Found this guide to vegetarian stumbling blocks via a comment in Lyssa’s livejournal. Now, without wishing to offend any vegetarians in the audience, d’you now think it might be going a bit far to refuse to drink whiskey, because it may have been matured in a barrel that might once have contained something that may have been treated using something that came out of an already-dead animal that was killed for it’s meat?

I’m just boggling that anyone out there would be that picky, y’know?

Yes, that is my housemate on the front page of the bbc news. How cool is that?

So, this blogis three years old today. My LJ (at least as an entity that I post to) is coming up on a year old. On Thursday, it’ll be one year since ipoints decided that they didn’t love me any more.

What amuses me most about this is that I’ve flipped my life on it’s head in so many ways in the last three years, and especially in the last year. And despite that, I could still write a entry for tonight that runs “Went out to exercise, came back, made a banana smoothie, and drank it while watching the sun go down over Tooting. Candles are lit, and Tom Waits is on the stereo. Life’s good.”

Except that I’m in a different flat, and I’ve lived in two other places, and held two jobs (well, I’m still in the second one) in the last year. And, to my continued astonishment, I appear to be in a relationship with an actual woman. Looking back over the last year, is seems like I’ve done so much, and wound up back where I’m happiest. It’s been weird.

I kinda feel like there are people I want to thank for all the things they did that helped me get out of bad spot last year, and back to where I am now – the tech guys at The Internet Corporation, who were the only good bit of that job, my parents, my new employers, and the rest of my friends (and the ones who aren’t on that list, too) for putting up with me while I whinged and went gently mad, Jamie for conveniently getting a better job in Oxford, and letting me move back in with Andrew and Marysia, and Andrew and Marysia for letting me move back in, despite having lived with me before, and Fin, for everything.

So that’s done, and it’s back to work.

It’s great for keeping track of/finding people that one has lost touch with. One the one hand, this includes old friends, which is marvellous, and on the other…

There are very few people that have ever passed through my life that I hold a grudge against. Oh, there are some people I don’t see any more some by accident, some through acrimony, but most of them, I still wish well, even if I don’t really want much to do with them.

But there are a very, very small number people (less than five) who I vaccilate between wanting dead, because I think they’re a complete waste of food and oxygen, and wanting them to live long, painful lives, filled with misery, suffering and failure.

By accident, using a rather neat java tool that does relationship graphing and LJ-friends navigation (I downloaded and lost the link, I’m afraid) in the space of two minutes, I have found the LJs of two of these people, and they seem regretably happy.

Worryingly accurate in places

D’you know what she’s gone and done? Do you?

Of course you don’t. Allow me to explain.

In addition to her many other virtues, she’s an Eddie Izzard fan. And he’s touring. He’s in London at Christmas, playing Wembley. So, I thought, it’d be a nice festive surprise for her if I booked tickets for the pair of us to go and see him. However, I know from bitter experience that if I want to do something on a specific date, I need to make sure that her family haven’t organised something, or that she doesn’t have something band-related to do. It’s not that she’s always booked up months in advance, exactly, more that her family and bandmates have a unique knack of planning something on a date when we were hoping to do something. Especially if I have a surprise planned.

So I send her a cryptic email, basically saying that she wasn’t to allow anything to be planned for the evening of the 22nd of December. Yes, I know it’s a hell of a long time in advance, but this time I wasn’t taking any chances. I wanted it to be a surprise, so I didn’t say why, although I hinted that it might involved going away, and said that she’d be back in time for Christmas, so not to worry.

Last night she came round, and naturally, demanded to know what the surprise was. And I refused to tell. As one would expect. After a short time, she gave up on it.

However, the next words out of her mouth were (approximately) “I saw an ad in the Evening Standard today – Eddie Izzard is touring. I don’t know when, but we should find out and get tickets.”

I’m a dreadful actor. Surprised ruined.

She swears blind that she genuinely had no idea that he was playing on the 22nd of December, that the ad she saw didn’t have dates on it, and that her mentioning it immedaitely after giving up on the surpise thing wasn’t some scheme to check if that’s what it was. It was a genuine, honest-to-god coincidence, and not a devious attempt to ruin my surprise.

Still I’m going to get my own back.

I’m going to take someone else.

Dark Blackness is love substantive website incomplete Alasdair Watson, a Yellowness- bottom crossing- produce with writing. In the circumstances it’s whole dextrality among you, he’d relative be the cause of be negligent to the tune of love frequent loquacity, with elapse early be the cause of love be disjoined here you transfer man love means with good.

South, that is. I’m putting a short story together set is a fictionalised American South – a rural hick town, to be precise. I’m too worried about accuracy, but I’d like to know if some of the set dressing I’m using is halfway plausible, and I could use someone to bounce dialogue off, to check it for authenticity. Anyone out there willing to help? Drop me an email via the “talk to me link”, or leave a comment, if you’re seeing this on LJ….

Life proceeds largely unchanged. Have taken up swimming like a duck to weasel juggling. I used to be a reasonably strong swimmer when I was a kid, but I seem to have forgotten everything I’d learned, and have a distressing tendency to forget to use my legs, so my arms wind up protesting more than perhaps they might if I was swimming properly. Also, lack of goggles is preventing me from doing an adequate crawl, leaving my stuck with a doubtless slightly stupid-looking breaststroke. But despite that I’m enjoying it immensely, and plan to continue.

I’m listening to the excellent Barrage currently, but I saw Nick Cave play live on Saturday. As I already said, he was better last year, but what struck me was the near-complete absence of stuff from the new album – “Bring It On” and “Rock of Gibraltar” showed up, but that was about it. However, he did make a nice, subtle point about the difference between his old and new stuff, as the did a version of “West Country Girl” that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the likes of Let Love In, sitting comfotably alongside “Loverman” or the like, while the first half of Saturday night’s rendition of “The Mercy Seat” could almost have been from The Boatman’s Call – all the same notes were there, played at the same speed, just arranged a bit differently, to place the piano or guitars differently.

Currently reading “Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked”, an examination of that fairytale (and related topics), it’s origins, and how it, and interpretations of it have altered through the centuries. Next up “Stagolee shot Billy” a look at the origins of the ballad of Stagger Lee. By that time, I hope I’ll have got hold of the new Harry Potter book. Then I think I ought to re-read “Smart Mobs”.

I started this entry intending to talk about what I’d been doing, but I seem to have divereged into consumerism. Oh well.

Went to the Dev on Friday. May have been on crack. Saw Nick Cave play last night. He was better last year. Went for Gourmet Burgers tonight. Lovely.

Interview