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.
L'il D
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We are sorry that you are still on hold waiting for a new post to appear here however the author is currently sorting his life out and moving into a FUCKING INCREDIBLE new apartment in a very posh area of London. He'll get back to you when he's fucking ready.
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Justin appears courtesy of Michele, The Bug appears courtesy of Miguel. Kelly Brook appears... to be a damned fine piece of woman. The Lil Gamers likeness is cause I'm all torn up that Mr Madsen has given up on the strip (sob, sob) and he deserves a tribute.
Doppelganger
I've started to see myself in the Tube. I'll be standing in the middle of a crowded carriage and there I am, another me, circa 2001. Glasses the same, hair more bushy and unkept, shirt from Burtons, no tie. Looking rather uncomfortable in the Tube, sort of wary and suspicious. Who are all these people?
I'm convinced it is the me from eighteen months ago, travelling to work at Oxford Circus each morning to work for a dot.com. He probably has lunch at the soup or sandwich shop near St Christopher's Place and enjoys a pint with the team afterwards at one of several local pubs.
Due to the unchanging nature of the Tube and all those tunnels I wouldn't be surprised if some quantum-shift time displacement phenomenon was going on. Y'know like the big wibbly-shimmering portal in City On The Edge of Forever, you onto the platform at Westminster and suddenly the platform is crowded with Londoners escaping the Blitz... or you take that wrong turn and find Morlocks hiding from the light chewing on rats.
I think it'll be in my own best interest to keep an eye out for my parallel-universe female self. Just for a bit of self-molestation, y'know?
Almanac
I remember a passage from a Terry Pratchett book where several people are arguing about how a farmer's almanac can possibly know the best time of year to plant potatoes. In typical Pratchett style the people decide that the almanac must be witchcraft and burn it.
I just received my Media Guide 2002-2003.
Need to know who to talk to about booking advertising of waste water trade and technical products in the middle east? Alain Charles on 0207 834 7676.
Need to know who advertises motorbikes in Mexico? Keble Paterson on 01394 450771.
How about DIY in Switzerland? Modell Fahrzeug on 0208 237 8601.
The book is also, like any almanac, filled with lots of really obscure and useless information about media buying and foreign countries. For instance, Vantaa is the fourth largest city in Finland and home to their International airport so its the perfect place to display travel offers. In the first six months of 1999 only 1% of the 46 billion french francs spent on advertising went on cinema commercials (I remember how bad they were, so I'm not surprised to read that) and the same company books in-flight movies on Japanese flights as Singapore, India and Brunei flights.
The problem now of course is that I don't ever need to advertise outside of the UK, so the book ultimately is useless to me except as a list of the wonderous things available to everyone else around the world.
Widgets and Doodahs
This isn't about anything in particular, just a few observations that I've made recently, I see this period of my life as the "getting experience" phase.
Imagine that a company pays two young creative guys to sit with a pad and pen and come up with a fabulous new design for the company's widgets and doodahs.
They are paid handsomely for their efforts.
A Project Manager is assigned to the project and he sees the designs and although he doesn't understand what widgets and doodahs actually do he does understand that people will pay shitloads of cash for the latest ones so he takes charge of the project.
And he is paid handsomely for it.
The Project Manager has several less expensive creative teams brought in and they take the original ideas and spin them off into further commercial properties and devices for garnering attention. They don't quite understand what the company's widgets and doodahs are good for but they're freelance so it pays to take a long time to do this.
And they are paid moderately well for it.
All of the ideas and all of the amends are delegated down from the project managers and the conceptual people to the people who actually produce the final work who are also the people who actually understand what widgets and doodahs are for.
And they get fuck all.
Soggy biscuit
According to Frank DeFord you can tell everything about a society by the way it treats animals and beaches. Others would have us measure society but the condition of our prisons.
Personally I think the best way to measure a society is in the primary schools ("grade school" for those of you who really, really want to bomb Iraq). Because as has been stated elsewhere countless times, you never really get out of that microcosmic representation of society that is the classroom.
You think Lord of the Flies is fiction? Don't you have deep-rooted psychological damage from your time amongst the other kids? I can't even look at custard anymore without remembering what you can do with it and a straw and a slice of bread.
Ugh.
The level of cruelty displayed by other children is legendary, if you don't believe me, see how many of these you recognise (shamelessly swiped from b3ta)
In other news we're moving to the new flat on the 28th (so don't expect much updating until thats all taken care of and done) and some bastard jammed up the plughole in the shower this morning with... a soggy rat or... a dissolving tribble or something...
Oh shit, didn't mean to hit "send"
Somebody forwarded me an e-mail. It contained this link.
I don't think this is just to get attention for the site as I've seen it before and its not offering anything for sale or an opportunity to enlarge my penis or breasts or pheremones or hair regrowth therapy... which all combined would have me looking a bit like Ann Widdecombe.
I'm on a list with a bunch of other people in this office block, most of whom I only know by sight so I suspect that the auto-complete function filled in my name rather than the intended recipient's.
I wonder if there's a name for that feeling... when you realise you've just sent a complete stranger who works in the same building as you a soft porn link.
Tight-sphincteritis?
Rrrrrrrrrent!
I can't apologise enough for keeping everyone in the dark here (although some of you knew) but here is the good news at long last.
Pix and I will be moving at the end of this month to a two-storey two-bedroom flat in Regent's Park where our landlord will be none other than HRH the Queen! This is as close to "rent controlled" as you can get in this country and by God is it a nice area. Its also cheaper than what I'm paying now, how the hell does that work out?
We've been looking at furniture catalogues ever since we signed the lease and I can't help but think back to Fight Club, my own private bible.
"Deliver me from Swedish furniture"
We're looking at coffee tables. I like the yin-yang one.
"Deliver me from clever art"
Pix just applied for a two-person season ticket to the Hayworth Gallery.
"And you open the door and you inside, we're inside our hearts..."
I spent part of Thursday being talked through a whole out-of-body intropection thing while lying flat on my back staring at a ceiling. It culminated with me finding out stuff about myself I'd never have guessed otherwise... mainly that I don't much enjoy lying on my back being talked through something whn I could be getting on with other things.
Maybe I need to get into a fight. How much can I know about myself when I haven't been in a fight for several years now? Anyone fancy a fight?
Deliver me some Swedish furniture
As I understand they really go for the online criticisms, this post will be refering to a certain company as Ikeya instead of using their proper name.
If names were important however they would never get away with it. Opened at random the catalogue announces a new range known as "Effektiv", I can have "Rättvik" beer glasses if I want and I'm not sure I do, and it would seem that the difference between an "Ärlig", an "Applåd" and an "Ulrikstal" cabinet is the color.
All I want is a bookcase.
I'd go with Habitat, but I worked for them and know why not to. I'd get Argos but it's just so tacky. Ikeya is the way to go for young trendy web-savvy professionals, and Pixie needs a new desk for when she moves down. (Would she like a "Jerker" from Ikeya, I wonder?)
I swear to God that there are a bunch of Swedish designers laughing their asses off that the rest of the world are sitting on "Förby" stools and putting "Traktat" cutlery in our mouths and falling over ourselves to pay them for the privilege. I still need a new bookcase though.
To each his own way
The World Today
Newly-reappointed President of Acerbia, D, will convene today with the heads of Sarcasma and Ironia along with representatives of the NU Security Council to discuss the emergent threat posed by the Cynicism Liberation Intifada Through Organised Resistance and Infrastructure Sabotage.
Leaders of the Bitter States of Acerbia are concerned that a six hour search for the C.L.I.T.O.R.I.S has had very little tangible effect and led to the elusive leader Bin Shallah Orgasma fleeing north to the mountainous regions where pursuit is hindered by the sheer height of the peeks.
An NU Security Council decree is likely to be issued over the course of today condemning the difficulty of finding the C.L.I.T.O.R.I.S and advising that in future if it wants to be found it should make itself a bit more obvious. The NU have already received a videotaped message where Bin Shallah Orgasma said he would remain in hiding until the Bitter States of Acerbia had mellowed out a bit and become slightly less cynical, also, foreplay shouldn't be out of the question.
The door into summer
One winter shortly before the Six Weeks War, my tomcat Petronius the Arbiter and I lived in an old farmhouse in Connecticut. I doubt if it is there any longer, as it was near the edge of the blast area of the Manhattan near-miss, and those old frame buildings burn like tissue paper. Even if it is still standing it would not be desirable rental because of the fall-out, but we liked it then, Pete and I. The lack of plumbing made the rent low and what had been the dining room had a good north light for my drafting board.
The drawback was that the place had eleven doors to the outside.
Twelve, if you counted Pete's door. I always tried to arrange a door of his own for Pete- in this case a board fitted into a window in an unused bedroom and in which I had cut a cat strainer wide enough for Pete's whiskers. I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats- I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilisation, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.
Pete usually used his own door except when he could bully me into opening a people door for him, which he preferred. But he would not use his door when there was snow on the ground.
While still a kitten, full of fluff and buzzes, Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible for weather. Connecticut winters are good only for Christmas cards; regularly that winter Pete would check his own door, refuse to go out it because of that unpleasant white stuff beyond it (he was no fool), then badger me to open a people door.
He had a fixed conviction that at least one of them must lead into summer weather. Each time this meant that I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself that it was winter out that way too, then go on to the next door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each disappointment.
Then he would stay indoors until hydraulic pressure utterly forced him outside. When he returned the ice in his pads would sound like little clogs on the wooden floor and he would glare at me and refuse to purr until he had chewed it all out... where-upon he would forgive me until the next time.
But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer.
-Extract from Robert Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer"
Air
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board this personal site, blog post number 429 from the start of this paragraph to the end of your visit here. One or two safety features we feel we should stress to you will be demonstrated to you shortly.
In the event of a mid-paragraph decompression, oxygen masks will be fired from your CD-ROM drive to automatically attach themselves to your face. Please ensure that your own mask is firmly in place before assisting any children or midgets who may be sitting beside you.
If any paragraph should be forced to ditch in water please refrain from using the emergency exits at the start and end of the post and instead use the center exit which leads out over the wings
There is a life-preserver stored behind the glass of your monitor, so please break the glass when asked to do so by a member of the writing staff. Please refrain from inflating your life-preserver whilst within the confines of the post as we have filled the canisters with helium and you'll all float upwards like hot-air balloons.
Your author today is D, his co-pilot in the event of any unforeseen consequences is Miguel and we're likely to be cruising at an attitude of "mildly-miffed-about-annoying-children" dropping down to "quite-depressed-Rob-Lowe-is-leaving-West-Wing" if we encounter any turbulence.
On behalf of the cabin crew let me extend my thanks for choosing Acerbia and wish you a pleasant reading experience. Peanuts will not be served and the in-blog movie is the psycho-cat attack.
Bride of Acerbia
Pix had a bolt put through her tongue today.
She warned me that this meant she'd only be able to drink iced water and soup, no food for a while, as her tongue would swell up to twice the size. What she hadn't warned me about was the fact she'd sound like Joey Lucas from The West Wing when she talks.
I keep asking her what our chances are in the Californian primary and when I can expect to see polling data.
We're moving in together for real at the end of this month. None of this half-assed stuff this is going to be full-on sharing a two-storey flat just off Regent's Park. Prime real estate, no joke. Who knows though, maybe pretty soon she'll be the...
The end of the affair
Writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block.
Writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block, writer's block.
Fuck.
Captain's Blog
Captain's Blog, stardate 12345.6
The Good Ship Acerbia is currently orbiting the planet Hyp-ertex-tmark-uplan-gu-age 4 at impulsive speed. We are assisting a delegation of advanced teenagers make first contact with a civilisation they have dubbed "n00bs". We've had a report that Klingers may try and disrupt the process for their own evil machinations.
Mr Spork, report! Damnit man can't you see past your alien wipe-clean plastic emotionless perspective and touch those human feelings deep inside? I realise it can't be easy having blue blood and rounded ears with tines but remember me? Damnit Spork!
Dr McMcCoy! Bones! Bones! Speak to me Dr McMcCoy, there are bones all over the bridge, your skeleton has fallen to bits and all the tibias and fibias are scattered under the consoles.
U-haula, hailing frequencies, and where the hell has all my furniture been sent to? Damn you U-haula we're under attack! Its the Klingers and they're all dressed in wild floral print dresses claiming they should be honorably discharged under the insanity clause!
I know there's no such thing as the insanity clause just as there's no Easter Bundy, Chekout, what sort of damned fool do you take me for?
Mr Canadian-pretending-to-be-a-Scot, I need warp speed now, I also need to invert the axis of rotation of the planet below us, reduce gravity so my beerbelly doesn't weight as much and cause time to flow backwards. What? What the hell does Yecannaechangetelawsofizzicks mean?
Tales From The City
Morning London, how are you?
"I'm doing well D, feeling a bit of pain in my lower burroughs, south of the river. Bit of a housing shortage in Camden still, but overall can't complain. How about you?"
Oh I'm good London, enjoying being here, y'know. Hows that marvelous circulatory system of yours holding up? I had some trouble at Baker's St Tube last night.
"Sorry about that, yes, it has been a bit of a problem for me, but I hope that this renewal project is going to give me better circulation and hopefully lower congestion in the streets too."
I think your Mayor will be doing a very good job of that too by charging people each time they drive into the city.
"Eh, what can I say, the guy's a dick. Beats people up then goes with the 'I never did' excuse"
Well anyway London, got to get to work, glad we could have this little chat. You take care now.
"Thanks D, its likely to be a hot one so drink lots of fluids."
Thanks again London.
Battle of the bands
Where I work we cover the top floor of a large expensive glass building. The whole place is open-plan except one small meeting room tucked into one corner and a massive glass-walled meeting room overlooking the Thames. Two large speakers sit atop stands and a large amp/CD system is there so we can enjoy music while we work and play.
This however can lead to conflicts of taste.
"What? I'm not going to listen to them, they're sellout mainstream shite they are."
"Christ, not Radiohead, pass the knife please and remember to cut along the vein as well as across."
"Yeah, well your taste in music is as good as your organisational skills: FUBAR"
As you can imagine with any group of people, finding one CD to keep the majority happy can be very taxing and usually means compromising your own tastes and taking something bland out of your collection rather than that alternative one you got that you know is a bit weird but you love (usually if you're like me it'll be for some obscure sample or link to a piece of pop-culture)
So it was something of a personal triumph that I managed to sneak The Reindeer Section's "Son Of Evil Reindeer" on over the speakers.
I guess what appeals to me most is the idea that not only is there an embittered evil reindeer out there but he's raising his son to be just like him. Well, that and the symphonic melding of styles that comes from a supergroup composed of members from some of the best independant bands in the UK.
Final results? One girl said it was "moody" and Nick the gay guy was annoyed because it wasn't perky or have a disco beat.
Rundown
I apologise to those of you who have been checking in regularly this past week for updates and maybe the occasional laugh, but life got very complicated very quickly and my social, home and professional life have gotten in the way of my online and love life.
Hopefully there'll be good news by Tuesday but I won't tell you what it could be just yet in case you jinx it (you accursed meddling kids you!)
Pix's birthday was yesterday so go say "happy birthday". We spent Friday night at the Yellow River Cafe in Angel enjoying bento boxes with a tableful of friends (thats more than a chairful and a little less than a roomful) and then for her birthday proper I got her a book of Ansel Adams photography and took her to see The Vagina Monologues.
Cccccccuuuuuuuunt! Cu-cu-cu-cu-nnnngggg, tuh!
So she's a much more confident and empowered woman today, but she still can't bring herself to say "the c word" outside of the theatre.
I'd have to agree with Eve's mentality of reclaiming the word. Absolutely, and why not?
While we're at it I wish to reclaim "gay" as meaning happy and... the... y'know... the n word... the one that's a racial slur. I don't mean bring it back into popular use, I mean banish it from the vocabulary of words intended to be used as slurs. Just as the c word shouldn't be used to describe women and wouldn't be if it were reclaimed.
Oh, and "scrotum", I want to reclaim scrotum just for the sheer hell of it. In fact I want to rename a small village in South-East England, Scrotum. Welcome to Scrotum, twinned with Couillon in Bordeaux and Escroto in Valencia. Scrotum welcomes careful drivers.
The town would be divided in half, with one half lower than the other and a constant temperature several degrees cooler than body temperature. Humidity would be a problem of course...
You are now leaving Scrotum, please come again.