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.
Love Letter to London
As I left work a fine rain began falling on the city. By the time the bus got to Buckingham Palace road the wind had pushed the clouds far enough away so that the sun was out and the rain was falling at an oblique angle. The road and pavements looked like they had been sprinkled with diamond dust but the Underground beckoned.
Deep underground, in the very veins of the city as the metal and plastic carried me to my eventual destination I stood listening to William Orbit's Water From A Vine Leaf watching the other passengers. The girl with her bared midriff. The balding woman talking to herself as she ate squares of chocolate. The tanned family who must have been tourists over from some sunny far off land. And the freaky guy highlighting passages in the Bible and reading them silently to himself to see if they'd make a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before he popped a cap in their ass...
Nevertheless there we all were being whisked off to our respective destinies twenty or thirty feet below the surface of the planet and I had to smirk. The future really is now. Only we don't call it the future, to us its just the present. The latest gadgets and gizmos don't amaze us as much as the stellar leaps forward portrayed in science fiction, but then those are only so radical because everything has been changed, warped forward in time, rather than the one step at a time stuff we live on a daily basis.
I arrived at my stop and upon resurfacing, leaving the underworld behind, I saw that the surface world was dark and wet but all the colors were vivid and bright, a stark contrast between the washed-out neons of the tunnels below. I wouldn't be the only person to say they loved the city when it's got that newly-washed feel to it...
Roleplay
Lets say for the sake of argument that I wasn't me, that instead of being me I was in fact a minor spawn of the Elder Gods residing in Y'ha-nthlei off the coast of Massachusetts. Now, being only a minor spawn I wouldn't have the power to turn sane men mad or to cause powerful and occult symbols to appear in the air in iridescent clouds. More likely I'd be able to befuddle men who were trying to do the crossword and rearrange alphabet soup when nobody was looking.
Quite simply however that's just not the point.
There would be ichor, lots of ichor, and I could pretty much expect to have at least three tentacles and a beak. I may be worthy of a familiar, although not one as potent as a Cat of Ulthar. Probably something more like a Weasel of Uranus. Now I can't guarantee it, but I would assume that since the Elder Gods can smite then I, as a lesser God of the Deep, would have the potential to smite, only to a lesser degree. So what sort of smallish items and things should I be smiting? Paperclips? Tealights? Dust bunnies? What do you think?
I'm afraid I can't smite Pete and 'bel, as they seem to be pretty much smitten already.
1,000,000
By the way, someone was the 1 millionth visitor to the site today. I wouldn't have even noticed if it weren't for the fact I had to reset all cookies and passwords and log in to the domain stats. Currently shows 1,000,088. So if you were visiting Acerbia about an hour ago, then it was probably you. Thanks for dropping by.
Soho
I had to leave the agency mid-afternoon for a meeting in Soho. I was driven in a nice silver Merc with leather upholstery along the Thames, past the Tate and MI6 headquarters, alongside the Houses of Parliament with the London Eye and Big Ben fighting for airspace. Up towards Buckingham Palace, and a quick sidestep into the heart of the west end.
The whole time I just sat there and watched London. 3:35 p.m. 20°c, blue skies with cloudy patches: life just... happened. It was almost magical.
Sometimes when I don't have to be thinking about anything else and the various distractions that would otherwise keep me from thinking those very deep thoughts, I can almost feel my brain trying to get to grips with the deeper meaning... the very "why" of it all. It's like wearing gloves and being told to pick out the velvet napkin in a blacked-out room full of hankerchiefs... you can almost feel as if you've linked a few pieces together but ultimately they were unimportant parts of the puzzle. They were the china cup on the sideboard in the house within the bigger picture, totally inconsequential but for a few seconds you felt as if you understood what the china cup was all about.
When the meeting ended early I took the time to wander through the streets of Soho, where microchip meets microskirt, where high tech meets high heels, and where Internet meets fishnets. The media whores were out in force at the cafés, tables full of people talking on their respective mobiles to tables full of people in other locations. The regular whores were just there for face value, it being too hot to screw in the mid-afternoon and life was just happening all around and I didn't have to be involved in it.
So I bought a very expensive bottle of Tequila, some DVDs and the latest White Stripes album and came home.
More, More, More
On the way to work this morning I noticed the statue of Sir Thomas More sitting in his nice waterfront gardens in Chelsea.
By the time he was my age he was a barrister in London. He fought legal battles with King Henry the VIIth and worked hand in hand with King Henry the VIIIth (the one who had six knives and looked like Sid James)
Staring at the statue I had one thought:
"I'd like to cave your head in you smug fucker. Think you're so smart do you? Eh? First I'd knock you flat with a right hook, then I'd kick you in the mid-section until you were sure to stay down. Then I'd go get the big marble block you were sat on and I'd pummel you repeatedly with it..."
Just keep me away from the Lincoln Memorial. I could take Lincoln... don't doubt me... him and his Minutemen
Clerihew
Acerbia was started,
To contain content most light-hearted.
If I were to have my heart ripped out,
Its not something you'd read about.
I'd like to blame Londonmark and Rise. We'll be doing sestinas by the end of the week at this rate.
Some Basic Facts
- Cosmetic products are designed not to hurt thanks to testing on convicts
- One of life's pleasures is spreading talcum powder on your girlfriend after her shower
- Talcum powder gets everywhere
- Talcum powder dries stuff faster than a sand storm
- Poking yourself in the eye with a finger covered in Talcum powder is a really dumb thing to do
Ladies and Gents these are the facts, they are irrefutable. Well, except perhaps for the first one... my eye really stings. Ouch, ouch, ouch...
The Indefatigable Punk Redux
For the benefit of Mike and those sexy diagrams of his, a repost from the Bulletproof Punk archives circa the 5th of September, 2001. I'm soooo ahead of my time
How ironic (or is that serendipitous), last night I complained that in secondary school I was never given the really cool problems to solve and on my trip home last night while reading Philip K Dick's short story compilation Beyond Lies the Wub I read the short story The Indefatigable Frog.
The story revolves around Zeno's Paradox, Zeno was a student of Parmenides and the paradox refutes the Pythagoreans' Division Principle (everything is divisible). If you are trying to go from point A to point B then, before you can get to point B, you must first go to point C (which is the midpoint between A and B, since that line can be divided). To get from A to C, you must first go to D, the midpoint between A and C. To go from A to D, you must first go to E, the midpoint... and so on and so forth. Eventually, you have an infinite number of points, and a finite amount of time to get from point A to point B. This is impossible. According to Zeno: Looking equates to Appearance, Thinking equates to Reality, and common people confuse them and never arrive anywhere.
In the story two professors try to prove or disprove the theory by using the frog in the well analogy. A frog jumps half the remaining distance out of a well with each jump, will the frog ever get out of the well? Mathematically no, philosophically yes.
I remember reading this story in my early teens and not understanding why nobody seemed to define what point of the frog needs to reach the edge of the well. If it is the center of gravity then eventually the distance from the frog's center of gravity to his front paw will be greater than the distance left to jump and he no longer needs to jump, he can just haul himself out. If the point of mesure is the furthest forward point of the frog though... well... remember all those distressed sheep on Iona? There are now a bunch of distressed frogs stuck just on the brink of wells somewhere to worry about too.
Zeno, convinced by his own conclusions, never moved again and recently appeared as Sloth in the movie Se7en.
You're Twisting My Melon Man
Considering that I had to be in the agency and ready for a conference call at 9 on the dot this morning, and that despite sleepy eyes, public transport and my sheer apathy I was actually there on time... and furthermore that said conference call never actually happened and the client wants it in Powerpoint instead, I'm in a surprisingly good mood this morning.
Playing The Pigeon Street Massacre, reading this (looks like the archives are buggered, scroll down to the post entitled "Master of the Universe" or... you could just read it all), shouting at stupid people who are too dumb to realise how this works and discovering that I really suck at haikus. No really. I do.
I can do a sestina, but not a haiku.
Also the only limmerick I can ever remember is one my mother told me:
There once was a man from Dundee,
Who was stung in the neck by a wasp,
When asked "Did it hurt?"
He said "Not very much,
It can do it again if it likes"
Ink
For those of you who were desperate to see Pix's ink, here, all you foot fetishists should be elated.
I've also updated the title graphic (in case you hadn't noticed) to include it. Consider this though: that image is far tamer than the one I'm working on for summer. This one's still got the heavy Art Nouveau influence, only with more boobs than ol' Mucha ever displayed.
Dinner and a Movie
Pix and I went out for dinner to a place where "well done" meant "rare" and "chicken" meant "salmon". Don't get me wrong, the food was wonderful, it just wasn't what either of us had asked for. I'm left wondering if that really was grilled cornfed salmon...
Afterwards we went to see Dreamcatcher... no, strike that, we really went to see Final Flight of the Osiris, which thankfully in this country was shown before Dreamcatcher and not after.
For the first time ever in my life I walked out of a movie. I feel ashamed, especially since there were some really good actors in it, I liked the director and its based on a Stephen King... but by God was it difficult to take a fart-horror movie seriously. It undermined itself at every turn. We walked out soon after the butt-weasels and from what I read it didn't get any better than that.
Whatever
My life's been really bland today. I haven't been up to much these days, but oh well. I've basically been doing nothing worth mentioning. Basically nothing seems worth thinking about. I just don't have anything to say right now.
Current Mood: 
unenthusiastic
Palindrama Queen
Our flatmate had an interesting reaction to Pix's new tattoo:
Flatmate: "Thats not real is it? Is it real? Its not, is it? Is it real?"
And considering that by day she's a lawyer I can only imagine what she must be like in court:
"Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen and ladies, gentlemen, ladies, gentlemen and ladies of the jury, you have heard the evidence, the evidence, you've heard it right? The evidence was heard wasn't it? The evidence that was presented before you today and it is up to you. Who is it up to? Its up to you isn't it? Yes, it is up to you to decide if my client is innocent or guilty, guilty or innocent, he didn't really do it did he? He's innocent of the charges, not guilty of them, isn't he? And on that point ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen and ladies, I rest my case. Don't I? I do rest my case, don't I? No, I don't rest it, do I? Yes, I do. Rest it."
Where? There on the stair!
We've had a tiny rodent intruder in our kitchen for a while now... since we first noticed him around Christmas I guess.
We half-heartedly decided we need to do something to get rid of him. He's certainly not as bad as the last time we had pests and I'm not talking about burning the house down to get rid of the little bastard, but y'know, we're people, living in a people house. Not a mouse house.
We could rent the cat next door for an evening I suppose... we can't get our own cat yet unfortunately for reasons I've already explained. So instead I rigged up a plastic basket trap that would trap him in the middle of the floor. No sooner had I walked out of the kitchen where the precariously balanced basket was leaning against a hair trigger than SNAP! I heard the trap spring.
"I got him!" I shouted.
Pix just shook her head and replied that I just wasn't grasping the gravity of the situation properly. The mouse was unavailable for comment.
Curry My Favor
I had Thai green curry and coconut white rice for lunch. There's something inherently cool about green food that isn't a vegetable. I ate it hoping at any moment somebody would point and scream "Thai green curry is people!"
Dodge This
My boss got tickets to the X-Men 2 premiere for tonight. He's always doing things like this: getting stuff for free from websites and technology vendors. And what do I get? So far I've had a blanket from Google, some free DVDs from AOL and an MSN butterfly beanie from Microsoft.
I swear if he does this when Matrix Reloaded comes out I'll kill him in bullet-time with my bare hands.
Bulletproof
I'm going to repopulate my archives with the rediscovered cache of Bulletproof Punk archives...
Let me just take a moment here since every poster, trailer or mention of the movie reminds me of my old site and say that I'm convinced it was just a serendipitous coincidence that my freelance project in '98/99 had a similar name to an independent comic book published that same year.
I can remember walking into A1 comics in Glasgow in the summer of '99 and seeing these comicbooks on the shelves for Bulletproof Monk and cursing some invisible twist of fate. I had submitted my end of year freelance project Bulletproof Punk only a month prior.
So in all honesty, I don't know which came first, the project or the comicbook or if there was ever any connection, but I'm guessing that since he's got a movie and all I've got are some old archives and images, he'd win in a fight.
Keys
Its probably not a good thing that I sat and watched the Live Duval Street webcam for about four hours today.
Fat cops, girls in low cut tops, streetcleaners, eighteen-wheelers.
Sometimes, when the Internet offers up six months worth of otherwise lost archives it can be a wonderful thing. Other times when it shows you places you'd rather be in real time, it can be a horrible place. (sigh) I need a vacation.
Template for a Seinfeld Script Redux
Originally posted on Bulletproof Punk on July 30th, 2001
1) Begin in Jerry's apartment, within the first minute at least two other regular cast members must enter the apartment either by buzzing up or by throwing themselves through the door. They must go via the fridge unless Jerry is already at the fridge
2) One of the following happens:
- If George enters, he must complain about a new girlfriend or his parents
- If Elaine enters, she must whine about being single or needing new clothes
- If Kramer enters he must either have a crackpot scheme or be interested in helping out the others with theirs
- If Newman enters he will not have mail for Jerry, he will however sneer
3) Kramer's crackpot scheme or an event Jerry has planned will be dissected and Jerry will make a joke into a question with an open-ended, hands-out gesture, nodding his head slightly
4) The episode will then follow the plot threads started in the opener with:
- Elaine complaining to her boss/colleagues/Jerry
- George doing anything to save money, his job or the chance of sex
- Kramer being blissfully unaware that his scheme is crazy
5) Jerry will perform on stage and have nothing funny to say
6) The episode winds up with the threads coming together again in Jerry's apartment:
- Elaine doesn't get what she deserves
- George is worse off than he was to begin with
- Kramer has either given up on his idea or lost interest in it now that everyone agrees with it
- Jerry will try and make light of their troubles and make at least one reference to Superman, baseball or how much money he makes as a comedian
7) The episode closes with Jerry on stage doing either a reprise of his earlier performance with more scathingly obvious comments or indirectly commenting on the morality of his friend's actions during the episode. The last freeze-frame will again be Jerry with his hands out in an "I don't get it" gesture, with a scrunched-up look on his face
This should in no way hide the fact that I *hate* Seinfeld
Siesta Time
For lunch I bought some fresh paella and a Vanilla Coke. I remember about this time last year the hot topic on US blogs was to either diss or support Vanilla Coke. Well you can expect a lot of people in the UK now to diss or support it. After lemon diet Coke I'm not sure this is much of an improvement. Why couldn't they just stick to regular and cherry? Vanilla Coke is likely to go down on my list of "vanilla things that suck" which already has Vanilla Ice, Vanilla Ice Cream, and Vanilla Sex.
Mig pointed out this article on Wired about Blogger's final posts. We imagined what they could be in the future...
"Boy, this cold is really bad."
"So I told the bitch to go and get her gun if she thought she was so tough"
"Have to go discuss finances with these guys I owe money to."
But I think its more likely that it'll be something like:
"Just ate a cheese sandwich. My cat is ill. Wow, have you read Wil Wheaton today?"
Nothing as ridiculous as my final post on Bulletproof Punk
We of course all understand this, being intellectuals but just where is Raed these days? If only his final post had been something like "I hear B-52's overhead... I think they've come to liberate us"
Miaow
I had a thought during lunch... you know the saying "Curiosity killed the cat", why doesn't it specify which cat? Was it the cat who was curious that was killed or was it a general insouciant query that caused Mr Tiddles to keel over with his paws in the air?
Is it like chaos theory where someone asking questions in China causes a feline holocaust in Switzerland? Is that why they're not allowed to use Google in China?
Imagine the trouble you could cause if you didn't like cats... I wonder...
Miaow THUNK
Oh, nevermind.
Welcome to Earth!
I watched Independence Day recently. I love the irony of a movie written and directed by a German depicting a black guy, a Jew and a drunk Vietnam veteran saving America from aliens.
That and several million people dying, but the dog survives.
I'll Biological Clock You!
I hate kids, and I can tell I'm with the right girlfriend. When Pix hears a crying child she doesn't clutch at her womb and make noises about her biological clock Ally McBeal-stylee, instead her knuckles go white, she grits her teeth and mutters quiet threats under her breath.
unLEDed
Lying on the couch watching TV to distract myself from thinking about ripping components out of Cortana to install in Ari... no, not girlfriends, those are the names of computers. My older one was called Shodan. Pix's are called Eris and Ceredis... oh, look if you don't name your PCs then you just won't understand, will you?
Anyway, I can see straight into the kitchen, to the worktop over the oven. The oven is white, with a green LED that acts as a timer when the oven is being used or a clock when it isn't. On the worktop above the oven is the white microwave, with an identical LED clock/counter.
In my kitchen for twenty seconds out of every minute there is a white goods space/time distortion as both LEDs show different times. I wonder what would happen if I put my hand between the two of them... maybe my fingernails would fall out and the hair on the back of my hand would grow out to extraordinary lengths...
Beast Machines
Been a bit preoccupied these past few days, what with my cold... its just a cold... no, you can't catch SARS over the Internet. Hey, come back!
My new PC arrived, hand delivered by those wonderful people at Citylink... who had decided to beat seven shades of shit out of it before I signed for it. The processor heatsink and fan unit was rattling around inside the full tower, bouncing off the rather expensive Radeon 9700 graphics card.
End result? One of the components on the card has been wasted and the machine will reboot without warning whenever it feels like it. Fortunately the people at Scan have gone far beyond helpful and are sending out a replacement and an on-site engineer to make sure everything works just fine.
Products: Top notch (when this baby works it cranks out the most incredible photorealistic graphics in realtime)
Post-sales service: Also top notch, the sales rep at Scan has done everything possible to make sure I know what's going on and how they intend to fix the problem, despite the damage being outwith their control
Delivery: Utter shite. The tower must have been thrown around like a football for the CPU fan to break off like that. But again, this isn't Scan's fault, it's Citylink's.
If you need a new PC, I'd highly recommend them. Some of the components they sold me two years ago are still in such good condition that they'll be transplanted into this new machine...
Oh alright, I'll admit it, the people who stopped reading and ran away when I mentioned SARS were the smart ones. But where else can one geek out about such things when you're trapped indoors with a contagious virus...
Balrog
Out of the blue Pete.nu asked me if I ever have that mental image of smashing my fist into the monitor, embedding my hand in it right up to the elbow, bones splintering on cathode tube, knuckles shredded on broken glass.
I had to reply that no, I tend to have the mental image of a hand coming through the screen of my monitor, bloodied and closed tight into a fist knocking me out cold.
Now I know who to thank for all those imaginary glassjaws.
Go read Tim Lutero, I inspired him
Lemniscate
Some days just never end... they drag on and on like molasses moving uphill in winter. I feel as if I've become trapped on a Möbius strip of perpetual tasks and meetings all with the same inevitable conclusion: we need more tasks and meetings before this issue can be resolved.
In my feverish state I'm convinced I can actually see time stretching out before me here. You could fly a hummingbird past me and I could pick out individual feathers for you. You could race a cheatah past me and I could play a leisurely game of join-the-spots on his back before he noticed.
I half remembered something along the lines of "Starve a fever, drown a cold... confuse a contusion, fake an ache, peruse a bruise, ignore acute respitory failure" or something like that so I drank three pints of water over the course of this morning. I'm now trapped in Deja Urinal Hell. How can one body hold so much water?
It doesn't help that I was supposed to have today off to collect my brand new beast PC which was delayed by a day because the engineer building the system had an issue with the flux capacitor on the man-machine interface module and couldn't get the parts. So instead I have tomorrow off... not a lot of use that is to me when TODAY JUST WON'T END!!!
Fanmail
It isn't often I get gushing fanmail, but when I do I suppose I ought to pay attention to it. So here for Unixgal and the other two or three people who have lamented recently that they wanted some sort of archive of the recent spate of Flash title graphics, here they are all in one handy gallery.
How To Drive Your Woman Wild In Bed
- Chew your toenails
- Repeat everything back to her but change the inflection so that if she says "What are you doing?" you reply "What am I doing?", "What am I doing?"
- Test the bulb in your bedside lamp by switching it on and off repeatedly at random intervals
- Read your book silently, with your lips moving. Doesn't matter if you're actually reading or not, the movement from the corner of her eye will drive her wild
- Wriggle your toes under the sheets, making a scratchy noise, when she asks what the noise is, stop and listen with her before starting again
- Slide one foot out from under the sheets and let it go cold. bring it back under the sheets and play "hunt the warm flesh"
- Rearrange your pillows incessantly. Tell her you're seeking perfection
- Tell her you can't sleep
- Tell her you can't sleep
- Tell her you can't sleep
- Tell her you still can't sleep
- Ask her for a bedtime story involving mutant monkeys
If you follow these simple tips then your woman will eventually become wild in bed and probably kick you quite violently.
False Advertising
Inks, minx the old witch winks, the fat begins to fry,
Nobody home but jumping Joan, father, mother and I,
Stick, stock, stone dead. The blind man can’t see,
Every knave will have a slave, you or I must be he!
- Judy, the insane double-agent in The Purge
Fresno Diablo
I got your fax
I got your letter
I got your mouth
I got your tongue
no man, no make
no fix, no better
bring it to me
reduce to one
- From a scribbled drawing by Phil Hale
Domestic Bliss
I woke up late and alone, which is fine because today is a Sunday, and Pix had already left for the London Marathon since 5 a.m. Wandering upstairs (our flat is a duplex on its head: bedrooms downstairs, livingrooms upstairs) I opened the curtains and stepped out onto the balcony to bask in the sunshine and smell the fragrant cherry blossom on the wind from the tree directly outside our windows.
I suddenly got the giggles and reminded myself that I really do live here. Maybe I'll head into Regent's Park with a cold drink and a good book...
Yes, you can hate me now.
Splash
Four feet.
That's how far up you can pour Coke into a half-pint glass from before somebody notices what you're doing and nudges you.
I hope I'm not the only person documenting these important pieces of trivia...
Rousing The Rabble
Right, it's been about a week since I proposed a Camden meet... and there has been a fair response, and a lot of very clever excuses that I will be using in future to get myself out of engagements (you know who you are... honestly, Tunisia? Yeah right)
So here's the deal. From about 1 o'clock tomorrow I'll either be in one of two places depending on the weather.
- Sunny weather: I'll be at the top of Primrose Hill reading a copy of True Tales of American Life
- Shitty weather: I'll be in The World's End pub towards the back reading a copy of True Tales of American Life
On the off chance I get bored of the book, or you turn up late and I've put the book away then the easiest way to identify me is to look for the guy wearing glasses with short, messy bleached hair in a black hoodie with a dead ninja rabbit on the front (courtesy of Samurai Lapin)
- Sunny weather: bring a blanket to lie on, some snacky-type food and your sense of humor
- Shitty weather: bring drinking money, a towel and your sense of humor
Hang on lads, I've got a great idea
Okay, you Yanks don't have a great track record of remaking British classics, but this trailer for The Italian Job makes it look quite fun. Of course I don't consider it a remake, its more of a rework. Unless they've included someone with a cockney accent... and no, DON CHEADLE DOES NOT COUNT, to say "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"
Update: Forget I said anything, the new Matrix Reloaded trailer eclipses it effortlessly
Ever After
I like B3ta. Surely everyone likes B3ta.
I've been spending a lot of time on there and I think some of it has rubbed off (oo-er!) So since this week's competition is "Modern Fairytales" I made one of my own.
Not sure it can compare to such masterpieces as Sleeping Beauty Sans Prince, The Very Horny Caterpillar or The Velveteen Bobbit but a worthy entry, don't you agree?
Gone, but also cuts glass
Man: "It would make me the happiest man on the planet if you would be my wife..."
Woman: "Ooo, nice ring"
Man: "Thanks, it was my mother"
Second Opinion Required
Symptoms:
- Sore head
- Dehydrated mouth
- Low brow and half-closed eyes
- Occasional inane grin
- Urge to go out and get into a fight
- Utter conviction that the toaster sneezed at me this morning
- Predisposition to tell everyone within earshot about sneezing toaster
- Desire to fight with anyone who calls me a liar
Possible diagnosisisis:
- Have become a caveman
- Drank too much at the MSN quiz night last night
Suggested remedies?
Decker
Something I don't "get" in London is double-decker buses. (get as in understand in this case, since I do get buses all the time. Beats walking) There are two types (and this is where I refer to Google, in the utmost confidence that somewhere out there is a really annoraky site that will illustrate my point) You have the nice boxy bus, with rounded corners version. This one I like. And you have the classic Routemaster version. You may recognise the Routemaster from The Mummy Returns or the upcoming Harry Potter 3: Harry Bitchslaps Hermione. Its shit.
The Routemaster is regarded as a classic in the sense that classic means "old", that classic implies it is "an enduring masterpiece" is a crock. It has to be the worst possible mode of convenience in London short of being dragged through the sewers on paper ski's by teams of soggy rats. "Mush! Mush! I say ratty!" Lets deconstruct it in a very Anna way: with a list.
- In the Routemaster there is a driver and a conductor. The driver sits in his own cabin and is communicated to with the ring of a little bell. One ring means stop, two rings means go. I can only begin to imagine what sort of Pavlovian nightmare could potentially arise were a crowd of Hare Krishna monks to get on the bus
- They're drafty. They really are. On the smooth-cornered ones you are always warm, they must have under-floor heating or something. Sitting on the top deck of a Routemaster though is akin to deciding that you're not convinced humans can't fly and asking to be inserted into a wind tunnel
- Although jumping on and off a Routemaster can be fun, I refer back to this post about turning hopping on and off London buses into an Extreme sport
- The engines. On a Routemaster the engine is beneath the hollowed out part in the front of the bus. It doesn't "turn over", it flails around like an epileptic on the bridge of the Enterprise during a Klingon attack. It doesn't purr, it rattles. The entire bus trembles whenever it is idling at a red light or a stop. I would postulate that the engine is in fact an old Singer sewing machine strapped onto the chassis with rubber bands
- The suspension. This has to be my ultimate bugbear about these Routemasters. At first I would think that the driver was revving up the engine, eager to race away from the stop, until I realised that the entire bus was swaying because someone was coming down the spiral straircase at the back! ...which reminds me, we'll come back to this after a digression about stairs...
- The stairs. The Routemaster has a quarter-turn staircase that runs up the back right corner of the bus to the top deck. In just over a metre of forward motion you rise two metres. I've seen schoolkids employing teams of Sherpas to guide them to the top of these stairs. Anyone under six feet tall needs to climb them sideways to avoid falling over backwards from raising their feet so high up
- The suspension again... oh man, spongey doesn't even describe it. The tyres are over-inflated and the whole bus sits over a foot off the ground, plus its narrow and trembles from the combinations of a sewing machine engine and passengers staggering up flights of stairs. I never feel safe on the top deck of a Routemaster (although it is admittedly the only way to ride on a double-decker) and I am convinced that they must topple over sideways at every corner. Contrary to the evidence available and based on some very complex engineering equations that I've done and can't show you I can categorically state that Routemaster buses fall over all the time and only through my timely shifting of my position do the buses that I sit on avoid a similar fate
But if you ever do visit London, you'll have to try one...
Traits
"I'm a Capricorn, born in '79, year of the goat. Think you're going to win this argument?"
- D, ten minutes ago to co-worker
Talk about your bad combinations. As a Crapricorn I'm:
Practical and prudent
Ambitious and disciplined
Patient and careful
Humorous and reserved
Pessimistic and fatalistic
Miserly and grudging
And as a Chinese goat I'm:
Always getting off on the wrong foot with people, however the Goat can be charming company. You are elegant and artistic but the first to complain about things. Put aside your pessimism and worry and try to be less dependent on material comforts. You would be best as an actor, gardener, or beachcomber.
And still I wonder why I get so many Google hits for "painless suicide". I don't believe any of that zodiac crap, simply because I'm stubborn and cynical. But I make up for it with my diligence, artistic flair and incomprehensible Brit-humor. Someday I hope to retire to a temperate climate by the sea and write books.
Do You Feel Lucky?
Pix said to me last night "I'm going to be out until midnight tomorrow, so you'll be free to do whatever it is that you do when I'm not around"
Which... to be quite frankly honest, startled me somewhat. Avoiding the obvious conclusions one could draw about what a man does when he's alone in the house (oh come on, we're all adults here, yes, even you Mum) it made me wonder what she suspects I do.
Does she think I invite the local communists round to plot the downfall of the global capitalist economy? Does she think I conduct horrific experiments on small animals in a pressurised shoebox chamber of horrors? Does she think I invite the gay couple next door over and we sit discussing which Village People track is the best? Perhaps she suspects that I put on camoflage, army fatigues and run around the house with my secret stash of combat equipment, slashing at the sofa with my Fairbairn knife and blast the local squirrel population to pieces in aggressive squirts of white BB-pellet death.
In fact, short of writing this post I haven't even had time to think for myself what I do when she's not around. My brain has become hard-wired to the idea that if she's not within my visual field then I must either be at work or asleep.
Nope. Not asleep.
And since I just farted very loudly and nobody complained I can only conclude that I am not at work.
So what am I going to do? Firstly I'm going to do the dishes. Then I'm going to set a load of clothes washing and then finally I'm going to go through all of her bookshelves and remove certain books that I don't like and know she hasn't read and hide them in a box at the back of a wardrobe or cupboard somewhere. Then I'm going to go through her CD rack (which was segregated from my "pishy techno music") and switch the CDs from case to case. And then to top it all off I'm going to top up all of her facial cosmetics with mayonnaise.
But, D, you might be thinking, what if she reads this post?
Well, to you, my inexperienced reader and relationship-immature friend, I say that this is what makes life interesting: conflict.
And besides... maybe I'm bluffing.
An Empty Plate
Puns that have fucked up for me in the past few days:
"I think she's telling you the tine" said as my mother brandished a fork menacingly at my step-father
"Don't worry, it isn't going anywhere" said in response to a colleague enquiring about potentially misusing office stationery
(if you don't get them, it's probably because I fucked them up)
Who's On Buffy?
I find it hard to imagine that two years ago I was mocking Pix for writing her silly little posts and getting comments from some guy called Davezilla and running a webcam on Citizen X as John Halcyon Styn chatted her up and Heather Champ commended her digital photography gallery.
I'm up for my two year bloggiversary on the 1st of May, it was the Mayday riots that started me blogging, I'll probably recycle my posts for the past two riots on the day. You can bet this year's one is going to be utter chaos.
Two years ago I was working at DoubleClick with a girl called Buffy, I've dug this out of some really old archives to reproduce here as last night I downloaded a different performance of Who's On First to the one normally available and it reminded me of this conversation between Pix and I from so long ago:
Who says that you can't communicate effectively online? At D's office there's a girl called Elizabeth who goes by the pet name Buffy, this is not about her.
D: What's Buffy's full name?
pixeldiva: Buffy Anne Summers
pixeldiva: (I'm guessing you mean Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in the show)
D: Yeah, how would you know our Buff's full name?
pixeldiva: fanfic.
pixeldiva: :-)
pixeldiva: these guys know *everythign*
pixeldiva: everything even
pixeldiva: speaking of which.
D: I meant *our* Buff. Not the TV show one.
pixeldiva: then how would I know that?
D: (banging head on desk)
D: That's what I'm trying to say!
D: What is this? Abbot and Costello?!
pixeldiva: you asked me what Buffy's full name was
pixeldiva: I said "Buffy Anne Summers" (assuming you mean SMG) - you say yeah. what am I supposed to glean from that?
pixeldiva: why would you ask me what one of your colleague's full names was?
D: Your comment "I'm guessing you mean Buffy from the TV show"
D: My reply, "Yeah, how would you know our Buff's full name?"
D: You took this to mean I was referring to SMG as "Our Buff"
pixeldiva: easy enough done
D: When I meant that the difference lies between SMG and Our Buff.
pixeldiva: anyway. what was your point?
pixeldiva: why were you asking me her full name?
D: I didn't make a point.
D: Doireann wanted to know.
pixeldiva: and that involves me how?
D: You know Buffy's full name.
D: Is this the circle logic game or something?
pixeldiva: oh good god.
pixeldiva: i do not know the full name of the person called Buffy who works in your office.
D: Tht's what I'm saying!
pixeldiva: oh hells teeth. so why in the name of holy hell did you ask me then?!?!?!
D: Now, what's the guy's name on first base!!!!
pixeldiva: D: What's Buffy's full name?
D: Doireann wanted to know Buffy The Vampire Slayer's full name!!!!!!
pixeldiva: right.
D: You told me!
D: That was it!
pixeldiva: (bangs head on desk)
D: Now when the guy who play's first base comes for his cheque every month, who gets it?!
pixeldiva: i'm not doing this.
D: You just did for the past five minutes.
D: Please blog that.
Thank you, we'll be here all week. No applause, just throw money.
Nada
Christ, is there anything worse than staring at a blinking cursor with a head full of fluff?
Update: Go read Mike's take on our encounter last weekend while I think up some content.
Cosette and Effect
Pix and I went with my parents to see Les Miserables (pronounced "Lay Mease-er-ahbles") on Saturday night and I was tickled by the irony of a big song and dance production about France fighting for freedom...
..which will be the last reference to the war on here for a while, cause since they started targeting BBC war correspondants (the Americans, not the Iraqis) I've gone off the war as a whole and think its time to change my title graphic to something a bit more peaceful and serene.
Gumboots
I was walking back to the agency from the nearest deli when I realised I was keeping pace with a woman in a flowery summer dress, her hair flowing in the wind. She looked round a couple of times to see who was following her and our eyes met each time.
Out of the blue I said "Say, ain't we walking down the same street together on the very same day?"
Had this been a perfect world she would have thrown her head back and let out a girly laugh before replying "Hey Senor that's astute, why don't we get together and call ourselves an institute? You don't feel I could love you but I feel you could."
And then maybe we'd have shared a little Once More With Feeling moment...
...but instead she said "Leave me alone" and crossed the street.
What country friends is this?
So it was a glorious day in London and I found myself walking barefoot in cool crisp green grass that crunched underfoot and sprang back up behind me. Cherry blossoms floated by on the breeze and looking up into the sky was like plunging towards an undisturbed pool of tropical water.
The cries of peafowl and the sound of running water filled the air as I walked slowly towards a distant Chinese pagoda, passing from warm air to cool, shaded pockets and all the while the crunch, crunch, crunch of grass against the soles of my bare feet.
This has to come second only to walking on warm, wet sand, where your feet sink slightly with each pace and each time you lift your foot up a small pool of water fills the print you leave behind.
I almost felt like Viola on the beach at the start of Twelfth Night... only with grass... and without the dress or boobs... so perhaps to be more accurate I felt nothing like Viola who is, after all, a fictional character, as she walked on fictional sand (which must be a very precarious situation to be in, I might add) along the seacoast near the fictional city of Illyria.
But the grass felt nice. You should try it.
Beer Garden
My parents are in London for the weekend, over from Paris (they're both Scottish). Unsure of what to do today, Kew Gardens was suggested. Although wandering around tropical gardens and groves of rhododendrons seemed to appeal to my mother and Pix, my step-father and I were slightly underwhelmed by the idea.
Upon further investigation we discovered that there is currently an exhibition of beer-making techniques and hops harvesting with Kew gardens. Pix pointed out that they were even offering the opportunity to taste nettle beer.
My step-father said quite straight-faced that this was the perfect compromise as it "killed two plants with one stein"
Meet and Greet
Maybe its the promise of summer, maybe its living so close to a park, maybe it was spending Sunday with Mike in Primrose Hill... but I feel the urge for a blogmeet of complete strangers.
Maybe just a Camden meet.
Absurdistan
London Mark
Undivine Comedy
Fish In A Pint
KookyMojo
Stupid Monsters
I call you out. Will you come to Primrose Hill (come on, its not very far away) to sit on blankets and eat sausage rolls and drink from plastic cups and look out over the whole of London in the sunshine and meet complete strangers for the first time?
I'll even ask Mo Morgan, even though I know he hates blogmeets but secretly gets a kick out of them cause he gets to be sparklingly witty and scathingly funny to a new audience every time.
How about... next weekend? Not this weekend cause Pix and I have guests over all weekend, but its only going to get warmer and brighter and hotter as summer approaches. Shall we say the 12th?
There Is A God
One of our media buyers is a very slick gentleman who always gets the best deals, always has the trendy clothes and always has his finger on the pulse. To achieve this he has had a mobile phone surgically grafted to the side of his skull... or at least you'd be forgiven for thinking that.
Whilst on the phone he likes to play with the corporate stress toy that Yahoo were kind enough to provide him with, which is basically a breast implant with yellow goo, glitter and a logo floating around inside.
Guess what just burst.
Guess who's expensive pants and shoes are covered in yellow glitter goo.
Guess who is going to pay better attention to how hard he squeezes breasts in future.
Dedication
I got so bored during a presentation I had to attend that I decided to write down every instance of a word ending in "ation" that I heard. The girl sat behind me didn't understand what I was doing but after I came out of the presentation and reread what I had written I could have redone the presentation myself from memory. Might use this as a didactic aid in the future...
combination, fragmentation, implementation, communication, remuneration, mediation, negotiation, meditation, concentration, innovation, revelation, evaluation, motivation, synchronisation, validation, frustration, participation, information, investigation, imagination
Paid For L33T
It really is the sign of a different breed of human when I can't get any empathy worked up towards either side of the pro or anti-war argument and yet the following got me teared up and covered in goose-flesh:
AMD Athlon XP 2700+ (2.17 GHz) "Thoroughbred" Core
2x Corsair XMS 512Mb DDR 333MHz PC3200 Cas 2 Memory
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe nForce2 Motherboard
128Mb ATI Radeon 9700 Pro DVI/TV DDR Graphics Card
Bundled together within a Coolermaster Gunmetal tower...
...
Your Order Has Been Confirmed
Sorry GeForce, you took too long getting the FX to the people, I've gone with Radeon instead after reading about Bill's new beast.
Sometimes I wonder if I have a better understanding relationship with computers than with real meat-people... y'know... fleshbags... sacks of sinew and bone... those things... Some of you are nodding, some of you are shaking your heads, and to those of you shaking your head I say 011110010110111101110101 011000010111001001100101 01100100011101010110110101100010.
School Days
Still having a busy week, so here's more recycled content from the old Bulletproof archives:
I went to school in what was the former Iraqi embassy in Paris, just off the Champs-Elysees. The school was an international/bilingual school where rich parents sent their kids to learn french while they did things like... be the ambassador to the US, manage the opening of a Disney park, be one of the Israeli peace process team... regular dull stuff. I was the second poorest kid there, which by no means meant we were poor, however the poorest kid was Floridian White Trash and he knew it.
"Chip", because nobody called him Charles, saw the irony of an International school where Israeli, Arab, American and European kids intermingled in a building that had been the former Iraqi embassy best, during the Gulf War. Every Friday he would phone in a bomb scare just after lunch on his mobile phone (which at the time was of equal size to a brick) and we'd all file out of the school, mess around for a bit and then disolve into the masses of people on the Champs Elysees, knowing full well that the Bomb Squad wouldn't take it seriously again and not turn up.
We were sad to see the Iraqi's lose.
Love and Ice Redux
Recycled content from back when I used to work at DoubleClick:
The offices I work in are spread out over three floors. We own the building but hog the top floors to ourselves. In an effort to tighten the proverbial belt the spacious sixth floor is being merged with the equally spacious seventh floor to simulate a tighter knit team. This means some of the perks of the sixth floor are being sold off.
This is a long way of explaining just why I was caught in the kitchen hugging the massive stainless steel double-doored American-style refrigerator.
Cowboy number one, a born again poor man's son
Pix questioned why I was on such a war kick the other night as I watched We Were Soldiers. At first I wasn't sure what she meant, since I've been doing my best to avoid as much CNN as possible and don't read any daily periodicals.
In the past few weeks though I've read Tom Clancy's Armored Cav, Robert Mason's Chickenhawk, and am currently reading Sun Tzu's Art of War.
I've taken to playing Risk 2, Shogun and just borrowed a copy of Command & Conquer: Generals to see if my machine can run it before I buy a copy.
I watched all the extras on the Black Hawk Down 2-disc DVD, Catch-22, some of the commentary track of We Were Soldiers and I'm still trying to track down a cheap copy of Courage Under Fire.
I've been listening to the 15 minute long ultimate mix of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes pretty constantly since Mike was gracious enough to make it available.
So I guess I don't know much about this current war, but when the book, movie, game or soundtrack comes out I'll have a better feel for it. Until then I'll just try not to come up with too strong an opinion either way.