March 2003

March 31st, 2003. Connections

Last night I worked out, at the pub, that I've now met five-sixths of the squirming.net writers in real life. This seemed quite impressive when I was mildly drunk, but doesn't when I'm sober. Especially as they hardly ever update, for one thing.

Later on, we ended up talking to a random couple I didn't know in another pub. It turned out that one of them knew The Boss, which I suppose fits in quite well with his Filmhouse Bar Theory. I don't think I've explained the Filmhouse Bar Theory here yet; the idea is that he says he can go into the bar at The Filmhouse, start talking to a random person he doesn't know, and - assuming they're not a tourist - find that they have at least one mutual aquaintance. It's like the Edinburgh version of the Kevin Bacon game.

I can't remember much about the couple themselves. The girl was in a flowery green 1970s dress over jeans, and long dark wavy hair. The boy had a dark curly mop, a Salako t-shirt and a ring covered in question marks.

14:27 Comments (4)

March 30th, 2003. Vermeer

Saturday night's telly highlight was a fascinating documentary about the private life of Johannes Vermeer, the seventeeth-century Dutch artist. It was made fascinating by its presenter, Andrew Graham-Dixon. He's not as entertaining a presenter as, say, Jonathan Meades, but he seems awfully passionate about art. His series on British art a few years ago was terribly good. He doesn't just present programmes; he presents himself as part of the programme. He shows his own reactions, thoughts and discoveries, like a private eye in a 40s noir film.

This is what he said about the painting View of Delft, which I look at a lot because it's one of the pictures in my Desktop Backgrounds folder. Well. It's a slight paraphrase, because I can't remember his exact words.

"For years I wondered why the roofscapes were painted with this pigment, which has an almost granular texture. Looking at it right now, I just realised - duh - it's been raining."

You have to admire an art critic who is passionate and eloquent, but still knows when to say "Duh!" about himself. He talked about Vermeer's troubled private life, and how the painting might symbolise his hopes of it improving. The picture has storm-clouds in the foreground, in front of a clear blue sky. Its buildings are in shadow and glistening with rain, but behind them the rest of the town is brightly lit.

When I've looked at this painting before, I've always assumed it to be the other way round - the darkness coming into the picture, rather than the sky clearing. The reproductions I've seen, though, have never really shown the glistening roofs as well as the TV camera did, and this helps with the sense of the picture. It makes it a much more optimistic image, for one thing.

18:48 Comments (2)

March 29th, 2003. Civilians

More stuff about the war, I'm afraid.

When it first started - ooh, all of a week or so ago now - lots of pundits said things like "of course, Saddam built lots of military installations alongside the civilian population, so we shouldn't be surprised if there are civilian casualties." The implication was that us decent, honest chaps would never do anything of the sort. We always make sure our military bases are well out of the way of ordinary everyday folk.

I've remembered now just why I smelt a bit of a rat here. It's to do with my grandparents.

Forty years or so ago, back in the days of the cold, cold war and the Cuban Missile Crisis, my grandparents lived in a small suburban village called New Waltham. It wasn't much of a village, really. It wasn't an old English country village; just a suburb that had sprung up next to a railway station which had been built in the middle of fields. My grandparents' house was on Peaks Lane, and they had a nice big garden where they kept chickens.

You might expect that there would be more suburban houses on the other side of Peaks Lane, but you'd be wrong. Opposite my grandparents' house was a big Naval radio base. The Navy kept big very-long-wave transmitters there, which could broadcast all around the world; and, more importantly, broadcast underwater. Via a little Lincolnshire village, the British government could keep in contact with its submarine fleet, many of them full of nice big nuclear missiles. Of course, the Russians knew exactly where it was, and somewhere in Siberia they kept their own little stock of nuclear warheads aimed right at my grandparents. If the World War had ever started up, my family would have been a little puff of radioactive smoke within minutes.

So, yes. It's not just evil megalomaniac dictators who put their military bases next to their people. If people get killed, blame the ones who fired at them, not some random act of town planning.

22:59 Comments (1)

March 26th, 2003. Guessing game

As yet, I haven't come out at all at work. I'll have to eventually, but of course I keep postponing it. It helps, though, that life here is fairly relaxed, and that The Boss has handled this sort of thing before.

He knows, though, that I've started to see a hospital consultant, and that my parents are very upset about it and think I should see a [different] psychiatrist instead. I can't remember what other hints I've dropped, but he once said: "Whatever it is, I don't have a problem with it."

Anyway, this morning, we were chatting about Mothers' Day cards. "I'm not sure what I should write," I said, "because with things being a bit tense between us."

"Does she know your other name?" he replied. "You could sign it with both."

"No," I said, calmly, "I don't think she's ready for that yet." Inside, I was going: "Wow! He guessed! He's guessed and he's trying to see if he's right. He worked it out! And if I just keep talking like this is a normal conversation, he'll know that I know that he knows without us having to compare notes and getting all embarrassed."

So, I might not have to bother coming out. Well, I mean, I'll still have to, but it won't be such a big deal if he already knows what I'm going to say.

15:13 Comments (0)

March 25th, 2003. Summer time

Blue skies, warm sun, people lazing about in the Meadows. It's only March, but it feels like summer already.

Walking through Princes Street Gardens on Sunday morning, the city seemed full of people relaxing and making the most of the weather. Each bench had someone relaxing or reading, and people were laid out on the grass. As I listened to the bells chiming noon, it really felt like it should be picnic weather.

Of course, you can't have a picnic on your own. So, does anyone feel like having a Scottish Blogmeet in Edinburgh sometime soon? I know the one Richard planned last summer didn't go too well; but maybe we could persuade more people to come along this time. Anyone interested?

10:06 Comments (2)

March 24th, 2003. Searchable

Cleaning out my hard drive, I found an old version of this page with the very first entries from when I redesigned (but before I switched to Movable Type). I hadn't realised, but the first birthday of the site (as it is now, at least) was on Thursday. The missing entries are now back up in the archives.

I also found the 'Diary' page from the old pre-blog version of the site. I could put those entries into the archives too, but I'm not really sure whether it's worthwhile. There were only a few, scattered from May 2001 to January 2002 with some big gaps in between.

Lastly, here are some recent search requests.

National Pop League: is on this Friday, and the last Friday of every month, at the Woodside Social Club, Kelvinbridge, Glasgow. It's been extremely busy lately; there were even rumours that it might move to a bigger venue. Nothing's on the cards yet though.
potatoes recipe rosemary onion: we have one of those, right here.
smoking fetish glasgow: I don't think I can help. I don't even smoke.
baile na cille lewis: we have a cemetary photo for you.
national pop league caitlin: um, am I the only Caitlin who goes to Pop League? I've not been for a few months anyway
scary website that start with "f": I'm not that scary, I hope.
dilbert june 11th 2002: I did look, but they don't seem to have any that old on the official site. Which is presumably why you were searching for it, of course.
chocolate pudding pictures: mmmmm. Pudding. I don't actually have any, but I'm drooling just thinking about it.

10:32 Comments (3)

March 22nd, 2003. Phraseology

"You must support our troops, now they're going into action."

This phrase has been going about so much over the past few weeks. Before the invasion started, Parliament seemed to take it for granted that when it got going, the whole house would 'support the troops'. Now it's well under way, the country is supposed to suddenly go patriotic and make sure we support them, even if we thought the war was a bad idea to start with.

That phrase, though. I don't get it. It's so bland as to be meaningless. I feel like writing: "Dear [random politician], in your speech on [whenever] you said that you hoped the whole country would 'support the military' now that the invasion of Iraq has begun. Please can you tell me how I can offer my support to our invasion force? Should I join up myself, or should I just start donating extra taxes?" In any case, why are people who think the war is immoral and illegal suddenly supposed to say "yes, I know I don't think you should be invading, but I'm going to support you now because you've started to do it." Is being anti-war supposed to be politically incorrect when there's a war on?

Actually, to be honest, that is the way that politicians think a lot of the time. They might campaign all they can against a given policy when it's just a proposal, but then when it becomes reality they switch round because it's now The Policy and backing up The Policy is the thing to do, however bad it is. I don't see why they should expect the rest of us to think the same way, though.

Enough waffling from me, though. Today's Guardian has a letter from the novelist Iain [M.] Banks, who probably spent a lot longer working on it than I have on this. It says:

This immoral, illegal war is not being waged in our name, yet now we're told we must support "our boys". What sort of support is it to accept a course of action which places them in such mortal jeopardy?

We wish these service people well; we wish that none of them had to risk being killed or maimed or disfigured or injured; we hope that not one of them ever suffers Gulf war syndrome II, or wakes up screaming, remembering the comrades they lost or the Iraqis they killed.

So to merely wish the troops well is to be disloyal; to wish to put them put in harm's way is to be supportive. This is nonsense; this is the support a noose offers a condemned man and we reject it without reservation.

13:26 Comments (2)

March 21st, 2003. Thank heaven for rich people

The Tat Emporium has started negotiating with a potential new client. I know I've said before that I think some of the stuff we sell is ... well, frankly, it's tat. Some of it seems rather over-priced, too. This new client, however, really takes the biscuit for it. We couldn't stop making jokes, because their product is *that* silly even we find it a bit ridiculous.

Unfortunately, it's that silly that I can't tell you what it is, because I don't want the client (or The Boss) finding out I've been talking about it. It's a bit like those "Name A Star!" services you see advertised, but less interesting. Feel free to guess what it might be in the comments box.

It's very silly, though.

15:21 Comments (2)

March 20th, 2003. Scurrilous view

Talking about conspiracy theories, one was being debated in the office today. Why is it, do you think, that Tony Blair seems so much in favour of the ever-so-slightly illegal invasion which started today? After all, back in the 1980s lots of Labour Party MPs tried to start debates about the horrible treatment of the Iraqi people, but he wasn't one of them. It's only in the past couple of years or so that he seems to be so concerned about them.

The big conspiracy theory is, of course, blackmail. The Americans have information about British politicians. It would be rather embarrassing if that information slipped out anywhere; so the British government does what it's told. We all know, for example, that the FBI sent the British police a list of several thousand people who had paid for child p0rn. The police have even let slip that there are Famous People on the list, at least one of whom is an important politician.

A few years ago, you might remember, there was a man called Thomas Hamilton. He was a scout master who was thrown out of the scouts, possibly because he seemed to be a little too fond of young boys. To get revenge (we assume), he murdered a class of primary school children, and their teacher, before shooting himself.

Some people thought it a little strange that he had been given a gun-owning license, seeing as he had a local reputation for being slightly odd. Of course, the police - who granted the license - had lot of paperwork concerning his license application, so if they'd had any doubts it would be down in their records somewhere. The records were promptly classified. They were made secret for a hundred years, so noone would be about to find out why he was given a licence until 2096.

The scurrilous, unubstantiated and completely unpublishable rumour going around is that the police only gave Hamilton his gun licence after receiving lots of pressure from a prominant Labour politician, who had no apparent connections with him. A few years later - when he's in a rather important job - this man turns out to be one of the better-known names on the police's list. It would be extremely embarrassing if a well-known politician given an important diplomatic job by the Prime Minister turned out to be a possible paedophile and partially to blame for the Dunblane massacre; so, the American government has a handy bit of leverage to persuade Mr. Blair to do whatever it wants.

According to The Boss, the Scottish press knows exactly who the politician is, but of course would get taken to court immediately if they tried to publish. We can only hope that some source will reveal all, I suppose.

23:59 Comments (8)

March 19th, 2003. Poisoning our precious bodily fluids

So, yes, a fat envelope from Australia arrived at the Tat Emporium yesterday. The Boss eyed it with suspicion. He gets nervous when things like that arrive, because they usually contain a cheque for $15.37 and a note saying "I would like to buy some tat, please." We're not set up to handle that sort of thing, because the bank charges would be horrible. But anyway.

This letter looked a bit fat to be one of those. Inside was a wodge of poor photocopies of newspaper clippings - all from Australian newspapers - annotated with comments. The writer seemed to be a New World Order conspiracist; lots of the comments (badly typed and all in capitals) were about how the press can't spot that the government is being taken over! By the evil New World Order and their black helicopters! There were pages on how the church is clearly part of the conspiracy because it's not doing anything to stop it, and on how Asian immigration is a grave threat to Australian culture. One page was about how the number of companies with triangle-shaped logos shows just how deeply the conspiracy is embedded - because the pyramid and eye is a symbol of the Illuminati and the Freemasons, who secretly control everything.

We knew nutters like this existed, of course - you can find them easily on the internet, after all - but we were quite surprised to find an old-fashioned postal nutter like this. We're an internet company so we're used to spam, but finding someone who can spare the effort to send crap like this through the post was rather impressive. He'd spent over A$15 on the postage, for one thing. The bigger mystery is, why the hell did someone send a pile of Australian conspiracy theory bobbins to a random company on the other side of the world? Why to us? Does Mr. Anonymous Australian know something we don't? ;-)

22:57 Comments (2)

March 18th, 2003. The empty space

Today, I wasn't sure what to write. All afternoon I listened to politicians debating on the radio, but didn't want to talk about the war again. After all, it will have started in the morning.

I was thinking of writing about the Australian chap who posted a random sheaf of conspiracy theories to the office, but I'm not sure. I don't really know what way to approach that from. That might be tomorrow's blog.

Maybe I can just bounce a bit about the lovely parcel that came today. I was slumped on the sofa thinking vaguely about dinner, when the neighbours brought it round. God knows what they think about their strange neighbour who gets writs from a sheriff one week and parcels from the US the next. It was a box of delights - exciting novels, lots of chocolates in a Powerpuff Girls bag, Biore strips, tasty-looking lip balm in a cute little tin and loads of other body-pampering stuff. Even the packing foam was rare and exciting. Even the box was intriguing for the cat; he kept trying to climb inside, but couldn't fit. I wish I could make presents that good.

22:39 Comments (5)

March 17th, 2003. Some things you wish won't come true

I was wrong, I'll admit it. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing in this context.

Six months ago, I predicted that the war would have been and gone by now. I assumed it would have started just after Christmas, like in 1991. Part of what I said then still stands, though: the timing of the war isn't really connected with politics. The reason the Americans are getting more and more desperate to start fighting is that in a month or two (or maybe even a few weeks) the desert will be too hot for them, which will give the defenders too much of an advantage.

Some time this week - it might well be tomorrow, in fact - I'll wake up in the morning and turn my radio on, and the war will have started in the night.

10:48 Comments (1)

March 16th, 2003. Not just me that's ill

The computer isn't very well either. Given that it's been on its last legs for nearly a year now, it's not too surprising. I'm actually having to think about definitely getting a new one.

Sitting sickly half-asleep in front of the telly for Comic Relief reminded me that the first one was so long ago, it was when I was still in primary school. I wasn't ill on that day, but I do remember that I had an exam. When I was in junior school, there was a very odd exam that we sat every year. Every year it was the same exam paper, which was in a big glossy book. It took about a week to do it, with a different section every day, all the questions being in the same book, and it was all multiple choice, with the answer sheet designed for computer marking like a lottery ticket (this was long before the lottery, of course). Humberside Education Authority weren't very hot on computers, so our teachers had to mark the answer sheets themselves, using a sheet of acetate printed with a line which would join the dots of the correct answers if you lined it up properly. We were never told our results either, but (if, say, you spotted a pile of results sheets on your teacher's desk) they also came in the form of a graph for everyone, showing how you'd done on each section of the exam. Looking back, it all seems really rather strange. Maybe all our primary school exam results were marked STRICTLY CLASSIFIED and buried deep in a secret nuclear bunker beneath Grimsby town hall.

(did anyone else ever have to do this exam? Was it a national thing? A Humberside thing? Just a Waltham Leas thing? W. G. and James Bainbridge - if either of you are reading this entry, did you have to do this exam too?)

14:48 Comments (6)

March 15th, 2003. Bleurgh

For some reason, I always seem to be ill on Comic Relief day.

Actually, that's not true. I was ill on that day once when I was at school, and I was ill yesterday. I dragged myself into work for an hour or so, before giving up, going home, and spending the rest of the day in bed asleep. By the evening I managed to get as far as the sofa, where I slumped for a few hours before heading back to bed again.

Today, fortunately, I think I'm a little better. The headache is fading, and an experimental packet of crisps went down and stayed down (touch wood). I might even manage to get outside in a bit. Or eat something more substantial, like some chocolate digestives.

11:05 Comments (1)

March 12th, 2003. More on that writ

So, it was OK in the end. I phoned up the company who had tried to serve the writ, and they said "yes, we know it wasn't the right address but it was the closest one we could find." They've promised to make a note and not get confused about it again, and told me I should just throw it in the wastepaper basket.

I'm glad I got it sorted out instead of just ignoring it, because I didn't want the courts to think that it had been properly served when it hasn't. I mean, the bloke it was for has sent his girlfriend death threats, and before he was in prison put her and her mother in hospital, and attacked her brother too. I didn't want there to be a situation where he does something similar again, but gets cleared of breaching the writ because he never received it in the first place.

Random change of subject: a sign I spotted on a shop door on my way home. "GONE FISHING WITH A LARGE BLONDE, WILL REOPEN THURSDAY."

23:20 Comments (1)

March 11th, 2003. Letter of the law

Today, when I got home, there was a sheaf of papers on the doormat. Picking it up, I noticed it looked rather formal. Some kind of writ, in fact.

Fortunately, though, it wasn't addressed to me. The address on it wasn't mine either; I don't think it was an address that exists at all. I'm not sure what I should do, or where I should try and send it back to. After all, the front is full of legal stuff like "I, Sheriff Officer [blah blah blah] do hereby lawfully serve the forgoing upon you, that you may not plead ignorance of the same." Given that the person serving it didn't bother to make sure it was received, but just put it through a letterbox with a vaguely similar address, the legality of that sounds a little dodgy.

Reading through the papers, the writ essentially says: stop harrassing your girlfriend, beating her up and sending her death threats, or we'll lock you up. Lock you up *again*, rather; in some of the papers the man's address starts with "Her Majesty's Prison". The writ itself is full of detail like: "The Defender punched The Pursuer causing her left eye to blacken. The Defender also abused the Pursuer verbally by calling her a 'Fucking slag' and a 'Dirty wee bitch.'" It's a bit frightening to get involved with something like this, however tenuously. The man is probably living in the next street from me.

20:01 Comments (6)

March 10th, 2003. More Links, Less Content

Spam is evil. It's bad enough when respectable trade bodies like the Scottish Food And Drink Federation become spammers (as pointed out earlier), but at least they only seemed interested in spreading the word to Scottish companies (such as all of the Tat Emporium's clients, for example).

Now, though, there's a rather more serious respected organisation becomes low-down dirty spammer story. The RSPCA has apparently hired some Florida-based spammers to promote its campaigns. Just like the SFDF did, they seem to be hiding behind the usual "it wasn't us, it was our consultants" excuse. Their webdesigners deny all knowlege, even though they hosted the images used to track which copies of the spam were read.

22:31 Comments (4)

March 8th, 2003. Saturday is Newpaper Day

It's always nice when some local news gets on the front page of a national paper. Like this story about an Edinburgh foot-fetishist, who convinced a shop assistant he was a charity collector, and let him pour baked beans over her feet and photograph them. Lovely.

More seriously, Gordon passed on this article from yesterday's Herald. It's the sort of thing I should tell my parents to go and read - not that they would believe that the article relates to me at all. I'd tell them to watch the TV documentary it mentions too, but it's only on in Scotland.

Finally, just a small Site Update: Laura's recipe for chocolate brownies has been added to the Sinister Recipe Tree. Mmm. I must try and remember to cook it some time.

20:21 Comments (2)

March 6th, 2003. What are you reading today?

Happy World Book Day!

A few weeks ago, I mentioned their poll to pick four books which best describe the four nations of the UK. The results were on the radio this morning; neither of my choices were picked. The English book was Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson, and the Scottish was Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Anyway, as it's World Book Day, I thought I'd ask you all what you're reading at the moment. I'm in the middle of Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World by Haruki Murukami at the moment. Go on, even if you don't normally leave comments, leave one now and tell me what books you're reading, what you plan to read, and what you've just finished.

Update: According to The Guardian, the Scottish winner was actually Me And Ma Gal by Des Dillon. Sunset Song was probably the one preferred by Today listeners. I wasn't very awake when listening to the radio this morning.

10:21 Comments (21)

March 3rd, 2003. Quick note

I'm feeling ill right now, because i'm tired and I ate my dinner too fast.

Because I got another final demand from the council, about the thousands of pounds they think I owe them.

Because my mother, on the phone, said: "You should cancel your next appointment with the doctor," and went on about how I'm making her sick with worry, pushing up her blood pressure and stopping her sleeping, and how I'm ill and I should find myself a proper psychiatrist who will agree completely with everything she says, and tell me I just need something to "take my mind off things" and everything will be fine.

I'm hoping that everything will look so much better in the morning. And I won't feel ill.

22:43 Comments (3)

March 1st, 2003. Prokudin-Gorskii again

Here are the last few photos, for now. I did these ones at work, downloading the big, full-resolution files to see just how good the results were. The resolution of one frame of the large files is about 3,800 pixels across.

First, there's a detail from a photo of some kind of Orthodox shrine; then, a picture of a rainbow; and finally, two views of a riverside town. The first shows most of the picture (with badly-damaged parts cropped out), and the second shows a detail, at the original resolution, so you can see just how detailed they are.

Of course, you can find the original versions of all these pictures at the Prokudin-Gorskii Archive.

13:52 Comments (2)