Repeated Disclaimer

Posted on by Alasdair

Oh, for fuck’s sake!

Does no-one understand irony any more? I love many of you dearly, but I am slightly boggled at the response to what I posted the other day. I mean, OK, several of you only know me through this, but there are a few of you I thought had a better handle on my character than this. Still, I have to do something like this every six months or so, so I suppose I’m about due for a new dose…

For the hard of thinking: I am a hopelessly soppy old romantic. I have no desire to be anything but. I see couples kissing in the street, and I think “Awww!” Most of my favourite songs are about Love. (Not Lovesongs. I’ll get to them another time.) The memories I hide inside when I’m feeling down are almost all romantic moments, because they cheer me up. I don’t share them with other people, generally, because, well, they’re memories that belong to me and my ex and no-one else.

Yeah, I am a cynic. What I’m not is bitter. Yeah, I think this is an imperfect universe. It’s also a beautiful and marvellous place, filled with enough strangeness and wonder to last me ten lifetimes. Yeah, I think that the human race is stupid and weak and small. But I also think that my friends are some of the most marvellous people on the planet, and y’know, they’re human.

How the fuck can I be bitter when I have a life like the one I do?

For the record, then: if I make a joke out of something nice, if I suggest that something is good and pure, and badly needs to be dragged through the mud, this is IRONY. It means that my actual reaction is “Gosh, I wish there were more things like that.” The more ludicrously over the top and nasty I’m being, the more likely this is to be true.

This isn’t always the case. Sometimes I’m feeling small and mean-spirited. But especially when it’s just a throwaway line like that, you’ll read me wrong less often if you assume it’s a joke.

Haul

Posted on by Alasdair

Shopping yesterday, mostly because I got locked out of the house, and then discovered I had quite a lot more money in the bank than I thought did, and payday is in a couple of days. CDs: Birthday Party “BBC Sessions”, going cheap at HMV. “And The Ass Saw The Angel” – CD of readings and music by Cave, Harvey and Clayton-Jones. Also cheap at HMV. “A Tribute to Polnareff”, v. cheap at Tower. I’m listening to this right now. I have no idea of Polnareff is or was, but there are a lot of artists I like singing in French. It’s very good. Can anyone tell me who the fuck this creature is, then?

Also bought a couple of books and a DVD not going cheap, and then (and I’ll be smug about this for some weeks, I fear) bought a jacket for twenty quid that should have cost over 100. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s not awful, and frankly, 20 quid for a nice black linen jacket is fine by me.

Zot

Posted on by Alasdair

So I spent a large chunk of today reading ZOT! Andrea was good enough to lend Andrew and I her run of the series some time ago, and I feel kinda guilty that it’s taken me so long to get around to them. Especially since Andrea has yet to recommend anything that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. You’d think by this point I’d have learned to shut up and get on with the reading…

It’s a weird series. I’m not sure if I really liked the early parts, to be honest. They were fun, I guess, but the just didn’t grab me. There were some nice ideas, and some lovely characters, but it all just felt a bit so-so to me.

Then I got to the closing parts of the book, the “Earth Stories”, which were the ones that Andrea had really recommended, and I understood why she’d recommended them. Funny, romantic, awkward, touching and happy. Cracking reading. There’s a lovely innocence to them that just makes you think “why can’t the real world be like that?”

Or maybe that’s just the hopelessly soppy bit of me coming to the fore. It does happen from time to time.

Excuse me while I strap on some really big boots and kick it in.

Ennui

Posted on by Alasdair

I am bored as hell. I want to go out and do something, but I can’t think of anything to do. I was vageuly thinking of doing either Camden Market or Merton Abbey Mills, but the weather has fucked that. I’m kind of tempted just to go out and put myself on a train to somewhere random, but I don’t know where I’d go.

Bing

Posted on by Alasdair

Geek moment: Something on my person beeped, and I had to check four different devices to find out what it was, and what the appropriate response was. I think I may need help.

Healthy

Posted on by Alasdair

OK, I’m becoming faintly worried. Because I went to the gym tonight. See, when I joined the gym, it was my intent to go on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The thought that I’m enjoying it enough that I’m going on nights outside of the routine I’ve set myself is, well, scary. I mean, yeah, so I decided to put getting in shape ahead of everything else in my life, including my writing. But I didn’t think I’d find myself getting home at nine o’clock at night, and thinking “what shall I do now? I know! I’ll got to the gym!” For someone who, six months ago, would have torn your arm off at the shoulder had you tried to take my cigarettes and lard away from me, to find myself eating healthy food, taking exercise and not shoving any more toxins into my body that strictly nessecary, well, I’m forced to ask “who am I, and what have I done with the real Alasdair Watson?”

Oh, and before anyone says it: whiskey and coffee are fundamental to my continued ability to operate like a human being, and as such are absolutely required toxins.

Mind you, the glass of red wine I had after getting in from the gym wasn’t. Perhaps there’s hope yet.

GSF

Posted on by Alasdair

Oh, fuck. I’m not good with conflict at the best of times. I don’t like arguing harshly with anyone. I’m told I’ve been known to look like I’ve been slapped in the event of people reacting badly in a heated discussion. But what I have even more of a problem with is watching my friends argue.

Most of the time, the Ninth Art staff get on pretty well. But just the odd time, there’s a bit of a blow-up. So, I surface from my morning’s work to check my mail, and find Andrew and Antony arguing. The latest mail I got was from Andrew, throwing what might be politely called a fit of the collywobbles. This is the second time in a month that this has happened. This time around, it’s oddly worse, because last time it happened, I was seething at the result – a day or two of my work went down the pan. I really dislike having my time wasted, you see. But I kept my gob shut about how furious I was, because I knew that everyone else had wasted their time as well, and I just wanted the whole think filed in the “dead” basket, and also because I’m not totally stupid or insensitive. This time, I’ve got no childish outrage to hang on to, and I just feel sick. Quite literally. I’m sitting here at my desk feeling nauseous. I’m not kidding about not being good at watching my friends argue.

But it’s starting to feel like we’re back at PopImage, except that frankly, this time around I could walk away with less of a sense of guilt – everything I needed to do at the outset is done, and the site could go on as it is forever, with minimal technical work (chiefly ensuring that a back-up of the database is done every so often, and in the event of disaster, restoring it). I quit PopImage because it was no longer fun for me. Sitting at my desk, feeling like I ought to head for the toilets and chuck my guts up isn’t a whole lot of fun, either.

I’m not going to quit, or even to mention this to the others. I’m not a two-year old, after all (even though I behave like one sometimes). But I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

Yes

Posted on by Alasdair

So, a few weeks back, I saw What Women Want. I’ve been pondering it on and off since then. I can’t decide if the film was misogynist or not. Part of me thinks it was. Cute as it may have been, funny though it was, the central message does rather seem to be that What Women Want is a man. Granted, they don’t want the arsehole the Gibson is playing at the start of the film, but still, given the sort of character that Helen Hunt is playing, is does seem that despite all her success, all she’s achieved by standing on her own, all she really wants is Mel…

But there’s another part of me that wonders: Would “What Men Want” have been hugely different? Wouldn’t the answer to that have been “a woman”? Especially given that we are, after all, watching a romance… Yes, there’s an argument to be made that the whole image of women given in the film is as creatures that spend most of their time worrying, and basically being mildly neurotic. But again, I wonder: are men that different? Maybe they worry about different things, but I ssupect that were it not terribly un-macho to admit to being worried about well, anything one might discover that yes, men worry a lot as well.

Is it misogynist to make a funny romantic comedy that, as part of the joke, requires the woman to be weaker, any more than is would be misandrist than to do the reverse?

God

Posted on by Alasdair

It’s 2:30am. The dinner party has just ended. Andrew’s in his bed, and Andrea is on the spare mattress in the lounge, and I know there’s no way I can sleep any time soon, which is irritating. My mind’s running nineteen to the dozen on all sorts of topics, and tonight’s top of the list: God.

Never the small ones that bug you at 2am, is it?

My relationship with god is a weird one. I used to be a Christian, until I lost both my grandfathers in the space of a week. Then, well, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in god, it’s just that I hated him/her/it. Over time, that essentially teenaged rebellion mutated into atheism. But given my other half-mad beliefs, I actually find it currently impossible to disbelieve god, exactly. Oh, in an argument, I still take the atheist stance, simply because I think that living your life with an essentially atheist outlook, regardless of other beliefs makes more sense, and is a more useful thing to do, both for the individual, and society as a whole. But in terms of my belief god, it’s not even an agnostic stance – I’m a practising chaos magician, for god’s sake. If this shit works, and I have every reason to believe it does, then how can god not exist? Granted, I’m pretty sure he/she/it only exists because we believe it does, but still.

But I find that now, over a decade since my initial loss of faith, I no longer have hatred I did, expect on the most abstract level. I no longer have it in me to fight over people’s faith. Don’t mock mine, I won’t mock yours, that’s my view these days.

Odd thing, though: if I’d talked about this a year ago, I’d have been a hard line atheist, with a big old chip on my shoulder about how belief in god was unnecessary at this point.

What I can’t decide is if this change is for the better. It’s more mature, I think. It’s a good indication of the results of the work I’ve been doing over the last year, and they’re results I’m happy with. But I miss that white-hot certainty of unbelief.

Ah well. Time to get some work done.