Daybook
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 18 most recent journal entries recorded in the "harvie" journal:
|
06:34 pm
[Link] |
Happier still now
Sometimes, you win _twice_
|
01:49 am
[Link] |
Happy now...
Sometimes, you win.
|
|
09:59 pm
[Link] | Coming home from East Acton, drunk, I stumble into Sainsburys. I am roaming the aisles demanding pork bellies. I see that not only are there no hash browns, but they have entirely stopped stocking them. I curse. A fat woman pushing a trolley barges into me trying to get through a 2 person gap, but she is easily two people. 'You shouldn't even be in here' I say. 'You don't need to eat for a month.' She shouts but I am already gone and dreaming of coleslaw. There are no 8 pence 'chicken flavour' noodles but I already have many, many of them but I want more. I go home, gulp down a huge glass of 'claymore' scotch that I bought because there was no Bells. Claymore is an apt name for this whisky that is no more than a tool, a base weapon to decimate braincells and consciousness.
At Kudos are Ian and the boy with no name who always wears the baseball cap backwards. I am already drunk and proceed to drink more. An hour after I arrive, I have had a bottle of wine and another double scotch. At the bar I smile at a cute boy wearing glasses and a scarf and a flat cap, then later send Ian over to get him for me. We talk. He is from Indonesia but lives in Birmingham and is only visiting for the day and refuses to come back to my house for the night. I take his number and he leaves to go clubbing with his friends. He invites me but we would have to queue, and I say about queueing and slitting my wrists and randomly wanting to machinegun people in the queue who are talking about music and clothes. He nods assent and quickly leaves. Across from me, around the corner is a japanese boy named Katsuhide who has a 26" waist and works in a clothes shop. His elegance and 'verve' astounds me and I want to die of jealousy. He has brought his usual friend and an old bald fat man who likes to buy them champagne. I have slept with him though and the old bald fat man has not, despite buying him champagne (whereas I flatly refused and made him buy a bottle of wine after I did the same.) 'I don't like champagne' I said which translates to 'I'm dammned if I'm buying you drinks when you're ten years older than me and working too.' He is graceful beyond belief, sits and stands in a way that makes you sure he practices, but he doesn't, they never do. I contemplate surgery, nerve gas, crash diets, electrolysis and air tickets to Manila. Katsu leaves with a little japanese girl who is wearing Issey Miyake (pleats please) and Dior glasses. I say 'meganakko desu yo' loud enough that she hears and she looks astonishedly at me but I am leaving. On the tube on the way home I fall asleep and dream I wake up in Zurich.
|
|
11:52 pm
[Link] |
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
I was watching 'The Constant Gardener' tonight.
Ignore the 'big pharma is evil' storyline. Ignore the 'conspiracy theory/old men in positions of power in government are evil' subplots. This is a very beautiful film about love, dedication and reality: the fact that life is cheap, because there is just so much of it. It is a film about expatriates, about the beauty and flow of the third world, and those who make it their home.
There's a scene in this film where our protagonist returns to England from Africa. They've filmed it on a wet, horrible day and as he gets off the plane, they focus on cameras, security apparatus, security infrastructure... the scene is deliberately overexposed and the white balance is set low so everything looks blue/grey and overly sterile, but the effect they're trying to create isn't one you really need to create if you know the country:
It's cold, it's wet, and it's over-regulated and our government is trying very hard to imitate the soviet state - only with enough technology to actually make all their fascist wetdreams come true.
When my last flight back from Manila hit the runway at Heathrow, the jolt of the landing woke me up.
I looked out the window, realised where I was and cried.
Africa is fucked, but it's not England, and that counts for a hell of a lot.
|
|
11:01 pm
[Link] |
Christmas
Last year:
Travelled with a friend to their Uncle's house about 60 miles south of Manila, arrived at about 7pm Christmas Eve. Ate tons and tons of chicken and pork adobo, rice, liempo, grilled tilapia and just about anything else that would fit in the kitchen, washed it all down with plenty of 'Fundador' brandy which was £4 per bottle and passed out. Woke up at the crack of dawn the next day to fresh, clean air blowing down off the mountains. Fried egg on toast for breakfast, followed by 'let's go and swim in the waterfall' so we did. Explored a jungle path running alongside a stream and found a very serious water bo (carabao) which attempted to interfere with my plans. Persuaded said bo to pose for photographs while looking retarded, returned home for more Christmas lunch. Later in the day set off huge quantities of fireworks, got the bus back into Manila and had dinner at a great restaurant in Makati and then back to my rooms, to fall very soundly asleep.
This year:
I have a dinner invite at a friend's, which I am very grateful for otherwise I'd be here on my own celebrating with Arthur Bell. It's going to be somewhere in the region of 1-2cº
One way or another I am so definitively out of this godawful country next year.
Here's hoping the Japan Thing goes ahead!
Have some Manila pictures.
|
|
05:19 pm
[Link] |
You're a fucking loserrrrr
Blair trades something for nothing, film at 11
This is so fucking irritating.
What happens here is that we give up £1bn of rebate at exactly the same time as we have a very publically discussed monster hole in our public sector pension schemes and in the NHS (£760m, i.e. less than £1bn.)
Where does this extra rebate money go? To the newly-joined Eastern European EU member states such as Poland and Hungary.
What do they do with this money? Use it internally instead of raising taxes - this allows them to remain (relatively) low-tax economies with simple tax schemes.
Where does a large amount of UK investment capital then go? Poland, Hungary - because they have low-tax economies with simple tax schemes - which is possible in part because we (and all the other EU member states) are paying them 'development' money.
We're actually VOLUNTEERING to pay another country to remain more competitive, and in return we have been promised 'a review of spending in 2008' and the only reason this has happened is so that Blair can say 'we (I) were/was successful and decisive and statesmanlike when it came to the EU presidency.' It's sheer grandstanding, and it's disgusting.
|
|
11:04 pm
[Link] |
Caller ID
I hate Caller ID.
Caller ID has led to the fallacy that avoidance is better than confrontation, and has equipped a generation of rude inconsiderate under-25s with the belief that you no longer have to say anything unpleasant to people.
Don't want to go out for dinner with someone? Met someone at a bar and unwisely swapped phone numbers but now decided you don't care? With Caller ID you no longer have to actually talk to this person and say 'actually I don't think we'd get on' or 'I'm really sorry but I'm busy' - you can just ignore them! And, if they _really_ happen to like you so call back and call back and leave 25 missed calls, well they must be a really crazy stalker and you're so glad you never spoke to them in the first place.
This also seems to be a really good way to get out of tenative engagements - if you know the other person wants to see you, then you get to say 'yeah I can probably make it that day' but when the day comes up your phone mysteriously fails to work.
No-one under the age of 25 is capable of rational human-human interaction any more. If it's not IM (when you can be the keyboard commando and start conversations with 'who the fuck r u and what do u want?') then they can't hack even the simplest 'confrontation' (i.e. saying no.)
I'm setting my phone to not send Caller ID.
Eat shit and die, you cowards.
Current Music: The Aprils - Astro
|
|
08:57 am
[Link] |
Azumanga Daioh
Upon the recommendation of someone somewhere on the interbutt, I have been watching:
Azumanga Daioh!
It's a bit odd, quite random, mostly funny and worth a watch.
Among featured characters is 'Kamineko' which translates literally as 'biting cat.'
An appropriate name!
Also the adorable chiyo-chan:
|
|
03:44 am
[Link] |
Today I discovered OS-tan
OS-tan: "the personification of several OSes, most famously Windows, by various amateur artists. A pure fan creation, the appearance of each character is generally consistent across artists. OSes are almost always portrayed as women, the Windows girls usually as sisters, despite sometimes seeming the same age"
I have to admit, this is new to me.
XP is frequently displayed eating or holding an empty bowl marked with the kanji for 'memory' to represent its unmatched ability to consume RAM, CE-tan is depicted as a fairy (often greyscale) complete with gossamer wings and 2k-tan wears glasses and a suit (as is quite appropriate for a superior being.)
I think they're quite sweet.
Many many little XPs.
More here!
|
|
08:03 pm
[Link] |
The Goldfish Bowl
There's a feature on my regular cycling route that I think of as 'the goldfish bowl.'
This is about 5 meters from a fairly busy road and overlooks the river and the promenade by the river.
I have never seen anyone in it.
|
|
10:27 pm
[Link] |
NOOOOOOOOOOOO
td div {
font-size:6pt;
}
STOP FUCKING DOING IT!
The only reason I can think of for people to do this is because they have a 17" LCD running at 640x480 which is crystal clear with pixels an inch across. It's indescribably stupid and I just end up having to write a really complicated filter that changes the font size to ten like:
ONLY IF font-size=(4|5|6|7|8)px IF CSS ENCLOSED (TD, DIV, BODY)
Firefox's 'enforce min font size' doesn't work with CSS. Joy.
To be fair there are sites that get away with a font size of 6 but they don't use it for td or body globally, and they certainly don't do 6 point white-on-black tahoma. Even with a 22" CRT it's no good.
Don't do it.
|
|
12:56 am
[Link] |
Oooooh kawaiiii!
I have to admit this is new to me. Presented, of course, without comment.
|
|
03:37 pm
[Link] |
Presented without comment (just emphasis)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4453681.stm
"Index has made a loss in nearly every year of its 20-year history, and has accumulated losses of over £100m despite many attempts by different management teams to turn the business around," said chairman David Simons.
"Our members who have contributed to the success of this company have been left reeling and utterly shocked by this devastating news," said John Gorle, of shopworkers' union Usdaw.
|
|
08:36 am
[Link] |
Life in Wartime
About ten years ago, I read a short story I'll present at the bottom of this post. It's called 'Life in Wartime' and it was written by The Deth Vegetable of cDc in 1993.
Gone are the days of the superbly detailed and often subversive how-to guides that sidestepped neatly from a didactic fury about the evils of Ma Bell to a 500-line schematic with each and every component perfectly rendered in monospaced-ascii, signal timings and voltage boundaries set out in obsessive and devoted detail, all sandwiched in a 70-column envelope with a 10 character margin.
The internet is a lesser place without them.
Life in Wartime is a phrase I use quite a lot, most often when justifying some atrocious act - to that end, it's concise and it presents most opponents with few exploitable angles of attack.
I would imagine you're going to hear it used quite frequently these days. Those who would use it will do so for exactly the same reason I would use it.
Life in Wartime
|
|
03:13 pm
[Link] |
Puppet Life
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4387525.stm
"It seems incredible, but millions of families and thousands of businesses have no-one to turn to but a bunch of unqualified amateurs to fix the most complicated pieces of equipment that have probably ever existed. It's a scary thought."
"WHY ISN'T THERE SOME BIG STATE-ORGANISED SCHEMA THAT CAN HELP US, WHY DO WE HAVE TO DEPEND ON INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE THAT WE HAVE TO INTERACT WITH AND NEGOTIATE WITH INDIVIDUALLY."
Why do people have this Deus Ex Machina complex? They want 'someone' to fix it and they want that 'someone' to be registered, official and authorised so there is a regulated bureaucratic procedure they can follow if anything goes wrong, because they know they are HELPLESS. This ignorance is neatly conveyed in the phrase 'unqualified amateur' - the concept of having a 'certificate' in general computer hardware and software maintenance is beyond the pale - you'd have to update it twice-monthly, if not more, and it would be specific in the extreme. 'Sorry sir, I'm only qualified to work with 40 of the 80 pieces of software you have on your machine, I can't help you.'
I suppose these people think when they take their car into a local garage, everyone that works on it has a 'qualified mechanic's certificate' or that every brick laid in their house was laid by an 'officially qualified bricklayer.' They'd probably have a heart attack if they knew their house was built by an 'amateur' who's only 'qualification' was that he'd been laying bricks for ten years.
His final argument: "But when [my dog] does get sick, at least I know I'll be taking him to a fully qualified canine service engineer to be mended, not a local amateur."
You can't kill a computer by botching the repair. You can break some hardware if you try hard and you can wipe the data by being clueless, but you can always take a backup first, even if you have to pull the disk out and back it up on good hardware. Computers are a lot simpler than dogs.
My point? We're all 'at risk' from cowboys out to make a quick buck, or worse, well meaning 'experts' who are catastrophe-causing dabblers, but the sheer helplessness conveyed by this piece is just depressing, especially from a person that claims to know a bit about computers (and by extension, lateral analysis and logical thinking, which is all you really need to know.)
There are few industries where a rigid qualifcation/progress ladder is appropriate. This is not one of them.
|
|
07:35 am
[Link] |
Something fairly strange
So, it's December, and I'm at the Ricky Reyes Christmas Inter-Salon 'Presentation' which is at Marikina Riverbanks. I'm surrounded by ~100 female and pretty-much-indiscernable-from-female hairdressers but we've got there about an hour early because (as normal) no-one has any idea what's actually going on when, and the concept of an 'official start time' is just nonexistent.
We wander around the riverbanks and look at the little shops and the carnival-esque setup they've got there, which pretty - there's a giant shoe floating in the middle of the river, which I find fairly amusing - apparently Marikina is where most of the shoes in the country are made. Anyway, we exhaust ourselves looking around the stalls, which are the same everywhere - there are only so many types of product available after all, and 95% of the stuff for sale here you can get anywhere else, 900 types of Nokia cover among them.
We return to the little stage-platform thing and wait more. The sound guy at this time has got all his amplifiers wired up and starts a sound check.
Now, one of the things I really like about Manila in general is the music - there's an awful lot of 80s synth-rock and generally synth-heavy stuff being played, and not the common poppy sort of crap that people generally remember as being 80's music, either. I can't count the number of times I've walked past Anthology and heard various weirder OMD tracks (anything from Sugar Tax, especially 'Call My Name' or maybe 'Electricity' or 'Radio Waves') - if you don't know anything about OMD, rest assured these are fairly obscure songs from a fairly obscure group. Of course there's a lot of romance and love songs about (.ph is obsessed with romance) too, but generally one can cope. Anyway...
The sound engineer is testing the setup. We've got some pretty big stacks left and right of the stage, fairly professional JBL concert-grade kit. On the stage, the performers in the show who have got there already are conducting an informal rehearsal, more of a walkthrough of their dance routines.
Sound guy cues up Enola Gay and conducts a full-power test. Followed by Electricity. Followed by Locomotion. Followed by Tesla Girls. I go insane. Norie has no idea why I'm grinning like a maniac and generally bouncing up and down, and thinks I have lost the plot. It's hard to explain well, but... I go 6500 miles across the world, to a city I've never been to before, and find people who are among some of the most interesting, capable and fun that I've ever met, the beer is cheap, the food is cheap, everyone's very cute, all the girls wear high heels and so do half the boys, and I go to a very weird inter-company christmas show and THEY'RE PLAYING MY SONGS, at full volume, and people on the stage have actually got bored with rehearsing and are DANCING TO THEM. TO OMD. AND THEY LOVE IT!
But all things must come to an end, and eventually the guy plays something different but equally excellent, which I note down and as I am listening to the lyrics, I start sniggering. This was just after Bush was re-elected, after all, and the war in Iraq is still just chugging on. So, for your pleasure, I present (some) of the lyrics to Industry's 'State of the Nation' which I first heard here at Marikina.
I see them marching off to war
They're looking so heroic
I'm told they won't be gone for long
But that's a lie and they know it
Ten thousand gone they won't return
Never to be seen again
Strategic games is all we learn in the end
But they say:
Don't you worry about the situation
(A message from the telephone)
They out there fighting for the state of the nation
(I'm waiting a chance to come home)
They always have to fight the alienation
(I realize I'm fighting alone)
When nightmares memories fades to dust
We'll get back on our feet again
This war has nothing to do with us
But somehow we're still involved in it
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no place (I don't want to be anywhere else) (like home)
Don't you worry about the situation
They out there fighting for the state of the nation
I thought that was pretty ironic. It's also a very good song.
I don't normally like quoting lyrics. It's terribly emo and it's a bit of a copout: 'this is how I feel, some other guy expressed it really well so I'll just put up the lyrics because I can't express myself.' I think I can get away with these though. It surprises me somewhat that we haven't heard the song here, it's terribly topical... Maybe it's getting airplay in the USA? Someone let me know.
The show occurred, was fairly impressive. 'My' lot didn't win. I would post a picture or two but none of them are even remotely acceptable. They're altogether too strange.
So fast forwards to on-or-about the 25th February, I'm just about to leave again, and I'm at a (fairly dubious) bar drinking and moping about having to go. I'm there with Norie and Isa (Manager of the salon where N works) and we're generally enjoying ourselves, but again, the soundtrack is OMD and Taffy and New Order. People there are nice, pretty, smiling and happy. It's easy to enjoy yourself and there's no inevitable scouse twat in the background cunting and moaning about how hard life is. The music is good, the people are good, the prices are right and it's warm outside.
2 days and 6500 miles later I'm at home. Or did I just leave home? I think the latter.
</center>
|
|
07:58 am
[Link] |
"The Today Program" makes me scream and throw things, again
Listening to Radio 4 here this morning (well, the stream of it) really sums up the problem with this country, as it does every day: No-one is prepared to suggest anything less restrictive.
This is about 24-hour pub opening - although no pub is _actually_ going to open 24 hours a day, but it's been tagged '24 hour opening' and we have the shadow home secretary discussing how this will lead to chaos and disorder and the skies will fall. Whether or not you believe that, that's his position and as they basically don't have any policies apart from 'oppose Labour on all fronts' it's not really surprising that this is the stand he's taking. Anyway, he's telling us how our town centres are a warzone due to boozed up thugs all spilling out of the pubs at 11:20, and then our glorious interviewer/host comes up with 'well why not make alcohol much more expensive, so they'll drink less.'
Fabulous. This is the way it is, these days. He doesn't suggest that more police be used to make sure rowdy drinkers are responsible (i.e. lock them up if they're not, they'll learn) nor does he suggest something like a curfew for those found 'drunk and disorderly' after spilling out of a pub.
Instead he suggests something that punishes everyone for the failings of the few. Welcome to the New British Future. 'Social Responsibility' - i.e. 'I can't find out who did it so I'll punish all of you' which, strangely enough, I last heard in school. When I was 8.
I'll pass.
Current Mood:  angry
Current Music: R4
|
|
04:41 am
[Link] |
Blah, first post
Okay, so we have a first 'post' (usenet) or an 'entry' (blog) or whatever it's called. Take your pick.
And as I write this, something noisily expires outside my window. How apposite! Small bird vs hungry fox from the sound of it... Oh well, sucks to be on the bottom of the food chain. Now I know how employees feel!
So it is 4:43 so this is a brief post. I really should learn something about strange clubs before going to them because weird friends recommend it. It was... interesting. No names, I have my dignity to consider!
I have:
One real Luftwaffe (pattern 2) dagger, sold by someone who had no idea what they were selling, and for about 1/8th of its (considerable) real value. Apparently too many people that used to know me think I am some sort of nazi. This'll help :(
 
On the left, one Slava 'Wind Rose' mechanical non-automatic (yes, you have to wind the thing up) watch, with the day in Cyrillic, which is just fab :) Movement is 21600bph (6/sec) so it's actually surprisingly well made...
On the right, one Poljot Aviator Chronometer, also non-automatic, with a very overcomplicated 3133 (21600bph, 6 ticks/second) movement. I _really_ like this. It looks very much like a Fortis model, but the Fortis costs £2000 and doesn't have cyrillic inscriptions, so I think the choice is a good one :)
DVD of Conspiracy and a Buffy purple velvet shoulder bag are all mine too :) Oh dear... Enough junk anyway, I normally have something to say, but at 5am, no damn chance.
Up next? More of the same!
xx
Harv
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: OMD / Concrete Hands
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
harvie's journal