HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIA!

Back in Cardiff and catching up. I have no idea why my writings page is climbing the Google heap. It's a bit embarrassing, as there are projects listed there which haven't been typed up for months (years?) It's a neglected backwater page.

I'll try to get it sorted out soon.

One day I'll take the whole thing down and start from scratch (in its current incarnation it just grew from a cv (resume) published using a Front Page template).

I'm in Frankfurt

learning the secrets of Houdini from a friend. Struggling with a Mac Computer and a German keyboard, so I won't write long.

New postings, and catching up on email later in the weekend.

Very strange.

I just woke up from a dream. What was odd about it was that in the dream I met someone (call him A) and did something (irrelevant here) which gave me a sense of déjà vu, and then when I thought about it I realised that I hadn't really lived through the event before, but had dreamed it. I mentioned this to another of the characters in the first dream (if you follow me) who wasn't surprised - "Oh yeh, A's in the habit of visiting people in their dreams".

Then I woke up, fairly confused, given that A really has just visited me in a dream...

Want one interesting site to explore, for the Bank Holiday (UK)?


Try Anxiety Culture

You may or may not believe that we never went to the moon - you may think we have a colony there (Alternative Three) but try this factoid about the Space Shuttle on for size:

Every time the shuttle goes up the solid fuel rocket boosters spew millions of pounds of aluminum dust into the high atmosphere and ionosphere. Some of this aluminum never comes down.
With 113 flights so far, that means there are millions of pounds of aluminum dust floating around up there blocking radio transmissions, sunlight etc.
This continuing atmospheric pollution is brought to you thanks to the primeval "explosion" technologists at JPL, NASA, and Morton Thiokol.

"Joe Six-Pack" goes along for each joyride, he throws
64,000,000 empty beer cans out the window on the way.
(32 aluminum cans per pound)
With 113 flights so far, that means there is the equivalent of
BILLIONS OF EMPTY CANS FLOATING AROUND UP THERE.
That's BILLIONS.

I am enjoying the stats from the counter: I have no idea how accurate this is - whether repeat visits count as one person or several, etc - but currently I have been visited (it says) by people using these languages
English 68
Danish 5
French 5
German 3
Dutch 2
Spanish 1
Unknown 1
Chinese 1

Which frame would make this look right? Oblique Strategy


Oh, and Lubor's Lens is something else, but I'll let you Google that yourselves....

Just a couple of notes: Thanks Brandon!

Thanks, also, to the people at Deep Leaf Productions, who just sent me my limited edition copy of *Maybe Logic - the Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson* the DVD (with bonus material).

I am trying to savour it, and not gulp it down. All it took to slow me down was to look at the practical exercises, when Bob said 'put it on pause and go collect some random household objects........................Are you back?'

At that moment I did pause... 'tooo laate man....'

Humanize something free of error

- that's what Oblique Strategies recommended to me today....

Oblique Strategies are 'over a hundred worthwhile dilemmas' by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt - that can be found in the form of a pack of cards. But here's a great online version to play with for now.

More weird stuff. I came home to an email saying someone had just signed my guest book!

I went - Which Guest Book?

Ah, that Bravenet one I put up and took down a year ago....so how did someone come across it? In a cache? Or are they just sneaking around Bravenet members area, and going into guest books and sites from that site?

Hard to tell.....

Here's a crappy bit of advertising crud. I wondered why contact lens people and cookie makers were popping up in Google, when you hunt for Jabba stuff.

It looks as though best-shops-online sell space to these companies, and offer to hype them up the charts, then just hide some irrelevant (but popular) keywords on their pages and Voila! instant placings in search categories. Worse than out-of-the-blue junk mail must be junk that turns up when you are doing a specific search (not because you have asked a vague question.....)

I don't specially want to advertise these people, but this is what you get:

Discovered! convenient biocompatibles contacts Discount Contact ...
... MILLERStardestroyer Captain No 2 TOM MANNIONJabba Puppeteers TOBY PHILPOTT MIKE EDMONDS
DAVID BARCLAYPuppeteers MICHAEL And with our huge buying power, we are ...
contact-lenses.best-shops-online.com/ convenient_biocompatibles_contacts.asp - Similar pages

Excellent for oatmeal raisin gift fresh baked cookies - Delicious ...
... oliverstardestroyer captain no 1 pip millerstardestroyer captain no 2 tom mannionjabba
puppeteers toby philpott mike Chef David, trained in the finest French ...
cookies.best-shops-online.com/ oatmeal_raisin_gift_Fresh_Baked_cookies.asp - Similar pages
Cheeky, huh?

I managed to buy a secondhand copy of the Jamais Vu Papers....and was enjoying it's tale of people writing their own life as stories or knowing they're characters in a book ( a plot my friend Mick used to like) - with all that weirdness of knowing what is going to happen (deja vu), reversed, to jamais vu. I have never been here before.

It was first of all strange to hear the Cardiff Giant mentioned (though it has nothing to do with this city I live in) and a whole piece was written in Pig Latin (which I find really irritating - Iway eallyray indfay isthay itequay annoyingway). Fairly strange things to come across - but far more bizarrely synchronous when I put on a DVD of 'Made' that evening - only to find Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau speaking in Pig Latin, and ending up working for a company called Cardiff Giant (which they have to claim to work for several times).

That's got to be an improbable hit!

There still seems to be a regular flow of visitors wandering through - Hi People!

I guess T'Bone's interview increased traffic a bit (but also Habidabad's interview from before).

This still feels like an ephemeral event to me. A couple of years ago my working as an online tutor gave me freelance earnings on top of my wage, and let me go visit Hawaii (after not leaving the UK for about 15 years!)

I liked the thought of working from home, and working with my enthusiasm, but I also guessed it wouldn't last. Like most of my freelance plans over the years.

So getting to visit a couple of Star Wars conventions is fun, (and I know it could be a big old world of promotions, if you get into it), but the most I honestly expect is a couple of trips to other European countries (where someone else pays the plane fare) , and meeting some good folks.

I never was good at sustainable plans (as you can see from my history) as I have always been restless, into early adoption, easily bored, always moving on.....

This steady job isn't bad (as a plan for being in your mid-50s) but I still don't know if it will really see me through all the ups and downs of the next few years (i should be so lucky...)

I so enjoyed my entry of the 27th July, that I am going to repeat it here - just to remind myself to put that link onto a permanent page (and because the link is changing)

"After finding Grand Illusions I was racking my brains for the address of another site I found a while ago, containing 'impossible objects' made from playing cards. Well, this morning I found my way back!

They are called WOW cards, and they are at Ian Rowland's website. He performs all over the world doing a 'Beyond the Psychic' show. Not like Uri Geller, he has a self-deprecating sense of humour and self-mockery (while obviously still proud of the great stuff he can do).

It was always Geller's vanity that annoyed me (I remain an honorary member of the circle of conjurers who like fooling people, but not kidding them it is anything 'paranormal'. And speaking of paranormal, have a look at the impossible objects on Ian's site, which he calls PPOs (Permanent Paranormal Objects) which make a ship in a bottle look like child's play. (Though sadly the links to Angus Lavery, and the spoon that changes shape were dead links when I visited today)."

It's been a funny week for news. I don't mean the death and destruction stories to keep the climate of fear going...

Nah, the trivia. Last week it was 'Sun screen causes cancer' - not so much directly, as that it makes people think they are completely protected and they carry on with the foolish over exposure...

Then it was 'nicotine is potentially a very useful drug' it's the smoking that's bad for you. It was fun for an old hippie to see nicotine as 'having so bad a public image that you could never get funding to study it', especially now that hemp cosmetics and foods and clothing and other spinoffs are becoming available - although we are still a long way from being prescribed THC for depression....

And then there was the New Scientist with 'sunshine is good for you' - yes it gives you skin cancer, but it also protects you from a lot of other types of cancer and other illnesses related to Vitamin D deficiency.

I feel like Woody Allen in Sleeper - I forget the exact quote, but the gist is that he wakes up 200 years from now to find that later research proved that the ideal diet is in fact Coke Burger and Fries.....

Well, I seem to be in Google churn at the moment.

Quite a lot of visitors, according to this new counter - you can look at the stats yourself, they're not hidden - several languages and countries, which is pleasing for a world citizen like myself.....

"Acting in 'Star Wars' I felt like a raisin in a giant fruit salad,
and I didn't even know who the cantaloupes were."


- Mark Hamill, imdb.com

Whoops! I seem to have lost my top slot in Google. I shouldn't have pulled my Home page for updating, and put it back without metatags, etc. Never mind - it just stops that 'I'm Feeling Lucky' gag for finding me easily....

Still, the interviews are buzzing, and people are visiting the site... I've been doing some friendly trading with people...

Hi Josh! Hi Lee!

And it's hot in the UK, so that's good, too. (I won't go on about my aches and pains, today...)

A BIG HELLO to new visitors. Since I put the counter on a couple of days ago I can see people dropping in to visit - probably in response to the interviews.

As you can probably tell from the look of the site, I am a 'cheap and cheerful' person. It's best not to think of me as some kind of film star. Right now I do a modest job for a modest wage - I still don't own any property, or have any savings, or pensions to look forward to!

I dropped out from school, determined to enjoy myself and to have adventures and not to work for anyone else - and succeeded very well at that.

When it comes to capitalism, money, property and social status, however - I remain a bohemian, or a Beat, a drop-out, or a hippie (or whatever word you use for someone so out-of-tune with celebrity, greed and fame). That doesn't mean it wasn't fun. Just don't assume I am any less human (or more superhuman) than yourself.....

The film business was just a little bit of lottery luck that got me through the 80s.