An amusing irrelevancy, via Fiona. Apparently, goth is in again.
Ballot
I was reading the Warren Ellis Forum, when I came across this, about what we can do to help, in the aftermath of the disaster. The thread in question had been closed for posting, just as part of an effort to keep the forum readable, but I just wanted to say how much it impressed me, and in the absence of the ability to do it there, I’ll do it here. The guy in question is running for mayor of New York, oddly enough. Find out more here. But here’s what he said:
“Here’s something else you can do.
Be nice.
Get the door.
Pick up the dropped book.
Say “excuse me.”
Give directions.
Carry the heavy bag.
Give up the cab.
Give up the seat.
Give up the pocket change.
Smile.
Say “I love you.”
Mean it.
Sing.
Dance.
Play.
Eat.
Drink.
Live.
Because THAT’S the best way to fight terrorism.”
There’s a man with his head screwed on straight. I’d vote for him.
Cold
Andrea said it well last night, but her exact words escape me: We’re living in a world where people can kill innocent numbers this big, and then not tell us why. And that makes it oddly worse. That not only are there the sort of filth out there who can plan and execute killings on this scale, but that they don’t even have the spine to tell us why.
On the one hand, nothing has changed. We’ve always lived in this world. There’s still as much wonder and the light out there as there ever was. But it’s kind of hard to see it, today. There’s something weird about my visor chiming off with my regular jobs today – it does it every day, but it seems oddly mundane to to be checking websites and doing back-ups today.
I’m reading a list of things people are doing to take their mind off this, to comfort themselves and generally reassure themselves that the world isn’t ending. Me, I spent last night watching the coverage with two of the people I love best. That’ll do me, thanks.
And There Was
It’s funny how the mind reacts at time like this, isn’t it? All I can think about are my friends and family. I have no reason to think any of them are in immediate danger, but I’m worrying about them in any case. And in turn, that sets off “I thought I didn’t have to do this any more!” sorts of thoughts in my head. (For those unaware – a large number of my family, and some of my friends are Northern Irish. Part of my life, growing up, was worrying every time something was on the news about explosions and death in Belfast. I was fucking delighted when the peace treaties were signed.) And while I’m thinking all these thoughts, I’m also wondering what the consequences of all this will be – as soon as blame is assigned, there’s going to be something vast and horrible coming out of the US…
Idiot(s)
Once again, I prove that I’m an arsehole. There’s an unfeasible tradgedy unfolding in the US, there’s hsyteria and panic going on all around, and my heart bleeds for everyone that this touches, and then Blair spouts shit about how this is a “new evil”. It’s a new scale, and I’m shocked, stunned and appalled, and still, I have it in me to be pissed off that Blair thinks that waiting to find out if your loved ones are alive or dead is a new thing.
So, of course, I shoot my gob off. I do it as tactfully as I can, hoping to convey my sympathies to those hurt by this, empathising with their plight, because I remember what it was like to watch the news about a bomb in Belfast and to wonder if anyone I knew or loved was hurt of killed by it, and pointing out how rotten and disrespectful to the memory of hundreds and thousands of dead people Blair is being. But I cocked it up, and reactions have ranged from “you insensitive asshole” to reactions that on the whole, may have been nicer and politer than I deserved.
And I’m left worrying about my friends in the area, and the families of people I know and love in the area, and god, it’s all a fucked up mess…
Rash Promises
Electricana. I appear to have generated interest with this one. So, a short explanation. Electricana is my new web project – a supplement to Ink Stains, in a very, very different vein. I’m still planning the whole thing out, but at the moment, it’ll house two seperate fiction projects.
There are two things beyond that that make me excited about this: one if the fact that the entire site (barring admin work) will be run from my Visor. All the content will be generated and uploaded “on the road” as it were. This has been an ambition of mine for the last couple of years. Yes, I am a geek.
The second one, well, that’s the scope of the fiction projects. That, you’ll find out about as they progress. One of them is, well, interesting. The other, if I pull it off, will blow my mind, at least.
It never really has
Words. Pictures. Magic. Electricana. Coming Soon.
Short Walk Down Memory Lane
Saturday evening, from my notes:
Kingston Hill is gorgeous in the late summer evening. This is how I remember it, when I think of it, and I think of it more often than you might expect. This is the point when the world reminded me it was out there, in so many ways and on so many levels. Not only had I just left school, full of notions of my own grown-up-ness, with the all the confidence and arrogance of a teenager, but I knew what I wanted and how to get it.
God, it makes me laugh, looking back. And it looks like you can go back again, but only to look around. There’s not a lot different more security, but there are still squirrels everywhere, and the air has that early autumn chill to it. The need to smoke Marlboro reds and listen to Alanis Morisette is suddenly very strong indeed. It’s time to wander away, but there’s part of me left thinking “what if…?”
What if I’d never gone to Edinburgh? What if I’d never met the people I did after leaving Kingston? What if I was still in touch with the people I knew at Kingston. Aside from sporadic e-mail exchanges with Claire, there’s no-one I’m still in contact with from Kingston. It’s a dead part of my life. The only person I still see that I first met during that phase of my life is Andrew, and I met him totally separately from the rest of it…
God knows how I’d have turned out. But still, it’s interesting to come here, and surround myself with the ghosts of what might have been.
Back to the real world. The barbeque is calling me. My friends are there, and there’s only so long you can spend in self-induglent imaginings of your other selves. Here’s to yesterday, and to all the tomorrows that never happened. I hope they’re doing well.
Unsaid
I have shit load of stuff I want to say here. Some of it, I just want to get set down in public. Things become more solid when they’re said out loud. If you don’t say it, then there’s no proof of it, and it’s easier to take back, in the silence of your own mind. That’s half the reason I keep this thing. It’s also the reason that it has no archive that you can read – I want to get things said in public, but I don’t want people to be able to torment me with them when I do change my mind.
But I digress: there’s lots of stuff I want to say, and a lot of it, I just don’t. Some of it, yeah, I know why I don’t. Other bits – the mood hits me, and I start to say them, and then something goes wrong – I get lost in work, my browser crashes, I just plain forget, lots of reasons. But something happens, the mood passes and I never go back to them.
I Loved That Phone
Today has been a day filled with wonder and light. I want more days like today.
Got a new mobile at the weekend. (If you need my new number and don’t have it, mail me.) I got a rather nice Samsung A-300, because it was shiny and space age, and the reviews I’d read called it a Nokia-beater. Sounds good to me. But the big thing about it was the IRDA support. Then I got home to find out that apparently the IRDA on some of the early version of this phone was, well, non-existant. And then I had to wait 2 days for the damn thing to be connected.
But once it was, it turns out that the IRDA works. It talks to my Handspring perfectly, and really fucking easily, too.
I can now get e-mail and browse the web from anywhere in the world. Or at least in the UK, which is fine by me.
For my next trick: posting to this thing from a riverside cafe.