Alasdair Watson

I don’t trust astrology. It seems like a pile of bunk to me. But I do, on the other hand, make periodic use of the tarot, so y’know, it’s not like I’m occupying some kind of atheistic high ground here. But still, it’s in that spirit of skepticism that I have just looked at chineseastrology.com (via arcana_j). I was born under the sign of the Fire Snake, apparently, which means that I am a wise philosopher and basically an all round mystic sage, which I chose to believe is entirely accurate. Of course, it also means that I’m supposed to hugely physically attractive, and have flawless skin, and I’m damn sure my skin’s not flawless.

But the real reason I know all this is crap is that this year, the one that started on January the 22nd, is the year of the Wood Monkey. This is, apparently, the best year I’m going to have in the next decade or so at least. Given that I woke up on January the 22nd feeling largely unable to face the world, this does not fill me with confidence. I mean, it’s entirely possible that I’m going to have a staggering wonderful year, but I was reflecting the other day that I had a brilliant 2003, and all it feels like 2004 has done thus far is piss on me, so y’know, maybe I was just born at the wrong time. Well, I know I was, but sadly, it would make no difference to my Chinese astrological sign if I’d been born at the right time.

But y’know, this isn’t a pity party. (Well, maybe a small one. Shut up.) So, after due consideration, I have decided that while I do not, under any circumstances believe in astrology, I shall, this once, assume that it is true, and astrology had damn well better look grateful about it. But I’ll be watching closely. I’m going to be looking back on 2004 (and early 2005, I guess) hard, and if things don’t rock utterly from end to end, I shall be demanding my money back. I don’t trust fucking monkeys, anyway. I mean, humans are basically just monkeys that decided that we liked plumbing and electricity better than throwing turds around and eating each others’ fleas, and look how we’ve turned out.

So: I have the week of my birthday off (20th-28th of March). It’s not a terribly special birthday, other than that it more or less obliges me to stop thinking of myself as “mid-twenties”, so I have decided that I’m going to do something (or possibly several somethings) interesting and special in that week, because my age isn’t being obligingly exciting. So, kids, I turn to you for suggestions please. As many, and as creative as you can come up with. Don’t worry about cost, time, or any other limiting factor other than, y’know, the laws of physics and basic possibility. I may not do somethings because they’re too expensive or time-consuming, but I don’t want to discount anything at this stage.

Well, I can only assume that someone sat down to write a film saying “I know what we’ll do – we’ll take the way Alasdair wishes the world worked, and we’ll map it onto a life that’s half his childhood fantasies, and half his more outrageously sappy teenage hopes and dreams, and set the whole thing in a slightly brighter version of his internal American South.”

Fucking loved it. I’ll be surprised if I see a more charming film this year, and it’s a strong early contender for my favourite of the year, as well. The world doesn’t quite work like that, but I’ve always loved the idea of a personal mythology, of stories from one’s past that are entertaining in and of themselves – the sort of story you find other people passing on saying “I knew this guy/girl who…” They don’t tend to be tall tales on the scale that’s presented in Big Fish, but still, the film captures that spirit of personal narrative beautifully. I’ll have to seek out the book.

My boss (who is on holiday) woke me up this morning, by sending me a text message complaining that he had rung the office this morning, and no-one had answered the phone. On a Saturday. When I was trying to catch up on the sleep I haven’t been getting. Bastard. I haven’t dignified him with a response.

So, having been woken rather sooner than I would have liked, I lay in bed for a while. Then I took my coat to the cleaners. Or rather, it took me there.

Had the drunken fuckwit from the other night thrown up over my biker-style leather jacket, it would have cost me 25 quid to have it cleaned. Annoying, but ultimately affordable. But no, it was my long coat. And so it’s costing me over seventy quid, (an amount that makes a difference to my plans for the month) to get it cleaned, because it’s a softer leather (and more of it) and has to be sent away to a specialist company. And it’ll be two weeks before I get it back.

A complete and total shitehawk, I say.

Tonight, I went to the pub with the comics mob, which was a bloody good laugh. I also bought another bottle of whisky, which I am looking forward to trying, when I finish one of the many fine malts in my home. Tonight was a good night.

Well, up to a point.

On the tube home, some bloke threw up all over me. Specifically, over the back of my several hundred pound worth of leather coat, and my rather nice leather bag. That man, boys and girls, is a shitehawk. He is a shitehawk, because having done that (and splattered some poor girl in the process, I should add) he proceeded to slump into a seat, pass out, and then stir only to leap from the train at Balham, without offering to pay for the cleaning, either for me, or, more importantly, the nice girl whose white coat (and hair) he had splattered with his watermelon-coloured vom. As I say, he was a complete shitehawk.

After the last fortnight, if something very good doesn’t happen to me very soon, I’m going to start hurting people. You’ve all be warned.

A shitehawk, I tell you.

For all their flaws, the people I have my DNS with are quick on the turnaround – looks like black-ink.org is back and running, so ignore my last message and use my normal address, although if you’re expecting a reply from me and haven’t heard anything in the next day or two, it might be an idea to re-send the mail.

My black-ink.org domain has just died. It should be back up within a day or two, but if you’re trying to email me, then you’d be best off emailing [myfirstname] at electricana dot org for the next few days.

I knew I’d not been the gym in a while. The weight I’ve put back is more than testament to that fact.

Still, since I seem to have spare time on my hands again I figured I’d fill it with sweaty masochistic practices, and try to get back into something that might pass for shape. So I popped along to the gym this evening to get a new membership card, since I’d lost my old one, with the intent of starting up again next month. So I get there, all set to pony up for a new card, only to discover that my membership has been cancelled. Last October, in fact. And I hadn’t noticed.

Whoops.

In other news, the oystercard people are bastards, who won’t let me buy a monthly bus pass via them (as least not on their website). Does anyone know if I can buy, say a weekly travelcard in order to get the card, and then after that, charge the thing with monthly bus passes (and no, pre-pay is no good to me), or is the only bus pass option the yearly one, even if you’ve already got the card?

Turns out that on top of everything else, Barrage were playing in London last week, and I missed ’em.

Fin and I just broke up. So if I’m a bit out of sorts over the next while, that’s why. I’ll bounce back, I’m sure, but I may not be entirely my usual cheery self for a bit.

What did people do before the internet, I wonder? Phone round? Spend the next few weeks correcting people in a slightly awkward manner? Take out classified ads?

There’s a building site just outside my office window, just like there is outside every office window in London. It’s quite a small one, but there’s a crane on it – a weird, stunted one, as if the equipment had taken up smoking and failed to eat its greens when it was a young piece of industrial machinery.

Aside from being small, this crane is also a mutant, as far I can tell. It appear to exist in order to move around really weirdly shaped lumps of concrete with spikes and girders sticking out of them (fuck knows what they’re building), and instead of having a hook, or anything conventional like that on the end of it’s line, it has a strange nodule from which hang a profusion of chains, like the tendrils of some kind of industrial squid. It’s been kind of weird, sitting here watching move around against the grey-blue twilight sky, the chains whipped back and forth quite sharply, agitiated by the motion of the cradle and the strong breeze. It’s like the damn thing’s alive and clutching for things, it really is.

Christ, I’ve just noticed something. There’s no cab on it. Nowhere for the driver to sit. It’s done away with him, hasn’t it?

Fuck. The machines are taking over. The little men in the yellow jackets down there are just servants to the yellow mutant’s whim, aren’t they? It’s building something strange down there. A think made out of concrete and sharp things. Machine aesthetics are at work outside my window.

(I may be slightly bored at work this afternoon, but seriously, the construction site looks weird in the twilight. I tried to get photos, but the phonecam isn’t up to the job.)