Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Must be a devil between us or something…
Hey by the Pixies always makes me think of being cooped up in an economy seat, flying across the deserts of Arabia, watching a full moon – bloody red with dust – suspended in the sky, eyes heavy with grit and lack of sleep.
Well it does.
There’s always an occasion to break out the Coleridge!
…alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on my soul in agony,
One of my co-workers has just had a baby, and is working from home.
Another of my co-workers is off for his grandmother’s funeral.
The third co-worker had a migraine headache.
The accounts guy only comes in on Mondays and Thursdays.
The new sales guy works on the road.
The boss is out at meetings all day.
There’s several truckloads of work to do and I’m the only one in the office. Oh joy.
It was Pringles
Player one sings the ingredients list of a food product to a randomly selected piece of Bach. Player two tries to figure out what the food product is.
God damn we’re a sad bunch ;D
It’s all just bitch bitch bitch! ;D
Ah, crushes! Where would we be without them? A lot better off if you ask me.
I don’t know about other people’s views (hey, that’s pretty much the definition of aspergers 😉 but personally I find crushes really inconvenient. They’re like a lingering cold. They show up out of nowhere, make life difficult, and take forever for you to get over. If there was a vaccination against them I’d get it.
I currently have quite a collection of crushes. None of them very serious – it’s been a few years since my last really bad one – but all of them just strong enough to be tiresome. Let’s see…
OK, there’s the redhead on the morning train who’s always dressed in black. There are three on the morning bus – the tall blonde who gets off at the hospital, the brunette geek who gets off at the dental college (although I haven’t seen her for a while) and there’s the very classy looking redhead who carries on towards the university. There are two women at the office – details of whom I’m not going to include lest anyone at the office reads this. There’s the sweet and friendly strawberry blonde at the sandwich shop, and her asian colleague. And there’s the shorter blonde on the afternoon bus.
The only two of these women that I’ve ever actually spoken to are the ones at the sandwich shop. They’re both very nice girls – insofar as I can tell from buying rolls and salads from them. The strawberry blonde and even talk a little bit now and then. Nothing major, just general small talk while she’s getting my change. Mind you, that’s falling off a bit recently because I can never actually think of anything to say to her. That’s one of the problems with being a socially inept aspie – you’re not much use at holding up your end of a conversation.
So she says something friendly, I’m lost for words, and I end up slinking away feeling lower that dirt. As a result every trip to the sandwich shop is a roller coaster of anxiety, stress and disappointment, only slightly mitigated by the fact that the food is pretty damn good.
This is what crushes do to me. Can you see why I’m sick of them?
The recrudescent malkins of the calid garde-manger
Last week I stopped into the second hand bookstore that’s opened down the road and purchased the copy of Titus Groan that’s been taunting me in the shelf by the window. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy is something I’ve meant to read for years so I figured that with a copy of the first book so convenient I might as well get on with it.
The somewhat eccentric bookseller (despite being a new establishment the store is doing a very good job of being rambling, cramped and musty with a slightly gnome-like proprietor – the way all bookshops should be!) reminisced about the first time he read the book while looking for my change. He told me not worry about words I couldn’t understand because I should be able to figure out most of them from context.
As such I was somewhat primed to watch for words I didn’t understand, and have kept a list of them as I go. I’m about halfway through and have hit six of them so far, which I think is pretty good going. The list (and the definitions) are as follow…
Recrudescent – My first reaction to this word was that it could mean almost anything. The actual definition is “breaking out again” or “renewing”.
Calid – I guessed that this means ‘clammy’, it actually means ‘hot’. Which makes sense when you think of the words ‘calorie’ and ‘calorific’ or perhaps the Italian ‘caldo’.
Fumid – I assumed this meant ‘full of fumes’, which in fact it does. Excellent!
Garde-Manger – My sketchy knowledge of French, combined with context, led me to assume that a garde-manger is a pantry. It’s actually a cool and well ventilated area of a kitchen used for the preparation of cold foods – although it seems more commonly used to refer to a chef that works in such an area.
Ichadbod – I am of course familiar with the name Ichabod, but in the book it’s used to describe a semi-ruinous section of the castle. I can’t find a definition online supporting this use, but I presume it’s a reference to the Hebrew meaning “the glory is departed”. Nice one Mr Peake!
Malkin – From context it was clear that this means ‘cat’.
Expect an update to this list when I’ve read some more – assuming I run into any other new words that is.
A musical diversion
I was thinking the other day about Tlot Tlot.
Tlot Tlot were a Perth band from (I think) the 1990s. I don’t know that much about them to be honest, in fact I only know one of their songs. But that one song is a doozy.
Imagine you put the members of They Might be Giants and Barnes and Barnes in a room with a honky-tonk piano, a mixing desk and several sound effect CDs. Then got them slightly drunk. They might come up with something like that one song – a work titled Box of Gods.
Box of Gods is hard to pin down. It seems to be some kind of attack on either religion, or the commercialisation of religion (or maybe both). It’s stuffed full of wacky sound effects, distorted vocals and lyrics so nonsensical that it’s hard to tell if you’re hearing them right. But it’s energetic, crazy and catchy as hell.
Now, your odds of finding a copy of it (or the album it’s off Pistolbuttsatwinkle’atwinkle) are probably pretty low, but because I’m a generous guy I thought I’d post the lyrics (insofar as I can make them out). This will also have the effect of increasing Tlot-Tlot’s web presence by at least 10%, which has to be a good thing 🙂
So here we go…
Box of Gods – Tlot Tlot
(Playing tennis, in the Herald…)
(Bop! Bop! Bop!)
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down,
Now wouldn’t it be funny, if you could purchase,
Religion on a stick?
And wouldn’t it be funny, if you could buy,
A god to get you by?
(Playing tennis, in the Herald Sun)
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down,
Now wouldn’t it be funny, if you could purchase,
A god soap on a rope?
Wouldn’t it be funny, watching your father,
Break down into a lather?
And wouldn’t it be useless, to buy a used car,
From a man with an honest face?
And wouldn’t it be horrible, to scrub the bathroom floor,
With holy water purchased by the case?
(Just make sure, you wash behind your ears!)
(Bop! Bop!)
(Bop! Bop!)
Now wouldn’t it be funny, if you could purchase,
A costume just like this?
And wouldn’t you be better off, if you weren’t,
All thumbs and two left feet?
(Pin yourself, on the cross, in the Herald Sun)
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I –
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods (Bop! Bop!),
I brought you down, I brought you down,
You bought me a box of gods,
I brought you down,
(Bop! Bop!)
That’s your lot for the day! 😀
Recipe time!
Follow these instructions to create the drink sensation that’s sweeping the nation – the Peanut Twenty-One-Hundred!
Ingredients: A 250ml to 500ml bottle of Coke (diet, zero, vanilla, whatever strikes your fancy really). A packet of peanut M&Ms.
Method: Drink (or otherwise dispose of) one fifth to one quarter of the Coke. Drop five to ten peanut M&Ms into the bottle. Enjoy the show (and clean up any mess). Once the Coke has turned an unearthly shade of brown, drink it (carefully). When finished, eat the chilled and marinated M&Ms from the bottom of the bottle.
This recipe bought to you by the Foundation for the Worst Possible Things You Can Ever Put into Your Body.
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
It was 150 years ago today Darwin published his book explaining exactly what was going on. If I had time I’d compose an eloquent tribute, but as I don’t, the following quote will have to do…
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Indeed Charles, indeed.
Vampires don’t f’ing sparkle!!
Apprently the Vatican has declared the latest emo vampire flick, New Moon to be “deviant” and a “moral vacuum”.
Now I don’t usually agree with the Pope, but in this case I think I’ll make an exception 😀
It just keeps getting worse…
You know, Big Media’s attack on democracy just keeps getting worse. Not content with “three strike laws” that allow a media conglomerate to cut off someone’s internet access by merely accusing them of copyright infringement (yes, that’s right, under these laws if Time-Warner or someone wants to throw you off the net all they have to do is say you’ve infringed their copyright three times, and you’re off – no trial, no burden of proof, no appeal) they’re now getting the UK government to set up a system where the Secretary of State can just make up and enforce laws about copyright without debate or approval by any other part of government.
Or to put it plainly…
What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. — Cory Doctorow
You can read the full details from the link above, including some pretty disturbing things the new powers are intended to do.
If you live in the UK and care about either democracy or the future of the net, get in touch with your MP now!
