It makes you wonder...

I just watched some martial arts demos on Eurosport. It's strange - I love physical prowess, but this weird mixture just puzzles me. If Bruce Lee wasn't just special effects then why does the grand final involve the bigger guy kicking the smaller guy around and winning on 'points'?

All the Wu Shu guys come on in Las Vegas glitter and fanny around with 'real swords' and other weapons (only one drop) - and it IS astounding (like good circus) but it's just show biz. And the 'breaking skills of Karate'? Well, at Oval House circus workshops in the 1970s people showed me how to break a slab of concrete on my chest while lying on a bed of nails (and hey, I ain't spiritual, it's physics) - hell, back in the early 60s (at my magic club) I broke a pole hanging on paper loops hanging off open razors (it's physics). We did walking on broken glass (not my kind of macho act) and all that jazz.

I am sure these guys are sincere, and they certainly are extremely fit, but as a show it has uneasy echoes of sado-masochistic stuff that appealed to Yukio Mishima. Isn't this Marine life entertainment (setting your balls on fire in the shower)?

So, I am not denying the skill, just the spiritual bullshit. Some people do fire-walking and get religion. Others do fire-walking and get a living. The first guy (in Mexico) who taught me to eat fire said I just needed to believe him it was going to be OK the FIRST TIME. I did, I did it, and it fed me for the following decade.

Like that dare that made me run my finger through a candle flame when I was a kid.

I've seen strong men acts you wouldn't believe. Bending 6" nails with hands; tearing a telephone directory in half (I managed it a couple of times after I was shown a few tricks); tearing a pack of cards in half (same principles, but I couldn't do it). I've seen a guy bend a long strip of metal stuck into his larynx...(nice physics and a lot of chutzpah).

I'm not putting it down - it's dangerous (don't try this at home) but not a lot of it is 'spiritual' unless I misunderstood.

And then the Shaolin Monks came on. They're good. I mean, they are astounding. Same quibbles hold as all of the above, but they are REALLY good at it. But so are a lot of my circus friends and freaks.

TA-DAH!

Here's Bob again:

Too much of nothing
Can turn a man into a liar,
It can cause one man to sleep on nails
And another man to eat fire.
Ev'rybody's doin' somethin',
I heard it in a dream,
But when there's too much of nothing,
It just makes a fella mean.

Or, in terms of - passing our time down here - should it be:

Ev'rybody's building the big ships and the boats,
Some are building monuments,
Others, jotting down notes,
Ev'rybody's in despair,
Ev'ry girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here,
Ev'rybody's gonna jump for joy.

Waving to Keili

Hi - found your posts in 'Spooking The Herd' and gave brief reply. Sorry to hear the back is still bad, and glad you have been updating your corrupted models - I keep on working on that stuff, too.

I also feel better about the surprising copy of Word Virus, with Masonic bookmarks, that just appeared on my desktop in a puff of yellow smoke.

Ah, spring!

Lovely sunny day, and a day when it would be better working for a circus than a library. I could be out there, drinking coffee in the sun, tightening the rigging with my shirt off, doing a bit of warming up and practising.

Hey ho, instead I will go into a sealed, air-conditioned room with permanent background hum, and fluorescent lights. Today it may feel like a prison.

Conflicting impressions

I have a lot of trouble matching up my sensibilities to the world. I can end up in an all-nighter arguing about the best way to manipulate your resources within the UK, so as to be able to retire to a country cottage with roses around the door - (I doubt it is easy, or even possible for me) - and at the same time defending what I might do if I ever get to be 'old' without a 'pension' - and then I go read a book like "A Mathematician Plays the Market" (which shows a rational maths person getting drawn into the feeding frenzy and irrational beliefs about easy money) - and finally open my email from the Open Democracy site about the appalling plight of people in Falluja - right this moment in present time - which makes even a dribbling retirement in a bed-sit on an inadequate pension sound like luxury. Because we are not living in a war zone.

To tell people they shouldn't make plans because the world is a random and terrible place, that humans are unpredictable and (often) untrustworthy is seen as talking down the future - as though just trying to be accurate creates a negative self-fulfilling prophecy...

There's a grain of truth in it, of course, but as our modern market is all about confidence and faith I suppose people really do believe they can 'wish' it into an upward spiralling self-fulfilling prophecy. That's the wonderful illusion for the innumerate that is the basis of chain letters, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes

PS (added later): the cover story for New Scientist this week turns out to be about how the human belief factor is more important in the stock market than rational decision making.... spooky.

Beautiful Thoughts

Sorry about the irascible rant (cor, look at dem fancy words...) anyway, I thought I would pass on this nicer piece - found chalked up on the Wall Newspaper outside Shakespeare and Co in Paris - a message from Sylvia Beach:

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about the little shops of the Latin Quarter 'with their shop windows filled with old books and etchings where nobody seemed to enter and the proprietor could be seen reading peacefully, indifferent to worldly success. Beside him lies a dog, or perhaps a cat. I wish sometimes to buy such a shop window for myself and sit beside it with a dog for twenty years.'
Rilke's statement was echoed by Anäis Nin when she told me she would like to lead the life I lead in a bookstore on the banks of the Seine River in Paris.

Oh dear - more late night rants

I do wish people wouldn't project their own fear of poverty, old age, sickness, loneliness and death onto me. (I have enough fears of my own, but I deal with them my own way). After all, Buddha left quite a few tips, after his encounter with these inevitable aspects of life. Check it out, seriously.. Or just try the cartoon version, for the Self in a hurry.

"What'll you do when you get old with no pension?" 'Probably die in humiliating circumstances'

"How can you joke about dying?" 'It gets easier when you turn 50 and lose a few friends.'

"How can you live without money?" 'How can you live with it?'

"I wish you'd stop claiming to be old" (say people almost 20 years younger) - being old isn't even an excuse for having less energy and enthusiasm these days - I suppose I should be dyeing my hair, and going down to the gym every day to 'keep in trim'.

How ghastly - even old age is no longer an acceptable reason to let yourself go, and to stop caring what other people think. Boy, do I envy those old guys sitting around in a taverna in some Greek village, playing backgammon without an ambition in the world; with no sense of adventures left undone; no sense of opportunities missed; feeling no need to compete with the next generation of Adonis's.

So, I will be cutting my hair short (boyish) and shaving off my grey beard for the Spring (pre-puberty look) and rushing around chivvying the hungover youth to 'get up and DO something' (and that's just this morning, when we were supposed to go rowing at 10 a.m. apparently... It's 9.06 right now, and these young things - in their 40s - don't look ready for it yet, after a night of drinking....)

And some young thing in a pub, the other day, told me my beard looked 'distinguished', and asked if I was a 'lecturer'.

'More like a lecherer' chuckled my drinking companion.

Wayang Golek - Javanese puppets

Vonny and Lance answered in no time to my query about a puppet someone I know is in the process of restoring.

I found them with a little searching in Google - and my previous knowledge of puppets - and my Dad's Dictionary of Puppets, etc. Their site looked the best informed, and displayed the highest quality of work, so I am very grateful to them for taking the time to enlighten me.

For future reference, if you have similar enquiries, they run a forum, which is probably the better way to approach a puzzle like this.

This particular character is one of the monkeys - an Anggada. Go look at the pictures of the other characters, too, and video clips, etc.

Took these off the front page...

but I'll park them here...these are a few other pages which don't link in yet - like My Heroes; the start of an index page for the site; a page for my favourite photos; also hanging around are my defunct Lyric of the Day page; a hoax UFO site that Keili and I whipped up; a picture of a decade of earth time bodged up for my birthday, from one of the cards I made to remind myself of the 8-circuit Leary Theory of the brain; a start on Belief Systems,

W.C.Fields and the Martian Brothers

I found this obituary about The Great Man, by J.B.Priestley in 1947 - fits many clowns:

I saw him long before he found his way to Hollywood, before 1914, when he was touring the halls in England with his juggling and trick billiard table act. He was very funny even then, and I seem to remember him balancing a number of cigar boxes and staring with horror at a peculiar box, in the middle of the pile, that wobbled strangely, as if some evil influence were at work. All his confidence, which you guessed from the first to be a desperate bluff, vanished at the sight of this one diabolical box, which began to threaten him with the nightmare of hostile and rebellious things.
And this, I fancy, was the secret of his huge and enchanting drollery though, oddly enough, it seems to have been missed - that he moved, warily in spite of a hastily assumed air of nonchalant confidence, through a world in which even inanimate objects were hostile, rebellious, menacing, never to be trusted. He had to be able to juggle with things, to be infinitely more dexterous than you or I need be, to find it possible to handle them at all. They were not, you see, his things, these commonplace objects of ours. He did not belong to this world, but had arrived from some other and easier planet.
All the truly great clowns - and Fields was undoubtedly one of them have the same transient look. They are not men of this world being funny. They are serious personages - perhaps musicians like Grock, ambassadors with attendants like the Fratellini, or hopeful inventor-promoters like Fields - who have, through some blunder on the part of a celestial Thomas Cook, landed from the other side of Arcturus on the wrong planet. They make the best of a bad business, but what is easy for us - merely picking up a bag of golf clubs or moving a chair - is horribly difficult for them. Things, that give us no trouble offer them obstacles and traps, for nothing here is on their side.

Backgammon - and other wonderful stuff

14 of us got together and played today. The Cardiff contingent came and went, and Alf won again.

Luke came in second, as a late entry from Somerset, and Tim came third.

I guess I am happy at 5th out of 14.....

And thanks for everything, Sephton - who knew that "It's been through a hippie" would become a guarantee of quality....

Pandaemonium

Ah well - Julien Temple's movie about Coleridge and Wordsworth was on the tv, and I have video'd it, although I only got to watch a little. Spring is in the air, and love and delirium hold sway.

For those of you who don't know the immediate connection, Coleridge spent some time in the Somerset village where I have spent some of my happiest hours. I still visit there, I have lived there.

My friend Mick had some delirious times writing there, when we lived in the same house. We always had a soft spot for Sam Coleridge, even though I can't honestly say I could quote him much.
"Here's Julien Temple in an interview: "Coleridge was exploring the territory of the mind a hundred years before Freud. He took amazing leaps. He was much more than just the first junky of letters, he was a very modern thinker. And a lot of the concepts that are key to our world were his concepts. Psychosomatic is his word, the suspension of disbelief is his phrase, for example."
The best I could say is that he feels like a real person - and the gap between the 18th Century and the 20th Century seemed to disappear...so seeing Julien portraying Coleridge having flash-forwards (to Hinckley Point power station and oil-slicked seabirds) as Mick and I then had flashes backwards seems completely appropriate to me.

Perhaps it's time to break out a new molecule - what have you got? Salvia Divinorum? Somewhere I have the quote to show that Coleridge wasn't just into exotic Opium - I'll dig it out for you - meanwhile - to lovers everywhere - peace and passion - reason is not everything - being sensible isn't all it's cracked up to be....Sam also used to take hemp for his rheumatism.....(medicinal uses in the 18th Century)

And men who feel things too much, and get emotional and crazy, like the Romantic Poets, may appear to be just self-indulgent, self-pitying 'pillocks' to our brisk, hard, present sensibility, but I wouldn't trade my inner self for anyone else's:

People tell me it's a sin
To know and feel too much within.
I still believe she was my twin, but I lost the ring.
She was born in spring, but I was born too late
Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

Simple Twist of Fate Bob Dylan

Copyright © 1974 Ram's Horn Music

More head-banging with Norton Security

I really don't know why I stick to this product, unless it's 'better the devil you know, than McAfee's slowing down your internet connection'.

I should have just subscribed for new virus definitions, and stayed with the 2003 version which worked fine... started playing with the 2004 upgrade, and the reviews (most of them) from Amazon.co.uk suddenly seem all too true. Grrrr!

Anyway - just like last year, I am going to have to uninstall/reinstall, and I remember what a pain that was to do cleanly. Surely I shouldn't be fiddling around in the registry in this day and age?

Why am I telling you this? Well, I have to tell someone, as I get reduced to tears of frustration by this kind of design. As for the Help Pages at Symantec, they have to have been designed by Kafka - the tree diagram behind it all must look hilarious. To install this you have to first uninstall that, to uninstall that you will need to check out these pages, these pages say you will need to do this, then this, then this, then this - now after those four things I have completely forgotten why I was doing them ah yes, you had to do them before doing that, what was that again? ah yes, tell you what, as I am getting lost here I will print out the pages as I go - now I have a bunch of cross-referenced paper, all I have to do is remember the order in which these things MUST be done OR ELSE. Or else, what? Back to the loop.....

It should go up as an example 'help site' of how NOT to treat people when they are already confused.....as one of the less literate reviewers said (although whether he was just young, dyslexic or simply apoplectic with rage and unable to type is hard to tell) - while you are unplugged from the Internet trying to figure this out, you are certainly safe.....

Well, well, well....

Paul and I were talking just the other day about why Google didn't offer an email service, and - guess what? - it's in Beta.

It's free (relevant ad-based) and they are going to offer 1Gb of storage (!) and allow 10Mb messages - serious competition to Yahoo and Hotmail.

For details - go look at www.gmail.com

Who are your parents, really?

Well, anyone who has spoken to me knows how proud I am of my parents, even though they didn't apparently do much of what is expected of parents in our culture...

My dad's theosophical interests are the most obviously unusual - and led me to being a vegetarian from birth, and (rather than an atheist/agnostic) never contaminated by odd religious beliefs - just because they were traditional, simply encouraged in that natural pantheism/animism of the child - I still apologise to snails if I step on them, I say good morning to all the sparrows who sing me to work - yup, I am crazy.

Anyway - when I talk about my humanist/agnostic mum I usually explain about how her most valued beliefs came from her deep study of Shakepeare and The Greeks. She wasn't wrong in pointing out that (say) Freud was just interpreting their insights, more a literary critic than a scientist, and that there was 'nothing new under the sun'. (Think Oedipius, Dionysus, Hamlet, etc). And Jung mined astrology and alchemy and such for his insights. Of course, Sheila (being a Stoic) was a bit disappointed when she found out I was from the Cynic school, and Diogenes was my hero, but hey...

I remembered a book I'd inherited (lost in the great flood) and despaired of tracking it down - it was one she had received as a prize when at school. It suggested that Shakespeare's "The Tempest" was a model of Initiation. I had told someone about it the other day. I put the Tempest and Initiation in Google and was ASTOUNDED that it found a review of it in one go! Even better, there is a copy in the library I work in!

You may find other relevant material about the Perennial Philosophy in this ebook.

G'night.

Reminder to self

I have spent more than I earn this month, so I am leaving this reminder to go back to visit the Impermanent Press after payday, to pick up a copy of MFU, a couple of Robert Anton Wilson tapes, and maybe the Philip K Dick book (doesn't that wet your appetite for a visit?)

No?

Ah well, I said it was a note to myself.....

And don't forget this warning from the Guns & Dope party

Warning: All email may now be read by law enforcement agencies,
as NONE is PRIVATE since the passage of the USA/Patriot Act.
Remember the Miranda warnings:
You do not have to send email.
Anything you email may be used against you in a military tribunal.
You have the right to have an attorney present while composing email.
If you cannot afford a full-time attorney, you're fucked.

Guns&Dope website

Huh!

Although I tinker with my front page, rather than leave it as a familiar welcome, there are bits I obviously never look at. When adding a link to Douglas Harding's Headless Way I noticed that I had got Tranquility Base spelled with two 'l's. I have no idea how long it has been like that - and apologies to anyone else (like me) with a proof-reader's eye, to whom misprints and misspellings are physically uncomfortable.

In my own defence, I can only say that Front Page (a template of which is what I am using for this lazy website) spell checks in US English, and I can only assume I believed it one day, instead of sticking to my guns. (We argue a lot -- about traveling, and modeling, and organising, etc)...I almost accept the z for s these days, but I hate those double 'l's.

hey ho so it goes.

And I guess all my dyslexic friends really don't care....nor my US friends, come to that.

The Beauty of Indifference

I have been reading a lot about Marcel Duchamp recently, which is fascinating stuff. He seems to have had a wonderful detached attitude which I recognise (I am not claiming to be as talented, intelligent, attractive, or intriguing). He seems to have kept his life to a bare minimum - considering property and belongings as encumbrances - it's possible he saw close relationships that way, too.

Of course, nowadays, when we think we know what 'normal' human beings are (or should be) we have a definition for everyone, so perhaps he had a tendency to Aspergers Syndrome (high functioning autism - one distinguishing characteristic -feeling like an alien on this planet....) Who can tell, certainly not me.

When I first came across Marchand du Sel (salt seller) I was delighted. And he often reminded me of my dad, too, with that enigmatic, knowing smile - and the chess.

Hey Phew Wow

I have stumbled through these few days rather....didn't really recover from the cold before coming back into work...but it has been kind of fun doing end-of-the-year statistics....even though it is easy to end up cross-eyed with spreadsheets and data and draft notes and reports.

It's also quite easy to get in a logic tangle while defining parameters for queries (We need a total for items which were added to stock between 1 April 2003 and 31 March 2004 which ARE books but ARE NOT children's books, have been borrowed at least five times AND are currently available....)

Ah, the dogsbody work backstage at the library, but it's worth it:

Even the most misfitting child
Who's chanced upon the library's worth
Sits with the genius of the Earth
And turns the key to the whole world. Ted Hughes July 1997

Notes for an autobiography - still thinking 'book'

Well, I know this is a great sprawling mess of a website, but it just grew.

I like books - I like skimming through, going to the Index at the back, the Contents at the front, chapter listings, etc. Speed reading and browsing non-fiction is a skill (and a pleasure) in itself, and I guess I haven't really adapted to the new medium entirely...

Julie has a new job (Hooray!) but has something quite seriously wrong with one of her feet (Boo!)

I am having a crash course in Excel, while Paul M shows me how to gather and display end of year statistics for the library...

New Film Stars!

Volker just sent me a DVD trailer for the vampire movie that John C and I 'featured' in; shot in London on their last visit!

heh

Down but not quite out...

Well, this cold/flu thing has blitzed me again. I did stumble through Julie's party, but I can't say I was sparkling...and the last 24 hours has been a blur.

I think I have moved on now, from the delirium stage, to the coughing and snuffling bit...terrific way to spend those rare and precious days of leave.....humph.

It was great to hear from Crissie Trigger, though - living out in The States - 30 years ago we were working together, and I can't really believe that much time has passed.

And here we all still are - how's that for a silly sentence?

I'll be back when I can type, think or be articulate...what the bugs get out of all this is anyone's guess...

Hey! More Fun!

To start with - I have to say my partner always asks "is that the round ball or the pointy ball?" but Wales just won 44-10 against Italy, and my casual lunchtime drink (on a quiet day) turned into - "I'd better go home now, but it cured my cold".

Bye - be seeing you - "Up the Celts!"

Logging off, and going home to lie down.

Guru ratings and rantings

Just in case you think I have gone mad (or, if you are religious, think I have just started waking up from my cynical egocentricity), don't forget to check out the consumer's guide to gurus here before believing a word anyone says.

Oh, and if you are shopping for a new authority figure in your life, you could do worse than browse through these same lists.....

Why not try one of the funny ones for a change...

One last thing

but first -

go visit this great Zen Shockwave


hahahahahahahahahaha

More spiritual blokes

My dad had read all these guys before I was born, but he never imposed any of it on me:

Heeeeere's Gurdjieff! "When my grandmother - may she attain the kingdom of Heaven - was dying, my mother, as was then the custom, took me to her bedside, and I kissed her right hand, my dear now deceased grandmother placed her dying left hand on my head and in a whisper, yet very distinctly, said:

"Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do."

Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and evidently noticing my perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, added somewhat angrily and imposingly:

"Either do nothing - just go to school - or do something that nobody else does."

She died immediately. The words registered deeply in the young Gurdjieff's soul and at a memorial service 40 days later instead of grieving along with his family , he started singing and skipping around the grave. (Something that nobody else ever did!)

And let's hear it for Krishnamurti!

It was at a Krishnamurti talk under the oaks in Ojai some twenty years ago that he revealed the "secret" of living to the several thousand of us who were there listening to him. He even used the word "secret,"and that he spoke of it at all was unusual, because he rarely talked about himself.

Partway through the dialogue, he suddenly paused, leaned forward and said, almost conspiratorially. "So you want to know what my secret is?"

We all sat up, even more alert than we had been, if that was possible. Almost as though we were one body. we leaned forward, our mouths and ears opened in hushed anticipation. Did we want to know his secret? Heck, yes! That's why we were all there, wasn't it? That's why we came to Ojai every spring: to listen to K. in the hope that we would "get it," that we could figure out what his secret was.

He paused. and then he said in a soft, almost shy voice, "You see, I don't mind what happens."
I don't mind what happens. The great man's words reverberated silently in by mind. They shook me to the core.

On Having No Head

This has to have been one of the most influential books I ever read. Simple - elegant - nothing to remember - no jargon - no 'beliefs' to swallow - I read it in one go, and wandered around with what felt like an inner smile for days.

There's a website, with experiments, etc, here

However, I am well aware of what Douglas Harding says in his intro - after having his first experience of headlessness.

'Discussion proved almost invariably quite fruitless. "Naturally I can't see my head," my friends would say. "So what?" And foolishly I would begin to reply: "So everything! So you and the whole world are turned upside down and inside out..." It was no good. I was unable to describe my experience in a way that interested the hearers, or conveyed to them anything of its quality or significance. ... Here was something perfectly obvious, immensely significant, a revelation of pure and astonished delight - to me and nobody else! When people start seeing things others can't see, eyebrows are raised, doctors sent for. And here was I in much the same condition, except that mine was a case of NOT seeing things. Some loneliness and frustration were inevitable. This is how a real madman must feel (I thought) - cut off, unable to communicate.'

Look at this site translating Lao Tse through Douglas Harding's eye(s)

Some kind of genius - JOHN FAHEY

Back in the 60s Judith played me an extraordinary record on her (then unusual) big stereo system. Spacious, hypnotic, mystical guitar. Nothing like anything that even the folk crowd I hung out with were playing. It was called "The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death". John Fahey was his own man, completely uncompromising. He wasn't a trippy hippie, but a drunk, hated the hippie scene who adopted him. Nothing new there - look at Kurt Vonnegut with his alcohol and 6o ciggies a day. Fahey had a difficult time later (which I can empathise with - without self-pity) but was doing what he wanted to do.

'He divorced his third wife, Melody, and lost his house; he contracted chronic fatigue syndrome; he entered a new phase of alcoholism by drinking beer compulsively for the energy it gave him; he discovered that he had diabetes. For a time, he was homeless and lived in a men's shelter in Salem, Ore. Sober now, he lives in a motel in Salem, where he recorded "City of Refuge," on equipment in his room.

During the down years, he supported himself by scouring second-hand stores and flea markets for used classical records, which he sells to collectors. Mr. Fahey still draws a few of his old fans to his concerts, and they occasionally request his old music. "I don't talk to them," he explains in a coffee shop near his Chicago hotel two days after the concert. "If they keep it up, I tell them: 'Look, if you want to live in the past, go live in the past. But don't try and take us with you.' " '

In later years he was, apparently, more interested in new music - noisy stuff, Bang on a Can, punk, and the big guns like Stockhausen.

On this website you will also find some of his words and writings:

"Therefore remember what I, the Great Koonaklaster taught you through my magic apples:
1. The official is appearance only. In the long run, the strongest are the weakest.
2. The official exists for the sole purpose of your edification, and making your edification
the more actual, enduring and real.
3. He who has ears let him hear.
4. The humorous cynicism I taught you in reason, science, and music----that the exercise
of this organ alone or in concert, is the greatest source of joy and wisdom short of the
forthcoming all-in-the-all and the altogether in the altogether, when we shall all be one.
5. Finally the source of daily strength and joy comes by chanting the mantras I have given
you in "John Fahey"’s book SPANK.
OM SRI, JAI SRI, KELVITRONAYA NAMAH
OM SRI, JAI SRI, KOONAKLASTERAYA NAMAH
And finally--- the strongest of all:
OM MA "

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Birthday to Julie! And the spring sun is shining................


Shame I have a cold, and/but have to go to work (sigh)

See you later.............

Tickets for Bob

Yeeeehaa! Yahoo! Yippee!

Bob's starting the European leg of his tour in Cardiff, and I have managed to jump in on the first day and get seats for me and Judith. The CIA (no, not them) is not a great gig. The standing tickets just let you mill around on the ground floor like a mosh pit, and although you can get closer to the stage, if you are not tall you will not see a lot. Of course, I'd far prefer to catch him in (say) Barcelona, but hey....

Last time (looking in the archive I see it mentioned on Wednesday, May 15, 2002) we ended up in the centre of the balcony by chance (or the kindness of the gods) because everything else had been sold. It was a little far away from the stage (I'll remember my binoculars this time) but it was right behind the mixing desk, so the sound was as good as it's going to get in that kind of venue...

Anyway - for those of you for whom this is not exciting news, or is, indeed, baffling - just allow me this one indulgence...Ta.

yahoo, yippee, etc (fades...........)

Tidying up my website

I have been wandering around my own website, for the first time in a long time, and I am sorry to find quite a few inconsistencies. In theory - I intended links to outside sites to open in a new window, so you have to close it to return to my site, and for internal links to flow forward (so you could use the Back Button). The only exception to that being when you click on pictures to see them larger, when I think I chose to make them open in a new window, too.

Whatever. I think my logic changed over the last three years, or however long this thing has been growing, and it doesn't seem consistent throughout.

I will try to do a major overhaul at some point, but it is really hard to get motivated...I prefer doing new stuff - adding, rather than tidying up. And I fear that if I start tidying up I will end up having to pull the whole thing down and start again, which is a very daunting prospect. I'd feel the way James Joyce must have felt when he left his only copy of "Ulysses" in a taxi, and had to start all over again from his notes (back in the days of hand-written text and no photocopiers....)

Or is that an apocryphal tale?

Everything Flows

I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing -- a noun. I seem to be a verb.

--R. Buckminster Fuller

I watched "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" last night. Sort of Tarantino meets Sergio Leone, so not the sort of thing I invite Julie down to watch...she was busy editing her photos of the junk yard anyway (far more creative).

Of course, I enjoy anything with Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Antonio Banderas, etc - but the most interesting thing for me was in the special features - the visit to Troublemaker Studios and his amazing set-up - also his Ten Minute Film School. And here Robert Rodriguez in an interview, expressing how I feel:

Q: How do you see the internet impacting the entertainment industry?

RR: You know what it is, it's something that's just not defined yet. So it feels like...I can only imagine what filmmakers felt like when film was first invented. It was so open for experimentation. It hadn't been defined yet. They were defining it as they went and pulling out all the possibilities. That was an exciting place to be. If you read old film books you see how excited people were. They knew they were on to something but they didn't know quite what it was yet and now that film's been almost fully explored it's time for a new medium and it's exciting that it hasn't been defined enough yet for people to really know its full potential which is much grander than what we're thinking now. So to be in on that from the ground floor is just a real privilege.

A big thanks to Michael for turning me onto "Greendale" by Neil Young. I hadn't heard it, and I didn't realise he'd made a movie, and all that.

Mick would have loved this - "gotta save the planet for another day"

There's loads to explore on the website - sounds pictures samples stories maps

"someday
you'll find
everything you're lookin' for" Bandit

©2003 Silver Fiddle Music ASCAP. All Rights Reserved.

Although I have survived through laughing like a Dadaist at the absurdity of life (and even on my calmer days I see it all as some kind of illusion - maya - a shadow-play) if you asked me for a style and tone for the way I see the world then I would still pick Film Noir. It is admittedly a genre of the generation before me (although the 60s put a cynical twist on it, with, say, Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" or the 'trust no-one' spy epics like "The Ipcress file" or the wonderful tv series with Alec Guinness about George Smiley - but the 'real world' hasn't changed that much. The conspiracy of the powerful, rich and corrupt, supported by bent police, and cowardly collaborators is still with us. Anyway - me and my band 'Diogenes and the Cynics' will shortly be doing a few gigs, and be producing a theme album:

"The primary moods of classic film noir are melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt and paranoia. Heroes (or anti-heroes), corrupt characters and villains include down-and-out, hard-boiled detectives or private eyes, cops, gangsters, government agents, crooks, war veterans, petty criminals, and murderers. These protagonists are often morally-ambiguous low lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Distinctively, they are cynical, tarnished, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive and ultimately losing.

The females in film noir are either of two types - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; or femme fatales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women. Usually, the male protagonist in film noir has to inevitably choose (or have the fateful choice made for him) between the women - and invariably he picks the femme fatale who destructively goads him into committing murder or some other crime of passion.

Film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) show the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasize the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment are stylized characteristics of film noir. The protagonists in film noir are normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes."

Just like life.... here's me down-and-out with a two-bit job in 1993

"Narratives are frequently complex and convoluted, typically told with flashbacks (or a series of flashbacks), and/or reflective voice-over narration. Amnesia suffered by the protagonist is a common plot device. Revelations regarding the hero are made to explain/justify the hero's own cynical perspective on life. "

And this was me doing the 'daily amnesia' schtick.

I am sworn to get on with writing my piece about wealth now, rather than ranting in pubs, and upsetting my friends. Talking is the enemy of writing, sometimes, as one fritters away the energy.

I won't even mention fnord that my son is working 70 hours a week at an average of $3.50 an hour - because a lot of poor people would trade with him, touring all over the United States with a belly-dancing troupe. It reminds me of that Woody Allen gag from "What's New, Pussycat" when he describes his work backstage at the Folies Bergere, and mentions the low sum of money involved. "That's not much!" says the other person. "It's all I can afford" sighs Woody.

I don't mean to obsess - it's just a subject that fascinates me. I didn't get bourgeoisified either in the 60s the 70s or the 80s or the 90s (not for lack of trying, some misguided folks might say). And yes I have had benefactors and patrons, I've even had a good income intermittently. I even started out with a reasonable education (of the old-fashioned, pre60s, kind). I have also been at the bottom quite often (most recently in 1995) when I would do anything to survive.

My friends in places like Sweden, Denmark, Finland don't entirely understand, because their countries have worked on elimination of social inequality. Even my friends in places like France and Germany have lived as citizens (not subjects). If you want to understand why Catch-22 remains one of my favourite books, try reading Chapter 2 of Polly Toynbee's most recent book "Hard Work", in which she tries to find out what help she can get from the State - if she suddenly found herself at the bottom of the pile - say, because "I might be a woman fleeing a violent husband. I might be a refugee family. I might have had my home repossessed after losing my job and defaulting on my mortgage".

She is a Guardian journalist, and, by her own admission, comfortably off. She says "MPs earn more than 96% of the population does, and many of us earn yet more." Still, her attempt to actually live on the low earnings of the bottom third of British society is revealing. So I am not knocking her intentions at all - I like reading the Guardian, too (it's one of the few intelligent, secular, balanced, rational papers available). Nevertheless, their holiday offers, their wine column, their fashion pages and gift suggestions, etc. come from an entirely different world from mine. I might as well consider mimicking David Bowie's holiday plans.

Anyway - Catch-22 is that The State doesn't give you money to get out of difficulties any more. It lends you money from the social fund. "I may be in a crisis but the state's response to my need is based on the mood and attitude of the officer, on the amount of money left in the pot, and on my ability to pay".

Crazy. I'll misquote Jesus here (everyone else does) because I know this was said in a different context - " For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. " (Matthew 13:12)

And Jesus wept. ((John 11:35) (not bad for an atheist, huh?)

"If privacy isn't already the first road kill along the information superhighway, then it's about to be"


Wired 2.04, p.40

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." Albert Einstein

And while we are talking about unified fields, I came across this Theosophical text about Vegetarianism (from 1913) which was probably known to my dad, and the reason I have been a lifelong vegetarian. And no, I am not preaching to you - I don't care if you reach enlightenment or not, I ain't no stinking Bodhisattva...

In fact, my vegan friends are still appalled at my cheese-eating. I try to pick Spanish Sheep Cheese, etc - and things that hopefully were not factory farmed, at least, but I am not a zealot. I wish I was, but I still like silk and I still like honey....so I am certainly guilty of exploiting insects and such. And, better late than never - watch The Meatrix - it's funny as hell, and not preaching at you, but it still may change the way you think.

Captain Clark Welcomes You Aboard

"Hail Eris!"

Of course, I am aware that most people read this backwards (i.e. this is the most recent posting and appears at the top of the page, but refers to the previous item, which is BELOW this)

The other great number is 23. If you have never heard of this, then have a look at DisInfo. It's quite an old-established number enigma, or is it just a mind-virus or meme? Certainly 42 seems more suited to clean-living, jolly H2G2 fans, but 23 lurks around the odder types like fans of Burroughs, Anton Wilson, Crowley, Genesis P.Orridge, etc.

My partner thinks you just notice it because you focus on it, and ignore the others - which is true to some extent. But she is just restating the secret addendum to the Law of Fives (everything is related to the number five....given sufficient ingenuity on the part of the investigator)

The Law of Fives
The Law of Fives is summarized on page 00023 of the Principia Discordia:

The Law of Fives states simply that: ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5.
The Law of Fives is never wrong.

In the Erisian Archives is an old memo from Omar to Mal-2: "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."

As a relatively unesoteric example of this Law in action, a Discordian would consider it significant that the Law of Fives is described on page 23, because 2+3=5.

Julie will be 42 on Friday.

42, huh? Isn't that supposed to be a significant number?

"As any digital hardware engineer, or software engineer, can tell you, the number '42' in base ten is equal to '101010' in base two. This alternating pattern of ones and zeros illustrates DEEP Thought's indecision about the Ultimate Question.
Of course, in the original Hitchhiker's Guide radio scripts, when Arthur has the "cave man" put out Scrabble stones and the sentence "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" emerges, and then Arthur says "Six by nine? Forty-two? You know, I've always felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe." -- it is at this point that a faint and distant voice says "base thirteen!".

42 (base 13) is equal to 54 (base 10). (Of Course -- Douglas Adams has been quoted as saying " You just don't write jokes in base 13!" )
To dispel any myths about 42 (and to make Douglas Adams Happy!), Douglas Adams also wrote on USENET: The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story"

Quick message for Keili, and about Keili. First of all "sorry to hear about the back, mate - take good care of yourself"...It would have been nice to spend the Equinox together (but I am not very often together, as you know.....)

I still hear friends of mine mispronounce Keili's name. I guess it's unusual, starts with "K" and he lived in Oz, so when they say 'Kylie' they don't mean any harm, nor are they being stupid, thoughtless or pig-ignorant (whoops!).

I'd like to offer them all a way to get it right...just remember that I agreed to this unusual name because it sounded like Ceilidh (an Irish gathering or party). Of course, most people can't pronounce Gaelic, either, just from looking at it...so I'll try KAY-LEE, that should do it.

For Keili: when looking for an interesting link to the word Ceilidh I immediately found this bulletin board software, made by Lilikoi Software, Inc! Now THAT'S AMAZING... it even has a juggler graphic.... Small World, huh?

I did an entry the other day with references to the semi-fictional aspect of a blog, and the characters who may appear in it. I deleted it (without copying it first) so I have no real memory of it, but one of the things I was thinking of when I wrote it was this wonderful site about Erik Kraft's Hyperfiction writings about a character called Peter LeRoy - and there is commentary from a fictional character called Mark Dorset, who is the webmaster, and can be emailed.

Or start at the home page, and go into the Fiction area.

Hey ho, and rather a lot of jolly drinking and music for St Patrick's Day - and a big thanks to Jules for the meal, which made all that drinking possible!

Just came across a reference to a Jerry Garcia band "Old and In the Way" - great name for a band of grey-haired old dogs....

Hi people

I don't put my private life up here, whatever anyone thinks, but it is St. Patrick's Day, and even an old atheist has to go out for a silly drink in honour of beating the (favourites) English at Rugby the other day. Or whatever.

Dylan Moran rules, OK (that's no rules, to you...) "Up the Moriarty's" ('sounds Italian' said a German woman at the bar....)

As I always thought of this as my own notebook - that I can write in from anywhere, and pick up from anywhere else - I haven't considered the fact that there is a sort of 'audience' out there. If I start writing it with someone in mind then I will freeze up. The whole point seemed to me to be to have a place to jot everything down, and I have no desire for a 'what I had for breakfast' kind of diary.

Still, I have decided that this is lacking entertainment value. I am going to carry a floppy disk around again, for my own research stuff (which, as you can tell, was notes towards the money piece I never completed for the ecology centre - something like Henry Miller's 'Money, and how it gets that way' covering alternative currencies, my extremely limited grasp of financial tools from gambling odds to insurance schemes, from pyramid selling to pension plans, with sidetracks into wealth distribution, real wealth and illth, etc.)

It's all got too personal now, so I am pulling the notes down until I can compile them. There's a quote from Henry here

The web is a free publishing medium - I love it. Of course, just like standing on the corner doing a street show to pass the hat, maybe nobody will pass, or those that pass won't stop.

Hey ho. I have information overload, like everyone else, so the chances of ANYONE reading this, or caring, is infinitesimal, but I have invited a few people over. You can probably get more interesting gossip in my local bar, if that's your thing.

One warning, from a friend's experience, if you get into Blogging just be aware that the choice of public/private only relates to Blog's own published lists. Mark it private, then publish it on the web, and Google might still find you through keywords. Just be aware.

When asked, the I Ching today said "The Thunderclap!"

When the thunder comes,
be on your guard, yet smile and talk cheerfully.
When the thunder terrifies everyone
within a hundred miles,
be like the sincere worshipper
who does not spill a drop of the
sacrificial wine.

That's a pretty clear Spring message.....

The material here is just undigested stuff which doesn't fit into my website anywhere, yet. I am just trying to slowly get away from living in a room full of fire-hazard paper; papers that have been lugged from place to place, buried, dug up again, shuffled, pruned and copied. (Oh, and occasionally put in a pile and burned). Anyway - I found this Intro to one of Henry Miller's shorter pieces. Sorry if you think he is a sexist, sadly his portrait and his reputation got re-written in the 70s by people who never (apparently) read any of his stuff. Or just read the porn that he and feminist Nin wrote for cash. Hey ho. So here's the natural mystic.

STAND STILL LIKE THE HUMMINGBIRD Henry Miller (1962)
"No, things have not changed a whit since Tropic of Cancer days, unless for the worse. La vie en rose is definitely not for the artist. The artist - I employ the term only for the genuine ones- is still suspect, still regarded as a menace to society. Those who conform, who play the game, are petted and pampered. Nowhere else in the world, unless it be in Soviet Russia, do these conformists receive such huge rewards, such wide recognition for their efforts.

So much for the dominant note. As for the subdominant, the thought is don't wait for things to change, the hour of man is now and, whether you are working at the bottom of the pile or on top, if you are a creative individual you will go on producing, come hell or high water. And this is the most you can hope to do. One has to go on believing in himself, whether recognised or not, whether heeded or not. The world may seem like hell on wheels - and we are doing our best, are we not, to make it so? but there is always room, if only in one's soul, to create a spot of Paradise, crazy though it may sound.

When you find you can go neither backward nor forward, when you discover that you are no longer able to stand, sit or lie down, when your children have died of malnutrition and your aged parents have been sent to the poorhouse or the gas chamber, when you realize that you can neither write nor not write, when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous."

I have never really been able to explain about my melancholy moods. It isn't the great 'depression' that is so common in our society of high aspiration. It is far worse around other people (they seem to take it so personally - and either get angry, shouting "pull yourself together! Snap out of it! Stop indulging!" etc OR they feel sorry for me "There, there..." OR they become personal trainers "Do therapy" "try meditation" "don't dwell in the past", etc. I am sure there are other reactions, but I want to move on to the positives. (see, it works...)

There is nothing wrong with sadness. It's natural.

When I am in this state I am happier with nature, or animals, than people [the unnatural animals]. I can sit and watch the sea, or the sparrows at play. I can lie in a hot bath. My face relaxs from the grinning mask that society demands, and falls into deadpan relaxation (which is read as miserable in our extrovert culture).

I only feel futile or grumpy when confronted with humans. I scoff at tv ads, I perceive human endeavour and aspirations as futile and presumptuous, I am sardonic, sarcastic, cynical and generally unpleasant (I am told). But the curious thing is that I am content inside. I think it was in my depressed teens that I first came across Chinese poets, and they seemed to catch the mood exactly (even in translation). I gather that they (and the Japanese) have many words for these kinds of mental states....I can walk through the park without hope or despair.

Listen:

All men are wreathed in smiles, ever merry-making,
As if feasting after the great sacrifice, like ascending a tower in spring.
I alone am inert, like a child that has not yet given sign;
Like a new-born child that cannot smile yet.
I seem to be homeless, I droop and drift as though I belonged nowhere, completely unattached.
All men have enough and to spare;
I alone seem to have lost everything; I am like one left out.
Mine is indeed the mind of an idiot, my heart must be that of a fool,
I can look dull - muddled, nebulous!
The world is full of knowing people that shine;
I alone am dull, confused.
I seem to be in the dark.
They look lively and clear-cut self-assured;
I'm alone, depressed, maybe patient as an ocean,
Blown adrift, seemingly aimless, never brought to a stop.
All men can be put to some use; as worldlings have a purpose.
I alone am intractable and boorish,
I seem to be rustic, stubborn and uncouth, yet differing from most people,
But I differ most from others in that I prize no sustenance that does not come from the breast of 'mother nature '

Lao Tse Verse 20

Woke up to SNOW!

I am still a bit glum. You know you are getting old when you wake up to see snow and go "Oh no! What a nuisance!" instead of running out into it with childish glee.

TweedleGlee and TweedleGlum. What a pair.

I guess glum is related to 'gloom' in those old Saxon words (see Sunday 7th)? And it certainly was gloomy light this morning with the snow on the ground. It wasn't bright and crisp and twinkling, more grey and slushy in the city...

[morning, Freud!] I just typoed that as "I wasn't bright and crisp and twinkling...."

Still, I'll just go home and crank up The Soggy Bottom Boys (from "Oh Brother, Where Are Thou?") singing Man of Constant Sorrow, and sing along - it always cheers me up pretending to do that nasal Southern twang:

For six long years I've been in trouble,
No pleasures here on earth I found.
For in this world I'm bound to ramble,
I have no friends to help me now.
(He has no friends to help him now.)

[While looking for the lyrics I realised I am not alone in this, as I stumbled over this Karaoke site for country music!]

AHAH! checked out in the Oxford Dictionary and 'glum' and 'gloom' ARE linked, but what I found that really made me laugh was this:

glummish - somewhat gloomy. hahahahahahahahaha So I am only glumm-ish...

Yesterday I played the Ry Cooder CD that Judith gave me, and remembered that great song "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" Dates from the 1920s (Depression/Prohibition, etc)

There once was a time when everything was cheap,
But now prices nearly puts a man to sleep.
When we pay our grocery bill,
We just feel like making our will --
I remember when dry goods were cheap as dirt,
We could take two bits and buy a dandy shirt.
Now we pay three bucks or more,
Maybe get a shirt that another man wore --
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?
Well, I used to trade with a man by the name of Gray,
Flour was fifty cents for a twenty-four pound bag.
Now it's a dollar and a half beside,
Just like a-skinning off a flea for the hide --
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Oh, the schools we have today ain't worth a cent,
But they see to it that every child is sent.
If we don't send everyday,
We have a heavy fine to pay --
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Prohibition's good if 'tis conducted right,
There's no sense in shooting a man 'til he shows fight.
Officers kill without a cause,
They complain about funny laws --
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Most all preachers preach for gold and not for souls,
That's what keeps a poor man always in a hole.
We can hardly get our breath,
Taxed and schooled and preached to death --
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Oh, it's time for every man to be awake,
We pay fifty cents a pound when we ask for steak.
When we get our package home,
A little wad of paper with gristle and a bone --
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Well, the doctor comes around with a face all bright,
And he says in a little while you'll be all right.
All he gives is a humbug pill,
A dose of dope and a great big bill --
Tell me how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Blind Alfred Reed 1929

OK OK - so I did a poverty rant below, but it's not just me I am talking about - here's the library's synopsis of Polly Toynbee's Hard Work: life in low-pay Britain:

"Could you live on the minimum wage? Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee took up the challenge, living in one of the worst council estates in Britain and taking whatever was on offer at the job centre. What she discovered shocked even her. In telesales and cake factories, as a hospital porter or a dinner-lady, she worked at breakneck pace for cut-rate wages, alongside working mothers and struggling retirees. The service sector is now administered by seedy agencies offering no prospects, no screening and no commitment. Most damning of all, Toynbee found that despite the optimism of Tony Blair's New Deal, the poorly paid effectively earn less than they did thirty years ago. Britain has the lowest social spending and the highest poverty in Europe. As the income gap between top and bottom has widened, so social mobility has shuddered to a halt. The low-paid are caught in an economic double bind that victimises them and shames the rest of us. "

For what it's worth, and in case you think I am exaggerating - in 2002-3 I earned £284 per week (and after super-annuation, tax and national insurance that's a take-home pay of £216 per 5 day week, even including weekend work and my First Aid allowance.) So I am above the official poverty line. DON'T SPEND IT ALL AT ONCE! (And more importantly - comparing myself to show biz friends - hey, they pay me to be on holiday five weeks a year, which never happened when I was self-employed - and they even pay me if I'm off sick.) LUXURY!

Just in case anyone reads this regularly, and wonders why I am whingeing about feeling poor (now that I have a steady job and don’t work in the notoriously badly paid area of show business) I should point out that Library and Information Services are famously badly paid, partly because (I guess) they are non-profit making (!) and partly because it is work that has traditionally been female-dominated (and women still earn considerably less than men on average.) Oh, and Wales is one of the worst paid areas of the UK. For the mathematically challenged, I offer this from the Socialist Party web page:

What is a typical wage?

AVERAGE WAGES can be very misleading. An arithmetic mean average includes a small number of very highly paid individuals, some earning tens of millions, which distorts the average upwards.
Only a third of British workers actually earn as much as the mean average.
To get a better picture of what a typical worker earned when Thatcher came to power in 1979 and when the Tories lost the election of 1997, it is more useful to look at modal and median averages.
If every wage in Britain were written out in order from highest to lowest the median income is the wage that is right in the middle of the distribution.
Half of all workers earn less than the median while half earn more.
The Modal average is calculated by sorting each individual wage into ranges and then determining which range covers the greatest number of workers. The modal average is the most commonly paid wage in Britain.

I wont do the figures here, but - in case you are wondering why I don't just move on - I was lucky to get a 'real job' at the age of 52 - after a lifetime of self-employment - and probably got it simply because most people couldn't settle for this kind of income. Imagine NOW trying to move on at the age of 58 (with 6 years work experience!) Duh. yeh, sure.

So, I am sorry for filling this board with complaints. It was, after all, my choice to drop out at the age of 18, and I wouldn't change a thing. It's just hard when breaking my glasses and having to replace them means not drinking for a month. Needing a new pair of shoes means no new books or CDs for a month or two. It's tight around here.

Still I am above the national poverty line, but then I live with a high earner: here's Polly Toynbee this time last year:

"It is not as if the poverty line is generous. Set at the EU official rate of 60% of median income (the median being the mid-point at which half the population earns less, and half earns more) it shoots at a vanishing target: the richer society gets, the harder it is to stop the bottom falling behind. In cash, the poverty line is currently only £165 a week for an adult couple to live on, (after housing costs). Consider too, said Professor David Piachaud, how many people never feature in the poverty figures because by working 90 hours a week on low pay, their total incomes stay above poverty level. "
"Their idea of "middle class" ignores the fact that the median wage is £20,000 a year: half the population earns less."

Or try OXFAM's take on this:

"With a quarter of Britain’s population living below the national poverty line, and three million households in debt to door-to-door money lenders, life is bleak for many in this apparently affluent country. Poverty rose sharply during the last two decades, particularly in the 1980s. "

And poverty isn't just not having enough toys and luxury goods fnord - food poverty

Food poverty means having too little money and other facilities to be able to eat healthy food. This has come about in the UK because traditional local shops are rapidly going out of business as large supermarket chains are being built on the outskirts of towns and cities. This means that people often have to travel some distance to buy their food. Poor people who cannot afford their own transport have to pay for public transport, which may be infrequent or unavailable. In a country where few own land where they can grow their own food, this situation makes life very difficult for poor people.

Sustain (a national development organisation) is working with Oxfam GB to help people to develop local schemes, such as a network of community cafés, food co-operatives, cooking clubs and voucher schemes to enable people in poor communities to have a healthy diet. Sustain and Oxfam also work with government departments to create policies which tackle food poverty. "

And here's the UN:

"The United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP's) Human Development Report jumped into the debate in 1998 with the presentation of its Human Poverty Index-2 (HPI-2), which aimed ‘to capture the multiple dimensions of poverty in a composite measure’. The index gives equal weight to four measures of deprivation, chosen to represent four dimensions of life:
· income – the percentage living below 50 per cent of national median income
· length of life – the percentage of people not expected to live to age 60 [I might make that with luck]
· education – the percentage of 16 to 65 year olds classified as functionally illiterate
· social inclusion – the percentage of long-term unemployed in the labour force."

And finally - In the last three years I have worked my way up above the the Low Pay threshold - whoopee

"UNISON’s Low Pay Campaign

UNISON continues to campaign for a minimum wage figure of half of male median-earnings, with a minimum wage target of £6 an hour and no lower youth rate. The updated figures for 2003 for half male-median earnings are £5.68 an hour, or £215.95 a week, or £11,260 a year."

It's a funny old world. Can't you hear me laughing?

Ah me - another glum day. Actually, it started well, with sunshine and all that, but I blew out a trip through just having a wave of glum pass over me. I don't call it depression, because I don't think it is that. What I have always suffered from is not angst, either - or frustration or envy - let's see - what else isn't it?

Anyway, cut to the chase - I think what I get is despair. I despair of humans (don't watch the news), I despair of myself. Glum, like I said. I can't think of a better word. Sounds like a good old Saxon word to go with the day that turns grey and rains.
And I don't suppose it helps to contemplate the past too much - maybe it just makes me feel old. And perhaps it doesn't help that I have been spending intermittent days without drinking or smoking - I don't have hangovers much anyway, but I guess withdrawal is worse (otherwise why would we get addicted to habits?) Or am I just dog-tired?

Did I put you off yet? I could write this stuff in a closed file, quite happily, and keep up the appearances, but a diary is a diary. Still, Mali did describe this as a 'column' which I hadn't thought of it as. I rather like that. A journalist with a readership of a dozen people. Actually, it is to keep up my typing skills, and to write routinely to keep the flow going, and to leave a little trail for my son [and my daughter, Yolande Jodi Philpott - if she ever seeks me out - Hi Yo!] or my sister, or my friends abroad to catch up (I hate phones) - but mostly it is notes to myself (because I can write to it from home or from work, or when travelling...and I end up with a journal of my year).

When trying to remember the past (when writing for the website) I always regret the loss of so many photos, diaries and papers over the years. The stuff I have managed to hang onto is a small personal treasure trove (although visitors seem to think my room looks like a hamster cage of paper...I guess I identify with small, timid, seed-eating rodents, so that's fine). On a bad day like this I feel like I am running in a treadmill in a futile way...I might as well join a gym and run on the spot at great expense (with video of road going by) for all the adventure I feel I am getting right now.

Glum. A word to savour. I prefer the times when I feel glee. Indeed Saxon entertainers were called gleemen, which is one of the great lost words.

Wow - that's amazing! I just looked in the guest book and found that Hadass had dropped in to visit. I guess anyone who has met me, or read anything I wrote, knows that I have spent more of my time 'dropped out' than safely settled.

I enjoyed it all, though it was intensely insecure...

One year I was unexpectedly made homeless - the people who had sub-let their house to me and Mick decided they didn't like teaching in Thailand (or wherever it was) and they came home abruptly one November. They even wanted to be 'back in their home for Christmas' but we said we had expected to live there for two years and needed at least that month to rehouse....So we stumbled through - and Mick and Pauline found other accommodation, while I decided that IF I only had £800 to my name, and had to either pay the Inland Revenue £800 in January, or put a deposit on some new rented place or just go optimistically crazy - went off to travel...

I failed to reach Turkey with my Finnish traveling companion, but instead I turned right in Switzerland and took an overnight train, to wake up alone in Barcelona. Fantastically right choice for me. I hung out there for a month or two (also renting a place in Sitges for a while) on that money...went back to the UK only long enough to get some juggling and magic gear, then returned to busk on The Ramblas and settle in.

Hadass was then one of the artists working in chalk on the Ramblas...and we became good friends...although I was probably in a pretty unstable state at the time...no fit state indeed...but I was truly desperate, and the street life culture was great (there weren't too many jugglers around back then) . Somehow the bohemian thing carried me through, with much joy and delight of living in the moment, and to hell with futures.

Yeh, I paid the Inland Revenue off next time I got a film job....

PS: yes I know you have to ignore the 'exclamations and ejaculations' to make that 46 thing work. It's not 'amen' in this case, but 'Selah'.

Know what that means?

Selah - a biblical term used in the Psalms that invites the reader to "pause and reflect" on the message.

The DVD was better when I found out how to brighten the image on my PowerDVD.

I enjoyed Larry Charles' commentary, brings out the stuff I know is happening, and assures me I am not making it up (they did it on purpose) - the language is stylized, theatrical, biblical, shakespearean, etc.

Reminded me of that thing about Psalm 46 - count 46 words in (in the king James Version) and you'll find the word "shake" and 46 words back from the end is the word "spear" so did Shakespeare work on the King James Bible or not? After all, most of the magnificent language we still enjoy is from 17th Century England, not biblical times.

Hey, and I know that 46 'is' 2x23 OK? How many chromosomes do you think you get from each parent? I didn't make this stuff up. fnord

DAY OFF slept through - enjoying drifting in and out of dreamless sleep, and then some dreams, too....

Got up late. Had a good time with the people of the household, now skimming through my DVD of Masked and Anonymous. I know the reviews of it, as a movie, are as bad as any Bob movie reviews. Looked at as a DVD, however, with outtakes, scenes you'd like to see again, etc - it is quite fun. I don't care if the linear movie is great or crap, really - it's trying to work on another level - re-packaging. As a vision of the world it resonates for me.

If you do happen across it, I truly enjoyed the little girl singing "Times they are a-changing" in Chapter 20. Val Kilmer with the animals in chapter 13 is interesting. "I'll Remember You" is a great piece in chapter 18. Wanna see Jeff Bridges? He's all over the place, try chapter 25. "Cold Irons Bound" in chapter 26 is a pretty good take. etc.

Well, we all have our own obsessions - I may not be a Bobcat (I just ordered a life of Marcel Duchamp online, and only after that discovered we have a copy in the library -Doh!) but I still enjoy a bit of multimedia from an artist I enjoy... Why not?

I have a whole thing about the origins of my name (more vanity publishing!) but I will probably make a page up for it. This guy has come up with most of the elements (puppet dog, biblical, toby jug, etc)

Meanwhile, the connection with Toby Jugs (drinking mugs in the shape of a person) seems to have started with this 18th Century song (or possibly Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare's Twelth Night) about a famous drinker who died, but whose clay was later dug up to make a jug in his image....all those biblical hints about humans being made of clay, too....as well as something much older (vessels in the form of humans or animals are thousands of years old).

Toby Filpot or The Brown Jug

Dear Tom, this brown jug, which now foams with mild ale,
In which I will drink to sweet Nan of the Vale,
Was once Toby Philpot, a thirsty old soul,
As e'er cracked a bottle, or fathom'd a bowl;
In boozing about 'twas his pride to excel,
And amongst jolly topers he bore off the bell.

It chanced as in dog days (fnord) he sat at his ease,
In his flower-woven arbour, as gay as you please,
With his friend and a pipe, puffing sorrow away,
And with honest Old Stingo sat soaking his clay.
His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut,
And he died full as big as a Dorchester Butt.

His body when long in the ground it had lain,
And time into clay had dissolv'd it again,
A potter found out, in its covert so snug,
And with part of Fat Toby he form'd this brown jug;
Now sacred to friendship, to mirth, and mild ale ---
So here's to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale.

I seem to have made myself glum with the thought that I just can't afford to go to California in July.

It IS sad, I know, to think that you ought to earn something BEFORE you spend it. I am stuck with that - it's a generational thing to some extent - it's also to do with my bad attitude to 'business', which is always a gamble, but is also the only way a future evolves.

If it was down to the hand-to-mouth, cash-in-hand people like me then culture would never have evolved beyond trading any small surplus you have for something else you need. In Mexico I traded entertainment for food and shelter (and money hardly figured in it for months). I have never grasped investment of surplus wealth for a measured return, or 'hedging your bets' on the future by buying insurance or pensions (why don't you just save your own money and gamble it on the Stock Market?)

And I do apologise for that 'dumbing down'. I know it's more complex than that, and I know it's easier than that - perhaps I am forever stuck with living down being a healthy, white, middle-class, educated British male. Because of everyone else's prejudices (or 'positive discrimination' as we say these days - with the assumption that all those characteristics are unfair benefits....) I have had to continually affirm my right to poverty - if it is 'voluntary poverty in the Western world' it must appear smug (and probably claim to be 'spiritual' of course) and if it is involuntary it is (around here) considered incompetent...there's no way out.

If, like me, you don't think that 'enlightened self-interest' is the perfect defence for greed and self-indulgence then you are thought to be some sort of grumpy leftie.

I am still having trouble getting into the middle ground simply because I don't want MORE than anyone else until everyone has ENOUGH. It seems obvious to me.

And yes, I haven't been drinking for a week, but had a bottle of wine tonight. OK.

J has just discovered the problem with being an 'early adopter' - you are the guinea pig, and will spend most of your time in chat rooms slagging off the manufacturers for not providing drivers, and looking for a hack.

I did try to explain that computers are different from many other capitalist products in that they are continuously evolving, so that a stable product doesn't ever exist. Better to buy a slightly behind the times system which has had time to settle in, AND check all compatibilities before buying (not just what some young salesman on commission says is OK). If you buy several brand new state-of-the-art items there is an excellent chance you can't plug them together and get them to work.

I'll bet that both these printers will work with my home XP system - (although a couple of years ago I was going through the same compatibility problem with my then 'new' XP system....)

I bite my lip, and haven't said 'I told you so' once - so here it is, leaked out on the net! sigh

K seems to be out on the road with a travelling troupe - the best life there is!

I have decided not to go to San Diego and be the poor relation...locals will be signing photos, taking cash, and jumping into taxis to head to restaurants - I would spend half the time fretting about selling enough to cover my costs...and even if I did very well, and got into profit, I would be unlikely to feel flush. I guess the chip on my shoulder from hanging out with richer people never quite goes away - it would be particularly ironic to be living that kind of 'poor relation' thing when all the fans would be assuming I have the magic touch - the show biz glam - the lucky break.

In one way, of course, my low status attitude works well at conventions - I am approachable, generous, friendly, co-operative, open and honest - so I would hate to turn into a penny-pinching, greedy old hasbeen.

That's as bad as if I had carried on doing comedy juggling and magic - and found myself as a sad old uncle clown doing kids' parties. NO THANKS!

So, I keep on moving and changing.

Just read Boomeritis. I have never been a great Ken Wilber fan (I design and research my own eclectic systems). For broad-spectrum discussion of human potential I'd choose chatty old Colin Wilson, and for cultural criticism with jokes I'd pick Robert Anton Wilson.

I enjoyed it enough - even if it does get a bit dry and heavy at times. At least jokes against ourselves are usually good value. Even self-referential jokes.

In the spirit of self-reference, I will quote the book probably talking immodestly about itself (!):

"that is why the great post-modern novel will never be written. But if somebody ever managed to pull it off, it would indeed be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius." pp 324-6

It does not appear to be that good to me, but it's quite amusing if you haven't read this kind of thing before.....

Although I heard from K this weekend, he is on the road and out of touch. I don't think I can change my decision about not going to San Diego. I thought about it a lot, and of course it would be fun to go, see Dave B, hang out at the Lucas booth, etc, but it just doesn't add up. It's too large an investment (at my scale) to go so far, deal with jet-lag, not really have a holiday, work my little socks off being jolly and friendly and WITH LUCK just about break-even.....of course, maybe I'd make some money, who can tell?

That is not the issue with money for me - it's to do with how much I have to lay out compared to what I stand to gain, and this is like betting on a odds-on favourite - everyone AGREES that you'll probably make money - but it will only be a small percentage on top of what you have to stake at your own risk.

I might gamble real money I had in my pocket - like my visit to Hawaii a couple of years back - it seemed extravagant, and my plans didn't all work out, but when I got back I didn't OWE anything as I had paid cash up front. THAT I could live with....

I seem to have costed the San Diego comic con and put myself off by estimating the risk. It's a shame - I could fly over there NOW for a third of the price it will be in the July season....and the same thing goes with hotels, I guess.

It would have been fun to see Dave Barclay again...and the Pacific. I kinda hoped I could tie it in with a visit to Keili, which might have justified the expense, but I haven't heard from him in a few weeks, so I can't factor him into the equation...

C'est la vie. I think the Star Wars thing may well have peaked, anyway (what with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter) - so I suspect I am only of interest to completists, now - the people who want a full set of EVERYONE concerned in making a movie. It makes it hard to think of selling 200 photos just to break even....

I am sure it can be done - and that people do it, but I was never a gambler (I am a lousy capitalist - partly because I never had any capital to play with, and - now - because I don't have any assets - tangible or intangible - to bet with or borrow against).

As if anyone really cares. I'll be back to delete. I am just using this to tell myself that I really have decided. Next step - let everyone involved know....hey ho.

Days go by. I seem to have missed El's birthday....nothing new, I suppose......

Yesterday I received a DVD of Masked and Anonymous, which is in US zone format, so could only watch it on the PC - but I enjoyed it. I know why it got 'incoherent and strange' reviews, and why it also got 'a little gem of film' type reviews....it's typically Indie (but with star cameos) and typically Bob (gnomic, dense language and rueful asides)...

Just my thing, I guess. I enjoyed The Sting on late night tv, too, but that's just because I love anything to do with scams and cons...lucky I am such an honest guy - and such a bad liar. But then again, All Muswell Hillbillies are Liars.....

Anyone who knows me knows that I have never been very effective on the material plane (owning things). I have, however, always been an info-addict since I can remember. Even stumbling out of a house I could never return to I have tended to grab files....rather than clothes.

I just came across a particularly unsorted bulging file of mine - which I will tease out soon, but the various strands of it are: nomadic life-styles (both traditional and tribal - Aborigines, some of the Native Americans, Romany gypsies, etc - and contemporary - Travellers); the sometimes involuntary or desperate (post-war tramps, homelessness); human rights; the history - Enclosures Acts, land grabs, etc. There's some BOTTLED ANGER in there. Stonehenge and the Battle of the Bean Field. Genocide. There's also some treasured memories (hanging out in Seville with Jose Vega Campo - mi amigo gitano ). There are also notes from weeks spent in The British Library researching the whole subject area.....

And yes, of course I am aware of the danger of romancing the bohemians - especially as I now seem to have finally settled somewhere...

There was a brief summary (aimed at street performers) in an article I wrote for Kaskade - re-published here. The draft was ten pages long, though, and I had to leave an awful lot out. Perhaps I'll put the draft up as a first stab at opening the subject matter out.

Here's a recommendation for ya - The Straight Dope. "Fighting Ignorance since 1973 (it's taking longer than we thought)".

Cecil Adams may well be the world's smartest man (ahem). I came across the site doing magic research. Try Cecil on "how did Uri Geller bend spoons?" ; "How did David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty vanish?" ; The Indian Rope Trick; "How Psychics can tell you stuff they couldn't know about you" - with help from Ian Rowland or, for a different kind of 'magic' debunking Carlos Castaneda. (What the hell IS debunking, anyway? - rudely awakening?)

Have fun searching their archives, and hey, why not ask Cecil a question?

And while we are in a debunking mode - don't forget the Skeptical Dictionary. I'll pick a random page, about the Sokal hoax.

I actually learned a bit more about Access and the library database in the last couple of days. Paul is a very good and patient teacher.

Watched late night tv (BBC4 progs on BBC2) - about the legal brothels in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century (uncomfortable viewing, but extraordinary social history - and of course many of my favourite artists writers and photographers knew this world). This was followed by a programme about Andre Breton and Surrealism - rather more light-weight - and a bit lowbrow (or is that just 'British'?).

In spite of my relentless bearing down on my (by most people's standards) small debt, I have still bought a couple of Bill Hicks items (his writings are new out, and there are articles in the press...ten years after his death - apparently he stopped speaking on Valentine's Day, and died on the 26th). I also jumped at the chance to grab a copy of Masked and Anonymous (even in the US format). Well, it's my sort of thing.

I was very touched by all the effort that Louise Wiberg has put into this birthday greeting - on a Danish Star Wars fansite - it is amazing to have people wish you well, based on some work done 23 years ago.

Thanks to Louise and everyone else at the site.

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour..."

Well, I made it! 58 times around the sun is quite a long journey.

Let's see - um we are an average of 93 million miles from the sun, and our orbit is more or less circular, so that's - um - two times Pi times the radius - um - 584 336 233 miles around?

And as the Solar System, too, is travelling around the galaxy, the earth doesn't do a closed orbit (as it is normally drawn) but a long spiral.

And I have done that 58 times. So that's 33 891 501 514 miles through the cosmos. Phew, I think I'll have to go and lie down (which doesn't stop us all travelling along at some blazing speed which I am far to exhausted to calculate).

OK, this site says we are doing 30km a second around the sun, and the solar system is going around the galaxy at 250km a second - you work it out....

And here we all are, arguing about resources on Spaceship Earth. And now we even have an operating manual.

"So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth."

Greetings to all sentient life-forms

(and a particular big hug for Heather - I'll answer properly later - but thanks so much for remembering 'mi cumpleaños').

Well, hell it's nearly my birthday, so I have been playing Bob Dylan and screaming along with it - can't help it - I know how many of my friends think it is a strange love - but he's always been there for me - stoned, tripping, happy, sad, travelling, falling in love, breaking-up, getting old - there he always is, still going through changes and taking notes.

He ain't my guru. I am not a Bobcat.

Just love those words, and the phrasing - "exercises in tonal breath control" like he said. I think of him like an actor - and mimic his delivery the way a lot of us attempt to reproduce favourite lines from movies.

I've seen (heard) him live a few times - and I was one of the 'jugglers and the clowns' replacing a support band in the foyer at Earls Court, London, for 6 nights only, back in (oh when was it?) 1978?

"This is a song about marriage"
Isis

"When it thus becomes clear that I own nothing,
not even what I have called myself,
it is as if, to use St.Paul's words,
I had nothing but possessed all things." Alan Watts

and why did Blogger's spell check want to replace St.Paul's with "stowaway" ?

Last year I collected quite a few unusual Jabba links. I was particularly touched by a birthday greeting on this Danish Star Wars fansite. I chatted briefly with Lars one time, when I was online with HR Nielsen, and he is one of the people behind that site.

The actual article (which HR kindly translated for me) was by Louise Alexandra Wiberg, who I am chatting to right now - as my birthday is coming around again - so there may be an update.

There is a link (and the translation) on one of my pages of interesting and unusual Jabba links here.

I picked up a Fuzzy Logic package at Falcon books (3 book deal) and have been enjoying them, though they are a bit 'enigmatic'. It was amusing to read - in Fuzzy Sets - that the author was bemused by the publisher's blurb on Cybernetic Conspiracy. He apparently had no idea it had anything to do with Leary's 4 Higher Circuits of the Brain! In fact, he admits he doesn't know what they are on about!

If you don't at all know what I am talking about (Fuzzy, not Leary!) - I found this in an FAQ:

"Fuzzy sets and logic must be viewed as a formal mathematical theory for the representation of uncertainty. Uncertainty is crucial for the management of real systems: if you had to park your car PRECISELY in one place, it would not be possible. Instead, you work within, say, 10 cm tolerances. The presence of uncertainty is the price you pay for handling a complex system.

Nevertheless, fuzzy logic is a mathematical formalism, and a membership grade is a precise number. What's crucial to realize is that fuzzy logic is a logic OF fuzziness, not a logic which is ITSELF fuzzy. But that's OK: just as the laws of probability are not random, so the laws of fuzziness are not vague."

And if you are wondering why I care, well, I have always had a problem with Aristotelean logic, and Either/Or thinking; Black/White; Good/Evil, etc - I always felt that it was an old-fashioned approach (even though my teachers would say "how can you challenge stuff we have used for 2000 years?" - and I would point out that Niels Bohr used the Taoist Yin-Yang symbol as a family crest, and famously mumbled when asked for precise answers about the weird world of quantum). Also I am fascinated by complex systems - so the emergence of this particular approach appealed to me, even if I don't entirely understand the technical side.

I like theMaybe Logic of Quantum Mechanics...no more excluded middle! We want our grey areas! Bring back ambiguity and paradox!

Ciao.

Normal Service will be resumed as soon as possible....

Not strictly magic (but I've never been strict about anything much!) this is an amazing site (and sight) - for something that makes the card 'castles' of my childhood into mere cottages...

Well, gosh darn, I am nearly up to having my 1000th visitor, since records began, (last August) - I'd do some kind of reward or ceremony but I am anti-ritual, and tight-fisted, and (sulk) it's MY birthday coming up this weekend...

I can't help it that I was born on St Valentine's Day. It used to be a rather minor holiday when I was a kid, but capitalism and its desperation to sell things has boosted almost any excuse for shopping and parties - so I end up associated with lurve (yeeugh) red satin hearts (aaargh) chocolate (yech) puppies (aaaah) red balloons (?) - are those symbolic condoms? - and all the other dreary stuff that contrived holidays have these days - drinking too much (champagne, no doubt) - dressing up - scoring - it's so tiring.

Personally I'll be glad when it's over - and we all move on to - what is it? Pancakes? Whitsun (what the hell is that?) Easter (chocolate again, rabbits and torture).

My ISP is doing maintenance right now, so expect delays in response to emails.

Ah well - I had a great week off!

No need for holidays in foreign climes - I saw family and friends (old and new) and had a great week - back to the job - ¡Mañana! - and on we go.

Sorry about the 'poor mouth' on Sunday - I could go back and delete it (I do occasionally rewrite history) - it happens that my opticians have reminded me I got all this stuff two years ago, anyway, and should re-test and get new ones, so I don't feel so bad at losing stuff...

It's been a great week - can't go into it now, but I saw my sister and my niece on Monday (in Reading), then caught Nicole and Volker from DSC in London (with John Coppinger) for a day out (including filming a clip for a vampire movie in an alley in Soho!). I was back here a couple of days, and then Julie and I went to see Judith in Somerset, sort out some computer stuff and walk along the beach with the dog, then go up to Bristol and see the fabulous Franki Anderson (last seen several years ago)and Ray and hear about some wonderful plans for putting together a Fool Space in Cornwall - and have a delicious meal. Isabella, too, was looking great...

What a fantastic week off!

I am taking a few days off now - going to visit my sister; meet a couple of the people from the Dark Side Convention in London; hoping to get over to Somerset.

Had a bit of a wild night on Friday, straight from work, and have mislaid (or lost) my computer glasses (middle distance) so I can either peer at the screen without glasses, or sit so far away that my arms can hardly reach the keyboard, and the letters are too small. Hey ho. Another unexpected expense to blow my carefully balance budget (I am paying off the cost of this computer which has sat on my one and only credit card for far too long).

I only GOT the credit card to pay for the computer (and occasionally shop online) - I don't use it for anything else - I find debt scary. Perhaps I am the last of that older generation who paid in cash....and never bought things they couldn't afford.