Alasdair Watson

Humbug I say! Christmas is cancelled. Return to work. Cease all festive activity. We’re a shitty species, and we don’t deserve a happy fucking holidays.

As you’ll have gathered, holiday mirth has fled my bones. This is because I had to give a statement to the police on my way to work this morning. I hoped on my bus, running only slightly late, full of seasonal goodwill – I finish at lunchtime, after which I shall go shopping for festive foodstuff and a last couple of things, and then I’m on holiday until the 5th, so you’d think it’d take more than a slightly crappy busride to dampen my good spirits – I’m used to those, after all.

What I got today was a testament to the depth of human malice and apathy. So, I’d been on the bus for 10-15 minutes, and we’re just passing where I used to live when a couple get on the bus, and sit on the top deck, at the back, a row or so behind me. Whereupon they proceed to have a row. Well, rather, he proceeds to harrangue her, some something involving a mobile phone. His every third word was fuck or cunt. This was pretty shitty, and everyone on the top deck was shifiting uncomfortably in their seats.

I’d like to say I was on the verge of saying something to him as a result of this, and maybe I was, but I honestly think it’s more likely that, like everyone else, I’d have sat there uncomfortably while he continued to berate her, because I’m not really any different to the rest of the toerags on the bus, but as I was sitting there uncomfortably, thinking that maybe I should say something, he hit her.

Backhanded her across the face, to be exact.

That rather made my decision for me – so, hoping the someone else would step in to stop anything else, I went downstairs and had a word with the bus driver, and got him to call for the police. Which naturally meant that we sat for quite a while halfway along the route. As far as I could tell no-one upstairs had stepped in, because he was still berating her when I got back to my seat, although he managed to restrain himself form hitting her again, thank fuck.

Eventually, the police turned up, and after a brief scene he was escorted off the bus, and I gave a short statement to the officers. Seeing me talking to them, he put two and two togther, and has threatened to find out where I live and fuck me up, but I’m a bit more worried about what he’ll do to the poor girl now, who really wasn’t happy to see the police.

So between this arsehole, wondering if I did the right thing, and the colossal indifference of the public on the bus (up to and including the living shit who complained to the driver about the interruption to his journey), I have no more goodwill toward mankind left, and am forced to declate the festive season at a premature end. I would say I’m sorry, but it ain’t me who failed to display any goodwill toward my fellow man.

In 24 hours, I will finish work for Christmas. In about eight hours, I will be seeing Eddie Izzard. But right now, I’m bored, bored, bored, bored, bored. So I’m going to do that 2003 survey that’s doing the rounds. But if it’s any consolation, I feel slightly guilty about it.

Out with the old

I got home this evening to find an amazon package on the doormat addressed to me. Upon opening it, it turned out to be a DVD – Pirates of the Caribbean, to be exact. The note said that it was for myself, Andrew and Marysia, and that we should be nice and share it, which displays either a rather sweet naivete, or a pleasingly cyncial wit.

Either way we’re all unspeakably grateful, of course, but the person that bought it forgot to sign their name, and we don’t know who to thank. So if they’d like to speak up, we will heap our blessings upon them.

Or, put another way: Ta very much, whoever you are.

[Update notice: Black Ink has new content.]

2004 is heading toward us with unsettling speed. Still, there’s time for one last look back over the year, and I’m in the mood for novelty, because it’s Christmas, and there isn’t any good new music out, or if there is, it’s drowned out by gimmick singles and greatest hits albums, and that fucking Slade song.

So, what new music has come into your life over the last year (note – not nessecarily released this year, just something you first heard this year), and who put it there?

In my case, the stand out for the year is Jason Webley, courtesy of Fin’s Mum. Courtesy of Jason himself, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for Charles Mingus and Leonard Cohen, both of whom I liked what I’d heard but hadn’t bothered to seek out more.

Honourable mentions to Mclusky, courtesy of zoo_music_girl and The King via stu_n.

What about you?

The curtains in Fin’s bedroom are made out of tissue paper. Or something slightly thinner. I, on the other hand, have become accustomed to sleeping with something close to blackout curtains – enormous heavy velvety things that admit almost no light whatsoever. This makes staying at Fin’s something of a trial for me, as I invariably wake with the sun, and then spend the next hour or two trying to sleep, and never managing more than a fitful doze.

At this time of year, at least it’s usually about seven in the morning before the light is strong enough to wake me, but on Saturday night, I was woken at 4am by the moonlight – the moon was almost full, low in the sky, and staggeringly bright. It was gorgeous, looking out over her back garden, everything washed in silver, the light glinting off a mild frost that was just settling. In that moment, I went from early December mode straight into full-on festive cheer. I attempted to wake Fin up to look at it, but in a reversal of the usual way of these things, she swore at me, and went back to sleep.

Sadly, thought it’s a full moon tonight, and quite possibly frosty, it’s also due to be overcast, in London at least.

And I can prove it. Go here and see for yourselves.

Hitherto unconsidered difficulty of having wifi: I don’t have my own SMTP server for the sending of mail. I rely on those of my ISP/office, both of which only work if you’re hooked up on their network, which is only good if you know what they are. But when leeching bandwidth off unsecured networks, I can’t use them, and hell, even just having to switch settings whenever I go between home and office is more hassle than I really want. So I’ve spent a little cash, and got myself an account with AUTH SMTP, so I can send mail whever I am in a more convenient manner.

In order to do this, I’ve had to buy yet another domain name, which brings my total to something like 10 now, which is faintly absurd. I’ll probably ditch a couple of the unused ones come the new year, although now I think of it, it’s only one of them that qualifies for that, and I like the name too much to part with it. I’m sure I’ll get around to the site I was going to build on it one day. Honest.

Post NaNoWriMo stress disorder has set in. I have these strange acres of unfilled time. I’ve written Friday’s column already, desperately trying to fill up the hours, and I don’t know what to do now. I’m tempted to start the next draft of Stormbreak, but I really want to give myself a week or two’s distance from it. Time to start in on something else, I guess. I think I’d rather leave Hard Rain (the sequel) alone for now – the first one is due some extensive re-writes and I don’t want to tie myself to keeping, well, any part of it.

Time to go back to that notion I had for Big Dead Bones, perhaps…

I will forestall the sexual jokes, first of all, by referring you to these parts of the (dictionary.com) definition of fetish:

1: An object that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially such an object associated with animistic or shamanistic religious practices.
4: An abnormally obsessive preoccupation or attachment; a fixation.

I will concede that I like my little bits of shiny geek wizardy, certainly more than my bank manger thinks is healthy, but I don’t wanna hump them, or anything. Having cleared that up, I can move on to talking about my shiny new toy, a Palm Tunsten C, which I acquired most for the joys of wireless networking it bestows upon me. I was resigned to having to wait until next year to be able to abuse that facility in the office, where we are not yet wireless (although we plan to be), but it turns out that actually there’s someone nearby with an unsecured wireless network that I can gank bandwidth off, should I develop a burning need to. The house, has, obviously, been wireless a while now. I discovered this morning that the range of the network just about covers the bus stop outside out front door, which is great because it means I can get my emails as I’m waiting for the bus in the mornings..

Slightly annoyingly, the keyboard I bought to use with it doesn’t seem to work. The thumb keyboard is fine, but the one I was planning to actually, y’know, type on just produces gibberish. Specifically, gibberish I’m not telling it to type. But I’ve got a ticket in with Palm’s support people, who have been helpful to other of my acquiantance in the past, so I live in hope. If all else fails, I’ll send it back to Amazon, and think about getting a different one.

I have discovered something odd, though, in the browser that comes installed. It’s CSS implementation is, erm, quirky, but I can forgive that, given that it’s trying to cut web pages designed for screens that are three times as large down to a useable size, but there’s a very odd quirk if I look at 9A that doesn’t seem to occur anywhere else, to whit: everything renders properly, exactly in line with what the stylesheet is demanding, except the navbar on the left, which just doesn’t render at all. No sign of it. Very strange. (It does, however render my friends page just perfectly – the content column is exactly the width of the screen, provided no-one has stuck any whacking great pictures on it…

Expect more of my adventures with the new toy over the next few days. Because I hate you all, and want to bore you to death.