Moron moment

So...I went shopping for a birthday card and a birthday present today. They were for two different people, so I went into a gifty shop. You know the type, with ribbons and cutsies covering every surface and those creepy dolls staring at you with flat, dead eyes.

Anyway, I narrowly avoided tripping over a shelf of Beatrix Potter china and managed to pick out a silver piggy bank for friend one (she's in finance, I thought it was whimsical). Well pleased with my choice I wended my way to the wall of birthday cards (it's a huge wall, jam-packed with cards) for friend two. Funny cards, rude cards, religious cards, cards that light up, cards with pop-ups, cards with badges, you name it.

And then I see this one card that has a row of buttons on the front. And a little screen. And I'm thinking, cool, calculator birthday card. And then I notice it has "In case of panic" written in big letters over the top. And in the split second it took me to reach forward to grab the card, I realised that I had mistaken the shop's alarm system for a birthday card with a wise-cracking calculator that makes fun of the recipient's age.

Thankfully, I hadn't activated the self-destruct sequence.

Hypnagogia

Hypnagogic imagery is often auditory or has an auditory component. Like the visuals, hypnagogic sounds vary in intensity from faint impressions to loud noises, such as crashes and bangs (exploding head syndrome). People may imagine their own name called or a doorbell ringing. Snatches of imagined speech are common. While typically nonsensical and fragmented, these speech events can occasionally strike the individual as apt comments on – or summations of – their thoughts at the time. They often contain wordplay, neologisms and made-up names. Hypnagogic speech may manifest as the subject’s own ‘inner voice’, or as the voices of others: familiar people or strangers. More rarely, poetry or music is heard. - Wikipedia

Ta ta Manto!

Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out!

Dum dum dum da da dum dum da da

Ninja kitteh

Dear Nick Hornby

I ploughed through your Complete Polysyllabic Spree in record time, with sheer giddy enjoyment. I've always liked your fiction, but the chatty and engaging tone of the spree captured my imagination in a way that non-fiction rarely does. How do you do that? Take seemingly unconnected works and link them in a coherent way? Did you practise that chatty style, or is it as effortless as it seems? How do you balance the gentle art of self-deprecation with incisive commentary on, let's face it, a crap-load of books?

The hardest think I find when I'm writing, for this admittedly small and very biased readership, is achieving any kind of volume. That's why I think not everyone has a book in them, some of us just lack the ability to carry thoughts, ideas, people, plots, jokes and riddles to more than a hundred words. I blame journalism.

yours faithfully

a fan

PS I have a friend who has a huge man crush on you. Football, check, mixed tape enthusiast, check, reader and reviewer, check. He's kicking himself now for not patenting the idea before you cottoned on. Thanks for that.

Tired

I have nothing to write about because every last drop of creativity has been squeezed out of me by the longest week of my life. I've written too many headlines, captioned so many pictures and faffed about so many standfirsts my brain has lost the capacity to string words together. This is about as good as it gets. Now on out it's going to be just static.

Bzbzbzbzzzzbzzbbzbzzzbzbbzbzbzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzbzzbzbzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzbzbzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzzzzzzbzzzzzzzzbbbbzbbz

Might as well live

Razors pain you.

Rivers are damp.

Acids stain you,

and drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren't lawful.

Nooses give.

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.

- The inimitable Dorothy Parker (shamelessly purloined from TT)

Atonement

I wasn't convinced that this novel could be adapted into a credible film. But it really is very well done.

Silly, silly girl. In one moment Briony derails two people's lives. The movie really demonstrates the effects of her decision to lie, and doesn't shy away from judging her harshly for it.

I know a lot of people find it hard to read Ian McEwan, find it hard to deal with his authorial voice. But that's what this novel is about - Briony's authorial voice, constantly rewriting the past, trying to come to terms with a moment of fiction that derailed reality.

In the scene where she pretends to drown so Robbie will save her, she flails when he doesn't follow the script in her head. She's constantly scripting her world and trying to order it, trying retain control. And when the people around her throw her lines away, she makes a horrible decision that will haunt her forever.

Fabulous book, intriguing movie.

Discovered

These really work to keep unwanted people out of your room. FYI.

Had we but world enough and time

I made mashed pumpkin, chicken and bulgar wheat for dinner tonight. I had the pumpkin and I decided to be "creative" and sprinkled cumin and coriander over it. It was delicious, if I do say so myself, but I had to stop myself from yanking the chicken before it was perfectly done. As I put it back on the heat, I wondered what my rush was.

Following that thought I read some of the food blogs I enjoy - lots of brilliant ideas - and one recipe caught my eye, for roasted tomato salad. The tomatoes roast for about three hours, then sit for two, then roast for another three hours. And I thought, what's the rush? Why not wake up on a Saturday morning and think, today I'm going to make tomato salad. It's going to take me all day. I'm looking forward to it.

The whole week I've been plagued with a sense of purposelessness. A sense of rootlessness. I'm already tired of living with someone - I want to move on. But I want a house, and a garden, and I can't afford that right now. I may never be able to afford if the credit crunch keeps crunching. I want to grow stuff, and take riding lessons again, and have a room devoted to books, and go to farmers' markets on a Sundy morning, and have a dog, and a cat, and go to Morocco so I can buy a tagine dish, and visit a museum every Saturday, and go out for breakfast, and see a movie with a friend, and take a bike ride in a park, and buy cds and finish Doris Lessing's Love, again, and enjoy my work and be promoted, and have someone around in the evenings to laugh with and bitch at, and to be able to afford to not hang on by my finger nails, and expect the universe to drop out at any minute.

It could have something to do with the MS, but that feels too easy, too pat. It makes the equation too simple, just as blaming it on my birthday seems too transparant to be true.

Nothing is stopping me from doing all these things. Slowly I'm working towards the goals. There's no rush. So why do I feel like I'm running out of time?

And so it goes

My street is alive with Ramadaan fever. Everywhere you look are signs warning that shops will be closed at certain times, crowds are gathered outside the mosque and the coffee shop is doing a brisk trade in sweet treats. So it seemed slightly off to run into a pair of teenagers arguing loudly, apparently about a drug deal that had gone awry.

Heeeeeeeee heeeeeeeee heeeeeeee

The literal icing tragedies killed me.

How to wreck a cake in three easy steps.

An insider's view of the Republican convention

Scary shit.

Twenty-seven

Today I turned twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven birthdays.

Twenty-five first day of spring birthdays.

Two first day of autumn birthdays.

This is the first year that I feel a year older.