JANUARY 2001
The tart with the cart
So here I am in sunny Dublin again. Not at work for once (though I am abusing office facilities to write this). Here to see a man about a dog, so to speak. Which involved paying for my own ticket. Shocking, I know. But at least that meant I got to fly British Midland instead of Aer Fungus. And BMid do understand that it's an airline they're operating, not a casual bus service.
So I guess it's nice to be back. That doesn't sound very enthusiastic, does it? It was cool to meet Phelim for lunch, as I haven't seen him for a while, the last couple of visits being of the flying persuasion. Afterwards I had three hours or so to kill before meeting Thomas so I took a wander around Grafton Street. It was really fucking dispiriting. The last time I was in Grafton Street was in August when I was working there for two weeks as holiday cover for Thomas. Tasha had flown out for the weekend and we spent a very agreeable afternoon wandering around looking for a ring to celebrate being together five years. That seems a long time ago now.
January 26, 2001
The ape was a great big hit
So I went to see Marilyn Manson at the London Arena last night. I have impaired hearing, a sore neck, stiff back and am absolutely knackered. It was fantastic.
Not to mention being quite an interesting experience on a couple of levels. I don't think I've ever seen anyone who had such mesmeric hold over an adult audience before. I've also never seen so many drop-dead gorgeous (and butt-ugly) babes in PVC or leather miniskirts and fishnets in one place. Additionally I've never stood out at a gig that much before. Not wearing black was a bad start. I would have been dramatically less conspicuous if I'd shown up in a PVC miniskirt and fishnets with full makeup. And I could have done with dyeing my hair black. :-)
January 25, 2001
Smiley and the whole world smileys with you
You know you spend too much time online in general and too much time in ICQ in particular when you write a letter (like with a pen, not a keyboard) and you find yourself dropping smileys into it. And not smiley faces like the ones Microsoft Word cutely inserts when you type colon dash close-parenthesis, but a proper :-) on its side....
I did that this afternoon while I was scribbling a note to my ex's dad to accompany some Mac software I was sending him. He's an English teacher too, to make it worse.....
>:-(
January 18, 2001
Macintosh envy
This is really surreal. I've hated Macs for years. And now I'm gonna have to buy one of the bloody things. I bought Tasha an iMac for her birthday. Although she loved it, she hasn't really used it much because we went on holiday a couple weeks after she got it and a couple of weeks after we got back she dumped me. It's been in the cupboard under the stairs most of the intervening time, but I figured if she wasn't going to use it anytime soon then I would. I know somewhere between nothing and absolutely nothing whatsoever about MacOS and I figured it was time I did. Plus I've been getting increasingly seduced by how cool Apple are making the kit these days. They seem to have suddenly acquired that gift that Sony have had forever of making their products inherently desirable.
Anyway, I've been playing with the thing all evening. It's a bit weird only having one button on the mouse where I'm used to three or four, though it's easily the coolest mouse on earth. Still haven't worked out how (or if) you get context menus and similar totally elementary stuff. But God damn it's fun to use. I'm gonna have to buy one. Maybe not an iMac, though I've been recommended the iMac DV Special Edition, maybe a G4 400 tower. But either way I feel the pull of conversion to Macintosh. It's kind of like that Dilbert cartoon where his clothes get pulled off as he abjectly fails to resist the lure of a hardware store.
January 16, 2001
I have a dream
This weekend is MLK weekend, an occasion to remember and celebrate one of the 20th Century's most courageous men. Think about this. A black man talks to a white man:
"When I was born I was black. When I grew up I was black. When I'm sick I'm black. When I go in the sun I'm black. When I'm cold I'm black. When I die I'll be black.
But you... when you're born you're pink. When you grow up you're white. When you're sick you're green. When you go in the sun you turn red. When you're cold you turn blue. When you die you turn purple.
And you have the nerve to call me coloured."
January 12, 2001
Thank you Florida and good night
I find it hard to believe even a posturing buffoon such as William Hague would wish to support Dubyuh on something that only an educationally subnormal backwoods shitkicker like him could think is a legitimate use of tax dollars. For Christ's sake, it's not 1981 anymore. The Soviet Union is long gone. Clinton had plenty of faults, but one of them wasn't perpetuating the Republican fetish for having an big bad evil spectre to scare the American people with. Jesus wept.
January 12, 2001
I love the sound of breaking glass
It's amazing how close trivial domestic accidents often come to being very serious. I was sitting at my desk idly discussing with the Evil Pixie the festering open sewer masquerading as my personal and professional life, with a beer by one hand. Apropos of nothing, or so it seemed, my desk lamp fell off the tape deck it was sitting on and landed on top of said half litre German beer glass (one of the tall ones) which was nearly full. Beer, broken glass and CDs everywhere. I got a couple of minor cuts on my fingers but nothing else apart from intense annoyance that I managed to transport the damn glass back from Wuppertal and then move house twice with it intact and but broke it in such a dumbass fashion. Despite the earlier thread of conversation about how little I feel like being alive at the moment (or at least conscious) I have to say that bleeding to death in a pool of Beck's and broken glass in my own house is definitely not my idea of a cool way to check out.
January 5, 2001
Remember what the dormouse said
Saw my first rabbits of the new millennium a few minutes ago (apart from my own, obviously). Went for groceries at half past midnight - 24-hour supermarkets are a marvellous thing - and on the way back the buns were out to play. Ten of 'em I saw bopping about by the edges of the roads. First I've seen for what seems like quite a while. Of course the weather's slightly warmer than it has been in the last few weeks, which probably helps. I love animals in general, rabbits most of all and the sight of wild rabbits hopping around never ceases to do my soul good. And God knows, I'm in need of that right now. So it was a particular pleasure, unexpected as it was at 1.15am, to see some buns venturing out. Small things are sometimes the best things.
