January 2003

January 31st, 2003. More doom tentacles

The Parents have delayed the start of their trip for a day or two, because my father doesn't fancy pulling a caravan up the A1 in this weather. They might just find a hotel for a couple of nights and get the train up; they might even not come at all. It would be a shame not to see them, but it would also be much less nervewracking.

There are much more frightening Tentacles Of Doom on another front, though: yesterday a "pay us now or else" bill for several thousand pounds of council tax arrived. I definitely can't pay it. I don't think I should have to pay most of it, but I don't have the right paperwork to prove this. The whole thing is just a nightmare, and I know that trying to sort out council tax stuff with the city council is a bureaucratic nightmare with endless forms to fill in. I hate to think what's going to happen over all this.

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January 30th, 2003. Purging demons

Last night I watched one of the most disturbing things I've seen for a while. It was a programme called Witchcraze, and it was about an outbreak of witch-hunting that happened in this area about 400 years ago.

The whole thing was filmed in a docu-drama format, as if as 16th-century film crew was running around Lothian, interviewing priests and folk-healers, and shooting fly-on-the-wall footage of royal audiences. It brought home the plainness, the ordinary everyday nature of all the people involved, and made the clinical, gleaming torture scenes just too painful for me to watch. A nasty reminder that torture is part of the everyday world in too many places.

The programme showed a witch-craze that started off as accusations made by desperate, famine-stricked peasants, became a political tool of the Church, and was driven into full gear by a credulous, uncritical king who seemed desperate to be seen as a learned man. Historically, it agreed with books like Russell's History of Witchcraft: although there were some people who practised simple sorcery and charm-based "magic", it was the intellectual elite which conflated this with heresy and Satanism; and moreover, many other people were accused purely on accusations from their enemies, or from superstition.

Witchcraze was in the papers yesterday morning, because it was, they said, a milestone in British television. Because of one of the words it used. The BBC had to get special permission to show it and everything, because it contained the word 'cunt'. Just once. One little word, which of course was more shocking and horrendous than all the torture scenes surrounding it. Personally, I find that being shown the things people can do to each other is far more upsetting.

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January 28th, 2003. Tangled

The building work at the office has finally finished! The idiot builders - the ones who nearly made the place collapse - left before Christmas, and the sensible decorator has finished now too. So, The Boss and his girlfriend have moved in and it's now their new sitting room. Well, a big open-plan living and dining room.

They have a "no shoes in the house" plan afoot, so in future I might well end up sitting at my desk working away in big fluffy slippers. I quite like the idea; I don't like wearing shoes all day.

Some of you might remember my electricity bill problems from a few months ago. Before coming to work this morning I was desperately trying to persuade the electricity people not to cut me off, because it's still not sorted out. They want to cut me off because the bill hasn't been paid. The bill is still in the name of my mad ex-flatmate,. who who refuses to answer any letters from them. Because she won't respond to them, they can't (they say) start up a new account in my name, or anything. Plus, I don't have any documentary proof of her moving out - only she does. It's a really big mess now.

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January 26th, 2003. Too Many Fools

When I wrote that last entry, I didn't realise what a fuss has been made over The Bloggies by people who clearly don't see it as something less-than-serious. The fact that the results can clearly be subverted by a small group of friends just goes to show what a small, unimportant thing it is.

As I was drifting off to sleep last night, I put on the radio as usual. Doing so, I heard two different BBC news reports about that SQL worm that soaked up everyone's bandwidth yesterday morning. According to the World Service, 22,000 computers had been infected by it; which was odd because an hour earlier Radio 4 had been saying that over 40,000 had been hit. Both went on about how the FBI was busily tracking down the sourece of the attack, but neither bothered to mention the most important aspect of the outbreak (which was alluded to in the BBC's online news article on the subject), which was that the main problems were caused more by incompetant computer admins rather than by any cunning on the part of "evil hackers". The security patch which could have prevented the outbreak was released on 24th July 2002, and its accompanying notes say: "System administrators should install this patch immediately". The worm attack happened six months later, to the day. Somehow, I doubt that the worm's release date was coincidental; someone was trying to point out just how many poorly-maintained computers are out there.

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January 25th, 2003. Bandwagonesque

I've been trying not to talk about The Bloggies for various reasons. Other people have done it much better than me, for one.

I *almost* wrote a rather bitchy entry along the lines of "how on earth did that site get shortlisted for that award," but managed to stop myself. As I was too lazy to get round to nominating anyone myself, I can't really complain when sites I don't like do rather better than they should. As Peter has already said, roll on the Antibloggies!

(On the other hand, I really don't like sites (this one, for example) that put up "vote for me!" graphics. It's just bit of fun, you know; doing that makes you come across all tawdry, like a cheap whore.)

A couple more Sites I Read are on the list today. One is greenfairy dot com, who writes some great things but had an almost-unreadable design (on my monitor, at least). That's all changed now, though. You've probably heard all about her from the Guardian competition and so on. The other is Sue Bailey, who takes lovely photographs and writes about books too. I adore her photos, and her book-reviews inspired me to set up my own reviews pages (although that was several months ago and I still haven't. Um.)

And finally: I recently spotted a link on ILE to some vital information for modern life. I ♥ the Weekly World News.

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January 23rd, 2003. Home life

Today the landlord wanted to send somebody round to check that my flat is still here, which gave me a good excuse to take a day off. At 10am I was lounging around in my pyjamas, thinking "Ooh, this is nice; I should probably get dressed because the flat-checking person will appear any minute". By 2 I was all "AARGH why aren't they here yet? I'm bored! I want to go out and do something!"

The Parents' next visit is in a week or so, and I can already feel the Tentacles of Doom approaching. This time next week I will be rushing round the house in a panic checking all the things I need to hide from them and worrying that I've left a bottle of nail varnish on view or something.

Incidentally, the reason they're visiting is that it's my birthday soon. Because of that I'll probably be having a night out in Edinburgh on February 1st, which is on Saturday week. If you know me and I've forgotten to invite you already, and you want to come along, email me or something and I'll give you more details. Um, when I manage to think of more details.

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January 21st, 2003. Stardom

It looks like The Boss is going to be on the telly today. A team from the local TV news are popping round this afternoon to record 30 seconds of punditry on technology and privacy issues. He's ironing a shirt specially as I type.

We have nowhere suitable to film him, of course; the big room next door is being redecorated, and the office is a complete mess. If he does let them film in here, I'll hide under my desk or something.

Has anyone else noticed Google acting a bit oddly today? I was just trying to do some 'link:' searches, and it was giving out completely wrong results.

Update: It looks like The Boss's TV segment won't be broadcast until Friday - or at least, that was what he said. He might have just been trying to make sure noone watches it. They filmed him upstairs on his living-room sofa, typing things into a blatantly not-switched-on laptop.

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January 20th, 2003. Whatever happened to... ?

A few people have reached the site recently by searching for information on the woman who was found wandering around Middle Rasen answering only to the name "Barry Manilow". Presumably, they want to know what happened to her.

Well, so do I! I have no idea what became of the woman; whether anyone found out her real identity, or whether she's still stuck on a Lincoln psychiatric ward. I tried searching the website of the Grimsby Evening Telegraph - your local neighbourhood Daily Hate! - but they didn't seem to have anything about her at all on the site. Does anyone know anything about what became her?

Oh, my favourite search of the week has to be "famous five" porn. It reminded me of a boy at school who - about 13 years old or so - reread the whole Famous Five series just to find the phrase "Dick went up to Aunt Fanny". I can't remember if he managed it or not.

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January 18th, 2003. Insomnia (again)

Coming home from work yesterday, I found a circular from the local councillor on the doormat. This is (part of) what it said:

"I must comment on the disgraceful article printed in News Of The World on 5th January 2003, headed Devils Estate. I have had lots of complaints from people who were disgusted with the way [your area] was portrayed. There are problems with youth behavious and drugs [but] most things in the article were grossly exaggerated."

I must have missed something. I never read the News Of The World, and their website is rubbish and doesn't seem to have archives or anything. Now I want to know just how bad my local estate is supposed to be! Do we have smack addicts shooting up in the stairwells and crack whores doing their stuff in all the alleyways? Enquiring minds want to know!

The cat is still keeping me awake when he stays in at night. Last night I kept waking up to find my head slipping off the edge of the pillow; the cat was curled up fast asleep right in the middle of it. The upside was that when I was sleeping, I had nice dreams about resting my head against various warm cosy people. That has to be a good thing.

Site update: more recipes from Terry Underwear, the chap who organises the whole Recipe Tree thing. All I do is put the recipes on the web, you know. Actually, I rewrote all the recipe pages slightly too; so if you had any bookmarked, be warned, your bookmarks will soon need updating.

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January 17th, 2003. Overlapping circles

This is a small city.

The Boss was telling me he thinks he could probably walk into the bar of the Filmhouse, walk up to a random person he didn't know, and - after checking that they live here - find that they have at least one mutual acquaintance. He tries it as a game with himself whenever he meets new clients - makes a bet he can find someone they have in common.

It's nice living in a small city, because I can sit at my desk and see hills and countryside. Behind some hills, true, but it's still there. I don't just have roofs, bricks and concrete to look at all day.

After that The Boss changed the subject, and told me about the time he worked for a photocopier rental company, and the incredibly illegal things that they did as routine to bring in more money. Like, fill in contracts with eraseable pen, then change the details after the client has signed. Like, send out two copies of all their invoices because some clients would pay both without checking the details. This was (he said) a reputable national company, too, not some shady back-street operation. I was shocked.

We don't do things like that at the Tat Emporium, of course. We're always honest, upstanding, and so on. Just in case you wondered.

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January 14th, 2003. Insomnia

I didn't sleep very well on Monday night.

Purr! Purr! Purr!

I opened my eyes and looked at the clock: 3am. The cat was looking at me intently, in that "give me a cuddle!" way. He sat on the edge of my pillow, tickling my face.

Purr! Purr! Purr!

I rolled over. He stopped purring, climbed around me, and sat on the other edge of my pillow, so his whiskers were tickling my face again. He sniffed me carefully.

Purr! Purr! Purr!

This went on, more or less, until 5am. I would roll over, feeling awfully guilty about not cuddling him and he would follow me round and sit next to my face again, making me sneeze and splutter. Sometimes, I would give in for a while and try to get my head in a position where it wasn't touching his fur. Sometimes, he would give in for a while and climb on top of me, his claws digging into my shoulder to stop him falling off.

As I said, I didn't sleep very well.

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January 13th, 2003. Day off!

In the end the phone call wasn't too bad. The Parents have latched onto the idea that it's all just a symptom of depression (getting their cause and effect muddled, I think) so just suggested things I should do to be more active outside work - join a photography club, start playing my clarinet again and find a wind band to join, that sort of thing. My dad even suggested they could get me a guitar and I could learn to play that. I wouldn't mind being in a band...

Oh, and following up to this post - thanks to Sarah's suggestion I managed to find some vegetable crisps in Sainsbury's. They're a bit expensive, though (£2 for a big packet) so I'll keep looking in local health food shops (which was The Boss's suggestion) to see if I can find any cheaper. And, hopefully, I'll find some in a shop which is less out-of-the-way for me than Sainsbury's is.

Following up to this post: I tried looking at Vodafone's website for informtion on their ads. They do have an advertising library on the website, but you're expected to register (as a member of a "Media Organisation" to use it, and I can't be bothered to sign up for Yet More Spam just to see where an advert was filmed.

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January 11th, 2003. A Marriage Made In Heaven

In bed last night, I was listening to a radio programme discussing marriage traditions in different countries; and I suddenly had a vision of my perfect wedding.

It would be in a sunny woodland clearing, early in the morning with dewy grass. My partner and I would be stood in the centre, holding hands. I'd be wearing a long satiny dress, ideally in dark green (although that wouldn't go with my hair). Our supporters would be stood around us, and around them the rest of the wedding guests (although I'm not sure how they'd see what was happening). Some of the supporters would make inspirational speeches or readings, and the officiator would invite us to take our vows and be joined. After the ceremony, we'd have eating and drinking and lots of music and dancing and friendship for the rest of the day, as long as we could go on for.

Mum would probably be upset at it being completely non-Christian; but it's not her wedding after all. Which reminds me - she will be phoning me later, I imagine. Be prepared for another rant.

Now, I suppose I just have to find someone to fall in love with and marry :-)

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January 10th, 2003. Surreal lunchtime thoughts

Walking round the supermarket, I noticed a Staff Only door I'd never noticed before. A sign on it said: "Only one person may enter the airlock at once".

My immediate reaction was that the supermarket obviously has its own portal into outer space. I love the idea of astronauts walking around the aisles, through the fruit and veg section, then going into the airlock and floating off into space.

I can see the moon from my desk, a half-moon in a clear dark-blue sky, and it looks beautiful. I'm unsure if I'm more impressed by how small and beautiful and delicate it looks, or by how huge and far away I know it really is.

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January 8th, 2003. Creepy

Last night was a night of weird scary dreams. First, my mother was using my bed to breed edible beetles, ants and big fat spiders; and couldn't see why this was freaking me out. Later on, I was in a competition where I had to cross the Forth by climbing over a mesh of ropes which had been strung over the Forth Bridge, naked apart from my underwear. I was in the lead, but kept leaving things I needed tied onto bits of the rope mesh, had to go back to fetch them, and ended up losing.

Yesterday evening, being lazy, I popped out for a takeaway. Coming home and watching the telly, I saw one of those annoying Vodafone adverts that usually show lots of cosmopolitan international people texting each other and having fun. This one was just the same, except it looked just like it'd been filmed in the street I'd just been buying my dinner in. I was impressed!

(OK, it probably wasn't; but it definitely looked like a Scottish city street. It wasn't onscreen long enough for me to recognise the place exactly.)

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January 7th, 2003. How to get nostalgic when you're not even 25 yet

Things we lose now we have computers, number 396:

When you start writing something, but it's rubbish, all you can do is delete it. What you can't do any more is claw the page out of the typewriter, ball it up and throw it towards the overflowing wastepaper basket in the corner of the room. You just can't. Even if you wanted to, you'd have to wait five minutes to print it just so you could ball it up and throw it away - the whole impulse will have gone by then. It would be silly. The 'ripping the paper out of the typewriter' thing is a whole tortured-artist metaphor that's just disappeared!

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January 6th, 2003. What is it all for?

I'm sorry; I don't mean to turn this site into a TSblog. If I keep going on about it all the time, it's going to get a bit repetitive.

This site didn't really have a point to begin with, other than for me to waffle about whatever was on the top of my head at the time. Gender is an important part of who I am, clearly, but it's not the sole thing that defines me. I'll still probably talk about it a lot, but I'll try to keep it in proportion.

All those irritating 'trans-' words are adjectives, not nouns. They modify what you are, but they don't define what you are.

Another word to describe me is 'geeky', which is possibly why I rewrote all the various Pictures pages over the weekend. The addresses of all the photo pages have changed slightly; but if I did it right, the new pages should be almost identical to the old ones.

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January 4th, 2003. If this carries on, it's going to be a nuisance

I'm just off the phone with The Parents. They always phone every weekend, but of course today there was one thing on their minds.

My mother has decided that I've been depressed for a while, and that that's what's wrong with me. "I think you'll find a nice girl and settle down with her, and then you'll be fine. I don't want you to make any rash decisions." Yes mother, and neither do I.

My father, obviously, has got everything from my mother, so he was full of the whole "you've read something that's put this idea into your head" thing that my mother was going on about on Monday. "Something must have sparked this off," he said, "what is it that you can't do?" I didn't really understand what the last part meant. All I said was: "if there is something that sparked this off, it was too long ago for me to remember," which is a rather diluted version of the truth. He then started going on about what I should do to make myself happy, and it took several minutes before I realised he'd switched to talking about my career. It went on in the vein of "you should do X, Y, Z" for some time, with occasional pauses for me to say "Mmm".

I know this must all be a bit of a shock to them and they've not had a week yet, so am I being ungrateful (or something) when I hear their reactions and think: "you're so far off-beam I can't even answer that"? I suppose really I should be a good little child and tell them honestly what I feel and why I think their reactions are misguided.

I really hope that they settle down and stop trying to say Helpful Things over the phone every week when it just puts me on-edge. God knows what their February visit is going to be like. And now I'm feeling guilty when I know really they're only trying to help, even though it comes across as a sort of didactic Parents-Know-Best attitude.

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January 3rd, 2003. Back to work

First day back at the office today. I spent most of the morning clearing my email backlog, and most of the afternoon sorting out all the little problems that had popped up over the holiday and correcting The Boss's mistakes. It's all back to normal now, then.

The other day I realised that I've been a bit neglectful in checking my referrer lists lately. So, if you've linked to me recently I'm sorry for not noticing. I'll try and get on top of it over the weekend or something. Along with all the other things I have to get round to, of course.

I was planning to spend my last day of holiday shopping, as it was my last day of holiday and most of the shops would have reopened. I got as far as Cockburn Street before thinking: "I'm freezing, it's pissing it down and I can't stop sneezing. I'm going home." I'm blaming my cold on the cat, who had come in that morning at 5am, soaking wet, and immediately ran onto my bed and under the duvet and wouldn't come out until he was dry.

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January 2nd, 2003. But will I stick to them?

My New Year's Resolutions are:

• 1024x768 To make less geek jokes.
• To just try to be honest, and try to be me all the time regardless of what everyone else thinks
• To somehow get some kind of social life that's based in the city I live in
• To read Pepys' Diary, and to keep my own site updated.
• To clean the kitchen, so that people can eat here without getting food poisoning.

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January 1st, 2003. Turning point

That was definitely the first time that I've spent Hogmanay in a graveyard, letting off party poppers and swigging from a bottle of cheap champagne, watching the fireworks explode over the castle.

We all stood around in the cold and agreed that 2003 is going to be a much better year than 2002 was. I smiled to myself, and realised that this Hogmanay is, hopefully, going to be a big turning point for me. Onwards and upwards, and all.

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