Qenny's Virtual Gob

Documentary Epiphenomenalism

2010-06-14T10:08:00.000Z

Back in the days when I was studying philosophy, one of the things that came up was epiphenomenalism. It's a concept that I liked, and made sense, and has made even more sense on the back of some of the works of popular neuroscience that I've read in the last few years. (No really, there are works of popular neuroscience, such as John Ratey's A User's Guide To The Brain.)

It was never really a concept that I had thought to discover in my daily work, though. However, some recent experiences have forced me, in reaching for a suitable concept to describe a work-related phenomenon, to rely on epiphenomenalism as a very accurate description of something that goes on a lot in the corporate world.

The trigger for this realisation was a process modelling tool that I have been obliged to use in my current work. It is terrible. One of the world such tools I have ever encountered. It has a rich feature set, and it allows the creation of models that go all the way from very high level abstract enterprise models, right down to individual software components within the solutions intended to support those enterprise models. The problem is, the tool is not good for visualising. It's output tends to be too big and cumbersome for the screen, and too ungainly to print out. And if you can print it - which perforce involves the use of a huge plotter - it is still too big to be useful. If you are looking at the process maps on the screen, it isn't always obvious where and when you can drill in for more information, and you can't tell at a glance how deep or complex a particular area is without going through every individual jot and tittle and drilling down to the n-th degree, basically doing a manual walk through the entire tree from root to every node. It sucks!

And yet, this is the recommended tool.

It is so bad as a means of sharing information that I have mentally branded it an "information diode". You can put loads and loads of useful information into it, but get bugger all back out. (I'm sure my semi-conductor physicist friends will appreciate the fact that there may be a miniscule trickle in the opposite direction, which only goes to strengthen the analogy rather than undermine it.)

It got me thinking about business documentation in general. So much of what gets written isn't actually used. It is created because someone thinks it has to be, often created by people whose time is expensive, so the resulting documents are works that cost the organisation a lot of money to create. And yet, once created, it is never referred to at all - not even once! It strikes me that a lot of business writing, therefore, is an epiphenomenon of the business. It is generated by the business. It has no causal value, to input back in to the processes that created it. It shapes nothing of the future.

And knowing that this is the case, I am now determined to ensure that, as far as possible, nothing that I create in my job will fall into this category. But that is sometimes very difficult, and often determined at the whim of one's managers.

Bow to the inevitable

2010-05-13T12:48:00.002Z

I bought two new bow ties yesterday. Bow ties are cool. Much cooler than Matt Smith's new Doctor, even though his proclamation to that effect caused an upsurge in sales.

Often a little ahead of the sartorial curve, I had been toying with the idea of wearing bow ties to work for some time now. About 18 months ago, my friend Lee Hathaway learned how to tie them, and in doing so discovered that they are popular with gynecologists because they don't get in the way. That was the seed of the idea that maybe I should do the same. Indeed, maybe everyone who works in IT should do the same. I often get irritated by my tie trailing on the desk, and needing to push it to one side or under the desk (where it gets wrinkled).

Then came my gig at Madame JoJo's. I perform there every Saturday, doing magic around the tables before the main show (or shows, when they are running more than one). They asked me to wear a bow tie, so for weeks and weeks now, I've been donning one of my standard little black ones and doing my magic thang for the general public.

And then came the latest series of Doctor Who, with Matt Smith's spiffing little neck adornment and accompanying declaration.

Since then, I have been commenting that bow ties are the next big thing, having noticed that David Tennant's doctor led the way in recent years to the huge upsurge in popularity currently being enjoyed by Converse baseball boots and shoes of similar style. Apparently, I've not been alone in saying that, and the link above seems to bear me out. As does the fact that one of the shops I visited yesterday was sold out of bow ties.

So, I bought a couple, I'm wearing them to work (one yesterday, one today), and I'm curious to see whether they catch on. Even if they don't, the fact that they are so much less hassle than regular ties is inclining me towards making it a permanent thing. I like them.

My Documents, My Lord

2010-02-18T10:59:00.004Z

I have long had something of an issue with the inclusion of personal pronouns within labels used to identify elements of a computer interface. In other words, I don't like "My Documents", "My Photos", "My Music", or any of the other "My ..." things that have been increasingly evident on Windows machines.

On one rather naive level, it's good interface design. It's simple and intuitive. It tells you what is in there, and it does it in a friendly, personal way. That's find until you have to describe anything to do with it, or provide any sort of support. Then you end up referring to things like "your My Documents folder", because the kind of people who need that kind of support tend to get confused if you say to them "click on My Documents". They are likely to ask "How can I click on your documents?" It's a mess. A disaster. It's horrid. It's up there with my dad's response when I was trying to help him with a PC problem once over the phone:

"Are there any other windows open?"

"Hing oan a minute ..." (long silence) "Aye, the wan in the kitchen."

"My" and "our" are relative references. What they refer to changes depending on who is saying it. And therein lies the potential for confusion.

Another example of this struck me the first time I visited Thailand, towards the end of 2000. I had never before given any thought to people using the phrase "Our Lord", until the tour guide at the Royal Palace in Bangkok mentioned "Our Lord Buddha". And it struck me that I had never questioned that phrase when used in a Christian context, but actually, I find it quite objectionable, because when someone uses it, they are subtly implying that both the speaker and the listener are both serfs of the lord in question, be it Buddha, be it Jesus. So, when someone says "Our Lord Jesus", or simply "Our Lord", I feel obliged henceforth to say "He's not my lord. He might be yours, but he's not mine."

Maybe I should make a point of doing that for Lent. Or perhaps for lent I should give up believing in bronze age myths. Ah, who am I kidding - I stopped believing in them a long time ago. Both the old myths (christianity, etc.) and the new myths (new-age nonsense of any description) are now completely consigned to the dustbin of my past. And good riddance.

Ketoman

2010-01-08T09:32:00.003Z

I've been on a severely calorie-restricted, low-carb diet since the 2nd of January, and I am losing flab at a rate of 500g a day. In five days, I have shed 2.5 Kg (5.5lb). I expect by the end of today to have pushed that up to 3Kg (6.6lb, or almost half a stone). Obviously, in addition to the low-calorie diet, I am also working hard at the gym every day to make sure that I continue to make demands from my muscles, thereby convincing my body to shed flab rather than to use up muscle mass.

Not surprisingly, I am delighted with the results so far. It's a very good start to the new year, to the regime by which I am determined to get in shape, and to my short-term goal of shedding 20Kg by the end of March. I know I'll lose more weight in the first week or two and after that the weight loss will slow down, but I can't help but be delighted with how things are going so far.

But there is a price, of course. I am forcing my body to use its overly generous supply of stored flab as a source of fuel. Consequently, I am in ketosis, and generating measurable amounts of ketones (I wee-weed on one of my Ketostix this morning and it turned quite a dark pink almost right away) as my liver breaks down my flab and converts it into fatty acids and ketone bodies. Unfortunately, the spare ketones don't all end up in the wee. Lots of them are turning into acetone and being exhaled.

My breath smells like I just ate a big shit.

The bizarre thing is that I can't smell it at all. If I try to catch a whiff of my own breath, it smells normal to me, presumably because the receptors that would detect the acetone have been saturated and are no longer sending any signals to my brain. So all the other receptors, which are detecting the normal stuff in my breath, and functioning fine and returning "normal breath smell" signals. But the reality is that I need to be very careful about talking closely or breathing closely to anyone.

Still, I'm on target to lose 3.5 Kg by the end of week one, which is more than half a stone. I might have pongy breath for a few weeks, but it will be more than worthwhile by the time all the flab has gone and my abs are looking marvellous.

Limericks for no reason

2009-12-01T21:23:00.003Z

There was a young actor from Tarsus
Who starred in some popular farces.
In his favourite scene
He portayed an old queen
Who went round feeling young fellows' arses.

I once met a gal named Melissa.
She's know as a wonderful kisser.
But treat her much nicer
And you might entice her
To show off her skills as a pisser.

Bashing

2009-08-24T14:16:00.003Z

The Bible is a recipe for human misery. And yet in amongst all those dreadful tales, the one that strikes me as the most insidious, the most subversive, the most evil, is one that could seem at first blush to be relatively innocuous, at least compared to some of the stories.

Incidentally, I initially wrote "has always struck me". I changed it, because that was inaccurate. It hasn't always struck me so. There was a time when I thought it was a marvellous, inspiring story, back in those days of long ago when I was studying to be a priest. Oh, how times have changed.

It's the story of Doubting Thomas. The moral of the story is that belief in the absence of any supporting evidence whatsoever is something laudable. Sneaky. But completely evil.

Dream

2009-08-20T08:57:00.005Z

As I mentioned in my previous post, I did a magic gig at the weekend. What I didn't mention is that it was in Liverpool. But rather than have a weekend in Liverpool, we drove up on Saturday morning to Manchester, checked in to the place we were staying, and then I left my Lovely Husband™ to his own devices and drove on to Liverpool to perform.

On my way along the M62, I spotted what looked like a giant, white phallus poking through a neatly clippered pubic forest of fir trees. It turned out to be Dream, a big piece of sculpture only recently erected. And I really mean erected. The sculpture is of a young woman with her eyes closed, but the whole thing is elongated, and the hair has a very symmetrical parting which makes the whole thing look remarkably like a penis - at least when driving past it.

I thought it might have been an image of John Lennon or some other local big name, but it turns out not to be so. Also, it's a relatively recent addition to the landscape. And it turns out to have cost a huge amount of public money. This seems to be the in thing, now. Ever since the Angel Of The North, huge big statues seem to be the order of the day. Apparently, there are plans for a giant white horse somewhere in Kent. Is this how it's going to be - huge pieces of public "art" turning up all over the place?

Personally, I'd much rather the money was spent on things that are functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct springs to mind, not that I'm suggesting for a second that we build aqueducts just for the sake of it, although I do think the Falkirk Wheel is a good example of the kind of thing I mean - beautiful, elegant, amazing, yet imbued with purpose.

Gigs and giggling

2009-08-18T09:13:00.002Z

I did a magic gig at the weekend. It had been a while. I've been more focussed on the stand-up comedy in the last few months. Interestingly, I found that my comfort and confidence levels have soared since my last magic gig, and I am now much better at controlling attention, and being completely on top of the pace at which I present my magic, not dragging or milking anything, but really getting the most from it, and maximising the entertainment value, the magical impact and the comedy. What has changed? It must be the stand-up.

Quite a few of my stand-up chums have suggested that I ought to use magic. I've largely resisted, apart from once when I was doing the compere role at Rye Wit (Wednesday nights, Catcher In The Rye, Finchley). It can make sense as a compere piece to do a big of magic. For me, it doesn't make sense within the context of a normal stand-up set.

What I love about performing magic is almost exactly the opposite of what I love about performing comedy. With magic, I have a fixed set of physical actions that I must perform to make the magic happen. Although there is some flexibility about the things that I say and the interactions that I have with the audience during such a performance, the tricks themselves provide a fairly rigid performance framework, and more or less dictate the trajectory of the entire act. There is less flexibilty, but on the other hand, having to work through the physical actions is almost like having script in front of me, and that can be a great comfort. In contrast, stand-up is much freer. I do try to have a decent narrative arc or at least to sequence the material in a way that makes sense, but I'm completely at liberty to talk about anything, with no bits of rope or cards to worry about. On the other hand, this liberty comes at the cost of flying without the safety net provided by the "script" of physical actions.

Besides, most of my magic is close-up and doesn't work on stage.

I'm on the very lowest rung of the stand-up ladder - the free or pay-to-play open-mike gigs, usually in pubs, often with an audience comprised of at least 50% comedians. At this level - and to be fair, even a rung or two above this level - it is not uncommon for acts to write cue words on themselves, usually on their palm, back of the hand, or wrist. I've done that once or twice, but I've stopped. I never really wanted to do it, and would prefer not to have to. And at the longest (and most important) gig I've had to date, I was a bit too concerned, and wrote a lot ... then ended up looking at my hand far too much. And that looks bad. That reminds the audience that you're not really sharing your extemporaneous thoughts, you're actually delivering material. It shatters the illusion a little. So these days, I don't write anything, I just make sure that I've rehearsed what I'm going to say. It's better discipline anyway, I think.

In my head, these days when I have a magic gig, I think of it as a gig. When I have a comedy gig, I think of it as a giggle.

My life according to Pet Shop Boys

2009-08-13T11:34:00.007Z

My thanks to fellow comedian John Grindrod for this meme, the results of which he posted on his Facebook page. (He also writes the excellent Shouting At The Telly blog.)

Here are the rules:

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. Try not to use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. Repost as "My life according to (band name)"

I'm skipping the "pass it on" bit, mostly because I'm no longer at primary school. You're all grown ups. If any of you fancy doing it, go ahead. I must confess, it was a toss-up between Pet Shop Boys and Madonna. No, I'm not an obvious, classic nelly-woofter at all, am I?

Are you a male or female:
Did you see me coming?

Describe yourself:
Losing my mind

How do you feel:
Numb

Describe where you currently live:
London

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Where the streets have no name

Your favourite form of transportation:
The Truck Driver & His Mate

You and your friends are:
Miracles

Favourite time of day:
Yesterday when I was mad

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
How can you expect to be taken seriously?

What is life to you:
A Red Letter Day

Your relationship:
Home & Dry

Your fear:
It's a sin

What is the best advice you have to give:
Was it worth it?

Thought for the Day:
I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing

How I would like to die:
So hard

My soul's present condition:
It's alright

Age and the perception of beauty

2009-08-07T09:53:00.003Z

I find that as I get older, the world becomes increasingly populated with people I find attractive. With a few exceptions (Sean Connery, and my old friend IM spring to mind), the age group of men I find attractive tends to extend no more than about 5-10 years more than I am at any given age. However, there are often younger chaps who are pleasant to look at (although only to look). And as I get older, that means that an increasing number of the population falls within the range of what I generally find attractive. It's great. The world just keeps getting more beautiful. Not necessarily by proportion, but definitely by raw numbers.

Age and the perception of time

2009-08-06T13:14:00.003Z

Over the last few years, as the perceived pace of life has quickened around me, I have developed the notion that the illusion of years passing more quickly as we get older is all about proportion.

When I was 4, it seemed like forever before I got to be 5. But then, the year from 4 to 5 added another 25% onto my entire lifespan. When I considered all my experience - which was even less than the starting 4 year point because my earliest conscious memories are from when I was about 3 - that year from 4 to 5 was a very substantial part of it. In contrast, I will soon be 39, and the time to get from 38 to 39 seems to have flown past at a rate of knots. But then, the year from 38 to 39 represents only 2.6% of my entire life experience.

I think because we hold memories of what has gone before, our experience is always diluted depending on how much is in that store. With only a little in the store, between 4 and 5, another year is a significant contribution. With a lot already in the store, one more year makes little difference.

Another way of looking at it is to compare one's life experience to a pie that gets cut up into slices, one for each year. When you're 4, those are big slices. By the time you're 38 or 39, the slices are getting pretty thin. Each year, individual slices become less significant, just as each year, the year itself becomes less significant in the scheme of things, and seems to go by very quickly because, hey, it's just another year.

Lyin' Air

2009-07-27T10:57:00.006Z

Some time between when I moved to NZ at the arse end of 2000 and when I came back in the summer of 2005, something went wrong with travel within the UK.

Before I left, there was good competition between the airlines, good prices, lots of flights, etc. It was also possible to pick up decent prices on train fares, too, making them another good option. Since I came back, I've been consistently appalled at some of the prices I've had to pay, especially on the trains. It's shockingly expensive, but apart from punctuality, which has generally improved, the actual journey has become much less pleasant.

Virgin Pendolino trains are the worst offenders. They seem to take their lead from airlines in terms of depriving folks of leg-room. I wouldn't be surprised if we start hearing tales of deep-vein thrombosis affecting regular long-distance rail travellers. And they are wont to induce travel sickness with their lurching around from side to side thing. And don't even talk about luggage space. Well, there's very little to talk about - it bearly exists. And for all this nastiness, they charge a king's ransom.

The previous healthy competition that existed between the budget airlines seems to have disappeared, and at the same time, the service from those airlines has become even more shit that it was before. But way out in front in terms of the barefaced, unashamed misleading information about prices and everything else, is RyanAir. Or as I call them these days, LyinAir.

They advertise flights for "£1". Except, that doesn't include the substantial taxes, which are not optional, and should therefore be reflected in the price. Nor does the advertised fare include any baggage fees. And since all checked in bags must be paid for at a rate of £20 per 15Kg, it's not exactly chicken-feed. The in-flight food is overpriced and not great.

Bizarrely, there is also a "check-in fee" that is not included in the fare. If you do on-line check-in, it's usually a little cheaper than if you do it in person at the check-in desk. Either way, you have to pay. Checking in is not an optional extra, and so any charges associated with checking in should be included in the fare. Failure to include that cost in the fare is blatantly dishonest.

Thing is, I already knew about all of that, after previous very unpleasant experiences. Today revealed another shocker. I thought I was getting a decent price for some flights to Scotland. Then at the last minute, the website slaps on a "card handling fee" of £10 per person! With one exception (Visa Electron), this fee applies. If it were a genuine card handling fee, it would be a flat payment rather than a per-person payment. It's just another blatant bit of thievery.

But now, because RyanAir and EasyJet managed, pretty much, to squeeze the other operators out of business, they can get away with just about anything. There are few, if any, alternatives. I hate having to use them, but there are times when I have no choice. But I am not a happy customer.

Innoculating truth

2009-07-17T11:44:00.004Z

Yesterday I caught up with the latest developments in the absurd case against Simon Singh. If you haven't already signed the associated petition, I urge you strongly to do so, and to encourage your friends and acquaintances to do so, too.

It got me thinking. One of the problems that science faces is that it deals with often complex situations, situations that have no simple, single yes/no, black/white outcome.

In contrast, the entire collection of made-up baloney on the unscientific side of the fence is very clear-cut and simple: all human ills are caused by subluxations (chiropractic), energy imbalances (reiki and similar nonsense), toxins (a whole host of bollocks non-therapies), and so on and on; your personality is determined less by a combination of genes and social environment, and more by the random positions of a collection of stars and planets at the time of your birth; and lets not forget the absolute certainty with which people assert the existence of their gods.

Science struggles because it doesn't fit so well into such absolutist frameworks. That's why the ignorant think they have scored a great intellectual victory when they spout such tripe as "remember, the theory of evolution is just a theory". They seem incapable of understanding the power of the scientific position. Scientists don't often say "This is absolutely true". They tend to say "This is the best model that we have developed so far". Idiots take this to mean that the current scientific model is therefore worthless, ignoring the fact that many scientific theories allow incredibly accurate predictions to be made, despite only being our "best approximation to date".

When scientific news is announced in the press, the truth is often lost because the detail gets squished in a black/white framework for which it is ill-suited. Journalists aren't interested in understanding the complexity. They don't want to know the details. They just want to be able to report that a new drug has been developed that will cure cancer, AIDS, obesity, or whatever else they think will sell the paper.

I've been pondering whether there is any way that scientific information can be innoculated so that it can survive exposure to the media without having its core message corrupted. Sadly, new age bullshit and religions all seem capable of surviving such exposure. So how can science be handled so that it becomes immune to corruption by the agendas of those reporting on it?

Twits

2009-07-14T16:05:00.002Z

Like many, many people, I just don't get Twitter. Nor do I want to. For the record, I am also not a fan of instant messaging, and tend to turn it off from gmail, Facebook, and other sites where it rears its ugly, unwelcome, interrupting head.

A few of my chums seem quite taken with Twitter, and there does seem to be an overlap between those who provide too much detail about their daily doings and those who use iPhones. I'm sure these things feed into each other. And some of them seem to have hooked up their twitterings to their Facebook account, meaning that I get that absurd level of detail turning up on my Facebook feed. It's really irritating, and I've resorted to hiding updates from friends who do this.

It got me thinking that the only way this technology is going to be acceptable to me is when it allows some sort of metadata that indicates how important the update is. That way, I can stay in the loop about important things that my friends are up to (e.g. if one of them is doing a show I might want to attend), but don't need to hear the trivial stuff ("going to the toilet", "in the toilet", "wiping" ...)

Of course, there's a lot more overhead involved, because I would have to specify what level of update was acceptable to me, and they would have to set the level each time they posted an update. Would it ever work? Or will we have to wait until the software is clever enough to understand whether a tweet is really significant (my gran has just died - she's gone for ever) or not (my gran has just dyed - she's gone for burnished beech-nut).

Not surprisingly, given the confusion of terms around twitter - tweets, tweetings, twittering - it is very tempting to call those who use it either twits or twats. Not that I ever would, of course.

Shoe / Lace / Blue

2009-06-25T09:57:00.001Z

Is it my imagination, or have shoelaces become shit over the last few
years? The number of times I have started tying my shoes in the
morning, only to have the laces break on me is going up and up all the
time.

Is it one of those things that happens as you get older but no-one
tells you about, and you are left to discover it for yourself?

Are there environmental factors at play? Does living next to a
forest, and walking through the forest expose the laces to something
in nature which attacks the fibres in the lace?

The problem doesn't seem to be limited to one brand or one style of
lace. I've tried both the nice cotton variety, and the
plastic-feeling but "stronger" type (it may well be Mercerised
cotton). They both fail. And it just keeps happening.

Have I become much stronger? Or more inclined to tie my shoes aggressively?

So many questions.

Paper Boy

2009-06-23T12:33:00.001Z

I'm in the paper. It's exciting.

(The Times, 23rd June 2009, times2, page 15)

Freezing in the light

2009-06-22T12:51:00.001Z

Well, I've had a good run, but it had to happen some time ...

On Saturday, I was doing my dozenth stand-up comedy gig, and I had a bit of brain freeze, and couldn't remember what I was going to say next. I managed to pick it up again, and got going. Then I hit another freeze point, talked about it for a wee bit, and got back on track. Unfortunately, the two freezes meant that I had less time available to me, so I had to drop some of the material that I had intended to perform. Hey ho. It was a learning experience. I'm going to get my hands on a video of the performance so that I can analyse it a bit, but I think it was a combination of a big meal beforehand, and a lot of socialising, rather than hiding away and going over my stuff. Once I got back on track, I got the audience on-side big time and got some huge laughs, so it could have been much, much worse. So I'm not especially daunted or worried about my next performance. As always, I'm just looking forward to it.

Bogus Osteopaths

2009-06-04T09:59:00.004Z

The ever delightful Purps is encouraging folks to sign a petition supporting Dr Simon Singh in his efforts to avoid being sued for libel by the blinkered, fraudulent idiots of the British Chiropractic Association. I signed it. I hope lots of other people do, too.

The Telegraph have an article about it, as do most of the other papers, I'm sure.

I was especially taken with this Telegraph paragraph:

The BCA represents a quasi-scientific group of medical practitioners who believe that manipulating the spine can treat or cure a range of other conditions not normally associated with a bad back.

Such deliciously understated mockery. I love it.

There have been a great number of celebrity endorsements, including a very eloquent summary from Sir Steven Fry (okay, I know he's not been knighted yet, but it's surely only a matter of time). Funny man and husband to a doctor, Dara O'Briain also chipped in with this memorable comment:

The preliminary ruling is a worrying development for comedians as well, a number of whom have been ridiculing the world of dubious medicinal and scientific practices for some time. For example, I may now have to reconsider my routine about homeopathy being a 300 year old con trick.

I do hope the courts see sense on this matter, and I'm very grateful to see that James Randi has voiced his committment to back Dr. Singh in any way that he can.

We should enjoy it while we can. We can't know how many years the Queen has left in her, but when that gloved hand has waved its last wave, we're going to be lumbered with a King as in thrall to the looney new age horse-shit spreaders as it is possible to be. Okay, his mum her has own homeopath, but Charlie boy, with his Duchy product range is much more open and outspoken about it. Despite the recent setback of being accused of defrauding the public with his "detox tincture".

Incidentally, I recently read a few very interesting books on CAM (Complimentary and Alternative Medicine), as a result of which I will never have chiropractic again. Some of the manipulations they do can cause stroke! I don't want to be having one of those any time soon. Besides, the whole theory is based on "subluxations" which are made up nonsense. You might as well base a theory on naughty pixies wiggling your vertebrae during the night. I'll stick to regular massage from now on.

Amongst the other claims in one of the books I read, which was backed up with a lot of evidence, were:

Chinese herbal medicine was more or less made up in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution
Commonly used homeopathic remedies are so dilute that you would only get one molecule of active ingredient in a sphere of water with a radius greater than the distance from the earth to the sun
The so-called Detox Foot Bath, or Ionic Detoxification relies on a standard electrochemical reaction

And what on earth are the so-called toxins that build up and need to be flushed from our bodies? Our organs do a very good job of that already, thank you very much. If they didn't, we'd all be dead.

Getting good limeage

2009-06-02T06:26:00.002Z

When we lived in New Zealand, we bought a kaffir lime bush to provide us with those wonderful, aromatic leaves so essential to Thai cooking. They aren't so easy to come by in the UK, but after our trip to Thailand earlier in the year, and the very pleasant hours we spent at a cookery school learning how to do everything from scratch, we felt the need to get one. So we did. I found a place online that would sell them and ship them to you, and in due course, the plant turned up.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to get my hands on fresh kaffir limes. They're essential to making the pastes which form the basis of Thai curries. We spent quite a long time sweating over a pestle and mortar bashing bits of rind from one of those babies down into its constituent atoms. However, having scoured the Asian food shops with a fine-toothed comb (which I had sterilised first, because I was using it on foodstuffs), I came up empty-handed. I have heard you can buy bits of rind fresh-frozen, but I didn't find any.

We've had the new kaffir lime bush for a while now, and I've plucked a few leaves for immediate use, and harvested a load to go in the freezer (they freeze very well). To my surprise and delight, a couple of weeks ago, the plant started flowering. That hadn't happened to the one in New Zealand, which we'd had for much longer. The flower opened, and it became obvious that it was going to fruit and produce a little kaffir lime. Yay! Then a couple more flowers appeared, one of which is now also turning into fruit. And suddenly, the whole thing is bursting into flower all over. Between last night and this morning, another dozen or so buds had appeared, along with dozens of new leaves. It looks like we're going to have a bumper crop - so far I've counted about forty buds. I'm so happy! And I'm sure the curries will be wonderful.

Poor little acai berries!

2009-05-09T08:35:00.001Z

I've been working behind a big corporate firewall that blocks a lot of sites. I can't get to Facebook, or to gmail, frustratingly. Fortunately, there are usually ways around these things. In this case, I can still log on to the webmail interface provided by my hosting service, completely flouting the rules of the organisation I'm working for, but hey, you can't keep a fellow from his email all day.

Thing is, my email is normally forwarded from my hosting service automatically and deleted, and I then pick it up in gmail. I hadn't realised just how much spam I get which is so obviously spam that gmail doesn't even bother putting it in the spam folder - it just trashes it.

And because of that, I have only now become aware of how much abuse the poor acai berry is getting from spammers. These tasty little buds are great in homemade bread, and they have been touted by lots of folks despite the many studies that challenge or at least weaken the entire antioxidant model of ageing. But will they really lengthen my shaft, prolong my climax, enhance my "holding off" power, and make me live considerably longer, and with a considerably higher quality of life, free from cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers, Parkinsons and incontinence?

Actually, I suspect if I were regularly having the kind of sex life that these spammers seem to think is the norm, that level of physical exercise on its own would be enough to increase my lifespan and decrease my risk of heart disease, never mind the berries.

Ranting Homo

2008-09-12T13:16:00.011Z

A couple of weeks ago, I was on my way home one evening with my Lovely Husband™. We were sitting next to each other on a Central Line train, as we are wont to do. At one of the stations, another gay couple got on and sat opposite and down a little from us. I was busy playing my Nintendo DS, my man was listening to some music. And on we trundled. I was vaguely aware that the other couple were chatting away, and it was pretty obvious that they were a couple.

As we approached Mile End, my Lovely Husband™ suddenly shouted to someone opposite and down the carriage a bit "What the fuck is your problem?"

I was a bit taken aback. I think one half of the other gay couple had the same thought as me - that he was aiming his anger at them. It quickly became apparent that the other gay guy was not the target of my Lovely Husband™'s anger. Rather it was aimed at the man sitting beyond him.

It seemed that this fellow had been making gestures to the chap sitting opposite him suggesting that gay people should all be strung up, or kicked down. We had a homophobe on our hands.

Here's a photo of one, so you'll have an idea of what they can look like. I must point out, though, that the one we encountered wasn't as good looking, and probably doesn't have a talented, if somewhat misguided, wife. Then again, they might both be in the same boat in that regard within a few weeks.

While I've got his mug grinning at you, I read an interview in that gospel in newsprint form that is Metro (or perhaps it was London Lite or The London Paper - but I'll pretend it's Metro because I like the fact that the editor has the same name as me). When Guy Ritchie was asked about Christopher Ciccone's claims that he is homophobic, he trotted out the standard homophobic defense: "I'm not scared of them, it's not a phobia."

Yawn.

However, he betrayed his arrogance when he then went on to claim that his discomfort around The Gays is entirely normal, and shared by 90% of straight men. What a pig-ignorant, self-satisfied, omphallocentric tosser. If he "thinks" something, then he arrogantly assumes that everyone "thinks" the same. Really, the man should get out more. No wonder he's only enjoyed success with one film (and a couple of variations on the same theme). Narrow-minded prick.

But back to the tube.

So, my Lovely Husband™ completely has a go at this guy, who was initially a bit blustery and clearly embarrassed at being called out on his behaviour. There was no stopping my man. He tore strips of the guy - verbally - and when the guy started trying to have a go back, he tore some more. Despite the obvious tension, he said what he said with sufficient aplomb to get most of the people in the carriage on his side, and the other guy was on a ticket to nowhere. As it happens, the phobe was getting off at the next stop (Mile End), as were the gay guys that he had been making his gestures about. One of the couple shook hands with both of us on the way out, the other was enthusing about how awesome the whole thing was, and dashed back onto the train again for another handshake and a "That has made my entire year!"

I think the best line that came out in the heat of the moment went something like this:

"If you've got so little self respect that you have to try and feel superior to people because you happen to be straight and they happen to be gay, maybe if you got you fat arse down to the gym and lost a bit of weight you could get some self respect without having to do it at anyone else's expense."

Of course, having lost the target for his ire because the guy had gotten off the train, along with his victims (who were no longer feeling like victims, since the bully had - like all bullies - caved when confronted), my Lovely Husband™ was now all fired up with nowhere to go. Exactly the wrong moment for the other guilty party - the guy at whom the phobe had been making the gestures - to decide do anything other than sit quietly and let everything settle down.

"And you're no better - you were encouraging him!"

Now, this other guy did a better job of defending himself, and did seem, initially at least, more prepared to have a go. The realisation seemed to dawn, however, that he didn't have the sympahy of his fellow-travellers on his side; and that by now he was one, and we were two. Eventually, the guy sitting next to me got both sides to pipe down, and the rest of the journey passed in relative peace. But oh my - my man did a big bit of flying the flag for gay rights that night. And even though I'm far too British to have actually savoured the confrontation, I was very proud of him standing up to unacceptable behaviour and actually being prepared to tackle someone's public wrong-doing. Inspiring.

The O.C.

2008-09-01T21:17:00.003Z

The last year has been a bit tough on the job front, with a few chunks of time spent on the bench desperately scrabbling around for something new, and mournfully watching as our once-proud savings account started to detumesce. However, I've been gainfully employed for a few weeks
now. The rate isn't great, but it's a decent length of time, and I'm making the most of it by getting experience in an area that I expect will grow over the next few years, and it's never a bad thing to be able to claim lots of experience in something that everyone wants. Also, they promoted me after the first couple of weeks. Yay! No extra money, but it will look great on the CV. I'll make sure it does.

I have worked in the same profession for 16 years, and spent a significant proportion of that time in the offices of large corporations. Consequently, I can say with my hand on my hard that I have a good handle on what counts as normal within such an environment. It also means that when I see abnormal, it stands out like a Christian in a porn shop.

I'm working in Docklands again. I quite like it there. It's an easy commute for me, not especially long, and it's handy for a branch of my gym. Being in Docklands, everything is a bit science fiction, new and shiny, modern and a little bit sinister. Too clean, too perfect, too calm. Much like Singapore, I'm told.

And on the subject of too clean, here's where the abnormal thing happens. It took a few days for me to notice it, but once I had, I can't stop noticing. Every day, at least four times a day, but it could easily be six, someone comes around to dust all the communal cupboard areas. Now, it's true that folks are in the habit of leaving team biscuits on here so that anyone can help themselves. (When I say team biscuits, I don't mean that in a rugby team sense; although the white chocolate chip cookies did make me wonder.)

Keeping the place clean and tidy is one thing, but four to six (or more) times a day? That's just madness. I wonder whether someone on the board of directors has an obsessive compulsive disorder, and has mandated that their obsessive cleanliness should become a way of life for everyone who works here. It truly is bizarre. How much dusting does a corporate stationary cupboard need in a day?

Run away!

2008-08-30T10:34:00.003Z

So last weekend I find myself standing in a queue at our local off-licence. I say local. There is one that's closer, but the staff are terrible, spending most of their time in their little office in the back getting very high indeed, and generally not giving a shit about their customers, their shop, or their stock. And they know fuck all about wine. Which you don't expect in Threshers, you really don't.

Queueing in front of me - this is the borders of Essex after all, so bottle stores usually have a queue - are two Young People, one of either sex. The male one sported sequin clad gym pumps and a matching belt. They might have been a bit theatrical, their conversation suggested as much, but I have an inkling that when it comes to theatre, this young fellow has it in much more than just his blood. Oh, and he was wearing heavier makeup than a Northern lass out on the lash. The last time I saw that much foundation, they stuck the Gherkin on top of it.

Apropos of bugger all, the chap behind me suddenly leaned in close and said "Bolt!"

"Huh?"

"Bolt!"

"I'm sorry?"

"Bolt!"

At this point he gestures vaguely to something that he is resting on his shoulder.

I had taken his utterance to be an imperative. He was telling me to run away. At first I thought it was a threat, that perhaps he was about to hold the man at the till at gunpoint until he had mixed him the perfect vodka martini, or whatever it is that these criminal types do. When I realised that he wasn't threatening, my next thought was that he was making an uncharitable (and homophobic) comment on the campness of the little theatrical Mary in front of me.

But my puzzled face had triggered a response from the harpy accompanying the chap, and she shrieked something about not everyone watching the Olympics. The chap then said to me "Bolt - he's the fastest man in the world."

"Oh, right," says I.

"He won the (whatever races it was) and broke (whatever world record or records he broke)."

"Did he? Well ..."

The harpy joins in again about not everyone watching the Olympics. They exchange views on whether it is reasonable to assume everyone in the country ought to have known what the guy was talking about because the vast majority of people have been sitting glued to their television sets for the last few weeks. (Perhaps I should have pointed out to him that I actually have a job, and whilst their number may be growing, I don't think you can accurately refer to the jobless as the vast majority of people in the UK. Not yet, at any rate.)

As if offering further explanation, the guy said "He's Jamaican," and indicated towards the thing over his shoulder again. I think it was a Jamaican flag. I'm not very good with flags. I'm not sure how this was meant to allow me to make more sense of the earlier exchange. The guy didn't sound at all Jamaican, though he could have had some ancestry from that part of the world.

What perplexes me is that I really do not understand what reaction he was expecting. What on earth did he think a random stranger would do when someone comes up to them and tells them to bolt?

Sport? No thanks. I'll stick to faggotry, thank you very much.

Base Knowledge

2008-08-25T10:52:00.000Z

If someone were to create an on-line knowledge base for people like Gary Glitter, what would they call it? I mean, wikipedia is already taken ...

The Festive Season

2008-08-15T06:48:00.004Z

We spent a long weekend at the Edinburgh International Festival. Or one of them, at least. The event has grown so much over the years that these days it's something of a cultural hydra, with the Fringe possibly being the biggest bit of it. And what a marvellous time we had - once we got there.

The train journey was bad, but could have been much worse. As a result of some severe delays and overcrowding, we got there almost an hour later than planned. It seems the latest money-making wheeze amongst the more desperate elements of the criminal fraternity is to steal copper cabling from railway points and resell the metal. Noice.

So, we got to Edinburgh a bit late, popped over the visit the friends we were staying with and drop off our stuff, and then headed out to meet up with a chum of mine from Aberdeen who had sorted out tickets to a magic show by young mentalist, Chris Cox. I might review that at a later date. After a quick bite and a change of venue, it was time for Scott Capuro, who really pushes the envelope of what he can get away with saying, and made me laugh a lot. He's actually friends with one of my dearest chums, and we've had dinner together, but since he spent most of that evening drooling over the waiter is doesn't really feel like I've actually met the man.

We did a late show that night: Slutty Livin' starring Livinia Slutford, the latest altar ego of and comedy vehicle for Jonathan Hellyer. Utterly, utterly amazing. Every time I see this guy perform I am blown away by his vocal talent. Of course, as Nick's blog makes clear, regular visitors to The Royal Vauxhall Tavern on a Sunday get to enjoy this kind of thing every week, and indeed, some of them even got to see the preview show in London before it launched in Edinburgh. In looking for a link to the show, I learned on Jonathan's web page that he was the guy who replaced Jimmy Summerville in Bronski Beat, and sang opposite Eartha Kitt on Cha Cha Heels - to my mind one of the campest pop songs ever recorded. Marvellous.

The next day I popped out earlier than my Lovely Husband™ to see a show starring Arnold Brown. He's a Glaswegian Italian Jewish comedian. As he puts it, three stereotypes for the price of one. Unusually for Edinburgh, he had a warm-up act. I can't remember the guy's name, but he wasn't very funny at all, and had awful comic timing. Arnold, in contrast, shone, but not as shiny as I've seen him in the past.

Later, my Lovely Husband™ joined me and we headed off to see Phil Kay in his 20th year at the festival. He and I studied philosophy together at Glasgow University, although we didn't know each other. I remember seeing him on TV a long time ago and thinking: he sits a few rows in front of me on Monday mornings. He was amazing, as always, although sadly his performance was seriously marred by his friends. He had generously brought a very large bunch of young people with him and given them free tickets. The rewarded his generosity by interrupting his show, talking loudly during his performance, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. To his credit, Phil tried to get them behaving a bit better, and managed to get the show more or less back on track, but we were both angered to see this lovely, gentle soul showing so much respect and having so much patience with a crowd of boorish loudmouths who didn't give him the same respect in return.

Sunday night, we had dinner with the friends that we were staying with, and that was a very pleasant evening indeed.

And then on Monday, my parents arrived ... more of that (and pictures) later.

Nudles

2008-08-04T21:18:00.001Z

One of the less acknowledged facts about healthy eating is that wholewheat pasta is much tastier than normal pasta, and has a much more interesting texture.

So far, so good.

Another not very well acknowledged fact is that noodles, as used in a variety of cuisines, particularly those of Asian countries, are pretty much the same as pasta.

Take these two facts, and add the third. It's much easier, in UK supermarkets, to get your hands on fresh wholewheat spaghetti than any other type of fresh wholewheat pasta.

Put them all together, and you can start using fresh wholewheat pasta to accompany stir-fries, pad thais, all manner of dishes. And it's yummyumum and then someomeome.

Pbuh!

2008-07-17T11:14:00.036Z

Following on from my last post, and Frobisher's comment on it, I was reminded of one of those things that I've been meaning to blog about for some time.

A while back, I visited an old friend of mine who now lives in one of the Home Counties. He teaches religious education. Indeed, he is the head of the department. He tells me RE these days is a deeply interesting subject, encouraging the kids to think long and hard about the questions that it raises, to confront and challenge their own and other peoples' assumptions, to take arguments to bits, etc.

However, I was utterly shocked to learn that nowadays, in every textbook produced in the UK, any time Muhammed is mentioned, the letters PBUH are added after the name. (Sometimes in brackets.) It stands for Peace Be Upon Him, which is what devout Muslims say any time they utter The Name.

I have no issue with them choosing to do that, but I think it is seriously misguided, perhaps even gravely misguided, to kowtow to Muslim sensitivities by obliging everyone to carry out this act of reverence.
We don't do it for other religions. I was brought up Catholic, and in the Catholic tradition - as it is expressed in central lowland Scotland, at least - you are expected to bow your head any time you say or hear the name Jesus. (Holidays in South America are understandably not very popular with Scottish Catholics.) If schools are obliged to add PBUH after every mention of Mo, why shouldn't everyone have to follow the Catholic practice of bowing every time they hear or say the name of the Big J?

If followers of Islam expect everyone else in this country to enforce their tokens of reverence, why should Buddhists not do the same? They always refer to "Our Lord Buddha", so wouldn't it be reasonable for them to expect everyone else to say that too, or at least a variant on it (Lord Buddha, for example)?
And what about those of the Jewish faith? They are prohibited from speaking the name of god. Shouldn't we also observe that rule and never say Yahweh? (With or without the aspirated "h".) Admittedly, it's not a word that comes up often in conversation, at least not in mine, but all the same ... Perhaps in textbooks it should be written Y****h.

These religions seem to accept that it is inappropriate for them to seek to impose their religious practices, observances and small acts of piety on people who do not share their faith. Catholics (and possibly Anglicans) genuflect in their churches, but they don't really expect non-believers or those of other faiths - even other Christian faiths - to do the same.

Why do followers of Islam seem to think they can call the shots, and demand that we all follow their religious observances? More shockingly, why do the institutions of this country let them call the shots in this way, and actually go along with their demands? Freedom to practice one's religion is fine, but when you step outside of your own freedom and start encroaching upon the freedom of others by seeking to control their behaviour, you are on very dodgy ground indeed.

Is it any wonder Islam is growing in the UK? They wholeheartedly embrace an ethos of bullying people into doing what they want. How could that fail to appeal to weak-minded, disempowered, poor urban youth?

Be a bully, get your own way, gain respect. Unearned.
If you saw it in an email, you'd assume that it was spam.

Choose Islam.

Choose a faith.

Choose a set of rules.

Choose a fucking big stick for hitting people who disagree with you. Choose to be told what to eat, when to eat, how to pray, who to associate with, where to holiday, who to marry. Choose halal meat, no alcohol, homophobia, misogyny, and wilful ignorance. Choose to give your money to people who'll help you destroy the country that gave you the money in the first place along with the freedom to spend it. Choose to demand respect without earning it. Choose to disrespect everyone who doesn't agree with you. Choose robes. Choose beards. Choose little white knitted hats. Choose to dress like you live in a desert, even though you were born and raised in Leyton, Berwick or Halifax and the nearest you've ever been to sand was a school trip to Southend. Choose what the women in your life should wear. Choose sheets as clothes. Choose to hide the love of your life under a sheet because you're so fucking insecure you can't bear the thought of any other man seeing her face. Choose domestic abuse. Choose sheets that will cover it up. Choose bombs. Choose hate. Choose limitations on your freedom. Choose to undermine the freedom of others. Choose to give up your autonomy. Choose not to think for yourself. Choose not to think. Choose to feel. Choose to have your feelings dictated by someone else. Choose to be told what to do by old men seething with pathetic envy. Choose to interrupt your life several times every day for prayer. Choose to limit your consumption of literature to a single book in a language you can't read. Choose to accept everything you are told about what that book says, as long as it confirms your own prejudices. Choose not to worry about any of the complex things in life. Choose laziness. Choose not to choose. Choose voluntary brainwashing. Choose cognitive dissonance. Choose to limit your horizons. Choose suicide bombing. Choose an afterlife of virgins.

Choose Islam.

(With apologies to Irvine Welsh.)

Marriage Of Inconvenience

2008-07-15T13:54:00.010Z

Made-up rumour of the day:
Foppy-floppy English actor Jude Law was rumoured to be have pursued big-haired country diva Shania Twain for a possible romantic liaison. In the event, they decided not to take matters any further, because they didn't like the idea of the children being brought up under Shania Law.

And in other news ...

On a not very related note, I am working on a parody of tonsurial apiarist Amy Winehouse's hit single Rehab. It seems to me that a growing minority in the UK are using their claimed religious beliefs as an excuse for intolerance, and using religion for political / personal-politic gain and power-playing. Like the teacher who wore a full veil when teaching tiny little children to communicate. Ridiculous. I suspect that many of these people wouldn't actually enjoy a life lived fully under the banner of their belief system, and if push came to shove, they would chose the freedoms of Britain over the harshness of scripture-based systems of "justice". This parody is aimed at them. It's a work in progress, but here's the first couple of lines:

They tried to make me go to Riyadh
But I say no, no, no.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

The Amazing Appearing Pounds

2008-07-14T08:02:00.011Z

People often ask me whether I can make money appear. If I'm performing in a paid gig at the time, I laugh politely. If it's not in the context of a paid gig, and I'm a bit more at liberty to display my genuine response to such a question, I pour scorn on their lack of originality and usually try to encourage everyone in the room to point and laugh mockingly.

(I don't do that when my Lovely Husband™ makes his gag about doing something about the dishes using magic. He says it every time, but then he has seen the tricks hundreds of times, and for some of them, knows every line as well as I do.)

Obviously, if any magician could make money simply appear, we wouldn't feel the need to ingratiate ourselves into sometimes charmless company and attempt to raise a smile, an eyebrow, or better get a gasp of amazement. As Jerry Sadowitz once memorably put it, "If I could do this for real, I'd be lying on a beach in the Bahamas with fifteen shades of lip gloss working their way up and down my cock."

Yet I noticed that I have been able to make pounds appear. Oh yes. Every since I came back to the UK in fact. I was looking through some photos last night (or possibly the early hours of this morning) and was shocked at how jowly I've become in the space of 3 years.
Let's see.
The picture on the left, of your author sporting a bow tie and a somewhat "I've just shat my pants" smile* was taken towards the end of February 2006, more than 6 months after I got back. (I was at the civil parternship of some very lovely friends in Cambridge.) The picture on the right was taken a couple of weeks ago, just before we took the father of my Lovely Husband™ to the airport at the end of his European Tour. There's a lot more of me in the second one. I need to sort that out.

Made up quote of the day:
"He tried speed dating to no avail, but switching from speed to rohypnol made a huge difference."

*I hadn't.

Court Mayhem

2008-07-10T09:31:00.002Z

Where we live, on the countrified outskirts of Olde Londone Towne, it's peaceful and idyllic (as long as we ignore the queens shagging in the trees just down the road from us).

So, I'm a bit concerned about a recent development. Middle-aged women who have siblings have taken to having lots of parties in the court where we make our abode. I for one am deeply concerned about this rise in aunty social behaviour.

Health And Safety

2008-07-02T10:00:00.004Z

During my last contract, I was obliged to complete a health and safety assessment at work. What a complete waste of time.

It provided me with no new information, only confirmation that the whole health and safety industry serves two purposes, neither of them remotely aligned with the purpose they claim to serve. Those two purposes are job creation and arse-covering. The former serves those who work within the health and safety industry. The latter serves the employer.

The course assessment at the end of the online course that I was obliged to do produced a list of changes that I needed to make to improve my work environment. If for any reason I failed to implement these changes, I would be in no position to sue the employer because, hey, they had made the appropriate recommendations. Never mind that in most work places, it isn't possible for me to set up a desk to conform to all the rules.

One problem that I have with all of this is the implicit sexism within all the courses. They go to great pains to ensure that if you're little, and your legs dangle, then there is a way you can still get into the officially recommended position at a desk. They make no such provision for those of us who are taller. If I adjust my seat to the recommended height, I can't get my legs under my desk. I've only ever once worked in a place which had desks of adjustable height, and most people didn't bother adjusting them.

I say implicitly sexist because a lot of the "information" on these courses is very obviously based on years old, outdated research from an era when the only people sitting at the desk working a keyboard were female secretaries. Hence the emphasis on what to do if you're too short (women are generally shorter than men), and little or no emphasis on what to do if you are too tall, since the men are always away from their desks doing the real work of business and enterprise. Apparently.

Musical Tags

2008-06-30T08:43:00.006Z

Hello blog. Hang on.

*blow* *rub* *wipe*

Just get rid of the dust a bit. It's been a while. Two whole months have gone past since I last mused in public. There have been lots of instances when I almost wrote something, but clearly none of them pushed me quite so far as to actually put finger to keyboard. But now, thanks to the ever-lovely Mandy Davis, who tagged me with a music-related meme, I'm doing it, really doing it.

So, to the meme. The original instructions for it came from Brian Sibley, and 'twas he who tagged Mandy, and why I got tagged, too. The "to do" thing is:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now.

So here goes. In no particular order.

I Just Wanna Dance (Alison Jiear)

This song has been in and out of my awareness for a while now, and I'm grateful to Nick for mentioning it in a recent post which nudged me into finding out more about it. And even more grateful to him for enabling me to hear several different versions of it. The song comes from Jerry Springer - The Opera. If you haven't heard it before, the name of the show might serve as a warning about the lyrical content. It's always good when we hear a song that accurately expresses something that we have felt ourselves, and this one certainly does that for me. Incidentally, the YouTube clip is a popular dance remix of the song, accompanied by a mixed bag of clips from films. It's very well put together, and delightful to play "spot the movie". Baz Lurman is well-represented, and there's lots of bits of Xanadu, but there's so much more - it's a treasure trove. I must confess that every time I watch this video, I have goosebumps of delight by the end of it. And if you fancy digging around a bit on YouTube, there are also some very funny clips of young queens lip-synching to the song

Cry For You (September)

In looking for this song on YouTube, I learned that it's not called You'll Never See Me Again after all. Always learning. I love it. It has a hypnotic quality that I find really appealing. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that lots of straight men like the video.

With Every Heartbeat (Robyn & Kleerup)

I think I saw the video for this a few times at the gym, but didn't know what the song was because although I could see the screen, I was plugged into my MP3 player and my own choice of music. The video always appealed to me, with its St Martin's film student feel, and when I finally heard the song, I immediately liked it. I was especially impressed with a section towards the end when the words "and it hurts with every heartbeat" are repeated several times, but sung in short little bursts of sound, so you can actually hear the hurt. Noice! Different. Unyoosual.

Black and Gold (Sam Sparro)

I can't embed the proper video this one on the page, but I've made the title into a link to the relevant YouTube page. I first saw Sam Sparro on a late night chat show. Probably Jonathan Ross, although it may have been the Friday Night Project. It took a few seconds for me to get hooked, but then the sheer sexiness of the voice got to me. My Lovely Husband™ pointed out that he has a very gay energy, prompting my to do a bit of digging on that there interweb. I came across the usual set of indignant teenage straight girls complaining about all these rumours that their beloved Sam might be a shirtlifing pillow-bighter. And then my Lovely Husband™ brought home a copy of Attitude featuring an interview with the man himself, in which he talks about his boyfriend, who is also his stylist. A few repeat listens had me admiring the lyrical content of the song, and the video is fun, stylish, sexy and shows a nicely restrained element of camp, I think.

Four down. Three to go.

Dragostea Din Tei (O-Zone)

I think I've posted a link to this one on my blog before, but it's worth repeating - and I still listen to it regularly and love it. Funnily enough, when chatting with Nick about I Just Wanna Dance, it came to light that we have both learned the lyrics to the song despite neither of us having any fluency in Romanian. I can't listen to this song and not feel happy, although I have a strong preference for seeing O-Zone perform it rather than the fat bloke who made it popular on YouTube, and renamed it "Numa Numa".

Don't Stop The Music (Rihanna)

This is another one where I can't embed the official video, so the title provides a link to the relevant YouTube page. The embedded video above has the right song, but the wrong video. Catchy. Mind you, most stuff that Rihanna has done is catchy - like that bloody umbrella song. Which I loved despite myself.

About You Now (Sugababes)

This is a great song for dancing to. It reminds me a bit of Avril Lavigne, and of many happy nights dancing my socks off in Popstarz. And of course, some of the remixes are absolutely fabulous.

Is that seven? Yes, it think so. Right. I'm done. But I'll try to get back into writing more frequently, because I do so enjoy it.

And just to be a bit contrary, here is number eight:

The Journey Continues (Mark Brown & Sarah Cracknell)

Thank you, Mandy, for the tagging.

Just semantics

2008-04-29T06:11:00.003Z

A phrase which often comes up in the IT business, perhaps more often from the business and management side of things rather than the techie side, is "that's just semantics". It has always bothered me. How can semantics - what something actually means - be dismissed in such an offhand manner?

Often, IT projects go wrong because there has been miscommunication. Requirements have been misunderstood. The architecture has been implemented incorrectly. The infrastructure has been built in a way that failed to take account of some critical operational features. Yet when it comes to getting a clear understanding about some things, a wave of the hand and a flippant "Oh, that's just semantics" is all it takes to set a disaster in motion.

I have often found that people talk glibly about a concept, or use a particular word, and when queried they either cannot define it, or, more often, there are wildly differing meanings being used by a group who remain ignorant of the fact that they are not talking about the same thing. I came across an example of this phenomenon only a couple of days ago, around the interpretation of the word "warranty". I've encountered many over the years. And yet to some, querying what they mean by a particular word is quibbling over what is "just semantics".

Card Of Hearing

2008-04-12T12:22:00.008Z

Oh, it's been a while, eh? Blame FaceBook.

I've recently (via my iGoogle news items linking me to something on The Telegraph) become aware of the Song Chart phenomenon, where an attempt is made to represent an item from the hit parade as a graph or chart of some kind. Or maybe a list. Or some element of a computer application or web page. Or a flow chart, UML activity diagram, entity relationship diagram, venn diagram, etc., etc., etc. Here's a couple of examples (of my own), in increasing order of difficulty:

Just will not do

Optimal Proximity

I'll post the answers in the comments box if prompted. If you like these puzzles, I would recommend visiting the Flickr group where they live. There's loads on there, some of which made me laugh out loud.

So, having played around with the concept a bit, one popped into my head, almost immediately followed by the thought that it would make a great birthday card for my Lovely Husband™. Then it occurred to me that what would be even better would be to have it play an appropriate bit of the song when the card opened. So that sent me off on the trail of customised card with sound chips inside them. Of course we're all familiar with the technology, and have probably received a talking or musical card at some point in the last 20 years. I had never looked into the possibility of getting one specially made.

In researching the topic, I learned that the chips that are used in the pre-made cards in shops actually support recording as well as playback, but they don't have a microphone, since that would increase the cost of the card. Now I could have gone and bought such a card, taken it to bits, put a suitable microphone on, and gone ahead with it. But instead, I discovered a place that sells blank greetings cards into which your own audio message (max 10 seconds) can be recorded. And it should have been obvious all along - the Royal National Institute for the Blind. They're a fiver a pop, and they have a built in microphone as well as a speaker, making it easy to record your own message in the card. I sent off for one, it arrived this morning, and I made the card up.

Not surprisingly, having gone to all that effort, the last thing on my mind was then hiding it in a cupboard for the next 9 months, until the birthday comes around again. So, he has seen it, and it did indeed delight him.

The whole exercise has opened me up to the possibilities of really interesting, home-made cards. And it is very easy to re-record and re-use these things, which makes them even more appealing. Hmm ....

Youth String Ensemble

2008-03-12T12:31:00.002Z

It occurred to me yesterday that a youth string ensemble could be described as kiddie fiddlers. It's not much of a thought for the day, but it was the best I could do.

1 and a 2 and a 3

2008-03-02T12:57:00.002Z

The ever-delightful Da Nator has tagged me with a meme about books.

The rules are:

1. Grab the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2. Open it to page 123.
3. Find the first 5 sentences and write them down.
4. Then invite 5 friends to do the same.

Until yesterday, that would have been easy, but I put in a bit of time doing some home improvement yesterday, and as a result, my office space is as tidy as my downstairs area after a quick trim with the Wahl. As chance would have it, the closest book is one that I bought last weekend at the Blackpool Magic Convention. It's a joke book by Michael Close. In addition to being an excellent magician, Michael is also a hugely talented musician, and a great collector and teller of jokes.

The book in question is called That Reminds Me, and is subtitled Finding the Funny in a Serious World. However, it's not all jokes, and page 123 happens to be one of the pages where he introduces a section of the book by talking abut the friend or acquaintance that inspired, reminds him of or told him the jokes therein. This particular section is dedicated to Billy McComb, a very talented and very funny magician, who died just over two years ago. His loss is still felt very strongly within the magic world.

Here's what Michael writes:

Billy McComb was of the same generation as Jay Marshall, and he too achieved great success as a performer. He appeared on big stages, variety halls, and workingmen's clubs, and he starred on television in the United Kingdom. Unlike Jay, who retired from active performing to run his magic shop, Billy kept plugging away until just a few months before his death. He was regularly featured at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, and he was often the opening act for The Amazing Jonathan in Las Vegas. I could not imagine how an audience that had paid money to see Jonathan would react to seeing a frail-looking old man walking out on stage.

So there you have it. I'd love to urge you to go out and buy the book, because it's very funny, and has a highly amusing foreword by Penn Jillette. I don't think it's on sale to the general public, although you can buy it online.

And now I have to tag five people. That's going to be a challenge, because I spend much less time doing this bloggy thing these days, and consequently have far fewer prospective tagees to draw from. And one of them has already been tagged by someone else.

Tell you what, if you want to do this meme, consider yourself tagged - only do let me know so's I can go and have a varda when you're done.

Private Dick

2008-02-28T01:39:00.002Z

Frank was in danger of lapsing back into Catholicism. It was that last glass of Campari which had just been one too many, and now sinister and subversive thoughts were stealing across his cerebellum with willful and wily alliterative intent. Transubstantiation might not just be a poor excuse for bad sleight of hand (seven years in seminary - surely enough for even the dullest seminarian to master a bit of simple palming!); confessionals needn't just be to save the pounds that pervy old Irishmen would otherwise fritter away on premium rate wank lines; and the whole shebang might not just be an outlet by which the closet cases of the world could have their camp cake and eat it.

He shrugged his shoulder and got to his foot. A passing sign told him that you're only ever half a man without Jesus. He grimaced, remembering the cute bit of Mexican trade who had stolen his wallet in return for what was probably the best blow-job the little shit had ever had.

A furtive man was glancing at him from the opposite side of the street, making a conspicuous effort to appear shifty. Frank saw through him like he was yesterday's countdown conundrum (washboard). He held no mystery, just a small dick and a tight throat. Why he was holding a throat will remain unknown. It was his own, as was the dick. Or at least until the hire-purchase people caught up with him.

A yellow net curtain hung in the shop window, and as he stared through it at the antique sweets within, he thought he saw the pattern in the net rearrange itself into an autostereogram of William Burroughs shooting up with heroin. Billow. It was gone. The tampax dummy in the window went on drying her hair as the fan restarted. Frank moved on before toxic shock set in. Serried ranks of solemn shops sailed past, echoing an earlier alliterative allusion and adding assonance as an alternative angle.

It was turning into one of those days. The initial bad sign had been when someone has almost discovered his secret identity. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a piece of foam shaped round a metal prong? Is it a rip-off? Yes and no, it's Thigh Master. With a final steamy whistle, that train of thought vanished into the distance. Even the favoured trick of sticking his head out of a high rise to admire the vertical horizon had failed, although he did succeed in donating a satisfyingly thick gobbet of phlegm to the sparse covering of a passer-by's head.

Perhaps it was time to become a lesbian.

A blush added brief fire to his cheeks for no other reason than that his corpuscles needed the exercise. Someone was playing Fur Elise badly on a piano with a flat A. Who was dealing these cards, anyway?

His apartment eventually made its ponderous way to his demanding feet, and with a sigh he headed for the cool comfort of the lift. There was only one letter waiting for him. The rest had been too impatient. It was an invitation to a party at 'The Gobbling Nun'. He didn't recognise the name of the sender. It was nobody he knew. He knew a lot of nobodys.

The Lion, The Witch & The TURDIS Of Oz In Wonderland.

2008-02-27T11:18:00.020Z

I decided this morning that I really ought to see if I can do anything to retrieve my juvenalia, with a view to publishing it on here, or on my website.

Towards the end of my school years* I wrote a lot, much of it humorous in varying degrees. Along with a very dear friend, MF (whose initials are quite unintentionally amusing), I was heavily involved in creating a school magazine. MF was great at coming up with ideas for characters and so on. I wasn't so good at that, but I did seem to flourish when it came to taking those ideas and really pushing them. It was a great collaborative effort, the likes of which I have only found once or twice in my life.

Amongst the other characters that sprang from the fertile soil of MF's mind were Elsie & Tom. Elsie Senga Mince was often described as housewife, superhero and all-round good egg. She was the companion to Tom Baker, who travelled around the universe in a battered blue police box. Basically, we were both big Doctor Who fans, the show wasn't being made any more, and Tom Baker was "our" doctor, i.e. the one who had been on all the shows we watched as children. So, although he was called Tom Baker, he was still The Doctor, or at least had all the props, characteristics and mannerisms that he had brought to his portrayal of that character.

We both read lots of the Doctor Who books (many of which were little more than the scripts from the TV show with "he said", or "she exclaimed" tacked on at the end of each line of dialogue). Being British, the best way we knew of showing our love for something was by taking the piss out of it mercilessly. This included paraphrasing and mocking all of the clichés that occurred in the books, and the standard plot lines. We also pilfered freely from much greater writers, too. The end result meant that whereas the books would (almost invariably) say this:

With a wheezing, groaning sound, a dark blue box slowly appeared on the forbidding alien landscape

our stories would have something like this:

With a wheeze, a groan and a hey nonny-nonny, a TURDIS suddenly appeared out of nowhere, exactly the way that bricks don't.

After we finished school, and stopped doing the magazine, MF poured his remaining creative juices into a full-size novel about some of his other characters, the Boys Of The Filofax. It was a great story, reminiscent of Douglas Adams, particularly during his Dirk Gently phase, with hints of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I read a draft, and loved it, but somewhere along the line MF gave up on it and, I believe, threw it away.

Meanwhile, I was writing longer stories than I had for the magazine, but still way short of an actual novel. And whereas MF had made the transition to proper novel-appropriate thinking, I was still messing around in pastiche land. To that end, my proudest achievement was Elsie & Tom in Snow White & The Seven Cybermen. It featured a Snow White who was anything but, some cybermen who had been unaccountably shrunk to midget-like proportions, making them much less menacing, and a brief but important trip back to ancient Greece during the race between Atlanta and Hippomenes. I also started work on what was to be my masterwork: Elsie & Tom in The Lion, The Witch & The TURDIS Of Oz In Wonderland. My intention was to take the characters through a butchered version of all three of those stories, mostly for my own amusement.

There were a few other things that I wrote during that period. Lots, actually, including deliberately funny letters to various friends. I really enjoyed writing, and for a few years afterwards, I would come across something or other I had written earlier and marvel because I had forgotten how funny it was.

Alas, some years ago, during a period of separation between my parents, disaster struck. Most of this writing was in a garage at my mum's place. Unfortunately, the local kids were a seriously nasty lot, and had a habit of torching the garages. Everything was lost to the flames.

I did have some old floppy disks with some of the material on it, but they were created on at Atari ST, and even using an ST emulator on my PC, I couldn't get anything from most of them. I did manage to salvage some bits and pieces of few years ago, but nothing from the longer stories, alas. Man, I would love to get my hands on those.

As chance would have it, a bit of digging around on the way back machine has given me a couple of smaller pieces. I'll put them up here as separate articles and see if anyone likes them.

* US readers might like to note that "school years" for me doesn't include my time at university. School is school, university is university - that's why we have different words for those things :-)

Chilli Fecundity

2008-02-21T09:25:00.004Z

Last summer we treated ourselves to a chilli pepper plant and a capsicum plant. The former yielded quite a few chillies, the latter only one or two capsicums (or peppers, or bell peppers, if you'd rather).

Around October, new fruit started to appear on the chilli plant. It took a while to develop, and quite a long time to go from green to red (via that odd blackish colour that they turn to make you think that they're about to rot and fall off). But now they're sitting on the vine, ready to be harvested. So the plant has kicked off another round, and we now have at least half a dozen new peppers starting to appear.

I've never known a plant to be so keen on producing fruit, and especially when it's a plant that is probably more used to warmer climes than those provided in England. In winter. Amazing.

The future of hacking

2008-02-20T09:19:00.003Z

I was reading a piece this morning on CNET about the Storm BotNet, a vast array of computers that, unbeknownst to their owners, have been quietly taken over for use in acts of cyber-terrorism, cyber-vandalism, and various other cyber-otherisms.

Over the last few years, as the number of little programs running on my PC has climbed inexorably upwards, and as the behaviour of various pieces of technology have clashed, the performance of my machine has been, at times, flaky. In the early days of botnets, mass-distributed viruses, trojan horses and the rest of that paraphernalia, you could tell when your machine was "infected" because the performance usually suffered. That's no longer necessarily the case, especially when the people who control the botnet don't want you to realise that your computer has been co-opted onto it.

Now that serious, well-organised, well-funded criminals are involved, I was entertaining the thought that in the future, the well-structured botnet program might do everything it can to improve your system's performance - secretly downloading bits of software to analyse and adjust the internals. That way, you might not mind being part of a botnet so much, because in return, you get a machine that's more reliable, without having to spend hours and hours running diagnostics and patching things up yourself.

Sorry. Bit geeky. Happens sometimes.

Election Earing

2008-02-18T17:55:00.004Z

The way things are going, it looks like the next president of the US will be the Irish-American gay porn star, Bareback O'Bama.

Personally, I think Hillary Clinton would be the more radical choice.

Not quite dancing in the streets

2008-02-14T09:25:00.002Z

Earlier this week, I was walking along Oxford Street shortly before 09:00, on my way from the gym to the office. I passed someone lying in a doorway wrapped up in a sleeping bag. I would have said sleeping in a doorway, but I think the person in question was awake, because there was steady, rhythmic movement taking place about half-way down the sleeping bag.

Now he (or possibly she) could just have been rubbing their hands together to keep warm. It really didn't look like that, though. It really did look like he was about to make a Big Issue appear out of nowhere.

Letting Go

2008-02-09T11:52:00.000Z

It's now three weeks since I started my new contract, having rushed out to buy a laptop for it, because I was asked at the interview whether I could supply my own.

I've had misgivings since the very first day. There seemed to be a lack of clarity about exactly what I was meant to be doing. I've struggled to get enough information to allow me to be productive. There doesn't seem to be any obvious place for me to go for information. And the people that I could go to are really busy, and so haven't been able to give me a good steer that has allowed me to get under way properly. I've not found it easy to get proper network access, and consequently have been at arms length from some useful intranet-based resources that might have helped. I'm all for being self-motivated and not needing hand-holding, but it does help not to be left completely at sea.

So it didn't come as a great surprise to me yesterday when my project manager took me aside to tell me that they had decided to let me go. The client that I was meant to be working for has put the work on hold, and revealed that he initiated it without actually having the budget to pay for it anyway. The company that I am working through don't have anything else for me to do in the meantime, and they can't afford to have me not doing billable work. So, it's adios.

I've never been "let go" before. I've been made redundant once. That was great - they gave me lots of money. This isn't so good, not least because I have been turning down offers of work for the last few weeks, and had one really interesting offer yesterday morning, before I knew that the decision about my future had been made. I can't find the details of the agent in question, so I can't get in touch with him, annoyingly.

Still, it might mean that I've been busy for a few weeks and making a bit of money, just tiding myself over until a really good contract comes in. I'll tell myself that anyway to ease the affront.

And now - back to trawling JobServe!

The Line That Isn't

2008-02-05T13:32:00.000Z

I am now working again in London, and facing the daily nightmare that is a rush-hour commute. I have noticed that announcements being made about the fate of the East London Line, and they struck me as a bit puzzling. The announcements go something like this:

The East London Line is closed until 2010, when it will re-open as part of the London Overground network.

The East London Line is currently part of the London Underground network, and when the line re-opens, I venture to suggest that it won't be called the East London Line, since that would invite confusion with the lines on the underground network. This leads me to conclude that in fact, the East London Line isn't closed, rather it no longer exists. Sure, the track is still there, and doubtless the rolling stock is stashed away somewhere. But that entity which we called the East London Line has ceased to exist.

The situation is similar, I think, to that which now exists at the Edinburgh Festival when it comes to comedy awards. For years we knew that if you did really well, you could win a Perrier Award. The awards are still given, except now they are not sponsored by Perrier, so they are called the IF Comedy AWards. A lot of people still think of them as the Perrier Awards, because they recognise it's a same shit, different brand thing, but technically, they are the IF Awards.

I think this is the flip side of the classic problem of the Philosopher's Axe (not to be confused with the Philosopher's Axe Wound, which I won't be going into). The classic problem presents the problem of identity very elegantly. I have an axe. Over time, I replace the handle (or haft, if you'd rather). Later, I need to replace the head. At this point, it's still my axe, even though it no longer contains any of its original constituent parts. Is it really still the axe I started with? At what point is it not my axe, or not the same axe? In the case of the East London Line, and the Perrier/IF Awards, the opposite is happening - the label changes even though the thing itself remains the same.

Actually, the East London Line is a bit different, because the label is likely to change, the context is going to change (from the LU network to the LO network), and the thing itself is going to change. Really, the line has ceased to exist.

So, to conclude, I would be much happier if the announcements on the tube went like this:

Please be aware that the East London Line has ceased to exist. Passengers are advised to seek alternative routes.

Blackpool or bust

2008-02-05T13:31:00.000Z

Only a few weeks from now, I'll be treating myself to a long weekend in the urbane and stylish grandeur of Blackpool. Every year, that jewel of the north plays host to the world's biggest magic convention, and this will be my second year in attendance. Last year, as a newbie, I didn't get there early enough, and I didn't stay long enough. This time around, I know better. I've booked the Friday and Monday off work, and I'm heading up relatively early on the Friday. Things kick off properly on the Friday afternoon with the first lecture of the convention.

To add to my delight, a fellow I recently became friends with will be travelling over from the US to attend. I met him and his wife when they were over here late last year for the International Magic Convention. He came second in the close-up competition with a very funny, magical, and beautifully structured act. Sadly, not all of my magical chums will be able to make it. One in particular who was very lovely to me last year, and with whom I shared the experience of a traditional Blackpool landlady, directly descended from the Lambeth Wyrm, or some other dragon of yore.

I am particularly looking forward to a lecture by J C Wagner, arguably the best bar magician the world has ever seen - although it's a tough call between him and Doc Eason.

There might be a blog soon about the new job. At the moment, I'm a bit too busy getting my feet under the table to write about it. Or indeed to write about much at all.

New job, new toy

2008-01-19T14:07:00.000Z

Finally, as of Monday I'll be back in the workforce!

I'm quite pleased with the role that I've landed myself, and if the interview is anything to go by, it will be a great place to work. They were very friendly. We got allong very well. So it looks like I'll be spending a lot of my time between now and April working out how a whole load of people can migrate a whole load of local council processes out of their existing offices and into a new location in Essex. This might even involve trips to Essex, which will be very easy for me given that I live to close to the borders of that fair county.

Unusually, the company I'll be working for asked if I would be able to provide my own laptop. I've never owned one. I've almost always had one for the last 10 or 15 years, but every single one of those has been the property of whichever company I have been working for at the time. I have long been an advocate of desktop machines. I think many people buy laptops when a desktop machine would be just as useful to them, would cost a lot less, and would be more amenable to upgrading. However, I jumped at the idea of buying my own for use in the new role, because it helps to reduce my exposure to certain tax liabilities that I'd rather avoid. Using my own equipment goes a long way towards establishing that I am not, in fact, an employee of the company with which I have a contract.

Anyway, after ordering quite late on Thursday night, and then geeing them along yesterday and agreeing to fork out for additional shipping costs, my new tablet PC turned up today. So far, so good. It seems lovely. The tablet thing is great, and I think I'm going to get a lot out of that facility. It also has an entertaining alternative to putting in username and password information all over the place - I can just swipe my finger across a little sensor, and it checks against a record of my finger print. Marvellous.

The Joy Of Slow Cooking

2008-01-15T13:05:00.001Z

It's now two and a half years since myself and my Lovely Husband™ moved (or moved back, in my case) to London. When we did, I arrived a few months ahead of him, and got lots of things sorted out - a job, a place to live, etc. When he arrived, I had only recently found a flat, and it was completely unfurnished. We put that right over the next few months. Along the way, we had one of the biggest arguments we have ever had. It was about cushions. I won't go into the details, but the end result was that the Lovely Husband™ ended up going back to a department store and returning some items that he had bought, and being issued with a credit slip. Some time later, we used that credit slip to buy a slow cooker.

We haven't made that much use of it until recently, although any time we did, we appreciated the results. However, I've been making soups of late, and the more I do, the more I come to love the slow cooker. For those of you who have never used one, or aren't inclined to cook, let me just say that they are very, very easy to use, and allow you to make some really beautiful food with so little effort it's almost wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a lentil soup with a ham hock in it. Wow - it was divine! One of the tastiest soups I've ever had. Yesterday, partly out of curiosity, and partly to satisfy a dietary-related new year's resolution*, I essayed a similar broth, but without the benefit of the ham hock. It turned out stunning. Delicious. Wonderful.

But here's the thing - I deliberately did it with just about the minimal effort possible. I sloshed some water into the slow cooker, chucked in some red and green lentils, bashed a couple of garlic cloves and threw them in, skins and all. Okay, I did peel and chop an onion, and a piece of kumara (sweet potato), but the total amount of time I spent prepping was less than five minutes, and that includes tasting and adjusting the seasoning (salt, pepper, chilli flakes, veg stock powder). Then I just left the slow cooker to do its thing. Several hours on the low heat setting, and voilà - perfect lentil soup.

I was out for dinner the other night with a journo friend, and mentioned slow cookers to him, but didn't get around to nipping his ear about how wonderful they are. I think I might direct him to this item once I've posted it.

* That new year's resolution is to try, as far as possible, to eat meat (or fish) only every second day, alternating with vegetarian fare. There are two reasons for this. One is that I think it is healthier on a fruit/veg consumption front, and on a weight management front. The other is that I am persuaded that meat reduction is very good for several environmental reasons. So, we'll be healthier, slimmer, and the planet will be a little less damaged. What's not to love about that?

Knock 'Em Dead

2007-12-20T13:17:00.000Z

Yesterday, I popped along briefly to The Magic Cave in Covent Garden, a magic stall owned and run by my fellow homosexualist magician, Lee Hathaway, and his business partner, Neil Henry. Lee told me a story that I just had to share.

Often in magic catalogues, an effect will be described as "This will fry them", or "This will floor them". Actually, one particular magic shop in London has a web site which claims many of their tricks will "flaw" the audience ("This will flaw them"). I suspect that's due to the odd way people in England can't pronounce the letter "r" correctly (unlike Scottish folks such as myself), and so they have confused "floor" with "flaw".

Another claim that is sometimes made is "This will kill them!". Or "This will knock 'em dead". Or some similar turn of phrase. Obviously, we don't mean that to be taken literally.

But here's the twist. Neil was performing last week for a bishop (or an arch-bishop, which is a bishop with a bow and arrow). He was doing an effect where the spectator holds a pack of cards, and while it is in their hands, it turns into a solid block of perspex. The moment when the magician asks the spectator to check in their hands, and they discover that the transformation has taken place is usually something of a highlight. It gets a good reaction. It kills them! On this occasion, alas, it did. The bishop looked, gasped, clutched at his heart, and had a stroke.

Well, okay, I don't know for sure whether the poor man actually did survive. I suspect he probably did, but what an awfully embarrassing situation to find oneself in as a performer - accidentally shocking the audience to death or close to it, rather than merely entertaining them.

I suspect Neil might not get a repeat booking at that particular establishment. Not through any fault of his own, but because from now on they'll probably stick to nothing racier than Daniel O'Donnell tribute bands.

Christmas Present

2007-12-18T16:15:00.001Z

My Christmas present to myself this year is that I can remove from my little motorbike anything that looks like this 'ere picture.

This morning, I sat and passed my motorbike test. Yay!

Only a few days ago it was looking like it wasn't going to happen. Following a fall on Friday (caused by a dickhead pulling out right in front of me quite deliberately - and then driving off after causing an accident), when I got on the bike on Saturday for some training, I only lasted a couple of minutes before realising that my nerve had gone and I just couldn't do it. I threw in the towel. However, on the way home, I decided to go back the next day and try again, but on a smaller bike, with a view to doing the test on a small bike. I felt more comfortable on a 125cc machine, and I thought I might as well give it a go, take advantage of the training I had already paid for, and be in with a chance of passing the test. The down side would be that if I passed on a 125cc machine, I would have two years of being on a restricted licence, limiting the power of the bikes I'm allowed to ride.

Quite frankly, my experience over the last few weeks has taught me that I don't mind being limited on the power front. I'm not yet comfortable on bigger bikes, and I won't be comfortable on them until I've spent quite a bit more time just getting used to general, everyday things to do with riding.

So, on that footage, I did the training on Sunday, and then did an hour or so this morning before heading out of the test centre. You fail if you commit a single major fault, and I was worried that the u-turn would give me a fail. I got through it, though, just. You can also commit up to 14 minor faults and still pass. I committed 7, so it was an okay pass. My steering was a bit wobbly from time to time, and I missed a signal on double-turn (right immediately followed by left), but that was about it.

I am now officially a big, hairy biker. So I'd better cancel my monthly order of Veet.

Recovery Discovery

2007-12-11T17:18:00.001Z

Yesterday morning I was barely able to put any weight on my left foot as a result of my recent motorbike-related injury. This morning, and all of today, it has been easier and easier to get about on. So, I'm still all systems go for more training this weekend, followed by my test on Tuesday. I hope I'll pass it, and get to join the ranks of folks like Tickersoid, who passed his test a couple of weeks ago. And if you should happen to read this, Tickers, let me offer my most heartfelt congratulations. They might sour and turn to envy if I fail my own test, but for now ...

:)

Take the sprain

2007-12-10T13:01:00.000Z

I spent this weekend learning how to ride a motorbike. I'm doing Direct Access, so if I pass the test (a week tomorrow), I will be legally entitled to ride any motorcycle. Unfortunately, that is looking a little less likely this morning that it did yesterday morning. Or even mid-afternoon yesterday.

On Saturday, I arrived a little late at the place I was being trained. The satnav got me a bit lost, although it's possible that if I had trusted it when it started going a bit funny, things would have worked out alright in the end. I was being trained by a chap called Paul, and my fellow trainee was a chap called Dave. The weather was awful, but we had a good few hours out on the road on little 125cc machines. I even managed to do quite well with the u-turn, which had been a real struggle for me when I did the CBT.

On Sunday, Dave and I had a different trainer, a fellow called Lea. The weather wasn't nearly as bad, the training was really good, and after half on hour on the little bikes, he moved us up on to 500cc machines. God, those things are heavy!

All went well. After a couple of hours on the road, a break for lunch, and a bit more riding, we went to a playground to practice u-turns and slow-riding, prior to trying it out on the road. One of the bikes developed a problem with its clutch, so we were heading back to swap bikes before attempting the u-turn in the road. On that occasion, Dave was leading Lea was in the middle, and I was following. Alas, metres away from the entrance to the school where we had been practising, I lost control at a corner (almost certainly because of a patch of oil on the road, combined with a wee squeeze on the front breaks). The front wheel slipped forward and to the right, sending me toppling to the road, the bike forcing my ankle around at an awkward angle, and pinning my leg for a few very uncomfortable seconds.

Oh, the pain!

I took a few minutes to recover myself, and after a while, Lea returned to find out where I had disappeared to. I hobbled back in to the school where we had been practising u-turns, and decided to sit out the rest of the day (which was only about 45 minutes). Then I got back on the bike, rode back to where my car was parked, and drove home. The ankle wasn't too bad last night, but it became more uncomfortable overnight, so I asked my Lovely Husband™ to drive me in to the local A&E this morning before he went to work. (Bless his little cotton sox, he went back home tidied up the place, and went shopping for me whilst I was busy getting x-rays and waiting around a lot for people to push my wheelchair.)

Fortunately, the ankle isn't broken, and there isn't anything seriously wrong with the knee or the calf (both of which suffered a bit). I got some crutches, and I'm trying to put as much weight on the bad foot as I can, because it seems that the more I try to walk on it, the more I can.

I just hope it's okay for next weekend, otherwise I'll have paid all this money for the bike training, but won't be able to go. That would not be a good thing.

Mission accomplished!

2007-12-06T14:44:00.000Z

It took quite a bit of doing, but as of about 20:45 last night, my lovely, shiny new motorcycle is safely parked outside the flat.

I say it took quite a bit of doing - I meant it!

The weather yesterday was dreadful. After waiting a few hours for it to clear, filling the idle hours by getting boring but necessary administrative tasks out of the way, I decided I had to go for it or risk having the bike sit on a street in south London for another night and day.

I got to where it was parked around 14:30, stood at the side of the road and kitted myself up - the jacket, the balaclava, the helmet, the waterproof trousers, the boots, the gloves. Obviously, if I were a superhero and there had been a phone box nearby, this phase of the operation would have been over very quickly. As it was, it took me ... some time.

I wonder if the rise in mobile phone usage, and consequent decline in numbers of phone booths, has made life harder for superheroes. If any such people read this blog, do let me know.

So, a mere half hour after getting there, I jumped on and tried to start her up. Nothing. The engine was turning, but wouldn't start properly. Eventually (after another half-hour), I walked her into a side street, and tried pushing her and starting her at the same time. Still nothing. I tried using the choke. Still nothing.

I had resigned myself to walking the bike all the way home - a distance of at least 15 km, probably more. However, after the first km or so, I happened across a bike shop. My lucky day, I thought! I went in and asked if they could have a look at it. The owner came out and spent a long time telling me how he couldn't really do anything, and was really busy, I would be better checking it in for a service, blah blah. Eventually, he took pity on my and agreed to try jump-starting it. It started up very easily. He asked me for a fiver. I have him a tenner, and my gratitude.

However, although he had returned the bike to a working condition, he hadn't been able to magic up some confidence for me. That was a pity, because I needed some, having lost quite a lot over the preceding 24 hours. I walked the bike some more, with the engine idling.
All through Westminster. Past the houses of Parliament. Past Downing Street. Somewhere along Victoria Embankment, I tried to get on and ride it, but wasn't feeling very confident. I continued to walk it. Past St Paul's, through the city (by now it was rush hour).

Before I'd ridden a bike, I had no idea how heavy they are. I suspect most people don't realise this. Walking through the city, stopping and starting to allow for the behaviour of other pedestrians, was really exhausting! When the bike is moving, to have to stop quickly is a strain. To get it going again is an effort. Yet both were necessary to avoid bumping into people.

At Aldgate East, I stopped outside a corner shop that I used to frequent when I lived in Number One Prescott Street. By this time, I had walked at least 5 km, gone up and down a few little hills - which seem a lot bigger when you're pushing a motorbike, hadn't taken any food or drink for a few hours, and had sweated at least a litre into my clothing. I popped into the shop to get some Irn Bru to keep me going, and then decided that it might be wise to remove the waterproof trousers, since it wasn't actually raining any more. When I took them off, it became apparent that I'd been sweating so much that they were completely drenched - it was as if I've been swimming whilst wearing them.

And back on the road again. I was now walking through some very quiet streets, so I decided to try getting on the bike again. I struggled a bit. I'd been walking for so long that my legs were cramping when I tried to ride. But I got going, after a few false starts. And then I rode for about three streets. Then I got towards busy streets again, so I got off and started pushing. Again.

Twenty minutes or so later found me in a street near Stepney Green, within 50 metres of Charlie's Bar, the pub where I used to perform every week. And in which I have shared a drink with Tickersoid and Jungle Jane, no less. I got on the bike again. And got going. And my confidence returned. And I found I was riding with reasonable comfort, despite the missing foot peg.

Along Roman Road. Past Victoria Park. Up into Hackney (awful traffic). Through to Dalston. Right onto Lea Bridge Road. Whizzing along past the turn-offs for Walthamstow and Leytonstone. Past the Whipps Cross roundabout. And then I was home. Exhausted, but exhilarated, very much in one piece, and delighted that once I got going, it got a whole lot easier. And in that whole time, I only stalled twice, and that was in the awful traffic mess in Hackney.

Now I can pop out and have a go on the bike any time, can ride it near home without fear of facing a great big journey that I don't feel ready for, and can begin to experiment with useful things like getting to the gym by bike, or popping onto an A-road or two. It's the beginning of an exciting new chapter.

Not so easy rider

2007-12-05T09:47:00.000Z

Beginners luck isn't always good.

After a recent exchange about motorbikes with Nick over at Unnatural Vision, I realised that what I had been planning with regard to my future existence as a big, butch biker was madness. Insanity.

My original intention was to complete some lessons (two this weekend, two the following weekend), pass the exam (hopefully), and then buy myself a big, powerful bike.

Reality check.

Five and half days of riding would leave me ill-prepared to handle a big bike. They are powerful. And dangerous. And one little slip of the hand and you find yourself halfway up a building. Or a tree.

I decided, therefore, that a much more sensible approach would be to buy a trainer bike, a modest 125cc job, such as I am currently entitled to ride, following my recent success with the CBT (for any SM aficionados who happen to be reading, this is Compulsory Basic Training, rather than cock and ball torture). Getting such a bike would mean that I would be able to get much more practice in before the test, because I'll be able to go out on my own during the week rather than only getting to ride when I'm being trained. After the test, I can take as long as I like before deciding that the time has come to get something a big more grunty between my legs. I won't go for a big bike until I'm happy that I am completely in control of it at all times. I'm thinking at least a year, possibly longer, because I might end up liking the little bike enough to stick with it.

So convinced was I that this was a good idea, I decided to have a look yesterday on that there interweb. And lo! I found a treasure - a seven month old SkyJet 125. (Alas, I don't have a picture of the self-same bike yet, but I found a snap of the same model in the same colour, so you get to see what it looks like.) It was going for a song, because the owner is emigrating. I high-tailed it over to take a look, stopping off at a cash machine to withdraw the appropriate amount of funds, and now I am the proud owner of this beautiful machine.

Alas, since I had only been on a bike for one day (when I did the CBT), I ended up feeling a bit lost when it came to actually riding it home. The guy selling it had started it, but once he'd gone, when I tried to move off, I stalled straight away. Could I get it started again? Not for love nor money. And here's where the bad beginner's luck kicked in. I got off to try and work out why it wasn't starting. I experimented with gears and the clutch and the throttle. And then it kicked into life, and took off. Out of my hands. Falling over as it did so. Taking me with it. Ouch! And upon righting everything again, I discovered that I had broken off the left foot peg.

Fortunately, the owner had popped out for something, and passed me on his way back in. He asked if everything was okay (since we had parted company ten minutes earlier). I explained that I was having some problems remembering all the stuff I did on CBT, and confessed about the broken peg. I felt quite guilty, because the guy had taken really good care of the bike, and here was me damaging it within minutes of getting my hands on it. He checked it out, started it up, and then walked it to a place where it could be parked overnight, so that I could come back and ride it home in daylight, when it will be a bit easier, and I'll feel a bit more comfortable doing it. So, today I'm going back to South London to pick it up.

I've been sent information about where to get a replacement left foot peg. The company that does them has promised next day delivery. Getting it home today will be something of a chore, but I won't have to wait long before I can ride it properly without having to keep my foot at a funny angle.

I had a couple of unfortunate incidents when I started driving, too, so I'm chalking this one up to experience. And at least I didn't sustain any injury, apart from wounded pride and a slightly bruised shin.

Vroooooom!

This product is not available in the shops

2007-12-04T14:30:00.000Z

High in Andes, in the remote region of Aixud, a small collection of farmers grow the beans that go into the world's finest chocolate. This has been their livelihood for the last two hundred years, and their produce has been bought up entirely by the world's finest chocolatiers, going to make the most exclusive and expensive chocolates in the world, enjoyed by only those small numbers of very wealthy people who can afford them. A secret known only to the super-rich. A privilege.

But now those farmers have decided that the time has come for the rest of the world to enjoy their delicious produce, and so they have created their own chocolate drink, and made it available in quality stores throughout the world.

So, next time someone asks, "Would you like a hot drink?" , you'll know what to say ...

Aixud Cocoa

The Job That Wasn't

2007-11-30T12:02:00.001Z

For the last couple of days, I have been happy and secure in the knowledge that I'll soon be back in gainful employment. I have been cheerily turning down offers of interviews.

Then last night, I got a call to tell me that the job I thought I had was no longer available, largely because the person who had offered it to me had been summarily dismissed from their role in the company, and everything else had been put on ice. And that situation isn't likely to change any time soon.

So, back to JobServe to get on with the hunting, I guess. Doh!

Many's a true word ...

2007-11-27T19:02:00.000Z

... spoken in jest. Not ingest. That's eating.

And indeed, many's a true word spoken or sung in lyric form. Sometimes only hinting at a subtext that, from time to time I just yearn to tease out.

I have no idea why today is going to be the day that I do this, but here goes.

Oasis. I was never a big fan. I hear them sing:

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how

My brain automatically adds, sotto voce:

because I'm an inarticulate oaf

Call me judgemental. (He used to hang out with Judge Dredd, so he gets to wear that rather sexy uniform. Sexy in a fascist bully-boy sort of way, alas, but sexy nonetheless.) Oh, and feel free to swap "boor" for "oaf" if you'd rather.

Oasis. A pair of walking Klein bottles.

Jerry In The Linen*

2007-11-22T13:18:00.000Z

In many respects, I think the normal, everyday people of the UK have much more in common with the normal, everyday people of Germany than with any of our other European neighbours. We aren't haw-hee-haw-hee-hawn like the French. We're not all ai-yay-yay-yay-yay! like the Spanish. And I won't even try for a crude Italian stereotype because I'm not sure how to spell it convincingly. No, if anything, we're much closer to slightly plodding but jovial hurdy-burdy-hurr of the lovely German volk.

This was brought home to me with some force at the weekend when our trip to Manchesterford threw up a totally unexpected delight. There is a huge - did I say huge? I meant huge! - Christmas market in the middle of the city that runs from mid-November all the way up to the festive season. The preponderance of the stalls seem to be German, although Holland and the Scandinavian countries are also well-represented.

Lots of stalls serving hot mulled wine, great big wursts in a bun (and we all like a nice big sausage in between the buns, innit?), sweets, cakes, candle-powered glockenspeils ... marvellous.

In addition to a couple of big sausages, plates of lovely, warming stew (and heaven knows, the warming was much needed - it was perishing cold!), and the odd tumbler of hot, spiced wine, we also picked up some marvellous spongiform puppets as presents.

*** NEOLOGISM FLASH ***

I saw an ad for Borders, who are giving away a seasons greetings card to everyone who buys a copy of Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion. The card reads "O come, all ye faithless". I like it a lot - I know a few people who would probably appreciate them, too. But as I was writing this, it struck me that I want a word to use instead of "the festive season", "yuletide", "xmas" (which isn't really fooling anyway, and besides, the x is just shorthand), or worst of all, "the holiday season". So, here it is ... (drum roll) ...

Mythmas

I like it, although I have to admit that if you use it, you might just sound like you have a speech impediment.

*** End of NEOLOGISM FLASH ***

Anyhow, to get back on topic, the markets were great, and the German people who come over to get involved in them seem friendly, jovial, and lovely, and just keen to get along with everyone. It was really lovely. This kind of thing is when the whole European experience works well.

Incidentally, we hadn't heard of this market thing at all before, but apparently it has been going on for a few years now. If they had such a thing in London, we'd know all about it. As it is, we're going to the Winter Wonderland, as previously mentioned, and we're now expecting to be a bit underwhelmed after our Manchesterford experience. But we'll see.

Watch this space (as the gynaecology lecturer said to her students).

*One of the curious things about New Zealand is that they refer to bed sheets, towels, and things of that ilk collectively as "Manchester". I imagine it's a reference back to the days when such products were made in that city, although I would have thought Birmingham would have been a more obvious choice. It also makes me wonder why they don't refer to cutlery as "Sheffield". An ex of mine had a grandmother who insisted on referring to the crockery as "Delft". Even when none of it had come from there.

How Not To Save Money

2007-11-19T09:16:00.000Z

We went to Manchesterford this weekend, mainly because I was performing at The Gay Wedding Show. Unfortunately, I made a major error in booking accommodation. I looked for gay-friendly hotels and B&Bs. I ignored some of the results - the places actually on Canal Street (too noisy!) and the big chains, and went instead for a B&B that claimed to be a couple of miles away from the Gay Village, but not very far.

It turned out to be further away than the proprietors made out. Much further. And it was horrible! The room looked like it had last been decorated in the 70s, and I suspect that was when the mattress was last replaced. What furniture there was seemed to have been reclaimed from skips, or possibly auctioned off when an old folks home was closed down. And for the distance from town, and the low quality, it wasn't that cheap either. The couple whose place it is were very friendly, although I don't think they have a great grasp of English. For example, their web site explains how the prices are charged on a per-room basis rather than per-person. It then goes on to explain that a double room is £x per night, but if two people are staying in it, it's £x each. Breakfast is extra.

It was so bad that, after popping back into town and spending some time enjoying Manchester, we checked ourselves in to a lovely, fancy and very expensive hotel, went back to the B&B, picked up our stuff, dropped off the keys, and fled. I had paid in advance, so we weren't doing them out of any money or anything.

Given the cost of taxi fares between the city centre and the B&B, and how much we would have shelled out if we had stayed there (which would have required another two cab rides), the total cost would have been not very far off what we paid for the posh place we ended up in. As it happened, we ended up spending most of what it would have cost us, plus the fancy place on top of that. But at least we got to stay somewhere pleasant, and didn't feel like we were spending the night in a borstal.

Getting In To Gear

2007-11-15T09:01:00.000Z

When he arrived home from work last night, my Lovely Husband™ was immediately put on the spot as I demanded that he stroke my hard, shiny helmet. For I'd been to a motorbicycling shop and bought myself some accoutrements for use in a new and rather exciting part of my life: being a biker.

I don't think I'll go for the long hair and skull tattoos look, although my experience to date is that most of them aren't like that anyway. And they're all very encouraging. They like people to take an interest in their bikes. There's a very strong community spirit.

Anyway, I am now the proud owner of an Airoh helmet (which I got for a little over half price, and which doesn't really look anything like the Optimus Prime helmet in the picture), some Oxtar boots and a rather marvellous pair of Halvarssons gloves. The Lovely Husband™ tried them all on, and was most taken with the boots, which made him feel like Spiderman. (I had wondered about the sticky white goo on his hands :) And somewhat ironic, given his arachnophobia.

Actually, the way he wore them reminded me of how he is when he's wearing the fluffy white boots I got him a few years ago. He loves them - he gets to recreate S-Club 7 videos as often as he likes. And I believe he's planning to wear them when a crowd of us go along to the Winter Wonderland in Jekyll Park.

So, now I have to sign up for a few lessons on the bike, and hopefully I'll get my full licence within a few weeks. Then I'll be able to get a bike as big and as powerful as I like. Can't wait!

I don't know why this has come upon me, although I have fancied the idea for quite a few years. My Lovely Husband™, my dad and my mother in law have all expressed doubt, concern, fear, and worry at the thought of me going around on a bike. However, I have stressed to them that, for one thing, I am a very careful driver. I am routinely mocked by members of my family for driving like an old woman. That would be an old woman who doesn't have any points on her licence, isn't prone to speeding, and has an impeccable no claims bonus. I'm quite happy to continue in the old lady mould, thank you very much. Another thing that I point out is that I'm not some wild and wicked teenager who is out to prove what an enormous manhood he has by driving into a tree at high speed. I'll be 40 in a couple of years, for goodness sakes! I don't feel the need to prove anything by going too fast, showing off or riding dangerously. However, I do find riding a bike really quite exhilarating.

It's also true that, having spent some time on a bike, I know that it will take a while before I feel fully confident and in control of the thing. There is zero risk at the moment of me being anything other than completely focussed on riding safely any time I'm in the saddle.

My dad tried to persuade me to consider a scooter instead. My lesbian sister has one, and although I'm not convinced that it qualifies her for Dykes On Bikes, she loves it so much that she's hardly been off it since she got it (last month).

When that persuasive attempt failed, my dad pointed out that if he didn't want me to do it, and my Lovely Husband™ didn't want me to do it, and my mother in law didn't want me to do it, but I was going ahead and doing it anyway, then that was really selfish of me. It was a clever route to go down, but it didn't cut any ice with me. I agreed. It is a selfish thing, but dammit, I work hard, I bring in a good income, and it really isn't very often that I do something just for me. So yes, it's selfish, but I don't feel bad about that.

Besides, although my Lovely Husband™ has expressed concern that I might end up in some horrible accident, he does acknowledge that I am very safe driver, and I think there is a part of him that finds the whole idea quite sexy. I'm sure it will only take one or two turns around the block on the pillion to convince him. Or perhaps a sidecar, which is what my mum would like.

Interpretation And A Mare's Cock

2007-11-06T18:13:00.000Z

Increasingly, I see situations in my own life or in the lives of others, when much pain, outrage, indignance (if there is such a word), anger, hostility - I could go on, but I can't be bothered reaching for my word dinosaur (thesaurus) - could have been avoided if someone first stated their intention before going on to say (or write) whatever they were going to say (or write).

So many times, I have seen people respond badly because they misunderstood the intent, and reacted in ignorance of the fact that the person who was communicating was actually trying to help, wasn't looking to undermine, had put much thought in before opening mouth or putting finger to keyboard.

Unfortunately, it isn't always possible to second-guess where the dialogue is going to go once the emotional brain-stem takes over and everything starts being filtered and distorted through instantaneously created barriers of prejudice and assumption. It would be great to be able to say up front: "In saying this I don't mean ..." But that's a bit like trying to disprove a negative. You can't possibly cover all the things that you don't mean. You might be able to head off a few possible routes, but the chances of covering even a fraction of the likely candidates is slim, unless you are prepared to spend more time apologising in advance than you spend actually delivering your message.

The fault is usually with the receiver rather than the sender. If you hear or read something that causes you to respond in a strongly negative way, the sensible thing to do is to check with the sender whether you have understood them and their intentions correctly. That way, you can avoid misunderstandings before they arise. Few people are socially skilled enough to do this, though. Admittedly, it isn't always necessary. I could have started this blog entry by stating what my intention was, but that would have been more than a little facetious. Although on the plus side, it gave me an excuse to use one of only two words in the English language that features all five of the vowels, making one appearance each, in order. (The other is abstemious, in case you were wondering.)

Making my intentions clear is one of those things that I want to become better at. Then I can be smug, and look down on all those people who don't or can't do it :-)

There are other things I want to change about my own use of language, in particular, swearing, and using expressions originating from the west coast of the US. They are both things I want to stop doing, but it's just so frighteningly easy to slip into it. I was discussing this on Sunday with the ever-lovely Tickersoid, one of the easiest people on the planet to have a really good conversation with, and a man blessed with more charm than seven series of an Aaron Spelling show. He tells me he has given up worrying about the creeping west coastisms. I'm just not fond of how it sounds when I over-use the word "like".

On a tangentially related note, I was in a taxi this morning between Southampton train station and the office in which I can currently working. On the radio was what sounded like a standard talk-radio show. Interestingly, however, although the callers seemed to be the standard knee-jerk reactionaries, the host of the show seemed to be a very well-informed, liberal, thoughtful but practical type. The kind of person who can come up with really useful, good, workable solutions to social problems without dissolving into PC wrist-waving self-incriminatory ineffectiveness, and whilst avoiding anything that is genuinely discriminatory, mindless, misguided or based on prejudice.

At the risk of destroying what might otherwise have been an elegant narrative flow, I'm going to jump back a bit and explain how I came to be having drinks with Tickersoid. I was in Cardiff for the Gay Wedding Show. I'd arranged it some months ago. My reason for being there was to provide part of the entertainment, to walk around and perform magic to those visiting the show. In the event, I ended up having a table upon which I made a little display of some magic props and business cards. Although there was a steady trickle of people through the show, it never really got to the point where I could properly mingle and work the crowd, so I contented myself largely with nabbing people as they went past and performing for them. It was fun, but tiring,. One or two couples seemed very interested in hiring me, so that made it all worthwhile.

Shortly before the thing kicked off, the organiser (Gino) made a short, introductory speech, and then introduced the Mayor of Cardiff. She gave her speech (which I think was intended for visitors to the show rather than for the exhibitors, but hey), and then wandered around for a while. Now, at an event like this, where I was expected to mingle and entertain, one of the things that I like to do is having something that makes me stand out a bit so that people look, stare, or do a double-take, and I can use that as a way of breaking the ice and getting a performance starting. With that in mind, I was wearing a long piece of thin chain (actual chain rather than jewellery) around my neck, which had a very large cock ring on it. This allowed me on a few occasions to get the ball rolling by going up to people and saying "I noticed that you can hardly take your eyes off my enormous cock ... ring." I like to set the tone up front. I didn't notice the mayor had made her way around to my table until too late, so suddenly I find Gino introducing me to the Mayor of Cardiff whilst I'm sporting a very large cock ring. It only made matters worse when I apologised for the naughtiness of my accessory, because she didn't know what it was, but was angling for an explanation. I declined to oblige.

Incidentally, once or twice folks who read this blog have asked where they can see me perform. The Gay Wedding Show in Cardiff was one such rare opportunity. Another is coming up soon. I'll be doing the same thing for the Gay Wedding Show in Manchester, which is on Sunday the 18th of November.

Weighty Issues
I heard a parent saying this to a toddler today in Southampton:

You can have a doughnut if you eat this sausage roll first.

If it had been an apple rather than a sausage roll that the little nipper had been refusing to chow down on, I probably wouldn't have noticed.

Left Or Right?

2007-10-25T20:00:00.000Z

My Lovely Husband™ sent me through a link to an article in an online newspaper based in Perth, Australia. It featured this animated GIF. Click on it to go to the original article if you like. I love it. To most people, the dancer appears to be turning anti-clockwise. To some, she appears to be turning clockwise. And if you go about it the correct way, you should be able to get her to change direction. It took me a while, and it was really frustrating, but I have finally learned how to change her direction at will, and my life feels a little more complete as a result.

Enjoy!

What is really bizarre is that this is meant to indicate the relative strength of your left brain vs right brain, and I have found that if I look up and to the left, then look back at the picture, she will be rotating anti-clockwise; if I look up and to the right then look at the picture, she will be rotating clockwise.

Marvellous things, brains.

Spam Chicago A Lot

2007-10-16T21:42:00.000Z

Okay, I'm not suggesting either that we should send lots of junk email to people in Chicago (either the city or the musical that bears its name). Nor tinned meat products from Hornell. (Did I get that name right?) The subject of this particular blog is merely an ugly squishing together of a couple of musical titles, viz. Spamalot and Chicago, as a way of appearing to bring together two topics that are completely unrelated other than by the fact that both have had some of my attention over the last couple of days.

First, the spam thing. Actually, I don't mean to talk about the musical at all. However, I wonder if anyone other than me has noticed a significant (four- or five-fold) increased in the amount of junk mail they are receiving? This has happened to me in the last few days. I first noticed it on Saturday morning. Instead of the usual 5 - 10 messages in gmail junk folder, there were 40 or 50. And thus has it continued for the last few days. I've also had a few instances recently of emails I send not reaching their destinations, or emails sent to me that fail to materialise. I wonder whether the global email system is finally melting down under pressure from the low-life scum who send unsolicited commercial email. And the various scam things.

So, now to the other topic, which this time does concern a musical: Chicago. My cousin and his wife visited us at the weekend, and one of the main things we had planned was to go and see a big west end show. We agreed in advance that Chicago was the best option, mostly because it enjoyed the most popular appeal amongst the four of us. Admittedly, my cousin being a rugby-playing chap, seeing musicals isn't high on his list of priorities, bless 'im. The one thing that made me slightly worried was that the part of Mama Morton is currently being played by Kelly Osbourne. This doesn't strike me as the most inspired bit of casting, nor a decision in which consideration of talent was a factor.
However, the reviews had been surprisingly favourable, and having now seen her performance, I have to admit that the reviewers were probably bribed. Whilst she did manage, most - but not all - of the time, to hit the notes relatively well, she could only do so by maintaining a singular focus on that task to the detriment of anything else. Such as moving. Or acting. Or putting any emotion, comedy, life or spark into the performance. Thus, I was witness to a performance of a hugely funny song (When You're Good To Mama) made to sound dull and lifeless. The young Osbourne was also pretty useless when it came to speaking parts. She delivered the lines, but someone might have considered that an ability to speak isn't quite enough to pull off a decent performance in a show.

In fairness, she wasn't the only disappointment. The guy playing Amos was wrong, wrong, wrong. If only Kelly Osbourne could have played him. At least his character is meant to be dull, dull, dull. And he was, but not in an entertaining and moving way. Just dull.

Billy Flynn was also a disappointment, and couldn't carry his lines above the chorus, so ended up spending most of his best numbers being drowned out by the backing singers.

The two leads, though, were great. Highlights in an otherwise disappointing evening. Well, them and the hot bodies of the male chorus line girls. Wow! Those were worth seeing.

I think the most entertaining part of the evening was when my cousin's chair broke about 5 minutes before the interval. Completely. The cast iron supports just snapped right through. One of the staff (or perhaps they're colleagues these days) tried to find us different seats together, but couldn't. They did find two spare ones in the stalls. I suggested that my Lovely Husband™ (who is scared of heights, and was struggling being in the Upper Circle) and cousin's wife (who was most keen to see a musical) should take them. A good move all round, I reckon.

From their better, and much more expensive seats, those two enjoyed the second half much more than we did, and came away much happier with the experience as a whole. I suspect that even a better seat wouldn't have created a better impression for me. The film was great. The stage show ... it's some songs very loosely strung together, with a minimal set, and none of the glitz that one might reasonably expect, given the cost of the tickets.

I know - I'm a Grumpy Old Man!

Misjudged Jargon

2007-10-10T11:36:00.000Z

Sainsbury's staff have clearly been instructed that these days, they are colleagues.

I don't have a problem with that. For decades I've referred to the people I work with as colleagues. I find it has a more pleasant, inclusive overtone than co-worker. The latter seems a bit disdainful, and suggests that you wouldn't be seen dead hanging out with those people if it weren't for the fact that you have an employer in common.

Also, some people are prone to leaving out the hyphen, and "coworker" has always suggested to me something like an updated version of "cow poke". You know, like how firemen became fire fighters. And actresses became actors, for the most part without the need for surgery (to effect the change of job title, at any rate). I could see how the cow pokes of this world might want a job title that was a little bit less open to misunderstanding.

However, I think the staff at Sainsbury's may need a little bit more training. For the segment of the job market we're looking at here, when I say a little bit more training, I probably mean they should have paid attention a bit more in school, because we're talking about a fundamental lack of comprehension of a fairly standard English word.

The reason I think this is that I was in our local Sainsbury's, trying something new today*. A fellow shopper wanted to ask a question, so he approached someone who looked like they might work there, and asked, "Are you a member of staff?"

Rather than say "Yes", and getting on with it, the response was,

Um, I'm a colleague, yes.

The best of it was that this "correction" was delivered in really rather a condescending voice. You could almost hear the accompanying slightly smug internal monologue:

Oh, you little, little, ignorant, ignorant person. You understand almost nothing of the glamorous world of fast moving consumer goods. We haven't been 'staff' for such a long time. Your quaint term of address is so last millennium! We're now colleagues. Yes, we're all colleagues. Sainsbury's doesn't have staff any more. Just colleagues.

Someone needs to sit that chap (and probably many others like him) down and explain that whilst the people who work with him are his colleagues, and he is theirs, it doesn't actually stop him from being a member of staff; and for the most part, he is not the colleague of the people who shop in his store, so it makes no sense for him to describe himself to them as "a colleague".

So. Try something new today. Try teaching English to Sainsbury's staff.

* I've never been a huge fan of this kind of catchphrase, tagline, or whatever other marketing jargon gets applied to such sloganeering these days. Sainsbury's - try something new today. I've never tried shoplifting. I suspect they would argue that they aren't encouraging me to do so, but there's very little else in their shop that would fit the bill, with the possible exception of feminine hygiene products. And to some extent, those aren't unexplored territory to me, either.

I feel I ought to explain that last bit. When I was young (about 5, I think), I found an intimate hygiene product belonging to my mum, and asked her what it was for. She said it was for cleaning one's bum. So, next time I happened to be dropping one off and ran out of loo roll, I scampered off to where they were kept and used one. It didn't seem to be the most effective way of wiping. And it wouldn't flush, either. That's how I got myself caught.

Missing Inaction

2007-10-10T08:26:00.000Z

I know that I haven't been blogging much at all of late. I think this corresponds to the period last year where I shut my virtual gob for a while. For some reason August - October seems to be a non-blogging time for me, and I noticed that it seems to be for quite a few other folks, too.

In truth, work has been taking me away quite a lot in the last few months, and I have much less time for such diversions as social notworking sites. I don't know how facebookers cope. (I still get regular emails telling me I've been added to facebook as someone's friend, but I continue to resist the temptation to sign up.)

Poison Ivy

2007-10-10T07:00:00.000Z

On Sunday, I quietly acknowledged that I have now been gracing this planet with my presence for 37 years. Clad in a lovely, warm coat - a gift from my Lovely Husband™ - we made our way to The Ivy to meet up with the ever charming A&B for dinner. As it happens, I have had a long-standing self-imposed obligation to treat A&B to dinner there, so it was my shout. And just as well, I think, because it put me in the position to do something about an injustice that might otherwise have obtained.

The food was lovely. The service was pretty poor. Here is one example of the level of poverty. I ordered a side of vegetables to go with my main course. It didn't arrive along with everything else. By the time I caught the attention of a waiter (their attention was not easy to attract, and I wasn't in a good position for attracting it), I had finished my main course. Only then did I get the chance to ask where the side dish was, and only then (after another few minutes) did it turn up. By which time it more or less constituted a separate course, albeit on the same plate.

In between receiving dessert menus and actually being able to place an order we waited about 20 minutes. In between placing dessert orders and having the things turned up, we waited about another 20. Then again trying to get some attention so that we could ask for the bill. The place wasn't especially busy, and they didn't look in the least bit short-staffed.

So, when the bill arrived (£300 for four of us), the service charge was somewhere in the region of £36, and had already been added. They had also added an additional cover charge of £2 per person. I asked to have the service charge removed, so the woman sorting out the bill (who was about the fifth or sixth member of staff who had dealt with our table that night) went away and got the head waiter, who asked what the problem was with the bill. I just said I wasn't happy to pay the service charge because the service had been quite poor. He promptly took it off, and the world improved just a little bit.

I've been to quite a few good restaurants in my time. In every place I've been that charges the kind of prices we were paying, the service has been exemplary. In The Ivy, it was not so. Sadly, I think they are now relying on their name to continue to bring them customers, despite not offering good value for money any more. I feel particularly sorry for the chefs, who send out excellent food, only to have the overall dining experience undermined by the serving staff. And I feel sorry for the serving staff who individually can be attentive, friendly and helpful, but collectively are not organised well enough to run the restaurant properly or efficiently. But there you have it.

Stupid users!

2007-10-03T16:05:00.000Z

I'm very sympathetic to people who complain, rightly, when a piece of technology (software or hardware) is difficult to use, and/or the documentation does not do a good job of explaining how to use it properly.

However, I have very little sympathy for users who get stuck, or make a mess, because they haven't bothered to look, listen or learn.

Last year, I dealt with a case of this so acute that it passed beyond frustrating and actually became funny. I had written a little DOS script (I know - how last millennium!) to do a lot of tedious work for the users rather than obliging them to do it all. The script relied on a number of steps, and attempted to elicit information from the users at least once in the process. If the user hit return before actually providing the information, the process abended. Unfortunately, the limitations of the environment meant that I couldn't loop them back and say "Oi! You were meant to type something there!"

To get around this, I made sure that the script put up information clearly explaining what was going to happen, and explicitly telling people that they should read each screen as they worked through the script. They shouldn't just hit "Any Key" without thinking. I pointed out to the users that the script did this, and emphasised that they really ought to read everything on the screen before proceeding, since this was a process they hadn't performed before. They all nodded and agreed. Then proceeded to ignore the warning, ignore the information on the screen, rush through the process, and waste their own time by stuffing it up. This was whilst I was sitting in front of them, immediately after I had told them to read everything and they had said they would!

The second and third groups faired no better, despite the fact that, having stressed the importance of reading everything on the screen before proceeding, I then went on to mock their colleagues, who had done exactly what I told them not to do. The second and third groups laughed at their colleagues stupidity - then went on to do exactly the same things themselves!

It beggared belief.

I was going to explain how this is similar to the situation I find myself in now, but as I started typing it, I realised that the process is much more complex, and explaining just how the users are getting it wrong - beyond the simple and obvious fact that they clearly haven't read my beautifully crafted, crystal clear instructions - would be even more tedious to read than it would be to write.

Let me short-cut that mutually unpleasant process by just writing: "Users? Thick eejits, more like."

Thank you all (or few - that might be more accurate) for bearing with me over the last few weeks. I've been really, really, really busy. And travelling a lot. Normal service will resume soon, I think.

Out Conjured

2007-10-01T09:08:00.000Z

I was delighted to read in yesterday's Independent On Sunday that Derren Brown is now officially, openly gay.

Surprised?

Lies, Damned Lies and Couriers

2007-09-13T19:34:00.001Z

I worked at home today (yay!) because I needed to catch up on a load of stuff after being on the rail* for the first couple of days of the week. Actually, I worked at home on Tuesday, too, because I had other stuff to catch up on then. It's an endless cycle of going out and talking to people, and then trying to find time to process what I've gleaned from them into something I can work with. I could tell you more, but a) it would be boring, and b) it would probably be in breach of my non-disclosure agreement. However, the fact that I was at home on Tuesday is relevant to this tale of woe and poor service. Oh yes. Another one. And so hot on the heels of the last one.

For it came to pass that I did find myself browsing on Amazon not too long ago. And yeah, was their selection vast and their delivery promises appealing to the eyes of the Lord. So submitted me my order unto them, and selecteth me the delivery option which involveth not the incurrence of additional charges.

Then didst I wait with patience, sure in the knowledge that my goods would arrive at the appointed hour.

On the 11th day, curiosity didst burn within me, and loggeth me on to their site once more, therein to track my package. Behold my astonishment at the revelation vouchsafed to me by the tracking application. For not only had the courier come unto me and attempted to deliver the bountiful produce of the Amazon, but they had come on more than one occasion.

They had knocketh on the door, quoth the tracking application, and had ringeth the bell until their very fingers grew weak with the strain. And tho their supplications had gone unnoticed, left they a calling card that I might arrange a redelivery at my earliest convenience. And left they a calling card on both occasions, lest the first contrived to turn itself from the true path between letterbox and doormat, and lose itself in the darkness of the cupboard under the stairs.

And vexed was I at these revelations, for I had remained within my chambers from the first hour unto the last on at least one of the days when they had knocketh on the door and ringeth the bell, yet heard I nothing. And vexed was I, for meticulously did I check for signs of a calling card, verily unto the darkest depths of the cupboard under the stairs.

So, ringeth I the people of the Amazon, and after much wailing and grinding of teeth did I learn that pretty fucking useless are they at getting their courier to do a decent job, and pretty fucking useless are they at providing people with the necessary information to remedy the situation themselves.

The fool hath said in his heart, "They'll sort it all out, it will be alright." But I say this to you, "Trust not the providers of service. Trust not their words of promise. Trust not their claim to put the customer first. For see, a courier company puts their customer first, but their customer is the company that uses them to deliver goods, not the poor bastard waiting for the bloody package to turn up."

And to drop out of the increasingly difficulty biblical mode and wrap up, I spent a bit of time digging around on the "Say No To 0870" site, got a phone number for the local delivery branch, drove down there, and picked up my package. I didn't mention anything about their drivers being liars. But they are.

*I could have said on the road, but I went by train. Pernickety? Moi? Not at all. I think you'll find I'm being pedantic.

Blue In The Face

2007-09-07T09:28:00.000Z

No, that subject isn't the cue for a naughty double-entendre.

It describes me trying to get sense out of Demon, the company that I use for home Internet access. My account was recently restricted, following a bit of an orgy of downloading, mostly of episodes of Babylon 5, my DVDs of which are in New Zealand. (I have legit copies, so I don't feel too bad about downloading for the purposes of watching it whilst I'm in the UK.)

According to the Demon Fair Usage Policy, my download activity is monitored, and if it exceeds 60GB on a 30-day rolling basis, the download speed during peak hours is restricted to 128Kbps. I fell foul of the policy last week, and consequently have had to endure some painful days when even the Google home page was failing to appear in anything like an acceptable time. It was like the bad old days of dial-up.

This prompted me to find out when the restriction would be lifted, because quite frankly, it was making my life a misery. The first person I spoke to implied that once the restriction is put in place, it stays there for 30 days. He then offered some drivellous crap about what "30-day rolling basis" meant in that context, and his definition, such as it was, would have been more accurately replaced with the phrase "on a monthly basis" rather than "on a 30-day rolling basis". So, I had a look at the Fair Usage Policy on-line. It pretty clearly defined what a 30-day rolling basis is, and it is exactly what I expected it to be. It also explicitly stated that the restriction would be lifted based on usage over a 30-day rolling period.

Here's an example just to make it clear what my understanding of the situation was.

Day 1 - I download 30GB of data
Day 2 - I download 30 GB of data
Days 3 to 29 - I don't download anything
Day 30 - I download 1GB of data

On day 31, my account will be restricted because, on a 30-day rolling basis, I have downloaded 61GB of data, exceeding my download limit. However, on day 32, the total for the preceding 30 days is only 31GB, so the speed restriction should be removed.

So, I call them again and take them to task over the differences between what they claim they do in their Fair Usage Policy, and what they claim to do when you speak to them on the phone. I didn't get anywhere. Even though, after much convincing, I finally got one call centre bod to put me through to his supervisor, the supervisor was no more able to understand that what he was telling me was completely at odds with the concept of a "rolling 30-day period".

I tried to get put through to a group within the company that I have successfully dealt with in the past, to no avail. At least they have sense, understand English, and don't try to contort pretty standard phrases to fit their (poor) understanding.

Just before I cancelled my account, I asked the last woman I spoke to to tell me what my usage was over the last 30 days. She told me, and then pointed out that the restriction on my account would be lifted in 9 days, when the rolling 30-day total no longer exceeded the download limit. That was exactly what I wanted to hear! So, my reading of the Fair Usage Policy is correct, the policy is implemented correctly, it's just the cretins in the call centre who had made it seem like there was a mismatch, because in fact, they don't know what they are talking about.

Jeez!

I know there are some lovely people who work in call centres, and having done a fair bit of process design specifically for call centres myself, I know how tricky it can be when you get a customer who ends up going off the stuff that's covered in the standard scripts. But this crowd were just a joke! Maybe I should pitch for some business from them, to come in and fix their munted processes, and get them some better scripts.

So, I'll put up with the restriction for the next 9 days, and then I'll get proper connectivity back again. In the meantime, I don't think the Skype phone is going to be doing a lot of work.

The Spice Of Life

2007-09-01T11:43:00.000Z

There are encouraging signs that variety is making a big come-back, along with a resurgent, modernised form of burlesque.

A few times in recent weeks, I've been enjoying the delights of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern's Brouhaha, their Wednesday night comedy thang. Of course, the RVT has been the womb from which sprang many an act, of whom Lily Savage is probably the most well-known. And of course, the roost is still ruled by the hugely talented Dame Edna Experience, who, on a good day, outclasses just about everyone. Ducky has been such an amazing hotbed of talent and creativity for years, and now it looks like it's catching on elsewhere.

My recent visits to the RVT have been during the Summer School, with Topping and Butch at the helm. They're great - the entry price is worth it just to hear whatever topical material they have put into this week's version of "Never Mind". The acts I've seen them introduce have included Lorraine Bowen, Ursula Martinez and Andy Parsons, among others. Huge diversity, quirky, odd, fabulous.

However, more recently I've noticed that all sorts of places are having Ducky-like variety nights. There are several such things happening in Soho during the week, in straight and gay venues. Further afield, there's the Bethnal Green Working Mens Club, proud home of some beautifully modern burlesque. And this evening, we're off to the St Aloysius Social Club near Euston to see a bizarre mixture of things brought together by Dr Dimaglio.

Perhaps it's a reaction against too much "reality" television (which was subjected to an interesting attack last night on Judge John Deed). Why bother sitting on your arse watching talentless no-hopers being boring together, when for the price of a couple of drinks, you can be entertained by people who actually make an effort to put a decent show together? I'm loving it.

***

Some time after creating this blog entry, I remembered the reason that it had occurred to me to write it at all. I happened to catch a bit of The Sorcerer's Apprentice this morning. This is a CBBC show which has been running over the school holidays, and apparently has done very well with the target demographic. This is good news to several of my magical friends and and acquaintances, not least Max Somerset, who plays the eponymous sorcerer, and Angelo Carbone who is the magic advisor for the show. The show that was on immediately after this one, though, was also very interesting, because it was based around a collection of performers with different styles of act who had to compete against each other to escape from a prison. The whole thing was basically variety, with a bit of a theme. Aunty is priming the next generation of variety lovers. Excellent!

Sin & The Law

2007-08-30T06:33:00.001Z

It seems to me that a lot of people at what most consider to the be extremes of religious zeal devote a lot of time and effort to the goal of making it illegal to sin.

Sin has been a very useful concept to the monotheistic religions. It's vagueness means that it can be liberally applied so that everyone is a sinner, and with a bit more twisted thinking, even an innocent, new-born baby has been "tainted". This gives some religions the opportunity to claim that we all really need them in order to secure redemption for ourselves, and guarantee ourselves a happy afterlife, featuring 72 white raisins, or choirs of cherubim and seraphim, depending on the flavour of the Judaic derivitive being peddled. (Both options sound like hell to me!)

This vagueness cuts the other way, though, when it comes to trying to make it illegal to sin, because for laws to work, you have to be pretty tight on your definitions, and have an agreed definition of what a sin is. And of course, if we are all born tainted by original sin, we might as well incarcerate new-born babies as soon as the cord is cut.

There is a deeper problem with the whole sin = lawbreaking approach. If we are not legally free to do things that are considered (by some) to be sinful, then we might spend our entire lives free from sin, but only because we feared prosecution. If I were god - and I'm glad I'm not, because I recently grew a beard, and I don't think it suited me - I would find it very unsatisfying to welcome people into my kingdom because they didn't break the law (i.e. they didn't sin), even though I would know how much they might have wanted to.

Of course, the argument would then run "Yes, but god sees what is in your heart, and judges you on that". In that case, what difference does it make if sinning is illegal? Not being allowed to sin by law isn't going to save me if I still want to break that law. So, making sin illegal isn't going to save any more souls than leaving us all alone to judge for ourselves what we consider to be sinful or not.

I'm very much with John Stuart Mill on this one. We should all have the maximum amount of liberty that is compatible with other people having the same amount of liberty.

I've had a couple of discussions recently about theism, atheism and agnosticism. I've heard from a couple of places an argument that tries to reclassify most atheism as agnosticism. As a professed atheist myself, I'm not keen on this downgrading of my position.

As far as I can tell, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate the existence of a deity, and I'm pretty convinced that there will never be enough evidence. The fact that this does leave a gap for me to be proved wrong shows that I not close-minded, just as I am open to the laws of physics being refined and modified as we approach a better and better understanding of the universe. However, unlike the possible existence of Higgs Boson, the discovery of which will go a long way towards providing solid evidence in support of the Standard Model of physics, in the case of a deity, I really don't expect that evidence will ever arise.

There is some "belief" involved in atheism. On the basis of the evidence to date, I am not convinced that there is a god. I proceed on the basis of the belief or assumption that there is no god. My "leap of faith" in this case takes me from an observation that there isn't much evidence that supports the god hypothesis, to a conclusion that this probably means there isn't a god. As leaps of faith go, it's not a very big one. More of a small step, really.

It has been argued that my position is one of agnosticism, because I am still open to the possibility of being proved wrong. Nonsense, I say. To purloin an example from Bertram Russell and abuse it for my own ends, someone might claim there is a teapot orbiting the earth. I might not accept their claim, and can express strong scepticism about it, but the fact that I remain open to being proved wrong doesn't make me agnostic about the teapot. For all intents and purposes, if it comes to a question of belief rather than fact, I do not believe. When it comes to a question of fact, the answer is a little greyer, but not much. I very strongly doubt it, to the point that I would be very, very surprised if presented with evidence that proved me wrong.

Another argument I've had in this area goes something like this: to define yourself as atheist is to define yourself in terms of something that you are not (a believer) or in terms of something that you do not do (believe). Why would anyone make such an effort to deny something, unless there was something at the root of that refusal to believe. Hmm. Let me think about that. Yes, there is something at the root of my refusal to believe. It's that so many people do believe, and as an atheist, I feel I have to stand up and be counted as one of those who actually says "You know what? I don't." If belief is the norm, then I have to define myself in terms that indicate that the normal assumption (most people believe) does not apply in my case.

I'd rather do that than be one of the masses (sic) who are assumed to be believers, and often are "lazy" believers. They've never really thought about it, so they just go along with whatever they've been told.

So, yes, it is defining myself in terms of something that I don't do, but that is only necessary because a contrast has to be made between the majority, who, in however half-hearted a manner, do believe.

That said, a lot of lazy belief in god is similar to the lazy beliefs about how the positions of the planets at the moment of your birth (according to an innaccurate astronomical calendar) affect your personality; that you can influence the outcome of a roulette wheel; that you might be pyschic because just as you went to phone your friend, he or she phoned you; that homeopathy works because it works on animals and children, and they are not susceptible to the placebo effect.

On that last subject, I feel obliged to note that when an animal is treated with a homeopathic remedy, more effort is made to ensure that the creature is looked after, gets rest, attention, etc. It is this care of the creature, not the shaken-up water, that does the trick. And kids? Puleez! My mum used to give us butter rolled in sugar to soothe us when we had a cold. And it worked. Kids, trusting little things that they are, are more susceptible to the placebo effect than adults.

Incidentally, there's loads of this stuff in Derren Brown's book, and it's an excellent read, and sometimes quite naughty. I've always liked his writing, having bought his first two books, which were aimed at magicians. The most recent one is aimed at the general public, and it's terrific.

It's the one that's best of all

2007-08-28T19:51:00.000Z

We're just back from a longish weekend in Edinburgh, during which we caught up with family and old friends, and watched a few shows, including Son Of A Preacher Man (funny), Four On The Floor (marvellous), Shoo Shoo Baby (excellent), Poof Loose (dull), Phil Kay (genius), Hatty Heyridge (great).

Oh. I've run of of things to say now. Damn. This was going to be a long one, too.

Ho Chew Ing

2007-08-10T10:59:00.001Z

A few nights ago, myself and the Lovely Husband™ were on our way home, a little bit tipsy, but not in a bad way. We were unable to get a seat, so were obliged to stand for most of the journey, as did a youngish (well, maybe early 30s) Chinese* woman. After a while, I noticed that she must have something caught in her teeth, because she was gurning and grimacing, and contorting her face in all manner of amusing ways.

Where I was standing relative to her allowed me to see just enough of her face to have an idea of which way she was screwing it up, but didn't afford her a similar view of me. So I'm rather afraid I took complete advantage of that situation and started mimicking her. After not very long, the Lovely Husband™ cottoned on to what was afoot, and starting laughing. The longer it went on (and it did go on for quite some time), the harder he had to fight to keep from losing it completely. And of course, that only spurred me on. A man at the far end of the carriage also realised what was happening, and he ended up in fits of the giggles, too. He was far enough away from the action that his laughter wouldn't necessarily have raised the suspicions of the target of this comedy effort. If only with we'd filmed it!

I do like making people laugh on trains. I've reduced my brother and sister to tears on busy commuter trains from Glasgow to our home town, simply by staring in a slightly odd manner, or allowing one of my eyes to wander a bit but keeping the other completely still. The number of times they ended up being tutted and scolded made it all worthwhile :)

* This isn't a guess. The Lovely Husband™, having taught English as a foreign language for several years, had an uncanny ability to identify peoples' nationality. I've never known him to be wrong. He said Chinese, I believe him.

Had Its Day: The Bathtub

2007-08-07T11:10:00.000Z

For many years, I have had a very strong preference for proper shower units rather than a shower-over-bath (SOB) setup. This morning, when I almost slipped whilst drying myself post-shower, that strength of feeling was redoubled, and I found myself thinking that bath tubs have had their day.

Estate agents (which I think are called realtors in some countries) are quick to dissuade us from removing the bath from a property. To do so will lower the resale value significantly, we are informed. I think, or perhaps I merely like to hope, that this will change as people come to see the wisdom of only having a shower. Let me count the ways in which proper showers are better than SOBs:

They are easier and safer to use.
The proportions of the space are generally better.
They better lend themselves to sexual shenanigans.

And how showers are better than baths in general:

They take up less room.
They are most cost-efficient.
They are better for the environment, using less water and less electricity.
It's quicker to have a shower than a bath.
You're not swirling around in your own filth.

In fairness, I should now consider the advantages that a SOB has over a proper shower:

You get the choice of shower or bath without needing space for both.
Only one area to clean, and (in some cases) one of set plumbing to go wrong.

My counter-argument to the first of these is that I have to compromise the quality of one of the facilities (the shower) in order to gain the option of the other (the bath). But I use a shower every day, and almost never use a bath, so the compromise isn't worth it. As for the other point, if I only had a shower, I wouldn't need to worry about cleaning the bath anyway, and showers are often plumbed separately from the bath, even with a SOB.

To complete the picture, here are the advantages of baths over showers in general, as I see it:

You can more readily relax and unwind in a bath.
They're better, and may be essential, if you have kids.
They tend to be better for people with impaired mobility.

Personally, as an able-bodied person who doesn't have kids, I don't find these reasons especially compelling. We have a bath in our house in Auckland, and I've used once. I would rather get rid of it and get a really good shower. Babies are usually bathed in little tubs until they're a certain age, and when they hit that certain age, they can have a shower rather than a bath. I suspect - and I'll look for any lesbian readers to confirm or deny - that a romantic, candle-lit bath may feature more prominently in the lives of ladies who lick. I don't think I've ever done one of those - not least because we probably wouldn't both fit comfortably in the tub.

I'm hoping that over the next few years, the environmental argument will change public opinion, and the perception that estate agents have - that to remove the bath is to reduce the value of the property - will change accordingly. Then I can rip out the bath when we get back to Auckland, and turn the entire bathroom into a much more luxurious affair with a really good shower, and decent storage space - rather than squandering a load of space on a facility - the bath - that we simply don't use, and that deprives us of a lot of room.

Preacher Screecher Kreature

2007-08-06T09:03:00.000Z

Last week, Thursday I think, I found myself on the Central Line around 10 in the morning, heading in to Liverpool Street from the delightfully leafy slice of green loveliness wherein my Lovely Husband™ and I make our current abode.

There was an old woman sitting a couple of seats along from me. Not very long after she got on, she started "preaching". I think she had some medical problem with her throat, because if she wanted to be heard at all, she had to raise her voice, and when she did, it became a really grating screech. My initial thought was, "poor thing". Then, alas, I began to make out the kind of things she was saying. Not talking to anyone in particular, most people being wary of catching her eye in case she took it as a sign of encouragement, she started spouting all sorts of religious claptrap of the xtian variety, with very few references to anything approaching or resembling orthodox xtian theology. Interspersed with references to god and jeebus were guttural condemnations of lesbians and gay men. It became hard to tell whether she was more interested in letting the world know about her love of god or about her complete and utter hatred and contempt for anyone who doesn't happen to be straight.

Needless to say, this very quickly damped any thoughts of feeling sorry for her. The things she was saying were so vile, so distasteful and so pointlessly offensive, that sympathy dried up and shrivelled on the vine. I feel angry towards whoever brainwashed her into being like that, but that doesn't make me feel sorry for her for being that way; in much the same way that I can still condemn a serial killer whilst also feeling anger towards the people whose abuse or neglect made the killer that way.

We went to Brighton Pride on Saturday, and had a wonderful time. At the entrance to the park, there was a motley group of placard-waving god-botherers, there to tell every attendee about how the wages of sin are death. I wanted to stop and tell them that actually, death is the wage that you get for having lived, regardless of how you did it, but why bother. Surprisingly, at least one of the placard-wavers looked really, really gay himself. The kind who probably just needs a nice big cock up his arse to reset his perspective to something a bit more sensible.

The event itself was great. I caught up with an old work chum with whom I have passed many a tipply evening in a hotel bar. We then met up with other friends and wandered around, enjoying the sunshine (finally), having a bit of a boogie, and eventually heading off to catch a chuff-chuff back to London. I ended up doing some magic for a lesbian couple we met on the train, and I suspect I might be getting a booking out of that, so yay.

And I think that's probably enough stream of consciousness for now.

Been a while

2007-07-23T07:38:00.000Z

I haven't blogged for a while, and for some reason that feels like admitting to a serious bout of constipation. I did try to squeeze one out whilst on a train last week, but something went wrong with my phone's 3G connection thingy, and it got lost. Boy was I mad! I'd been at it for ages, because doing it on a phone meant lots of thumb work and predictive text. I thought that Blogger would have saved the draft, as it claims to do automagically these days, but alas, 'twas not to be.

My Lovely Husband™ and I popped up to the north of Scotland last weekend. We had a day or so in Aberdeen, which afforded us the opportunity to visit my old school (Blairs College), one of my favourite castles (Dunnottar). We also managed to fit in a mince around the city centre, a wee trip down to the beach, and a wander around Old Aberdeen. The city centre bit turned out to be really rather important, because EasyJet, in their finite wisdom, had decided it would be best not to send our checked-in luggage on the flight that we took. ServisAir promised to get it to us early the next morning. Which they failed to do. And failed again the next morning. In the end, we had to intercept the courier on our way back from Inverness on Sunday afternoon, when we were on our way back to the airport and our flight home. So, a lovely weekend, but a slightly whiffy one.

But I get ahead of myself. After Aberdeen, we headed off to Inverness, stopping in at Fyvie Castle - it's something of a corker. Then we made our way via Elgin to Inverness, where I had a quick 10 minute massage in a shopping centre - we only had the car insured for one driver, so I was spending a lot of time behind the wheel. Then it was on to Loch Ness, and Castle Urquhart, and from there a quick trip up to Glen Affrick, stopping at the Dog Falls on the way. I had to take some of these sites in on my own, or partly on my own, because my Lovely Husband™ suffers from vertigo, bless 'im, and couldn't get close enough to get the full effect. Dunnottar was particularly bad on that front, even though they have made the approach much easier than it used to be.

We spent the Saturday night in Kinneskie House, a gay guest house on The Black Isle. The hosts were very friendly, the place was lovely, and it was more like staying with friends than being in a guest house.

After the courier-interception thing on the way back the next day, Castle Fraser was our final stopping point, although by that time we were kind of castled out. And very few castles can hold a candle to Fyvie.

Fast-forward one week, almost. Friday night, I queued outside Waterstones from about 21:30, and got my grubby little paws on the new Harry Potter book around 00:15. I got through the first three chapters on the tube journey home, and then stayed up until about 05:30 reading it. I had to turn in eventually because I was starting to fall asleep, but I woke up a couple of hours later and resumed the story; then with a couple of little naps in between chapters, I finished it in the middle of the afternoon. I loved it. I was concerned that Jo Rowling would struggle to pull everything together without making it a massive, unwieldy tome of a book; in the event, it was done rather elegantly and efficiently, I thought, even despite the introduction of a new concept (the Deathly Hallows of the title). It was a bit like watching the final moments of the manufacture of a ship in a bottle, where it's creator pulls the string that lifts everything into place and suddenly it all makes sense. Nice one.

Loserists

2007-07-07T09:53:00.001Z

Matthew Parris had a piece in The Times which I really liked. It basically says that so-called terrorists are a bunch of sad, drop-out, misfit losers; and portraying them that way is key to making the whole thing go away. Being a member of a group of people who are perceived as sad, misfit drop-outs isn't something that disaffected youths would aspire to, whereas the idea of a criminal, intelligent evil, shadowy powerful organisation, well that has a lot more appeal.

So, international terrorism will shrivel up and die if we respond to them by letting them know how sad, pathetic, futile and silly they are, rather than according them status as evil, baldycat-stroking, scar-eyed, Bond villains.

Okay, so the cat in this picture isn't baldy, but I'm sure you get the point. I couldn't find a picture of Doctor Evil.

Spiders, fish, and pussy

2007-06-28T12:59:00.000Z

I'd venture to proclaim that most people are unaware that spiders moult. But they all do, leaving behind exuviae as they do. I have often seen an exuvia in a cupboard or something, and wrongly assumed that I was looking at a dead and dessicated spider corpse, when actually what I was looking at is more akin to a pupa from which a lovely butterfly has flown. Or summat.

Most of the spiders that we have in the UK don't leave very exciting exuviae behind. Tarantula spiders, on the other hand, oh boy, theirs are something else. As I'm sure this picture ably demonstrates.

You might be wondering why all this talk of spiders, and is it just an excuse to put a photo on my blog that might give some visitors the willies. I have to confess, I have recently been trying to get my hands on some tarantula exuviae, but having failed in that endeavour, I've decided to come clean about what I was planning to do. But not entirely.

There is a magic effect that I used to do, and have been thinking of re-introducing to my act. Without giving too much away, at an unexpected moment, the chap for whom I am performing the effect (I almost always pick a man for this, for various reasons) suddenly finds himself with a spider on him. Except it's plastic, and not very convincing. How much better, thought I, if I were to replace it with a tarantula exuvia. Much more effective. But there are none to be had for love nor money. I've tried pet shops. I've tried GumTree. I've tried contacting tarantula enthusiasts directly. No joy. So I'm sharing it here as a story of what might have been.

That brings me to another foray into the world of pets: fish. I bought a goldfish yesterday, and over the next few weeks, we'll be rehearsing a goldfish production effect together. In theory, there's no reason why I couldn't leave every table at a function with their own goldfish. Nice touch. Anyway, I'll be trying it out for the first time properly this weekend, and if it flies (perhaps "swims" would be more appropriate), then it's a big green light to The Goldfish Trick.

And finally, the third of the creatures mentioned in the subject of this blog entry, which is neither a reference to cats, nor to ladybits, but rather to me. When did I become such a big pussy? I remember as a child I would happily get dirty, eat sweets that had fallen on the ground, and so on and so on. I'm usually not too bad for the whole excessive hygiene thing. Sensible, but not absurd. However, I find myself really paranoid about getting any sort of contamination from the little fishy. So, when I change its water, I've been making sure the sink is disinfected before anything else goes near it. I've been rigorously scrubbing my hands after feeding the wee thing, or if the smallest part of my finger should even touch its water. What on earth is all that about? It's a bloody goldfish! It's not going to kill me. Yet somehow, somewhere along the line, I've become much more paranoid about interacting with a little bit of wildlife. This is despite having spent some quality time within the last few years fishing for snapper, and wading into a river to catch koura (fresh water crayfish), and then eating them. it makes no sense.

Shaping Up

2007-06-26T13:43:00.000Z

I'm delighted to be able to report that my recent spurt of dedication to reclaiming a more svelt and becoming body shape is beginning to pay off.

Folks who move from the Anitpodes to the UK joke about an injection that is administered at Heathrow on the way in that makes your arse get bigger. There is some truth in this. I can't speak for Australia (although the bodies of Sydney scene queens speak for themselves), but certainly in New Zealand, it is much, much easier to have and maintain a healthy lifestyle. It's easier to eat out without piling on the pounds. It's easier to eat in without piling on the pounds. It's easier to make visiting the gym a standard part of the daily routine. It's easier to escape to the great outdoors and burn a few calories that way. And more people do it, so it's socially easier, too. You are less likely to find that friends and colleagues scoff at your healthy living choices, and attempt to undermine your resolve and lure your sorry ass down to the nearest pub.

It's getting on for two years since I got back. After about one year, I had gained about 15 kg*. As I approach the second anniversary of my return, I am happy to be able to report that I have now lost all of that extra weight, and the belly is starting to disappear. There's a ways to go yet, but if the next few weeks go as well as the last few, then strides will be made. On Saturday, my Lovely Husband™ and I did a Hulaerobics class at 09:15, immediately followed by a Body Attack class. The hula hoop class is fun, quite tiring, and can hit your abs with surprising effectiveness. Body Attack is really quite intense, and to me delight, much more fun to do as part of a couple. We were both a bit bushed after all that, but felt great for it.

My body was buzzing all day on Saturday, giving me hope that I'll get back to that marvellous state when I'm drinking little (if any) alcohol and no caffeine (which I gave up about 6 weeks ago), getting lots of quality sleep, and fitting loads of exercise into my day. When it all comes together like that, it takes about a week or two, and then I feel really switched on every minute of the day: sharp, buzzing, feeling great, full of energy, and very positive and happy. Okay, so last night was my weekly pilgrimage to The Magic Circle, and I find it difficult to keep that night completely tee-total. Even still, I imbibed much less than usual.

*Anyone who doesn't like metric can do the conversion themselves. Personally, having adjusted to using it all the time, I'm loath to return to a system that I never really understood, and wasn't taught at school. I mean, how many feet are there in a mile? And how many pounds in a stone? And do you know the correct times table to be able to multiply these figures easily?

Yippideedoodah!

2007-06-18T12:09:00.001Z

I've signed up with the folks who run the Gay Wedding Show to perform walkabout magic during two of their events: Manchester and Cardiff. I'm looking forward to it. Now I'm just waiting for my paid-for ads to turn up on a couple of web sites aimed at gay couples who are tying the knot (in the civil partnership rather than bondage sense), and then I'm sure I'll have all the gigs I can handle.

They've already published the details for the Manchester Show, and the Cardiff one will be appearing shortly.

My Lovely Husband™ is also delighted because he has been itching to have a weekend in Manchester ever since he got here. And now we have the perfect excuse. Okay, it means I'll be spending a day on my feet doing magic whilst he's out exploring the city, but I did quite a bit of that exploring stuff a couple of months back when I was working there, so I think I've seen all there is to see. (And love it, incidentally. Manchester's great. I could live there.)

I've never been to Cardiff before. Maybe we'll bump into Captain Jack Harness, that guy who's a bit like John Barrowman, but really into the leather scene.

Revamp

2007-06-14T10:36:00.000Z

I've done a Mary Queen Of Shops on my official magic web site, because I've finally decided to get the finger out and start looking for gigs. In a further drive towards consistent branding, I've gone for a look and feel that is identical to my new business cards.

There's a link to it on the left. Please feel free to have a varda, and let me know if you think it's lacking.

Britain's Got Talent

2007-06-13T13:39:00.000Z

Unfortunately, it's also got a lot of vulnerable people with borderline personality disorders and no discernible skill as entertainers who believe that they can change their lives if only they are given a chance to show the world what they can do. They want to follow their dreams, though sadly in many cases, these dreams are predicated on talents that do not exist. Wishful thinking, no matter how desperate or how great the quantity, is no substitute.

I don't tend to watch reality television programmes. In truth, I don't watch much TV, period. I did catch up a bit of "Britain's Got MORE Talent" last night. They seemed keen to showcase the more ridiculous acts, and sadly, magic featured quite heavily in there, to the point where presenter Stephen Mulhern, himself a magician, decided to step in and convince the judges that magic can be done well.

One of the acts I saw was a chap who calls himself Flash. Although we didn't get to see much of his magic, we probably saw enough. What we did see was arguably adequate for a small close-up gig, but not for stage, and certainly not for a Royal Variety Performance. His insistence on doing the first couple of lines of the Flash Gordon theme certainly didn't help. Zany can be good if you can bring your audience with you, but if you can't (and he couldn't) you just end up looking like a twat.

He seemed relatively sane compared to some of the other hopefuls - even though his MySpace page might suggest otherwise.

One of the other contenders had sold large chunks of his DVD and video game collections in order to "travel in style" to the audition. (He made the journey by bus.) One has to wonder just how far he had travelled if indeed he had to sell 90 DVDs and dozens of games. The saddest thing about this young man is that he is determined to make it big, and thinks that of the three things he is currently studying (singing, dancing and some other performing art), singing is his strong card. Yet it was clear from his performance that he is tone deaf. He couldn't carry a tune if you wrapped it up in a Gucci bag and thrust the handles into his chubby little hands.

There was another, even worse than this guy, who groaned his way through a terrible few seconds of Shayne Ward's dirge "That's My Goal". Not only was this one unable to hit the notes, he didn't seem to know many of the lyrics, or to be capable of articulating those that he did know in a way that made them intelligible. Yet afterwards, he seemed angry - really angry - at the judges comments and reaction to him. Definitely an unstable personality there, and probably a mental problem of some kind.

Yet SyCo (the production company) will cheerfully exploit this young man and others like him in the name of entertainment, and the masses will continue to lap up this kind of public spectacle, in the same way that our forebears flocked to Bedlam to laugh at the loonies.
And so many people believe, like that strange pink-haired creature from this year's Big Brother, that to be featured on a show like Britain's Got Talent is to be amongst "The Chosen".

Makes a fellow proud to be a human.

Gag on this

2007-06-08T16:15:00.000Z

How odd. I started typing, and Blogger starting changing everything to Hindi.

Anyhoo, in lieu of a proper post, I've decided to write down here a joke that I really like, and that I enjoy telling, but that doesn't seem to be nearly as well known as it ought to be (in my rarely humble opinion).

A somewhat puny man is sent to prison. On his way to his cell, he is terrified at the prospect of sharing with some hulk who will make him his bitch, and routinely molest him. As he is shown into his cell, he discovers that his worst fears seem to be coming true. His cell mate is a massive, brutal looking felon. Broken teeth, bad tattoos and scars add to the overall sense of menace. The brute looks the little man up and down, and then leers at him and says "Hullo."

"Hello," replies the little man, timorously.

"Do you want to play a game?" asks the big guy.

"Er, okay then," says the little guy, fearing the worst.

"What shall we play ... I know. We'll play mummies and daddies."

By now, the little guy is quaking in his shoes, and only a few moments away from losing control of his bladder.

The brute continues, "Do you want to be Mummy or Daddy?"

Suddenly surprised that there might be a way to avoid some pain and humiliation, the little man says "I think I'd prefer to be Daddy."

"Alright then, Daddy - come and sit on Mummy's cock!"

Wipe Out

2007-06-01T11:14:00.000Z

I don't recall every consciously thinking it, but I suppose that when I was younger, I must have had an expectation that at some point in my life, I would have faced just about every possible embarrassment that the world has to offer, and come through smelling of roses. Today I learned that life is ever-inventive in its approach to developing new ways to colour my cheeks with the palette of shame.

I was on my way home from a brief trip to Glasgow. I stopped in at the gents to drop one off before going through security - you never know when they'll do a cavity search these days.

I don't make a habit of dropping the toilet paper, but it does sometimes happen that somewhere from hole to bowl, the kitten-soft layers go astray. It could be a badly aimed toss, an insufficiently strong grip, or the distraction of someone waving their noo-nah through a whole in the wall. Not that such things happen very often these days, and certainly not in our lovely, shiny airports.

Whatever the reason, the used bit of looroll sometimes ends up on the floor. Like accidentally tumbled toast, you probably don't want a used chunk of s*wipe landing buttered side down. Or Marmite, if you really want to take the analogy just a little too far.

Although I have lost the rag in this manner before, it was a novelty for such an event to take place in a cubicle featuring a large gap at the bottom of the partition that separates the supplicants to Cloacha from each other. The kind of place that featured heavily in my early, and with retrospect misguided, attempts to find Mr Right. (At the time, it was obvious to me that Mr Right would also sit in public toilets tapping his foot and sliding it closer to the tapping foot in the next booth along.)

It gets worse. My runaway Andrex puppy falls to the floor, landing face-up to expose where I had dabbed my lips. Man, that was one chocolatey cappuccino! Not only is it fully visible to the boy next door, but it has the audacity to land mostly on his side of the partition, making it almost impossible for him not to have seen it; and even if his eyes had not been drawn to its sudden appearance, the quick scrabble under the partition that I was obliged to perform would have made certain that my shame was exposed to his presumably disgusted gaze.

I'm just relieved (sic) that I managed to flush and run before he did, and lose myself in the crowd outside the door (it being a busy airport loo) before he could identify the culprit.

And there I've gone and increased my tally of log blogs. *tsk*

YourSpace? You can keep it!

2007-05-25T09:11:00.000Z

MySpace - what a stinking pile of shit.

Discuss.

Dancing Queen

2007-05-13T20:33:00.000Z

Saturday night was spent in G.A.Y. Late watching the Eurovision Song Contest. There were tears. There was laughter. There was disappointment from the crowd that the UK did so badly, although I strongly suspect the fact that Scooch had completely ripped off a Pandora song might have had something to do with that.

We were joined by the lovely JC and his man Rob, and the delightful Sven and KazzieBoo, and later by the magical genius of Stevie D and his new beau, Si. It was a fun, fun evening, and we cheered and booed along all night. Personally, I thought Spain, Turkey and Russia where the best three.

But what the hell was going on with the act that won???? It was probably the most shit Eurovision winning song of all time. More worthy than a bus-load of Sally Army tin-rattlers. I mean, alright, it was nice seeing a fiesty l'il dyke take the Eurovision crown, and she was surrounded by women doing their best to look like 70s shop dummies, or perhaps original Charlie's Angels extra-wannabes. Hilarious as they were, they couldn't detract enough of my attention away from the sheer shitness of the song.

And they voted for it in droves, all over Europe! Well, mostly Eastern Europe, it has to be said.

On the way home, we were treated to a delightful performance from a high-octane young queen who'd obviously been hitting the meths quite hard that evening. Bless!

Bear in mind when assessing his performance that this was carried out on a moving underground train. And for the nosy amongst you, I do flip the camera around a couple of times to take in my Lovely Husband™ who it sitting opposite me.

Making Everyone Cross

2007-05-10T08:35:00.000Z

When I was working in Norwich last year (which I'll be doing again soon, although for a different client), I first encountered a new style of pedestrian crossing which I have recently learned is called a Puffin Crossing. I wasn't impressed. They are confusing, and to my mind not very user-friendly, despite what the acronym stands for (see Wikipedia article). Incidentally, the name is obviously a desperate attempt to crowbar some meaning into the word Puffin whilst keeping the name of the crossing aligned with names of other crossings: Pelican, Zebra, Pegasus (equestrian), Toucan (bicycles), Panda (now defunct), Tiger (rare). Feel free to grab any of these crossing names and produce a convincing acronym.

Trouble is, they're cropping up everywhere. I've encountered them in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Leeds. It looks like they are going to become the new norm.

I've tried to understand the logic, and I think I get some of it, although my conclusions differ from the reasons they give.

Okay, having the red and green man on the same side of the road as the pedestrian might make it easier for the visually impaired who might struggle to see him from across the road. On the other hand, if there's a crowd at the crossing, only those immediately next to the controls will be able to see the indicators, everyone else's view being obstructed by the people closest to the controls.

In contrast, with a standard Pelican crossing, the vast majority of the people at the crossing can see the green/red man, even though he is across the street, and provision is made for those of restricted vision by the audio signal. In some cases, for both Pelican and Puffin crossings, there is an additional tactile feedback device built in to the crossings controls that make additional provision for the visually and/or aurally impaired.

They claim that the benefit is that as you wait, you can check out the traffic at the same time that you check the status of the red/green man. This isn't a particularly strong argument at all. It means you might be aware of traffic coming towards you from the first half of the road you are going to cross, but you are facing in the opposite direction to traffic coming from the second half of that same road. With a Pelican crossing, the red/green man is in the middle, so you can easily direct your attention to either side, and see traffic coming from both directions.

The only justification I can think of - and I haven't see it in any of the literature that attempts to convince the great unwashed that Puffin crossings are A Good Thing - is that the signals used by a Pelican crossing draw your eyes, attention, and direction across the road, making you more inclined to cross. The Puffin signals, by drawing your eyes to one side, make you more inclined to wait.

It also occurs to me that the introduction of this new style of crossing is going to mean a lot of guide dogs need to be re-trained, and for quite a while, there's going to be a period where those dogs will have to cope with two different set of signally systems. So does the introduction of this new thing really help the visually impaired? I doubt it very much.

Technology Joy

2007-05-05T08:59:00.000Z

I got some new technology toys yesterday, and one of them in particular has made me a very happy geek. It's a watch. It only cost a tenner, but it looks surprisingly good, and it has a USB connector built into the strap so that it can be used as a flash drive (1GB). Great.

I'm told (by adam who sometimes pops in here) that this is now obsolete because there's a new version that uses bluetooth rather than USB. However, I'm still very, very happy with my purchase because it works well with my car stereo. The car stereo (which was a purchase from a few months ago) has connectors for USB and SD cards. I usually have an SD card full of music in there, and then take the card out to slip into my MP3 player when I arrive at the gym.

(MP3 player - £8; 4GB SD card - £20; the look on the faces of iPod owners when you tell them how much your MP3 player cost - priceless. There are some things in life that a lot of money can buy. For everyone with sense, there's shopping around.)

However, last night, I loaded up the watch with some choonz, and when I went to pick up my Lovely Husband™ from the station, I popped the USB connector on the watch into the USB socket on the car stereo. And lo, there was music.
Numa Numa - or Dragosta Din Tei if you'd rather - by O-zone. And I defy anyone not to love that song - it is so innocent, joyful and uplifting - it fills my eyes with tears of delight.

Nipples 101

2007-05-03T18:12:00.000Z

I neglected to point out some months ago that I have been blogging for a year. That said, I did shut my virtual gob for a few months, so perhaps that why I didn't think the anniversary was worth registering.

However, I recently spotted that I was approaching my first blog century. Circumstances conspired to make my 100th blog entry a sad one. This is now post 101. And not a dalmatian in site.

I've been thinking about nipples.

The word "nipples" is, oddly enough, hugely unpopular with my mum. Say it in front of her, and she usually grimaces and says "Ooh, I hate that word!" I have no idea why.

My nipples are a bit crap and non-existent. I've never been a big nipple far, in either sense - a big fan of nipples, or a fan of big nipples. Having mine tweaked, prodded, flicked, teased, nibbled ... none of it does anything for me. Similarly, doing these things to other people doesn't really get me where I want to get to, if you follow me.

I've known people who are the opposite. Indeed, one chap of my acquaintance (not intimate, I hasten to add) was reputed to be able to get from a non-standing start (sic) to that place with nary a need for anything beyond someone giving his nips a lot of love and attention. And a fair bit of twisting. If it were a radio, you'd have been through all the stations several times.

The piercing that I got a few months ago was an effort to enhance my fun life with an additional pleasure option. I forgot to mention on here that said piercing lasted about 6 weeks before I gave up with it. I think the bar didn't work too well for me, and a ring might have been more appropriate. Hey ho.

It occurred to me today to ponder: do straight men play with their own nipples? Do they like having them played with? It always seemed to be quite a significant thing on the gay scene, back in my single days. It's one of those places you automatically go to with a new playmate to see if it elicits a response. Yet I've never heard a straight male friend mention it, despite having quite detailed and revealing conversations with straight men over the years. There's no physical difference, so presumably straight men are as able to get off on having their nipples played with as their homosexual counterparts. Yet I've never heard mention of it.

Anyone have the answer?

End Credits

2007-05-02T13:36:00.000Z

Late last night UK time, the brother of my Lovely Husband™ finally conceded defeat in his long and painful battle with cancer. We were amazed that he found the strength to keep going for as long as he did, and by all accounts remained cheerful, determined to make the most of what he knew would be his last few months, weeks, days, and hours.

Over the weekend, my Lovely Husband™ had to make a tough decision about whether to stay in the UK, or travel back to NZ so that he could be there, hopefully before Brad died, but if not, at least for the funeral. In the end, he decided not to go, for a variety of reasons. Instead, we will both head over there for a week or two at Christmas.

Brad leaves a potent legacy in his feature film, In My Father's Den. His diagnosis had arrived when he was editing and then publicising it. The film garnered much critical acclaim on the festival circuit, although I think the general release in the US and the UK was bungled, so it didn't get the mainstream attention that it deserves. I wish he had the opportunity to make more films. He was a great story teller - and if he had ever turned his attention to horror, I'm sure he could have equalled Hitchcock with his ability to terrify.

No Con Do

2007-05-01T12:40:00.000Z

Last night, as I stumbled my way from the office to my nearby hotel, towing K9* in one hand, and hefting my laptop back in the other, I was approached by a man in his 60s. He looked familiar, and as he engaged me in conversation, or more accurately, began his monologue, I realised almost straight away why I recognised him.

His opening gambit was to ask me to confirm the time showing on a big clock on the side of a nearby building. I confirmed that it was correct, 18:30. His next line was "Never buy a frickin escort". Little did he know that I'm a happily married 'mo, and therefore have no need of the services of such gentlemen. Although I was a little puzzled, since I'm sure the more usual approach is to hire an escort, not buy him outright.

Unaware of my internal non sequitur, this fellow was ploughing on with his monologue, explaining how he had locked himself out of his car and now couldn't get back into it; that he had locked himself out whilst wearing his slippers (he pointed to them as proof); that no-one was going to come and get him, his son-in-law couldn't pick him up, and he had left his wallet in the car, so he couldn't get a bus; the police wouldn't ... actually I stopped him with the following observation:

"I met you last week, mate. It was the same story then."

For this was indeed the case. Last week, he had approached me in exactly the same way as I walked from a restaurant to my hotel. Asked me for the time. Then straight into "Never buy a frickin escort". And so on.

The objective of this fellow's ruse is to con you out of £2.40 - his alleged bus fare. I'm not sure how many times he pulls this stunt, or how often he succeeds. He's certainly very plausible, on a first encounter at least, although I didn't give him any money first time, either. A second encounter makes the con that much more obvious.

This has been my defining experience of Liverpool so far.

*K9 is my Samsonite suitcase. I've had him for about 10 years, and he's still in great nick, despite having travelled all over the world. I call him K9 because when I pull him along behind me using the rolly-up cord thing that's build into one of his curves, he trundles along in a manner not at all unlike The Doctor's erstwhile robot dog companion.

The Books I Haven't Written

2007-04-29T12:46:00.000Z

Over the years, there are many books that I haven't written, whilst I can count the number that I have written on the fingers of no hands. I have an unfortunate propensity for coming up with titles that amuse me, that quickly spin themselves into a story, and then as soon as I sit down to think it through a bit more, they start to fall apart, and it becomes apparent that the joke isn't sustainable beyond the mildly amusing title.

Here's an example: "One Too Many Relationships" - a racy tale of a philandering database administrator. Bit of a geek joke. If you don't get it - and I don't expect many of you to do so - consider yourself lucky.

There is one that I keen coming back to, though, and it isn't based on a bad pun. I'd love to write it, but I might end up just outlining the concept on here one day in the hope that someone else can run with it. I really like the idea, and if I were to write the novel, I would probably get ex-communicated, which would be a lovely thing to happen. That way, no-one could refer to me as a lapsed Catholic. I've never liked that expression. It gives the impression that I merely forgot to renew my subscription, rather than that I took something which was really deep-rooted in me, ripped it out and threw it away. But before I do any of that, I have been seriously jotting down notes for a possible technical manual, and putting together sample puzzles for a possible children's puzzle book.

I think something that my Lovely Husband™ said last night got me thinking of these things. I can't remember how, but the phrase "Do or die" came up in conversation, and we decided it would make a great name for a hair salon. (Obviously, the "die" part would have to change its spelling.)

This is all a bit random and unconnected. But then, so am I at the moment. I just wanted to blog something. They do say blog often, blog early. They didn't say anything about quality.

Branding & "The Unborn Child"

2007-04-24T11:23:00.000Z

A quick detour before I get into the meat of this post. Possibly not the best choice of words.

I'm working at home at the moment - bliss! Some time away from being wherever I have to be throughout this green and pleasant land. And it meant I got along to The Magic Circle last night for an excellent lecture, followed by a delightful repast with some of my magical chums - all of whom blog, with variable frequency, and all of whose blogs are accessible via links on my blogroll.
I normally eat in Ask after a gathering at TMC, and although I am sometimes not entirely delighted to be eating there, they do a very generous tuna crostini indeed.

I have a load of work to crash through today, before heading off up north for the rest of the week. Still, it means I get to see my family. Yay! However, putting all that to one side, and switching on the serious ...

Back in the days when I was a seminarian, devoutly Catholic (with a capital "C"), prone to singing in tongues, and praising the Lord, I happily accepted that anyone involved in providing abortions was a monster, and any woman seeking a termination was a cold-blooded baby-killer.

If I still thought like that, these days I would probably be delighted that Peter's Chair is now occupied by the German Shepherd, about whom I heard quite a few stories some years ago, I can tell you.

How I delighted in news of Father James Morrow, the renegade Scottish priest who decided to get a little more pro-active on the pro-life front that the Catholic church would normally be.

How I poured scorn on the phrase "pro-choice" when I first heard it, dismissing it with something between disdain and disgust. How evil, I thought, to attempt to rebrand this sickening infanticide by removing the A-word and attempting to downplay the fact that little babies were being murdered.

I won't dwell here on the reasons that I changed my mind, or the long road that brought me from being an ardent pro-lifer to an equally ardent pro-choice supporter. But it was only after making that journey that I looked back and saw the very effective branding that had seduced me.

Those who call themselves pro-life aren't really pro-life at all. They call themselves that in order to avoid using the A-word, and to imply that those in the opposing camp are somehow anti-life. If so-called pro-lifers really are pro-life, then they would probably find that their mission is more readily achievable by encouraging people to shag - all the time, whenever they can, regardless of consequence. No, they're not pro-life. They are simply anti-abortion. The most important thing to them is that there should be no abortions. In some cases even when to continue with the pregnancy would put the mother's life at risk, or the pregnancy was the result of an incident of rape. I'm tempted at this point to launch into a tirade about the evils of male institutions that attempt to control and subjugate women, as indicated by a disregard for the woman and a focus on the bit that the man contributed to ... but I'll control myself.

Those whom I previously described as pro-abortion aren't really pro-abortion at all. They're just not against it. If they were pro-abortion, they would encourage all pregnant woman to seek a termination. Or if they were inclined to behave in the manner of the so-called pro-lifers, they would sneak into the homes of pregnant woman and perform terminations on them whilst they sleep. No, the most important part of the argument for the pro-choice folks (and these days, I count myself in that number) is that it should be the woman's choice.

Having made that realisation, it irks me to hear people described as "pro-life" because I now see it as an undeniably clever but nevertheless dishonest way of attempting to manipulate peoples' emotions into sharing a point of view. It's a branding exercise, in other words. And I'm not keen on those. I don't like being lied to.

And now for an afterthought about other misleading stuff.

30% less fat!

The kind of flash you might see stuck on a packet of crisps any day of the week. This kind of thing bugs me, because I know how easily less sharp-minded folks are seduced and misled by it.

When any kind of comparison is made, it's a good idea to ask for the basis of the comparison.

30% less fat than what? Than there used to be? Than comparable products? Than a block of lard? And even if you get through that bit (yippee - 30% less fat than there used to be) we could still be talking about a total fat content of 80%.

Worse still: 30% less saturated fat!

So same amount of fat, not quite so bad for you, but still unlikely to do you any favours, yet being promoted in a way that suggests it's a healthy option. Bad. Bad!

I used to live in Wimbledon. There was a department store there called Elys. A sign across the road from the main train station proclaimed: "Elys - the store that's closer to you"

Oh, that used to get my goat. (Impressive, I know. Very few department stores offer a goat-getting service.) Closer to me than what? Kuala Lumpur? Tibet? Harrods? My left bollock? Really!

Oh, and give yourself a big pat on the back if you spotted the flagrant hypocrisy in one paragraph of this afterthought.

Tip For Travellers: Ironing

2007-04-18T06:30:00.000Z

I am currently spending much of my time away from home, living out of a suitcase. As ever, having a nice, crisply ironed shirt every day in such circumstances can be a challenge. The main problem is that I have a penchant for pure cotton shirts rather than their (to my mind) rather more tawdry relatives of the polycotton variety. Pure cotton shirts can be a bugger to iron. The really don't want to play ball unless they're damp. And most hotel irons don't have a little squirty watery thing built into them. In fact, the majority of them don't even have steam.

I have tried a number of standard approaches to this problem, but none of them has proved entirely satisfactory. Then last week I had an inspiration, followed by a bit of experimentation, and I think I've cracked it.

I take my shirt with me into the bathroom, put it to one side, and have my shower as normal. Once I've finished my shower, instead of drying myself straight away, I put the shirt on, making sure to press the front panels against my chest and abdomen. (Note: abdomen rather than abs, but I'm working on that.) I take the shirt off, get myself dry, then iron the shirt - which by this time is damp but not soaked.

It works a treat!

Bluetooth Blues

2007-04-10T14:22:00.000Z

Don't you hate it when stuff that should just work just doesn't?

A couple of weeks ago, I took delivery of a bluetooth keyboard for my new iPaq - itself a bad purchase decision, because I have subsequently learned that one of Nokia's new devices would give me more of what I want, and would work better. Including the GPS bit. Plus ca change.

In theory, the keyboard should just work. I've paired it with the iPaq. They should just find each other via the magic of bluetooth, and start talking. Instead, any time I have connected them, it has been after at least half an hour (usually more) of frustration and annoyance trying to get them communicating. This morning, amongst other things, the software for running the keyboard managed to trash my other bluetooth paired devices, and still refused to connect! Until just a moment ago, when I did exactly the same things that I had been trying earlier, and suddenly it worked. The only thing that had changed was that in the meantime, I had connected my (very cheap, third party) bluetooth headset to make sure that I could connect to something! So now I am sitting on an Virgin train to Liverpool, tapping away as I whiz along faster than fairies, faster than witches.

The headset, as it happens, just works. By which I mean it does so without effort, not it does so but only barely. I went through the pairing routine once, and since then, all I have to do is enable bluetooth on the iPaq, turn on the headset, and Bob's your mother's brother. (Well, okay, I had to redo that pairing this morning after the keyboard trashed my list of paired devices.) Amusingly enough, the headset wasn't made by HP, unlike the keyboard, and the iPaq itself. Nor did it cost anything near as much as the keyboard, which I think was badly overpriced. Nor is the keyboard nearly as elegant as a similar device that I bought about ten years ago for my old PalmPilot.

Incidentally, I once tried to encourage friends and colleagues to use "PalmPilot" as a euphemism for wanker. I was hoping this alternative interpretation would catch on, in the same way that "self-starter", the hoary old cliché from a million curricula vitae, had acquired such a different, and much less positive, spin.

The reason I am blogging this today is that I spent rather a long time in Euston Station this morning, and thought I might while my time away by writing. Instead, I ended up spending over an hour trying to get the f*cking keyboard to talk to the stinking pile of overpriced shite that is my lovely new iPaq.

And the reason I had so much time to kill at Euston is that my train to Liverpool was delayed by almost an hour on account of a trackside fire and/or landslide. The whole thing is giving my flashbacks to "The Railway Children", which scared the bejeesus out of me in my youth. This trackside fire thing seems to have replaced leaves on the line as a popular excuse for bad rail service. A trackside fire caused the cancellation of services on the Eurostar a few weeks ago when myself and my Lovely Husband™ were trying to get to Bruges with some friends (we're off this weekend instead).

Having mentioned having the bejeesus scared out of me as a nipper, we've just had Easter. I hope that the light of the risen Christ may shine on you all, so that you turn away from sin, open your hearts to Jesus, and accept him as your Lord and Saviour. Lord knows (sic), he knew what he was doing. Oh yes, that dying and coming back trick, that clearly demonstrates his saviour faire. Not to mention flair. And he does it every year without fail. Now, there is an element of a problem there. You can't get that worked up and depressed on Good Friday, because you already know how the story ends. Besides, why call it "good" and then go around with a long face? However, fundamentally, although the whole thing is a bit predictable, every year Jesus goes through the same routine: dies for our sins and the sins of all humankind, and then three days later (using that odd inclusive counting thing so beloved of the Romans), he comes back. There may be lots of things you could criticise him for, but a lack of reliability isn't one of them. Every year, like clockwork: dead ... wait a bit ... tada - back from the dead! He's just so darned reliable, and I think that's the kind of trait you look for in a Messiah.

And after that, if anyone has a telephone number for Hell, I think I might as well phone up and make a reservation. If it's where I'm going to end up, I might at least try to get a decent seat.

[Time passes, as does much scenery. It's a long way to Liverpool.]

Innocent delight is something that can readily bring a lump to my throat and cause my eyes to glisten. Being a big poof probably helps in that regard, too. Travelling all over the country by chuff-chuff over the last few weeks, I have had several experiences of seeing children in streets and fields that I pass through, furiously waving at the train as it whizzes by carrying its load of jaded intercity travellers.

The sheer joy and exuberance of these little wavers, being friendly for no reason, looking for nothing more than simple acknowledgement, a returned wave, delights me. It costs nothing, but can light up an eager little heart, and a big enough older one. It's a beautiful thing.

I remember being the waving kid, looking in awe at these people on their way to places so far away that I could barely imagine it. And now here I am, having travelled to the other side of the world and back. The fact that kids still wave at trains gives me hope that not all is lost in the sea of delinquency that the gutter press would have you believe in (and be terrified of).
The fact that every waving kid could one day do things they never dreamed possible, as I have, makes me happy too. Happy for them, happy that they have so much possibility before them, and happy that they have the optimism to wave at passing strangers and give a little unconditional love to the world.

[aside]
It delights me that as a result of the quality newspapers moving to the tabloid format, we now have to use the more accurate "gutter press" rather than "tabloid press" to distinguish hate rags like "The Sun" and "The Daily Express" from real newspapers.

Oops

2007-04-09T20:07:00.000Z

In the rush to wax lyrical about abs and sandals, I completely neglected to include in my previous wibbling some observations about the anti-piracy ads (now, don't go confusing the ads with the abs) which were screened during the pre-show show when we went to see 300.

Let's ignore for a moment the very strong element of preaching to the choir that is unavoidably associated with these ads, and with their cousins, often to be found on DVDs, whether rented or purchased. ("You wouldn't steal a movie ... Erm ... ")

The anti-piracy ad that screens in our cinemae points out how ripped off you would be by purchasing a knock-off DVD of a feature film. The sound quality will be lower, the picture will be smaller, and you might have to put up with filmed footage of someone a few rows in front of you getting up to go for a wee.

Let's look at those things.

If you buy a pirate DVD, then like any DVD, you're probably going to watch it at home. In that case, unless you have the most amazing home cinema system known to humankind, you know in advance that neither the picture nor the sound is going to be as good as you'll get down your local [insert name of cinema here].

And even on that issue, our experience of 300 last weekend included a couple of scratches and sound pops, the likes of which we don't normally get on home-viewed DVD. By the way, if you do have the best home cinema known to human kind, let me offer my condolences - I know that they say it's what you do with it that counts, but it also helps a great deal if you've got a lot of whatever you've got.

Obviously, I'm not talking about home cinemae at this point, and equally obviously you are over-compensating for something!

Anyway, that's two of the three arguments dispatched with. And a sentence with a prepositional ending - how my teachers would weep!

What of the argument that says that if you watch a pirate DVD, you'll have to put with the twat three rows in front of the camera who just had to get up and go for a widdle during the pivotal moment of [insert name of movie]?

This strikes me more as an argument against going to the cinema rather than against buying pirate DVDs. Or indeed, an argument in favour of waiting until the DVD is released and then downloading it via BitTorrent or whatever spyware-laden peer-to-peer networking client takes your fancy.

I am not and have never been a fan of digital restrictions management (DRM) technology. The film industry's efforts to protect its revenue stream are just so misjudged it makes me wonder whether this is an industry that is as creative as it would have us believe. The fact is that any attempt to restrict digital content is doomed to failure, yet the content creators insist on trying to apply the economics of scarcity to their products, when that economic model simply does not fit.

Unlike the sad story of MacroVision that blighted VCR technology from its inception, and the even sadder fate of Digital Audio Tape, which died a death at the hands of the music industry who feared what would happen if people could make perfect, digital copies of their music, with MP3 and the various video codecs in common use, the digital cat is well and truly out of the bag, and content producers will have to come up other ways to make money from their products.

As cinemae rose to the challenge of home video by selling the experience of going to the cinema, so content producers have to rise to the challenge by selling the advantages of content ownership, or content rental.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out over the next few years.

300

2007-04-04T11:20:00.000Z

On Sunday afternoon (in the dark of the matinee), my Lovely Husband™ and I went to the cinema to see swords and sandals epic “300”. When trailers first appeared for it, I was rather under the impression that it was called “Zoo” because of the style used for writing the 3. I blame an old school friend who introduced me to the dangerous ways of the fancy, filigree zed that looks like a number "7" shagged a letter "g".

I say swords and sandals, and there were plenty of those in evidence. Impinging more upon our awareness were the sea of rippling abdominals and the rather incongruous rubber jock straps. Or what looked like rubber jock straps. Hey, I'm not complaining. They set off the aforementioned abs very well.

It was an entertaining piece of cinema, with a deliciously camp Xerxes and a King Leonidas who sounded remarkably like Sean Connery.

Although it’s hardly a chick flick, there were moments when I thought a box of tissues might have come in handy. (Man-sized tissues, of course. As I have said before - and will continue to say until I finally say it to the one person who is going to find it amusing - they don’t call them man-sized because we have bigger noses.)

We’re both hoping that seeing all those muscles on screen will encourage us to push ourselves a little bit harder at the gym. I’m sure I could get myself into that shape if I just … you know, worked out properly and consistently, stopped eating as much as I do, and gave up alcohol completely. Clearly, getting that kind of shape would take so little, and yield so much.

Actually, given that actors are routinely turned from 98 lb weaklings to buff hunks by the Hollywood machine, I wonder whether anyone has setup a business where they take you away for six weeks and turn you into the shape you want to be. I know I’d pay for it.

Five things you might not know about Qenny

2007-03-21T12:05:00.000Z

The lovely Brian Sibley, writer, broadcaster, and lately blog whip-cracker extraordinaire, tagged me with a meme in which I am to write about five things that few if any people know about me. Alas, my workload of late has made it difficult to get around to doing it. However, better late than never. Here goes.

I used to be very religious. I studied for the Catholic priesthood for eight years, starting in junior seminary when I was eleven, and eventually leaving senior seminary about six months after my nineteenth birthday. I also had an early and quite active involvement in the charismatic movement, frequently attending prayer meetings from the age of seven onwards - at my own instigation, I hasten to add. There was no pressure at all from my family to do this, it all came from me. In my mid teens, I was given the gift of tongues, one of many deeply affecting and moving experiences that I had during those years. (I have since learned the delights of giving the gift of tongue, and have had many more deeply affecting and moving experiences as a result.) Looking back on it all, I can see the psychology that was at work, and understand how these experiences came about. At the same time I can recall the intensity of feeling, and how powerful the subjective experience was. Now I can understand it, and be delighted by the power of the human mind without the need to invoke any supernatural explanations. Just as well, really. It would do my atheism no good at all if I couldn't!

I shat my pants in Palmerston North. This is one of the two most embarrassing things that I can remember happening to me, and it's a pretty recent memory. I've been toying with the idea of getting it all out in the open by posting the full, gory details as a blog entry. There is more to the story than just erupting in explosive skitters. Oh, yes. That was only one facet of the full horror of the situation. As for the other more embarrassing thing, I'm not sure whether it would make a suitable blog entry. If you think the Palmerston North story sounds bad, the other story is much, much worse. So bad, in fact, that when I regaled my sister with the details, she came close - very close - to being physically sick.

I once pretended to have seen a ghost. I used to pop down to the chapel in my junior seminary to play the magnificent pipe organ down there. It was quite a creepy place to be on one's own, and I would invariably leave in something of a hurry. One night, I decided that it would be quite good fun to make up a story about having seen something. It was very believable, and I managed to work in references to a suicide that had happened several decades before. It created a bit of a stir for a time. These days, I wouldn't do such a thing, because I have found over the years that any sort of dishonesty invariably leads to problems, and I simply can't be bothered trying to keep two separate strands of truth/reality going at the same time. I have no idea how pathological liars (such as my ex) find the energy to maintain their lies. It's exhausting! (Actually, I think they convince themselves to "believe" what they're saying. They seem to think that as long they stick to their version of events, their lies will become the truth, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence contradicting their claims.)

I played Mabel in The Pirates Of Penzance. My junior seminary had a long, proud history of putting on Gilbert & Sullivan operettas at the end of the scholastic year. In my first year there, before my voice broke, I gave my Mabel opposite my best friend TK's Frederick. At the dress rehearsal, during our duet sequence, I ripped my dress quite badly (along the seam), so that at the same moment on the big night, my bare knee shot right out into full public view - most unlady like!

I once came very close to ending it all. At the end of a traumatic relationship, I was sufficiently upset that I made plans to see for myself evidence of my then bf's infidelity, after which I was going to throw myself off one of Aberdeen's very high bridges. In the event, his evening didn't quite follow its usual formula, and by the time I did see him (heading off home with someone that was so not his type, but he was drunk enough not to care), I was more angry than upset. It was a traumatic experience, and I did come very close to following through (not in the Palmerston North sense, I hasten to add). However, it was also very empowering because it was the beginnings of a long process by which I shook off the shackles of self-doubt and unworthiness that I had acquired through my earlier years, and started to learn to love myself. In a rather weedy, new-age way, it has to be said.

Rather a serious note to finish on, I know!

Anyone reading this who hasn't already played the game, please consider yourself tagged.

You're it!

Inappropriate Bragging

2007-03-05T09:28:00.000Z

When I bought my most recent mobile phone, it came with an industry-standard mini-SD card. The card had some stuff on it, including a ring tone that I rather like. Unfortunately, the capacity of the card is only 64Mb, which isn't a lot to play with if you want to have the device double up as a sometime MP3 player. So, I bought myself a nice 1Gb card. Swell. Holds a decent amount of music, and in such a tiny little bit of plastic.

Thing is, I can't transfer the bits I like from my original card, because SD stands for "Secure Digital", meaning that the people who sell you the card can put content on it that is "secure". Nothing to do with enhancing my security, it's all about ensuring that the seller's content cannot be moved or copied. From my point of view, this is a terrible restriction, because it means I can't use the ringtone I like even though I paid for the bloody thing.

This made me pause to think how odd it is that the name of the thing, in this case Secure Digital Media, actually brags about something that is a benefit to the seller but a significant restriction for the buyer. Why not come up with one called Huge Markup Media?

From the buyer's point of view, a more accurate name might be "Restricted Content Media". In other words, even if you pay for the thing, don't expect to be able to use it freely.

Similarly, I have a lot of sympathy for the thinking that DRM, the orthodox translation of which is "Digital Rights Management", could more accurately translated as "Digital Restrictions Management", since from the point of view of the consumer, DRM takes away my ability to do some things, and so it seems more accurate to use the word "restrictions" (which the technology imposes) rather than "rights" (which the technology removes).

It anyone could point me to a bit of software that would allow me to crack the security on my SD card and therefore use the ringtone that I like, I'd be delighted.

Blackpool Or Bust

2007-03-04T19:56:00.000Z

Actually, this doesn't have to be an either/or choice, since in Blackpool, it is easier than it is in most towns to pick up a fake bust. Or an inflatable lady. Or man. Or any of a number of other tasteful products. Even off season. As it was last weekend.

Yes indeed. Last weekend, I went along to Blackpool for their annual magic convention. I'd never been before, but had heard of it from many people. It's the biggest (I believe) annual magic convention in the world. There were dealers, performers, lecturers, competitors and magicians from all over the place.

My first impression on walking in to the venue was similar to how I felt the first time I attended a Gay Pride event. I found myself thinking, "Oh my god - I didn't realise there were so many of us!"

Magicians as far as the eye could see. Some of them doing the kind of things that are common to magicians and muggles alike: getting pissed, stuffing a sausage roll into a mouth, attempting the surreptitious removal of an ill-adjusted boxer short from an arse-crack. Others were doing overtly magical things - levitating bank notes, cutting cards in manner bewhildering, producing foreign currency from the orifices of passing youths.

I caught up with friends old and new, and discovered new connections that had been staring me in the face all along - such as a fellow Magic Circle member who, it turns out, is the son of a guy I know from the magic club I belong to in Auckland. I also got to see some of the worlds best magicians, not necessary well-known names in the muggle community, but names that are known to most magicians, and spoken with reverence and respect.

One of my oddest experiences of the weekend was holding onto a chiffon that was perched on a table as the table itself floated off the ground. That was odd. But what was really odd is that the guy making the table float let go so that it was just me holding this chiffon, and I know I wasn't doing anything to make it happen.

Amongst the many performances I saw, I have a hard time choosing between the close-up magic of Greg Wilson and that of David Roth. For entertainment value, probably Greg. For sheer magical wonder, David. Getting to see both in the same weekend - priceless.

There was rather a lot of alcohol consumed over the weekend, and so I ended up crawling off early on the Sunday rather than stay for the full day. Next year, though, I'll be back, and I'll be sure to take the Friday and the Monday off work, and make the most of it.