This isn't some kind of amazing personal discovery, or even that unusual or funny. But Aki Riihilahti's online diary is one of my favourite things on the web.
Aki is a first division footballer with Crystal Palace. He's from Finland, and has a very different attitude to most professional sportsmen. He also writes wonderfully down-to-earth yet moving diary entries in not-quite-perfect English. These two pieces are among my favourites. What a gent.
So, here's the chance to show you two new things in my life: my new (and extremely temporary) beard, and my wonderful, stylish, slightly-too-big AFC Wimbledon training top! Don't I look dapper!
"Never in all my travels had I ventured as far as Adelma. It was dusk when I landed there. On the dock the sailor who caught the rope and tied it to the bollard resembled a man who had soldiered with me and was dead. It was the hour of the wholesale fish market. An old man was loading a basket of sea urchins onto a cart; I thought I recognised him; when I turned, he had disappeared down an alley, but I realised he looked like a fisherman who, already old when I was a child, could no longer be among the living. I was upset by the sight of a fever victim huddled on the ground, a blanket over his head: my father a few days before his death had yellow eyes and a growth of beard like this man. I turned my gaze aside; I no longer dared look anyone in the face.
I thought: 'If Adelma is a city I am seeing in a dream, where you encounter only the dead, the dream frightens me. If Adelma is a real city, inhabited by living people, I need only continue looking at them and the resemblances will dissolve, alien faces will appear, bearing anguish. In either case it is best for me not to insist on staring at them.'
A vegetable vendor was weighing a cabbage on a scales and put it in a basket dangling on a string a girl lowered from a balcony. The girl was identical with one in my village who had gone mad for love and killed herself. The vegetable vendor raised her face: she was my grandmother.
I thought: 'You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.'
The stevedores climbed the steps in a line, bent beneath demijohns and barrels; their faces were hidden by sackcloth hoods; 'Now they will straighten up and I will recognise them,' I thought, with impatience and fear. But I could not take my eyes off them; if I turned my gaze just a little toward the crowd that crammed those narrow streets, I was assailed by unexpected faces, reappearing from far away, staring at me as if demanding recognition, as if to recognise me, as if they had already recognised me. Perhaps, for each of them, I also resembled someone who was dead. I had barely arrived at Adelma and I was already one of them, I had gone over to their side, absorbed in that kaleidoscope of eyes, wrinkles, grimaces.
I thought: 'Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. This means I, too, am dead.' And I also thought: 'This means the beyond is not happy.'"
(Taken from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, chapter: "Cities and the Dead 2")
Fuck, listening to Gershwin is giving me so much more pleasure than any other music right now. I've always suspected that old people, with their passions for classical music, jazz and whatnot might be on to something. It seems those blank, drolling, grizzled faces disguise cunning and perceptive music critics.
In other news, I came tantalisingly close to completing my first to do list EVER. All I failed to do, from a fairly extensive chore selction, was buy some football shorts. I did however purchase a POST-IT NOTE DISPENSER! Jealous? Huh? Huh?
The other night I lay in bed for over 6 hours before I got to sleep. It was awful. It did, mind, give me the chance to develop a passion for supercross - motorbikes racing across artifical tracks in huge American arenas, with massive jumps 'n' shit. Ricky carmichael is the best - read this and weep, Michael Schumacher.
Stevie: I was chatting with my colleague about how much I love Liza Minelli. Sometimes I think I'm a gay man in a straight man's body.
Mark: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean - though with me, it's more like I'm a woman rather than a gay man.
Pause
Mark: Oh my god. We're Will and Grace.
An exciting dream last night, with a narrative structure! I always enjoy them, as they usually end up being thriller-like, and this one was no exception.
I also had a crime fighting buddy, which is unusual. Me and Liz were on the trail of a dwarf who was stealing cars. We tracked him down to a Tuscan village, chased him over precarious ledges, until we had him hemmed in in a picturesque square. As Liz covered me with a big gun, I shimmied down a sort of ladder without any rungs to apprehend the thief. And I did!
Okay, I'm unlikely to be able to sell the story for millions, but it makes such a change to have a satisfyingly complete dream experience.
I haven't wanted to write for a long time now. This blog doesn't count - hilariously entertaining as it is, it's just skimmings off the surface.
About two weeks ago, I thought I was teetering on the brink of something quite special. My tiny, atrophied imagination had been stimulated by a gift from Sarah, and I felt the adrenaline rush of *actually* thinking I could write something. So I did.
Two paragraphs.
Aaargh! Sarah was very understanding and patiently listened to my whining, and told me not to worry if the first draft wasn't perfect. I know this - I'm an editor, for heaven's sake - but ever since I have had something more than writer's block. Something like a fear that I'll discover once and for all that I *can't* write, which would cripple me.
Or maybe I should see it as a failed relationship? Mourn it, then move onto something more compatible and rewarding. I am thinking maybe underwear modelling? Professional ice hockey? Construction work? International espionage?
Take the What High School
Stereotype Are You? quiz, by Angel.
So, once again I have been having problems with my computer crashing and misbehaving and doing all sorts of bad things. And, once again, I fixed it! Am I a 1337 g33x0r?
No. I took its covers off and hoovered it. Done the trick perfect!
The traitorous scum who run Wimbledon FC, the club I used to support before it was sold down the river and moved to Milton Keynes, have been banned from using their club crest as it impinges on the rights of the arms granted to the borough of Wimbledon in 1906. Hahahaha!
As a result, they have come up with a new logo, above. I have to say, incredibly unpopular it may be, I actually rather like it. Note, however, the cunning use of the letters "MK" in the yellow part of the crest. Coincidence? I don't think so.
So, which badge do you prefer? I know which one I'm happier to wear on my chest.
Wowza! A new track to do at karaoke! I just got hold of "Regulate" by Warren G and Nate Dogg (see right), and man, this is the best shiznit I've heard for months!
So, who want to be Nate to my Mark to tha C? (or vice versa, possibly - I really want to do both parts but they overlap :))
I was woken this morning by what appeared to be a hornet making its way lazily but methodically around my room. It's strange the buzzing was loud enough to rouse me - perhaps the light from the beautiful day we've been predicted made the difference, or perhaps the insect buzzed me in its travails.
Regardless, after the maggot experience, I don't want any other insect types setting up home in myhouse, especially not where I sleep. 
It's bad enough that there's been a wasps' nest immediately outside my window for the last few years; I have to shoo out several wasps a day, and my ex-girlfriend even got stung when she rolled over in her sleep onto a wasp that was taking a breather on the mattress.
My parents have an odd wasp situation. Last year they had some flash, classy new decking installed on their patio, made of hard-wearing, silver oak wood. However, it seems that this wood is also ideal for making the papery wasp nest, as over the summer months I'd always see three or four wasps literally eating wood from the handrail and flying off home, leaving little light-coloured trails. It's barely noticeable now, especially after a winter of stains and moisture. But give it another few years...
I know it's not a good photo, and it's actually not that good a conversion job, but here's the van I was telling you about:
I'm 93rd on the stats page for I Love Everything, with a pitiful 130 posts in the last month. How can that be right? Oh, I know, I was in the States until three weeks ago. But still, that's only about 6 entries a day! Am I somehow wasting my precious timewasting time?
My camera is buggered again. My computer refuses to recognise the connection, so I can't upload images that I want to put on my blog. Which is a real arse, as I have a couple of decent ones. So I shall describe them in words.
1. Me with a goatee. Hahaha. Yes, it does look a bit silly, but then it has only been a week. And I don't imagine it'll last much longer, probably not as long as the Great Four Week Goatee of 2001.
2. On a side-street on the way into Putney on the South Circular, there's the A-Team Van!! This pic is obviously not of it, but of an unsatisfactory toy replica. Who'd have thought "hidden in the Los Angeles underground" actually meant "living in a 1970s council development with handy access to Putney Leisure Centre"?
3. Basil. Watch this space...
Jay has piqued my curiosity with his enthusiasm about Putney and the number 22 bus. I'll try and get a picture of one for you, but what's the dilly, Jay?
So I had a sizeable lunch before giving blood; I had a glass of water afterwards. And then I went out drinking. Uh oh. It's fine when you can keep track of how much you're drinking, and limit yourself accordingly. It's less fine when your generous, hearty and blood-rich friends are constantly topping up your glass.
So the toilets at the RAC Club had the pleasure of my company for a thoroughly unpleasant 5 minutes. I could put some of the blame on the delicious mussels and burger with which I rather belatedly lined my stomach. But I'd be lying.
So today, chastened, I decided to do my ironing. I have a pile of ironing which has literally been waiting months and months to be ironed, so today, needing to purge my embarrassment, I started to do it. However, I soon noticed these wispy white marks on my clothes, so I brushed them off, assuming they were dust of some kind.
Wrong.
Inside one of the wispy things was a maggot! Oh god! I don't think I gave a girly scream, but you should have seen my face. Eww! I looked at the other clothes, and they too had the same afflcition (though I did only find one other actual worm). I am so skanky! I am ashamed! I shall be flagellating myself for the rest of the day. Urgh.
I'm off to give blood this afternoon. This'll be about the 10th time I've done so, and it's kind of a weird thing for me to do.
For a start, I'm very lazy - anything unnecessary or requiring any effort will almost certainly be rejected out of hand, or perhaps carried out poorly right on the deadline with extremely bad grace. I also HATE needles. I hate the tiny little ones for innoculations with a fervent passion. Yet the needle they'll be sticking in my arm today is bigger by several magnitudes. What the fuck?
It's basically because of some rather warped logic on my part. The more I suffer, the more I feel I've done, the greater sense of achievement I get. And while it might involve conquering a fear, I don't actually have to *do* much in order to achieve it. And there's a little bit of milk of human kindness in there too, obv.
Another morning, another dream. This time I was taking the place of Richard Briers in The Good Life. We were flilming a new series, and the audience had so loved me and Paul Eddington in series 1 (in which Penelope Keith and Felicity Kendal were supposed to have the starring roles) that there was even a caption on screen saying "Paul Eddington and Mark C4s4r0tt0 have been promoted to lead cast members".
The action was a good deal edgier. Felicity, in particular, was far from the sweet, smiling creature in the series we know and love; rather, she was abrupt and waspish. I was debonair and dapper, entirely unlike Richard Briers. But very like me.
I think it'd be a huge success! And Felicity Kendal 25 years ago, cor...
I am only writing this entry as it's a link I found on Tara's excellent blog, but bugger me if it's not ingenious. So far I haven't beaten it once, even though it's sometimes hard to see where it's coming from. Give it a go!
This is a little ditty my grandmother sung to me as a small child. It's in Italian, so I shall ofer a rough translation afterwards, though both the Italian and the translation might be some way off the mark.
Lo sai che i papveri son alti, alti, alti
Ma Mark è piccolino
Mark è piccolino
Lo sai che i papveri son alti, alti, alti
è nato paperino
Che cosa ci vuoi fa'?
(You know that the poppies are very very tall
But Mark is very little
Mark is very little
You know that the poppies are very very tall
He was born a little duck
So what do you want to do about that?)
Discuss.