish to use this one? "No" Please hold still while the third photo is taken. Three... Two... One...
*flick*
"Stupid hair..."
Do you wish to use this one? "No" Please hold still while the fourth and final photo is taken. Three... Two... One...
"Well at least I look human in this one."
Your pictures will now be printed out. Please leave the booth. Next time blink before I start the countdown you scruffy vulgar indecisive fuckwit.
Adventures in Parenting
My father and step-mother have taken their first into a much larger world. They got a PC. Second hand and pretty clunky by today's standards. It has a crank-handle to boot it up. Kidding, it has an ignition key and clutch.
When I saw it I half expected monkeys to be gathered around it smashing bones to the sound of Strauss. This is a big evolutionary for these parents (my mother and step-dad are the techno-inclined couple) and I was pleased to see that my father knew what a mouse was for: you pull the cord to start the CPU fan motor.
I couldn't hide the smile that was splayed across my face when asked questions like "what does this button do" and "how did I end up with my Paint picture as my background?" and multiple shortcuts to desktop items littering the desktop itself. How many shortcuts does one need to The MSN Network? How many of us even need one?
I donned my "Idiot's Guide" hat and explained that the OS allowed for three ways to do everything. I showed basic file management skills and explained why bitmaps are crap, diskettes too small and warned against the motherboard dust bunnies.
My father retired recently and now has all day to spend on that machine messing around in drawing packages and typing stuff in Word. What a sad plodding existence that... hey, waitaminute!
Meeting in the aisle
Hey! Hey you! Yeah you! With your khaki trousers and your musty sports coat, huddled over your shopping basket, yeah you grandpa. Count with me here pops;
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, ah-ah-ah-ah. (lightning flashes and a small bat flaps down beside D's shoulder)
Get the fuck out of the nine or less aisle! No, your multitude of fiberous vegetables do not all count as one item. In fact, count the six-packs as six seperate items each and you're into the twenties. You made it this far without knowing how to count to nine?! Don't "eh?" me wrinkly coffin-dodger, I'm onto you, you're not fooling anyone here with this selective deafness.
No! Good God no! Don't pay with pennies! I will be forced to shove you through plate glass if you continue to...
oh, so you can count.
Moments of mirth
Some of the more amusing moments of the three-day funeral.
The driver who picked us up from the house was obviously a reformed boy-racer. He'd accelerate from a red light as if the hordes of hell were after him, and considering there were four of us filling up his minivan that was quite an impressive move. He thought nothing of answering the phone and talking to his solicitor as we careened around Regent's park traffic and it was only after we had blasted through the west end that I got really worried: he put his seatbelt on.
The wake deserves mentioning because I met more of Ann's family than ever before, including her cousin Mark. Mark was tough, and I mean tough.Every question or story involved serious bodily harm. "How's your scooter?" "Oh it blew up on me and I picked it up[ and threw it in the mud and left it to burn", "Would you like a cigarette?" "See this scar? I got this when I threw myself out of a window because I noticed a cigarette machine out in the street", and "Does your tattoo hurt?" "About as much as when I stick my arm in the oven and wrap my fingers around a heated metal tray, yeah" the best of course was when he complained how awful Ann's mother had been to him as a child when she poured bleach on him or Vim or some corrosive agent. That was until she corrected him: "It was soap"
We were driven around on the day of the funeral in the most gorgeous Daimler Limousine and at no extra cost it was arranged that we would be driven to the airport in it too. I had to resist the strong urge to wave to the public and nod my head royally at them.
Unfair
Six months ago I put on a shirt and tie, smart trousers and shoes and I was best man at his wedding when he remarried his ex-wife.
Tomorrow I'll put on suit and tie, smart shoes and I'll attend his funeral. There will be no posts.
Duplicate
[D logs on to Moveable Type and begins typing only to notice someone else already typing]
Hey
Hey
You know if it weren't for the stubble and the fact I look lousy in navy I could swear you were me. You're typing in my blog.
Sorry but the hired help isn't supposed to type here. You're supposed to type filler not the main entries.
Hired help? Do you know who I am?
Judging by the shoe size and lack of fashion sense I'd guess you're the live bait salesman Pix found at the flea market in Camden today.
You mean I'm not the real D?
Bushy
We went up to Highgate for a pub lunch and drinks and subsequently a walk through Highgate park and then on to Hampstead Heath. We saw a squirrel.
A grey squirrel, just a run-of-the-mill squirrel.
Pix acted as if this was the rodent equivalent of a multiple orgasm with a big bushy tail.
"Its a squirrel!"
Yes, a squirrel.
"A squiirel!"
We've established that, shall we keep walking?
"A squirrel! Here squirrel"
It probably has rabies, can we just keep going?
"Its a squirrel!"
Having firmly established the squirrelous nature of the beast beyond any shadow of a doubt, as if the profile and behavior hadn't made it eye-bleedingly obvious what the damned little rat was, she then proceded to kneel down on the grass and try and attract it over.
"He wants food"
Maybe he'll enjoy leaping for your jugular and tearing out your throat, don't expect me to remove the little bugger if he sinks his teeth deep into your neck.
"Give him something"
Me, D, the walking healthfood store. I tossed it a Polo mint. The squirrel sniffed it, didn't enjoy the smell of peppermint and bounced across the grass elsewhere.
"He didn't like that. You should have had some real food."
This from the woman who stabbed me with a fork three times already today and I'm supposed to be packing ready-to-eat squirrel food. This post was written in the spirit of Mo Morgan, whom I am convinced has similar conversations with his partner Katie Norton.
In other news we've decided where we're eventually going to move to. We like Hamster... sorry, Hampstead. Tune in next Friday to see if we're going to be moving there anytime soon.
Double Standards
We have a very complex relationship, Pix and I. To the casual observer a bout of bickering would be almost comical in nature with banter and sides aplenty, pop culture references and in-jokes sprinkled liberally so that anyone paying more attention than they should will discern that it isn't actually an argument.
Scenario 1: Man wants desert and woman doesn't, however when woman sees man's desert she realises she has made a mistake and wants a forkful. Man perhaps teases woman, but will let her have a bite providing she puts up with a little berating for being weak-willed.
Scenario 2: Woman orders desert and man declines. Man notices desert looks rather tasty and picks up a spare spoon, cuts off an insignificant sliver from the edge and...
she stabbed me with a fork. The bitch stabbed me with a fork THREE TIMES!
Two thumbs up shitbean
Previously on Blade The Vampire Slayer; my best buddy Whistler shot himself in the head to prevent being turned into a vampire, the ruling body of the vampire underworld was obliterated by a rogue half-breed who was in turn killed by Blade, we left our hero and his female doctor friend who was working on a cure for vampirism in Moscow.
And now the continuation...
Hey everyone, its okay, Whistler's okay, Kris Kristoferson needed the cash. Wow, well glad we got that sorted out, and now on with The Wesley Snipes Vanity Project. We've got a shitload of cool new vampires and they're all really shit cool and, damn one of them died... oh crap a few more of them died, and guess what the bad guys are really tough, hoboy is Blade having trouble. Well no, he's not. Where's his doctor friend? Why is the creepy guy from Gossip pretending to work with him? Why are we led to believe Whistler is working for the other side when he's not. Why is this so shallow and the soundtrack so crap?
They threw money at the visual effects department like their movie depended on it, well guess what people, it depended on certain failings.
1. Matt Goss is as scary as a soggy sponge.
2. Danny John-Jules as a vampire? I supposed he already had the teeth from working on Red Dwarf.
3. Whistler cured from vampirism in a matter of minutes... with no explanation one way or the other.
4. UV light travels at the speed of light and doesn't go round corners.
One funny point, the lawyer joke. This was basically a martial arts movie with a lawyer joke in the middle. Avoid it at all costs.
Oh and by the way I stole the title of the post from Angry White Girl, cause I could just imagine Ebert giving this two of her "thumbs up"
Living with D: part 1 in a series
Invariably when people get to know me, and subsequently Pix they will ask her certain questions along the lines of "How can you put up with him?" and "Why haven't you killed him yet?" and I'd just like to share with you what sort of stuff she puts up with.
Friday evening used to be Buffy and Angel nights on Sky One (they've since moved to Thursdays, no idea why) and my routine would be to buy a big tin of Jelly Belly beans and we'd snuggle up together in the dark and watch Buffy and Angel whilst eating Jelly beans.
Of the myriad of flavors, certains ones will always be left uneaten; Root Beer, Cinnamon, Chocolate Pudding, you know, the really gross ones that only freaks like. On the other hand Pix particularly likes the Buttered Popcorn and Peanut Butter ones. Foolishly she also trusts me.
Here try this one, I told her, passing one in the dark.
She bit into it and immediately realised it was one of the nasty ones. "Ew, gimme another to get rid of the taste quickly!"
So I gave her another one, again she bit into it and discovered it was one of the nasty ones. I pretended it was an honest mistake this time around.
I didn't get away with it after the third time though.
Touch base
Once again let me just remind you that the site is called Acerbia for a reason. Not just because it starts with an "A"
If I deliberately wanted to be top of everyone's links I'd be "Aardvarkian Sardonicism" or something.
Novel entertainment approach
We went to dinner with a friend of Pix's, a Mexican mentalist who writes his own computer programs, and as we walked through Leicester Square we could hear what sounded like a really amateur digeridoo being played half-heartedly.
"Duuuuum-uuuuuum duuuum-du-du-duuuuuuummm"
As the crowd parted we discovered that a homeless guy had requisitioned a traffic cone and was using it as a makeshift megaphone to show off his incredible talent at making "dum-dum" noises.
Incredulous we walked on, only for our guest to disclose that last night the guy had been doing the same thing but singing the Muppet's "Mahna mahna". Now that I'd have paid money to see.
Spy Hard
It was announced last week that the British Intelligence services were making a desperate plea to the City for new recruits. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ communications centre are looking to increase funding by 2.4 billion and staff by 18% in this post 9/11 world.
They're looking for young proven talent with language, analytical and computer skills, and...
Hang on...
Me. I have language skills, I'm pedantic to stupendous heights, computer literate and I can fire and strip a pistol. I look good in a suit, I can play 21 (somebody teach my Baccarat fast!) and really like the new Aston Martin. Pix has already said that if I want to apply then I can and sway all the international female hitmen, er... women to my debonair charm and flair. I can ski, bungee jump and pilot a plane... me! Pick me! I want to be a spy!
Bond. D Bond.
Weakness
Argh! I've discovered the reason behind carpal tunnel syndrome... carpal gophers!
Fly away home
Last night at about four a.m. I realised I hadn't drawn the curtains, having left the window open all day. As I pulled them together, making sure not to knock over the vase of daffodils Ann has left to dry out on her desk the biggest bug I had ever seen (and I've seen those cockroaches at Disneyworld, they're big mofos) buzzed in disagreement with me.
There it sat, vertically, amongst the folds in the curtains as I reminded myself "Its just a bug, its just a bug" and went looking for a glass and CD. Once I had pinned the curtains against the window pane with the glass I slid the CD behind it and effectively trapped the bug which was banging itself against the glass walls of its cell. And I left it there on Ann's desk overnight.
This morning I was able to make out the orange-yellow patches of fur on the inch-long abdomen and when I told Ann about it over the phone she confirmed it was a queen bee. Wow. A queen bee... I've captured royalty.
"She probably doesn't have much air left if she's been there overnight"
Ann does some pretty spectacular macro photography with her Nikon Coolpix 995 so I figured I'd save the queen bee for when she got back tomorrow. It was her own fault for coming in and enjoying the dried out daffodils.
About an hour ago Ann's father died. She called me and we talked and after we hung up I went and placed the queen in her glass prison out on the window sill, turning the glass upwards, removing the CD from the top. Unsteadilly she rose up on cramped wings, feeling the currents of air and able to smell the cherry blossom on the trees in our street. With a buzz and a flutter she rose into the air and flew away from the window past the falling blossom leaves. I wasn't just giving her life again, but her whole colony too, my previous folly forgotten.
Ann flies home tomorrow. We'll go back up there for the funeral soon.
Phatty-boom-batty
And here we observe the age-old ritual of marking your airspace as the new housemate comes home a bit drunk with a friend and plays Janis Joplin a bit too loud.
In more advanced cultures you would see the person being annoyed by the high-pitched voice piercing through the house in the early hours of the day knocking politely and asking that the music be turned down, but not in this instance.
You'll notice that this specimen has carefully repositioned his 5-point surround speakers to all be against the ajoining wall including nesting the rather large subwoofer into the corner of the room, angled towards his adversary.
His selection of music is primitive but effective at drowning out the higher voiced Janis Joplin music, the track seemingly stuck on repeat. He is retaliating with Orbital, Moby, KLF and that strangely appealing new Sugababes track, all with heavy baselines and very few lyrics. The trick here is that by drowning out the housemate's music and adding a faster paced backbeat to her music he has effectively ruined her listening-pleasure and enforced his dominance of the airspace.
Tomorrow the primitive man-beast will of course claim he couldn't hear the offending track, nor was he aware that his own music was louder than it should have been, but he will show a smug grin or two. Now lets release him back into the wild and see if he tries to mate with a tree or something...
Moral of the story: Don't mess if your stereo only goes to ten, cause these go to eleven.
Would the real Slim D please stand up?
So I guess you're going to be a bit perplexed when you read some of the entries prior to this one.
This explains a lot. I had not one but two fellow bloggers posting stuff up here and sabotaging my debonair brand of humor and sophistication; Christine and Robyn herself. And I returned the favor in spades. Its past midnight here and coming up on the deadline for the US bloggers to explain a few things.
Robyn's hair is not purple. Christine has not been fooling around with Todd (although the Colin Powell thing is rumored to be true) Robyn doesn't want a divorce. Christine doesn't have a secret crush on James Doohan. Robyn doesn't want any pictures from your private collection, and none of these answers are true.
Just as I hate Enya, never saw Billy Elliot, don't want a fat cat, and don't do personality tests, but I am responsible for Bogger and The Jill Matrix. From tomorrow it'll be same ol' D back to blogging the only way I know how. And who knows, that redesign might show up one of these days.
The Time
I have taken all sorts of personality tests today, and tried to come up with a witty post about how much D has always dreamed of owning a Hummer. Is it really legal to call a vehicle a Hummer? I mean, isn't a hummer something totally different then a big giant truck that can squish people? Anyways, I digress. I considered posting more cat photos even, but D would probably fly across the Atlantic to bitch slap me if I did that to him, so for now I will turn his blog back over to him and stop being so silly here.
And D isn't gay. It's just my job to make him look that way. (It's ok D, you can admit that you like Enya. We know it's true.)
Here Kitty, Kitty
Now I have entered the realm of real bloggers. Here is a picture of my favorite cat. Maybe when Pix returns to London I should tell her to bring the cats along? The world needs more cats, you know? Cute guys like the one above, too. Anyways, here is my cat photo in my blog, and Dvorak can just deal with it.
bitmap redhead underdog
Been a long time between corpses, but finally another corpse of mine is up. I love starting them. Come to think of it I quite like finishing them too. I have the most trouble finding ways not to piss the next person off though with really difficult trailing edges...
Who's the redhead? Sister of a friend, she's in a band called Subsonic, I just liked the top-down angle of the shot. Those of you who talk to me on AIM will recognise Laika, the Underdog as my buddy icon. The Underdogs had their domain whisked out from under them by a cybersquatter after the domain expired without warning.
Spring
Spring. Ah, spring. Spring is such a beautiful thing, I just love spring. Flowers blooming everywhere, and the lovely scent in the air. Daffodils. That is such a funny word to say, and yet a beautiful flower. I wonder who came up with that word though, what were they thinking? It is really an odd word. Ah, spring... No, I am not nuts. Get your hands off my Jaffe cakes! Ok, fine. No more talk of flowers.
Maybe it's the fact that I am writing this so early in the morning, but I just can't find the usual witty banter that you are so used to from me. Later today I will come around. Or you may just find cat pictures and a bunch of personality tests. You can deal with it, I am sure. For now I am going back to sleep.
Bogger
I don't normally descend into toilet humor but I figured what the hey, I mean, it is the first of April. And Miguel is to blame, he put the idea in my head. All in jest of course.
Reloaded
A while back she did something nice for me, so it pleases me to announce her latest movie is now available on DVD.
You may recognise her co-stars; Choire, Philo and Michele.