August 2003

August 30th, 2003. It's that time again.

I have a headache. I'm sure it can't be a hangover, because I was out doing cultural stuff last night. You can't get hangovers if you've been at a classical music concert (thanks to Owen and Sana, who had a spare ticket). The fact that we went to the pub afterwards is entirely coincidental.

So anyway, because writing something original is too much like hard work right now, it's time for Recent Search Requests.

woodside national pop league glasgow: was last night, actually. And I forgot to mention it. Sorry. Must make a diary note in future. Must get a diary, so I can write down the future Pop League dates.
long skirt fetish I don't think I can help with, frankly.
contact address of the panacean society: I've been getting an awful lot of hits related to the Panaceans since I last mentioned them. I'll have to write a bit more about them soon. In the meantime, I think their address is 14 Albany St, Bedford, UK.
Stornoway blog: I don't know any, but Island Life is from Leurbost, which is only a few miles down the road.
corporation bridge grimsby is in this picture. It was built in the late 1920s to replace a Victorian bridge which had been designed by the locomotive engineer Charles Sacré. But that's all I know off the top of my head.
reviews of one hundred great photographs dean gallery edinburgh: I wrote this about it. I hope it'll do.

That's all for now. I think I'd better go back to bed.

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August 29th, 2003. Overused

It's normal to hear the same songs as background music over and over again. On the telly, I mean. TV production people clearly have very sparse record collections because they're always using the same albums and the same tracks over and over again: Sigur Rós, Royskopp, Stereolab, and so on.

One song in particular, though, is on far too often at the moment. I have no idea what it is, but it's on TV all the bloody time. It was on a Channel 4 trailer that they seemed to show in every single ad-break. It was on Scrubs the other week (during a sex scene). The other night, I spotted it on What Not To Wear. Just as it faded out, I flipped channels only to hear it all over again, within seconds, over the closing credits of some Channel 4 documentary. I'm sure that counts as over-use.

It's not that it's a bad song. It might be quite good, in fact. The problem is that it's on telly all the time, and I still have no idea what it is. Still, at least it is tolerable to listen to. I mean, it could be worse. At least it's not that awful Coldplay song that made Steven Berkoff rip off his own face.

Update, August 31st: Thanks to Mark B for successfully identifying the mystery song as Dreaming Of You by The Coral. Well, I assume he's successful; obviously I have no idea myself whether he's right or not. He usually knows about that sort of thing, though.

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August 28th, 2003. Flyer Watch

The Fringe is over for another year. The tents in the Meadows are coming down, and you can walk along the High Street at a reasonable speed again. So, now it's all over, it's time for Flyer Watch.

On Sunday, incidentally, I couldn't keep the flyering-people away as I went up the High Street; they were desperate to get rid of their print run before their final shows. Probably, they were trying to push themselves into profit, too. But anyway. Here are the flyers I was given, and their ratings:

• Le Ciel Veut Pas De Toi (The Sky Doesn't Want You). Long, thin and black, with a disturbing suggestion of bloody wounds. Apparently, the play is a "visceral, dream-like response to brutal events in Kosovo". It's also sponsored by the Formica Corporation. Flyer: 3 stars.
• The Girls Of May. Not just postcard-sized, but with room to write an address too. A nice vintage-looking BW photograph on the front. 4 stars.
• Vera Wilde. A revolutionary musical with feather boas, by the Left Coast Theatre, Seattle. Has a rather pale man wearing nothing but a feather boa. I'm not against nakedness, but in his case it wasn't a good idea. 2 stars.
• Kindertransport, by Nightingale Productions. Um, it's just a piece of paper. A photocopy of a low-res computer printout. Given that they only performed the show three times, it's understandable that they have a low budget for their flyers. 1 star.
• The House Of Yes, Wasted Theatre Education. I mentioned this flyer earlier, and their lead actress emailed me about it; which made me feel rather guilty for not even going to their show. Five stars, then. [and I've just realised I haven't even replied to her email yet, either, which makes me even guiltier. If you're reading this, I *promise* I'll email you Monday.]

More of these to come at the weekend; I don't want to go through them all at once.

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August 26th, 2003. Stranger things have happened. But not often.

Shocking news from the Tat Emporium this week. We're hiring people!

We've even interviewed someone already this week. The Boss wanted her to start right away, I think, but she turned us down. Our hiring system seems to be slightly the opposite of normal companies - it feels like it's always us begging them to join. Of course, that's the only reason I managed to get a job here myself.

(NB: I'm sure the interviewee was none of the regular readers. If you think it was you, I'd just like to say that it almost certainly wasn't. Yes, really. Please, it wasn't you. Stop worrying about it.)

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August 23rd, 2003. Grist for the psychologists

Thinking about this slight insomnia thing: I don't really like the idea of taking drugs to alter my behaviour, even if it's something as minor as not getting a good night's sleep. I hate hormones, too - just the whole concept of them. I don't like the idea that my behaviour - not just my physical appearance - is guided by the fine concentration of chemicals in my bloodstream.

In my mind, I'd like to be a dualist. I want to be able to think that me - the stream of thought dreaming all this up - can potentially be a separate thing from the body that's actually writing this down. As you can probably guess, I don't like my body much. I never have: the first thing I can remember thinking about myself is that I looked ugly and moon-faced.

It would be so nice if I could be confident that my body and my mind are separate: but there's too much evidence against it. I know too many people who have been on anti-depressant medication. The mind and the body might still be somehow distinct, but they're certainly not separate.

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On a completely different subject: hello to whoever it is that's been looking at this site from a Conservative Party computer quite a bit in the past week. Are you someone I already know who's temping, or are the Tories trying to see what bloggers think about them? Is this all a prelude to some big new election strategy? I think we should be told.

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August 21st, 2003. Middle Of The Night

I've got into a routine, and I don't like it. Every night I wake at 4 and can't get back to sleep. I finally get to sleep about 6, oversleep, wake up in a hurry and spend the whole day dog-tired. When I get home I'm completely out of it, spend my evening slumped on the sofa, then go to bed around 11 before waking again at 4.

This waking-in-the-early-hours thing is getting to me. I had similar problems when I was in my early teens - but I put it to good use, by training myself to get up at 5am, so I could do my homework in the morning instead of the night before. Now, though, I end up lying in bed worrying about my place in the world, and generally depressing myself. It's partly the cat's fault, waking me up when he wants to come inside for some water. Does anyone have any tips on how I can go to bed at 11 or 12 and stay asleep right through until 7 or 8?

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August 19th, 2003. Weekend

It was a great weekend, incidentally. I didn't go to the gig I mentioned, though. We were sat in the Tav, and moving would have been too much effort.

In the end, though, we made it to a party way out in Polwarth, and I found that Sarah is back, in the civilised world that has things like razors, hot water and electricity. She's all muscled and tanned after spending her summer looking after birds, and she's started writing her blog again too. The whole weekend, I think, was bouncy and amusing and inspirational and so on. I didn't even mind walking home in the rain at 4am on Sunday morning, because sometimes it's just nice to walk home at night in the rain.

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August 18th, 2003. Quick note

Someone emailed me on Saturday afternoon, but managed to send an email that was blank apart from their signature. If you were trying to contact me (and didn't just send it by accident), then you'd better resend it.

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August 17th, 2003. Sympathy For The Devil

If you put together the words "religion" and "telly", you're most likely to think of either a) Americans in bad suits and dodgy wigs asking for money, or b) cosy, very British shows like Songs Of Praise, presented by Generically Nice grinning faces who were probably created in a secret laboratory underneath Shepherd's Bush by cloning the body of Thora Hird. The Devil, you see, has all the best TV shows. Occasionally though, you do get interesting documentaries and so on.

In the past couple of weeks I've seen two religious documentaries on Channel 4; on very different subjects. The first was about a group of early-20s Christian clubbers who went off to be missionaries in Ibiza. The second, by contrast, was about Bedford-based property magnates slash apocalyptic cult The Panacea Society.

You can't quite imagine seeing Panaceans on the dancefloor. They're elderly, genteel and rich. Expecting Jesus' imminent return, they've specially redecorated one of their houses for Him to move into. At the moment they're renting it out, but the tenants are on two months' notice in case the apocalypse happens. I hope Jesus can put up with a hotel for two months. Incidentally, when He does return the whole world will be destroyed apart from 450 square miles of Bedfordshire. Bedford was the original site of the Garden of Eden, you see?

(The Panacean spokeswoman said that the current tenants of Jesus' house don't know that it's destined to become the earthly home of God. They do now you've been on telly and told everyone their address, you daft bat.)

There doesn't seem to be much similarity between the apocalyptics of Bedford and a bunch of people who spend their summer wandering around Ibiza offering to pray for drunk people and having religious visions in nightclubs. Both of them, though, believe in one thing very strongly. Someone is out to get them. They know who it is, too. It's Satan, of course.

"We're here doing God's work," said a young evangelical, "and The Enemy doesn't like that. He's trying to stop us."

"It's a classic spiritual battle," added another, after they lost a DJing slot. The Panaceans didn't mention him as much, but they also seem to believe he's out to get them - their founder thought that he would 'devour' her if she ever travelled more than 77 paces away from her chapel.

Why is it, then, that religious groups often have this paranoid tendancy? I don't know, but I think you can also see it reflected in the Pope's homophobia. Maybe there's a general connection between religious paranoia and the recently-reported fear-based roots of conservatism; or maybe some people just can't bear to stand their own irrelevance. There's also a parallel to be drawn with conspiracy theorists here - the Great Spiritual Battle has to be one of the biggest conspiracy theories of all.

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August 14th, 2003. Message In A Bottle

I know I've gone on about Innocent Drinks before (here, in fact), but I have to mention them again because of a couple of things I've noticed just recently:

• Their bottles have little messages moulded onto the bottom. Things like "Read the label, it's more interesting" or "Stop looking at my bottom".
• They have a promotional van driving round Edinburgh at the moment. It looks like an old ice-cream van, except that the outside is almost completely covered in fake grass. Woohoo!

(I tried to find anything about their grass-covered ice-cream van on their website, but didn't manage it. It was parked on Bruntsfield Place at lunch-time; maybe if it's there again at the weekend I'll get a photo.)

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August 13th, 2003. Summer afternoon

Yesterday I took the day off, because the landlord was sending someone round. I spent hours scrubbing the kitchen (Sarah, I hope you read that) and cleaning my bedroom so the agent would hopefully be happy. He was in and out within five minutes, which was a good thing really. They've been sending threatening letters accusing me of illegal subletting, because the sharp-eyed agent spotted both genders' clothing on my clothes-horse last time; I was glad he didn't bring it up again and force me to explain everything.

As I had the afternoon to myself, I wandered round the city a bit, buying a few records and a t-shirt I mentioned a while back. I walked down the High Street hoping to pick up a few fliers, but for some reason didn't get that many. The canny promotors must have all felt "hah! She wouldn't really come to our show! All she'd do with a flier is use it for some ill-conceived internet project!" I'm not sure why - I wasn't even wearing a "Fuck off, I'm local" top.

It was nice to be able to do something a bit tourist-like; I should have dangled a camera round my neck for the full effect. I ambled about without worrying, through the craft market in Parliament Square (lots of jewellery, paintings and Indian-style embroidery). I didn't even get annoyed when other people stopped moving in front of me.

The High Street at the moment has several small stages along its length, so Fringe acts can do little demonstration shows to convince you to buy a ticket. Most are typical Fringe theatre acts, with students in elaborate costumes; but one had just a woman with a guitar. I stopped to listen for a while; it was rather nice to listen to something so straightforward. The artist's name was Kim Edgar, and she is playing St. Mark's, Castle Terrace on Friday night. Her posters have a testimonial from the Linlithgow Journal & Gazette, and her flyers list her mobile number in case you'd like to buy a CD. The set seemed to have plenty of covers (the flyer says "jazz standards, Joni Mitchell, contemporary and original songs") but I suppose that's the best tactic when you're trying to get people to stop and listen in the street. I might even go along to the gig.

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August 11th, 2003. Single Question

Why, when I have so much to do at the moment, do I have to feel quite so lethargic? I can't concentrate for more than twenty minutes without sagging to one side and wanting to sleep forever. My mind keeps flipping between "get up and work, you lazy bitch," and "why bother? It won't do you any good".

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August 9th, 2003. Just another ego-boost

The mad cultists have left already, leaving behind a few crumpled-up leaflets and a rectangle of yellowed grass. So, no chance to organise a Flash Mob to overwhelm them or anything like that. A Flash Mob in Edinburgh in August would be a little pointless in any case: you wouldn't be able to tell it from the normal slightly-weird crowds.

I still don't have many flyers that are worth talking about; maybe I'll walk up and down the High St a bit to make sure I get a few. The Guardian did their own Flyer Watch type piece this week; it must have been a slow reviews day.

Magic moment of the summer so far: walking past a coffee booth on Rose St and hearing Rain by The Clientele playing. Note to self: must buy more Clientele records.

Kristin has been writing recently about why people keep blogs (her archives don't seem to work, but it's the August 6th entry). She probably has a point that most people - even if not consciously - do it for their own ego. You probably have to be a bit egotistical to think people will want to read what you think about the Festival or mad cultists, or (in her case) trips to nightclubs and the gym. I don't think it applies, though, to people who use those more community-oriented diary sites like Livejournal or the one I've forgotten the name of that Vic used to use. All the Livejournal people I know (there seems to be quite a few) just seem to use their journals like traditional journals, except for them being (partly) public.

Maybe this is one of the things that Scott Nowson's research will tell us more about, although I'm not really sure that that's the point of what he's doing. I'd quite like to read something about why people keep websites, if any of you know of anything that's been written about it.

Of course, the ultimate egotistical blog has to be this one [found via Vaughan]. Y'all be careful, now; if there's one thing I want less than people I like to stop blogging, it's people I like writing long, bitter posts about why they're going to stop.

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August 7th, 2003. Socratic

As I was coming into work this morning, something reminded me that the Tat Emporium office is in a rather middle-class area. Walking past a youngish-looking dad standing on the pavement chatting, I overheard him say this:

I've just taken Felix down to his summer school at             High School. He's doing a course on philosophy, or something.

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August 6th, 2003. Put the chocolate in the fridge

I can't think of anything to write, and I'm blaming the weather. Walking to and from work makes me far too hot and bothered. I haven't even picked up any flyers for Flyer Watch, although the mad cultists did try to push one on me yesterday. All the flyerists must be on the High Street.

I love the way, actually, that as soon as the weather forecast goes above 30C the whole country goes mad with "Aargh! The country is melting!" news stories and so on. All we need to do, I think, is officially adopt the siesta. Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse for an afternoon nap.

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August 4th, 2003. Pieces

Lots of little fragmentary things are in my mind today. Some of them I can write here, some of them I can't really.

The Boss is very angry right now; almost shouting at me. We have this whole division-of-labour thing, supposedly: he does design, and I do all the behind-the-scenes programming stuff that makes everything work. I've been trying to prod him towards learning new techniques, so our sites look a little more modern and less 1997 in style; but he doesn't want to learn. "Why can't you do all this?" he shouts. "It's simple! Why can't you just get this to work for me?" I'm not sure why, if he thinks it's simple, he can't be bothered to learn how to do it himself. His girlfriend has gone to make tea, to try and calm us down.

Puzzler of the weekend: why, when I try to speak in the Voice of God, do I end up sounding like Arnold Schwartznegger? I must have a lurking Austrian accent just waiting to burst out of my vocal chords.

The Meadows are now nearly covered with Festival tents, including one from a rather-well-known money-grabbing cult much loved by movie stars. I know there must be websites out there with anti-Them leaflets all ready for printing out, so I'm quite tempted to print up a pile and hand them out on Middle Meadow Walk. Not tempted enough to actually do it, mind. If you've got any better cult-baiting ideas, let me know and I'll try and persuade my friends to do them.

Talking of Festival things, Richard has set up a Festival blog, with reviews and so on. I don't think I'll be able to see much this year (I'm a bit skint), but then, I never do.

I realised earlier that I've been skipping out on posting adverts for, well, the sort of stuff I used to always post adverts for. Things like National Pop League and Camera Obscura gigs. People still keep finding this website when searching for them, so I should really mention them a bit more. Camera Obscura are touring in September (but the dates haven't been confirmed yet) and are also off to Spain to play at the Benicassim Festival (which is this weekend). The next National Pop League is on the 30th, I think, and I might even try and go this time. So there you are, then.

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August 2nd, 2003. Motherhood

It always feels vaguely ironic that I have to go to the maternity department for my appointments with the doctor. I half-expect to see women in labout being pushed past reception on trolleys, screaming, whilst I'm waiting. It doesn't happen, but even so all the other patients look very motherly. I feel a bit on my own, a bit left-out.

(the doctor did mention, this time, that I could still have children one day, in the sense of having genetic descendants rather than actually giving birth myself. Maybe that will cheer The Parents up a little - although I doubt it.)

One of the hospital patients had incredibly large hair. An unruly electrified haystack, looking thick and matted. As she was pushed off in a wheelchair towards the ultrasound room, all I could see of her was an enormous frizzled orange mound.

I admitted to the doctor, I'm a procrastinator. I delay things. She replied that there's not much point me visiting her so often if my situation isn't changing. There's nothing wrong with my situation not changing, but it's just that there's no point me visiting her if I have nothing to say. I shouldn't leap on every excuse to put things off, though. There's nothing wrong with me saying "I'll give my parents a little more time to be more accepting," as long as I realise it might never happen.

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