Whimpering in Inner Space.

I'm swallowing antibiotics in capsules big enough to travel in. I think I'll fit one with a seat and an intergalactic propulsion system.
Over the last week, my left ear has been gradually  tuning in  to the cosmos,  registering strange popping sounds, clicks buzzes, gurgles, and general white noise. The tuning was really crummy, I never got to hear a full sentence or identifiable sound, but on sunday it started to be painful, not just annoying. On monday I went to work and was extremely wobbly, my balance was definitely odd and touching in front, behind or under my ear really hurt. Oh. And I was working twelve feet up, on a scaffolding tower. Or I was trying to. By 9 a.m., it was obvious that anything requiring balance or concentration or bending down, or turning around, was a bad idea. I decided to do the sensible thing, and call my doctor. Unbelievably, the receptionist said "Can you get here for ten-thirty?", instead of the "Earliest appointment I can give you is next thursday", which I'd been expecting.
So I wobbled into the office, told the boss I'd be gone for a while, and went to see the doc, who peered in my ear and said "You're fine, no sign of..... Ooh?" meanwhile I was gripping the chair with white knuckles and attempting not to squeal.
"Oh" she said. "Nasty. I'll give you some antibiotics, you might  need some over-the-counter pain relief."
What! Might? AAAAAAOOOOOOOW! She prodded my ear, which made me levitate with screwed shut eyes and thought I might... MIGHT need pain relief?
Anyway, I went to the pharmacy with the prescription, picked up a carton of space-capsules, and some ibuprofen, and went back to work. Whimpering (more like a whipped mouse than a man).
By yesterday evening I was seeing purple sparks and wondering if I could mix ibuprofen with vodka and pour it into the ear. Or clove oil. Or burning jet fuel, anything, anything.
I ended up just going to bed and trying not to move my head at all. I did eventually  fall asleep, and dreamed all sorts of horrible dreams. The mad doctor had my head clamped in a vise and was trying to drill into my brain through my ear, in order to implant a controller and turn me into a human robot.

This morning, the pain was subsiding a bit, and strange noises had resumed. The capsules make me nauseous, but it's preferable to the alternative.

This has been a shamelessly self pitying post, and unabashed trolling for sympathy. I know you're thinking "Stand up, man,  don't be a spineless, snivelling wimp!"
But today, that's me. Spineless as a jellyfish.

It's the Eighties....

Occupy? The City?

Sup up your beer and collect your fags,
There’s a row going on down near slough,
Get out your mat and pray to the west,
I’ll get out mine and pray for myself.

Thought you were smart when you took them on,
But you didn’t take a peep in their artillery room,
All that rugby puts hairs on your chest,
What chance have you got against a tie and a crest.

Hello-hurrah - what a nice day - for the eton rifles,
Hello-hurrah - I hope rain stops play - with the eton rifles.

Thought you were clever when you lit the fuse,
Tore down the house of commons in your brand new shoes,
Compose a revolutionary symphony,
Then went to bed with a charming young thing.

Hello-hurrah - cheers then mate - it’s the eton rifles,
Hello-hurrah - an extremist scrape - with the eton rifles.

What a catalyst you turned out to be,
Loaded the guns then you run off home for your tea,
Left me standing - like a guilty (naughty) schoolboy.

We came out of it naturally the worst,
Beaten and bloody and I was sick down my shirt,
We were no match for their untamed wit,
Though some of the lads said they’ll be back next week.

Hello-hurrah - there’s a price to pay - to the eton rifles,
Hello-hurrah - I’d prefer the plague - to the eton rifles.

Hello-hurrah - there’s a price to pay - to the eton rifles,
Hello-hurrah - I’d prefer the plague - to the eton rifles.

A Poem.

Tongue and Groove, by Dave Smith.

Tongue and Groove
Forms a lock. But how does it begin in this world? The twig
falls, snaring another, and another, a storm’s blackness
gathers and sends its will scudding down and over the quiet
niches of the forest, where a nest of barky remnants
holds, waiting it seems, and is then lifted, swirled away.

Like the afterlife. We never see where they land or in what shape.
We mimic what we can. We remember. We say this way.
The shadow man’s fingers feel the groove. Fits to it
a piece of firm, now barkless wood, slender and pliant,
then into it, then deeper, snugly, and carries it with him a while.
When the wall stands, ugly and crude, needing its wind-cover,
the hand, after the night with love, fashions plank and rib,
wets for entry, slides, sees this cannot be easily parted.
Long years hold up the rich color, the vein-mapping.
Some like to sand hard, thinking to get back the early patina.
My wife from the first wanted to paint it brilliant cloud white.
Such an old look, such dour faces. At last I gave in.
The paper, medium rough, slid like a small hill of gravel
loosing the smell of pine sap. I could see the shadow
felling the tree, making the rib, the lock, nailing up forever
what would soon be lost in the sailing white, layered like mist
you cannot see through. The little nail holes puttied-in,
like eyes, slab after slab shoulder to shoulder, knots where
limbs grew, room like a snow-crypt. We live here.
Still, I know stains will rise some day, the lock split apart.

Save the Sugar-Plum Fairy!

St Charles, Missouri is the town which  fired the Sugar-Plum Fairy. 
The Sugar-Plum Fairy,  like all fairies, is a naturally upbeat and ebullient character. Or she was. Now she's a tearful little fairy, stripped of her wings.
Why? because, the employers of all upbeat and ebullient fairies, who seem to mostly be mean and grumbly trolls and ogres, are extremely suspicious of effervescence and enthusiasm, given that a grumbly troll or ogre can rarely attain even a faint upturn of the lips, let alone a smile.
So suspicious, that they make their fairies pee into a cup, and hand their fizzy yellow fluids to Ogrelab, for drug testing.

Laura Coppinger has played the fairy for the last six years,  as part of a group of characters who add fun and magic to the city's centre during the run-up to christmas. As such, for a few weeks of each year, she's a city employee. And city employee applicants, have, it seems, to be drug-screened.
By submitting a urine sample with the grinch listening to her tinkle.
And this year, she filled her cup, and, as we all do when we've peed in the porcelain bowl, she flushed.
Oh dear. Flushing is forbidden. (This is because the sample provider might just use some flush water to dilute the sample). Therefore her sample was rejected.

Laura was told she'd have to stay until she could provide another cupful of warm pee, ("Note: The collector should also tell the employee that the temperature of the specimen is a critical factor and that the employee should bring the specimen to the collector as soon as possible after urination. The collector should inform the employee that if it is longer than 4 minutes from the time the employee urinates into the container and the collector takes the specimen temperature, the potential exists that the specimen may be out of range and an observed collection may be required.")
An observed collection!!!!
She had another job interview to go to that afternoon. So, frustrated at the delay, she muttered a naughty word.
And the fairy code that the city council uses says “Christmas characters don’t know naughty words".
Surely, the fairy code applies only when on duty, interacting with townsfolk and shoppers, whilst in character?
(Doesn't Snow White, for instance, ever get a break, where she dares fart?)
Laura said a bad word. In the ladies room with only one other person present, that person being a town employee charged with conducting urine collection on city employees, that person told her she need not bother waiting, because swearing precludes fairyhood. Snip. Off with your wings, disgraced mortal.



Three separate campaign pages have been created on Facebook: Save the Sugar Plum Fairy, Bring Back the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Save the Sugar Plum Fairy on Main Street. More than a thousand people have added their support to the effort.

Many of the businesses have spoken out in her favour, asking that the fairy be reinstated, but the mayor says the decision stands.
I, for one, shall be boycotting St Charles Missouri this christmas, and I promise not to vote for the current Mayor in any upcoming election.

Footnote: Because I was wondering why flushing is taboo, I googled  drug test procedure, and found out far more than I ever needed to know. Did you know there are companies which sell 'synthetic urine' and strap-on bladders in which to conceal it?
Oh yes. they do... And I found the (no doubt apocryphal) story of the guy who was told that drugtests were being held the day after he'd smoked a heap of weed, so he asked his girlfriend to help him out with a ziplock baggie of clean pee that he could hide in his pants. "good news", the drugtester quips, "You're clean of drugs, and congratulations... You're pregnant!"

The Handbook on Pee-Testing, as used by the United States Department of Transportation.

Via Arbroath.

Post From a Zombie Laptop

As I said, a few  days ago, I experienced an unscheduled outage in my computer time.
Put simply, Windows Vista fell over and died. The laptop was thus brain-dead. But no worries, because Vista's got built-in repair tools, and, failing that, if all the hammering and sawing and welding are to no avail, then I can use the built in "Restore to last known good configuration"
Nope. "Can not restore...." Then we go to "Select an earlier restore point"
Nope.
Then we use the fancy drive image backup my brother in law advised me to get.
"File corrupted".

So, dammit. I went to my original rescue discs and restored the thing to the state it was in three years ago. I've lost little or no data, all my documents and pics and so on get backed up elsewhere. Just not the operating system, the bookmarks and links and so on.

In the meantime I've been decluttering my clutterer home, and I dredged up the ancient laptop and its power supply. "I wonder?", I mused. Plugged it in, and  accessed the interweb via firefox 3. A retro experience indeed. All the old bookmarks... I try them, and most of the places they pointed to are long gone.
If I unplug the power lead, it's like I've squeezed off the oxygen, the laptop staggers, coughs... I plug it back in, hey, it's a zombie. It's the undead, the undying.
Of course, plugging it into the interweb is the wrong thing to do. All the old programs, unused for years, start groaning "Braaaaains!, Braaains", and are trying to suck in as many updates as they can get their hungry gums around. I'm killing processes as I go, printer drivers for long dead printers... Eventually we hit an impasse. I'm trying to write a blog post and the error messages start.
Poor little thing, its brain's full. Can you believe, a laptop with a six gigabyte hard drive?
My phone's got more storage than that. I'll bet the toaster does too.

So I gave up, took the shiny laptop to the computer gurus who rent space from us at work. They ran diagnostics prior to the planned windows 7 install, and lo and behold, they found it wasn't windows' fault, but rather a failing memory chip. Cybernetic Spongiform Encephalitis.
So a quick lobotomy, followed by a prosthetic memory, a new  shiny operating system, and a brave new world.
I'm back!
Yaaaaaaaay!

"Digital Versus Analogue?"

I'll bet there are no comments on this one....

BSOD

The Blue Screen of Death.
Luckily, I tend to regularly dump the contents of my laptop onto a hard drive. A couple of days ago, Windows Vista, which I've been using for a couple of years, since the big box thing died, had a little difficulty starting. Kind of like a stroke, actually. Obviously it would be churlish of me to grumble, because it's never done so before, despite the stories about Microsoft's 'Blue Screen of Death'. actually, despite all the stories, I've not seen the BSOD for years, not on my computers. XP used to die in many pathetic or dramatic ways, then claw itself out of the abyss toward the light, but never used to give me that stupid blue screen. Ah well, I thought, rebooting, Vista's got all these clever self-repair tools built in so I'll let it repair the start-up sectors all on its own. Well, it tried, and fell over repeatedly. Then it asked me if I'd like to start with the last known good configuration? Oh yes, I said, whatever it takes... It worked for 24 hours. Next day we tried the same old game again. What caused the fail. As far as I can see, the fail occurred after several abortive windows ".net family" update attempts. At first it said update failed, unknown error. Then it tried again and fell apart totally, bsod. And why, I ask, does it do that. It flashes a blue screen full of text up for about seventeen milliseconds. I'm a phenomenally fast reader, but there was no way I could imprint more than a couple of lines on my retina before blackness and the void. A couple of hours later, we'd tried all the saved restore points. At this point, of course, I could have inserted a ghost image of a good configuration.... Um. If the computer didn't tell me that there was a corrupted file on the disc. I sniffed it, it didn't smell corrupted. I mean, I've eaten smellier things. Maybe it meant the disc had been taking bribes? Snorting coke? Heaven forfend! Which meant a major rummage, to turn up the rescue discs I made when I first got the laptop, using the manufacturer's software. Now it has a 'repair' option, but after a couple more hours of abortive tries, I had to go for the full restore, pithed frog option, in which you wash out any old remaining brain cells with bleach, and write onto a blank and vacant cortex. Poor computer. Lobotomy. By now it's nearly 2 a.m. But I had it running, so I left it downloading 122 windows vital updates. If I had enough money, I'd abandon all my dignity and buy a No No No No.... I can't say it...... a... m...a M... M..... M... No. I can't say it. I just can't give in and buy a sealed box which has been blessed by the celestial fruit-monger. Yes, I mean a M.... Oh damn. If I try say that word that refers to ineffably smug computers which cost ridiculously disproportionate sums, then I just know I'll have a nosebleed.
I have, however, decided to upgrade to Windows Seven. Meanwhile current fresh install of Vista is running amazingly quickly, because I haven't reinstalled all the crap that just sits there in the background, parasitically wasting processor cycles and memory, on the offchance that I'd like to scan something or print or view photos or movies. My browser though. Sigh. I've lost all my bookmarks. A library of resources gone. Oh .....buck-it! I suppose I'll remember some of them, bit by bit. And pictures. Downloaded stuff. Any more and I'll start weeping. And yes. The first person to say "Why didn't you back it up continuously, seeing as you had software to do it?" gets a poke in the eye.