anna_en_route's Friends

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8408233.stm?ls
FUCKING EVIL, I SAY

I mean, the vampire squid were bad enough, but these bastards are developing armour, for fuck's sake. Next they'll be working on a water-breathing apparatus and then we'll be fucked.

"Going to Cuba is not like going to Connecticut."
Overheard on NPR this morning

Well, no. They have better Cuban food there, for one thing. And much nicer beaches.

Tea this morning: mango passionfruit
Teacup this morning: I rinsed out the kitty in filing drawer cub.
Temperature: 42 degrees. Hardly worth recording.

And now, yoga, and then slouching towards work. Time to blow up something. Possibly a space ship and a couple of world leaders.

...huh. I have this sudden sense I've got my grove back. More carnage: fixes problems every time.

Did I mention I climbed a 5.10 yesterday? (okay, yes, I'm still geeked. But then, when I started climbing, one of the things I said to myself was "I would like to be good enough at this to climb 5.10 someday." And while having sent one 5.10a on the slab in not the same thing as climbing 5.10, not really, it puts it within reach. It's visible now, in a way it wasn't before. So cooooooool.)

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: (WNPR - Live Stream)

DO ANYTHING 024

Nearly to the end of the first volume, now:

…Alan Moore who’s also in the audience at an early Roxy Music gig and watching Brian Eno in some insane costume making music with Science, Alan Moore, whose early career could easily be described as trying to find out what might happen if Brian Eno had written the Fantastic Four, Brian Eno, who conceived of his generative art software project 77 MILLION PAINTINGS as “visual music,” which is as good a term for “comics” as any I’ve seen…

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

I went and sat under the Electronic!Christmas tree tonight with Jez, Jodi, Will and Nicola and managed to not get hypn-ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTREE! TELECOM'S WISH IS MY COMMAND! THEIR INTERNET IS SPEEDY AND NOT GLITCHY AT ALL! THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE IS BEYOND COMPARE!

Apparently there are 150 different light patterns that they use to make the patterns, and they were pretty fucking awesome. Will and Jez were discussing how they could make their own, while Nicola and I were insisting that it was powered by sparkle-ponies, and those little buggers are hard to farm because they don't thrive in captivity. It also wanted me to take acid. A LOT.

Now, all this kerfuffle over having to specify gender on your LJ in order to make the advertising more gender-specific. They said nothing about telling the truth, so what I'm suggesting is that everyone change their gender to Male. EVERYONE. Worldwide. Yes, there will be a few annoying weeks of car/muscle stimulants/porn ads, but I'm fairly sure that LJ will get the message and drop the ridiculousness. I'm also thinking that if I change mine to male, it'll be a nice change from the YOU MUST HATE YOUR BODY IF IT IS LESS THAN ANNOREXIC bullshit they've put on. Maybe I'll luck out and get a link to a halfway decent porn site.

I'm watching Moon. So far the robot reminds me of HAL from 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Also, I got home to a wonderful surprise. Jess had given me one of her old Eees, which is I think the next model up from mine? It's shiny and white and I'm trying very hard not to make racist comments about it working better than my old black one*. Now I need some stickers and whathaveyou to make it all purty like.

*Well, it does! I can turn this one off and it'll turn back on again! And the screen's bigger, so that "once you go black, you never go back" thing is bullshit.

I found a picture of Will when he was a nipper:

Also, dinner:
http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order/
I want cowboy leg.

Poll #1499174
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Home ownership (half)

View Answers

Yes, go for it
5 (71.4%)

No, you're chaining yourself down, man!
1 (14.3%)

AHAHA MORTGAGE
5 (71.4%)

My lord, I am a homeowner (half!)
0 (0.0%)

Avondale

View Answers

Yes, good suburb with many fine qualities
3 (60.0%)

No, look elsewhere
1 (20.0%)

Spiders!
2 (40.0%)

What the hell am I thinking?

View Answers

W
4 (66.7%)

T
4 (66.7%)

F
4 (66.7%)

Normally when someone is trying to make a decision, I advise them to flip a coin, just because when it's in the air you know which way you want it to land.

Right now, I want my coin to hit on its edge, spin around, and finish balancing neatly on its side.

I wanna write like Greg fucking Brown when I grow up.
Coldest night of the winter, working up my farewell.
In the middle of everything under no particular spell.
Clouds roll in from Nebraska. Dark chords on a big guitar.

Current Mood: amazed
Current Music: Greg Brown - Rexroth's Daughter

he always was a painter and he left me his suitcase
Ooops.

Realized today that I started Grail about 130 pages too early, and, in fact, the first scene is the scene I wrote today. Alas, the life of the working writer.

Howeveer, I may be able to recycle some of that earlier stuff. I just need to remember that in an interesting novel, terrorism comes before politics, rather than politics before terrorism.

On the other hand, that route was a 5.10a, and I sent it again today. Also got a new one I think is a 5.8, and while I did not get a hold higher on the sky wall monster, I did get unclipped today. Wednesday, the goal is two holds higher. Dammit.

Current Mood: oops

T-shirt Of The Week #008: SCROTUMPUNK

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

So, every Monday, I’ll post the new shirt here, and you can peer at it more at http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.

HOWEVER, THIS WEEK: it’ll run ’til next Monday, as we’ve been running late today due to my being in London for meetings. Okay?

This one needs some explaining. I once opined on Twitter that the word "scrotum" ruins everything. And proved it by providing the helpful example "scrotumpunk." And then, um…

…I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #008: SCROTUMPUNK:

4184667565_e4713565d1_o

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

413653507v10_480x480_Front

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

Chris In Bibleland
Does anyone remember/can anyone track down the post I made here back in '05 or '06 about the (I thought) non-confrontational but brilliant way Chris handled the racist man who sold us a car in Bibleland during our exile? I wanted to show it to someone, but after looking through two months' worth of post-K posts, I can take no more.

if you lose your money lose your life
Well, that's 1800 words for the day, and a third of a book by MS word count. And I appear to have finally found the plot, so if I can make the 150 pages of setup the readers will have to get through interesting, I may have a publishable book here eventually.

Mean things: epistemology, mind control, social tyranny, toxic memes, minority rule, oligarchy. The usual, really. I need to blow something up.

Maybe tomorrow, or Wednesday.

In any case, now time for a little nap or something before massage therapy appointment, food, and climbing.

tea today: market spice
temperature this morning: 34 degrees
teacup today: cat in a filing drawer

33100 / 100000 words. 33% done!

166 / 400 pages. 42% done!

Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Gram Rabbit - Lost In Place

After this morning's freak-out, I spent the evening with Jay and the girls, and there was a surprise!Sheryn as well, which was nice. Dinner was eaten and then there was another surprise - Christmas presents!! Penny had gotten me an ice cube tray that makes ice cubes in the shape of the Titanic, as well as some stripey socks that had sharks on them and a mustard-scented air-freshener shaped like a hot dog; and Rachel and Jay had gotten me a Dexter action figure, which pleases me immeasurably.
We also wound up watching Stephen Fry's Last Chance to See*, with lemurs in Madagascar and the blue whale off the coast of Mexico. I must say, I really like the cgi-clockwork animals in the we're-going-to-tell-you-interesting-facts-about-the-animal, but then I rather like clockwork things, so there we go.

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Yeah...

I'm still feeling a bit off - the sleeping pill was rather strong, so it's kinda knocked me on my ass a little and I've spent the day feeling kinda sludgey in my head. It's good though, I got the sleep that I needed and probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I'm thinking there may be further sleep tonight as well.

Also, Anita does a brilliant impersonation of a knight in shining armour <3

*Yes, the show with the thoroughly inappropriate-yet-hilarious Kakapo moment. Come to New Zealand and get neck-raped by our native fauna...

Today I read Meg Rosoff's book How I Live Now. I have been warned of this already because

karenhealey blogged about it, but the blurb is some of the most misleading copy I have ever read in my life. It was terrific, I really loved it.

Lately I have also been obsessively reading the Millenium trilogy, which are the Stieg Larsson books that took the world by storm (starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.) They're great reading, thrillers that make you feel a little bit cosmopolitcan, although the third one is bogging down a bit into the kind of political intrigue that I like least in any kind of fiction. Also, there was one phrase which I now can't remember but it was really stupidly translated - it was clearly a direct translation of a Swedish colloquialism, like in English we'd say bunny boiler or something, and the thing that got me was there was an equivalent colloquial English phrase that would say the same thing. Oh well, I think I'm getting pickier in my old age (also, right now the job I'm in is rewarding pickiness, which is like they're indulging me in my worst habit. There are only two things I'm picky about: food and apostrophes.)

Strange dreams...
Tom from work was trying to send a tortoise through the mail by encasing it in polystyrene. It was an unhappy tortoise because there was only one air hole and he was going to wrap that in brown paper and send it to a friend of his. Then I took the tortoise off him and was walking through a hospital that was all dingy and fucked up like the one in Silent Hill.

Anita was very nice and went and got me sleeping pills from the chemist across the road so I could actually sleep, and it knocked me the fuck out. I'm feeling a bit heavy in my head now, but a fair bit calmer. Ugh.

-Have I pimped Andrew Bird at people yet? If not, please go find some and listen? He's mad goodness. I am anticipating his concert with increasing glee.

-The sneezing and snottiness is not going away. I'm pretty sure it's hayfever but now I'm paranoid that I'm getting sick before I can have surgery. Stupid workmate and girlfriend putting that idea in my head! I firmly think healthy thoughts. Otherwise it's waiting till the end of Feb and I really really don't want to.

-Roller Derby is amazing fun to watch even if you have absolutely no idea of the rules.

-Things are going well with Heather.

This is what the house looks like from the road above:

No, the house with red window frames is the neighbours, you can tell from the way it's got a roof, unlike ours. Ours is hidden down below the trees, nice and unobtrusive.

This weekend was mostly working on the posts and fighting with tarps in gales:

( lots of big pics )

Moving to an entirely different scale, I mocked up the circuit boards for the Fannies, to check everything fits. I'm glad I did, in two square inches of boards I found five errors. Well, three "won't work" errors and two "could be better" tweaks. And it turns out that to make it fit, I have to overlap the boards in three dimensions, not just two. Yup, some of the high components on one board fit between high components on others.

( My head hurts now )

So the electronics all fit. When turned on, it might melt, but we'll deal with that later, mainly by going "ow, f***" and running away.

Next step, as you all know, is to make the gerbers and panelise, then get some quotes. Anyone know a board fab that'll happily cut boards that are utterly tiny? I want fifty boards, from three designs, but the average size is two square inches so that's a lot of cutting to be done.

Current Music: LRS from Psurkit

Empty Box Of Pixels

I have to go into London tomorrow, as I’ve been instructed to meet a producer. Sometimes my agent talks to me as if she has some kind of remote-operated Destructo-Ray Projector in my office that’ll burn off one of my balls if I disobey her instructions. But she speaks with such confidence that I start to worry that she does actually have some kind of remote-operated Destructo-Ray Projector in my office, and so I go to the meeting.

So it’ll be all quiet here until tomorrow night.

However...
Some thoughts about that depression meme that's going around. Since it does ask for age and gender, I wonder if it takes into account that interrupted sleep, weight gain, memory loss, inability to concentrate, and mood swings are also symptoms of menopause and changes the scores accordingly. It's rather surprising how many health professionals don't get that out of the way first. If a woman's over forty-five, it's the first thing I'd consider -- as your body adjusts to lower estrogen levels, life can become a physical and mental roller coaster.

Dear lord, the lack of sleep alone can account for the weight gain and the mood swings and the inability to concentrate. Primary source research; I don't remember the last time I slept through the night. If I had to work outside the house, I'd be on HRT so fast it'd make your head spin.

When the beloved used to work in group homes, there was a woman under their care who'd suddenly starting having health problems right out of the blue. She wasn't sleeping, she'd wakeup three or four times a night soaked in sweat, she was forgetting how to do things she'd known how to do for years, and was violently moody. They couldn't figure out what was wrong. So I asked how old she was. (I did volunteer work with the client at the therapeutic riding stable) She'd just turned fifty. I said, "You think she might be in menopause?" Hadn't occurred to any of them. And some of them were in their fifties. Some of them were having the exact same symptoms. ("I am NOT in menopause!" "Honey, if you're sweating like a duck, odds are good you're a duck." "I am NOT a duck!" "It's a meta... never mind.") And guess what? She was. Once they knew what the problem was, they could start dealing with it. (To the extent that their drastically reduced budget allowed but that's another story.)

There's a 100% guarantee that 51% of the population will be going through an estrogen adjustment with varying symptoms to varying degrees. And apparently the other 49% is doomed to endure an enlarged prostrate and erectile dysfunction. No wonder everyone's depressed...

I must say, I do like the Woolshed Sessions. Jess Chambers is tiny and cute like a pixie dressed up as a cowgirl. It's only the second one that I've worked, but it was a wonderful change from the weekend's reggae mayhem. Nice and laid back with lots of breathy sweet songs with slide guitar and mandolin solos*. It was also cool because they'd decked the bar out with heaps of pohutakawa flowers and Christmas decorations and stuff, so it was really pretty.
Here's my favourite song of hers:

Sadly the lyrics are quite self-destructive and kinda mopey, but the tune is scarily catchy.

The best thing? Shaun had worked his kitchen-magic** again and made churros, so we had them and strawberries and chocolate sauce for after-work noms. And also pinot noir. But primarily the churros. I may have had to stop myself from licking the sugar-and-cinnamon mix off the bar from where it spilled. SOMETIMES I'm civilised. Not often though. The end of the night saw me and Sam hanging out and drinking wine while listening to 80s Ozzy Osbourne and having a brilliant bogan-chick bonding moment. I'm quite glad that we kept Sam, she's cool.Also, it was weird leaving the bar while it was still night time. WEIRD. I'm not sure I approve.
Something else I do NOT approve of is the fact that we've got NO gigs between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and then nothing after NYE for two weeks. TWO FUCKING WEEKS of no income, and I have to save my holiday pay for the SINZ tattoo comp and the North Island tour with Ginger Brown. I am SEVERELY displeased.
I also seem to have messed up my hand again, right thumb joint in the wrist hurts like a motherfucker.

It's only just gone 0700 and it's as bright as midday out there. DO NOT WANT.

Also this:

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Is why i'm not allowed rolls of carpet any more.

*Seriously, there was more mandolin than your average Gypsy band. If it was cowbell, Christopher Walken would have shut the fuck up and let the Blue Oyster Cult do their thing.
**I swear that boy is going to make someone a good house-husband one day. And the woman that marries him is going to get FAT

Bright Hanukah Wishes
Wishing you (a day late for the beginning) a Hanukah filled with celebrations, blessings, and light!

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: "El Festin de Hanukah," Richard Kaplan

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