Dear Boss

I think I’ve given you pretty good service over the past few years. You might remember saying once that I was “the best hire you ever made”; I hope you haven’t changed your mind. I’d like to remind you that since my arrival on the subs desk, press day has by all accounts become much calmer and smoother; you haven’t yelled at the news editor in ages. Probably that’s because he left, and it’s impossible to yell at his adorable replacement – by the way, could we get her desk moved to a dark corner somewhere? She’s making me jealous – I mean, distracting the male reporters - but never mind.

You know I’m always in punctually, or at least before you. I covered for you when you had to get your hair cut before that hot date the other week. I bring cookies. I haven’t had a sick day in, ooh, months. You pay me for three days a week, but you get as much work out of me as you ever did in five – wait, never mind, forget I said that. Anyway, I have a great rack, thus improving the aesthetic value of our office and improving morale. At least among the men. Since you’re among them, I’m sure you appreciate the importance of that.

So here’s the thing. You won’t mind if I take the rest of the week off, will you? I mean, I’ll still be here, improving morale and all the rest of it. It’s just that I won’t actually be getting any work done. Not since I found the bugs*.

Look, you gave me internet access, what did you expect to happen? Go bug the production editor. He’s on eBay again.

Sincerely,
Scroobious

_____
* I found it on Little Red Boat, by the way, but do you mind if we don't talk about blogging on work time? Thanks. 'preciate it.

Just till I can patch my brain back together

I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be working. Working on all kinds of things. But I've completely lost my ability to concentrate. Too many things in my head at once. Too many. And it's hot. It's not supposed to be hot. It's Notting Hill carnival day. It's always crappy weather at carnival. That's the rules. Come carnival, summer's over. Except this year, apparently, not. Last week and this week seem to have traded places. It was supposed to be summer last week, autumn this. Last week was already autumn. Everybody was saying so. But summer's laughing at us now, coming back for one last sweaty gasp and making us all kick ourselves for not getting that leg wax.

Well, just the girls among us, anyway.

So here's what I was supposed to do this weekend:

1. Sudden Urgent Job no 1 (estimated duration: one day)
2. Sudden Urgent Job no 2 (estimated duration: two to three days)
3. Secret personal project (estimated duration: one month, but broken up into bite-sized chunks)
4. Visit Kew Gardens (prearranged date with Esteemed Father)
5. Go to ballet (Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling; free tickets to a sellout performance like this are not to be scorned, no matter how many demands there may be on my time)
6. Clean the house, child, it's disGUSting!

Here's what I actually did:
1. Um, maybe half of it.
2. Um, maybe 5%.*
3. Two bite-sized chunks. Many more to go.
4. Done. Admired Chihuly. Very pretty. But it took a lot more out of my day than intended because: EF took me to the garden centre to stock up on winter plants and spring bulbs. And then I had to get the plants into the ground. So much for Friday.
5. Done. Very entertaining. But it took a lot more out of my day than intended because: Sunday train schedule + catching up with old friend + unexpected good weather = riverside Pimms, leaving early, home late.
6. Um, no.

And also 7: trying, and trying, and trying again to get my damn Bluetooth dongle to work.

It doesn't. Well, it works fine on Beloved's iMac, but not on my PC. Don't say anything, you Mac fiends, please.

And now I'm sitting here, having been fiddling at my keyboard all day, utterly unable to hold my two brain cells together for more than five minutes at a time. Which is rather impeding my progress. Honestly, you wouldn't believe how long it took me just to type this post.

Better get back to it, then. [girds loins]

ohdeargoddessMUSTi?
_____
* In my defence, they're not all *that* urgent. I mean, I'll get them done by the deadline I agreed to. Really I will. Just, well, not *early*.

Headline of the day

Up-to-the-minute, breaking news:

FREE PHONE CALLS ON THE NET

Why is it always the Evening Standard, eh?

Conundrum

On PostSecret:

"I only feel beautiful when I'm hungry."

Well, I generally don't feel beautiful at all, so for a moment there I thought I'd found a trick. Maybe if I were hungry more... but then, when I'm hungry I'm not happy. Hard to feel beautiful when you're not happy.

Hm.

Not just me then

Why, this article could have been written by me! Apart from, er, the "enormous literary figure and cultural icon". Well, I mean, I might be enormous, and I might be an icon. (Hey! I might! Could happen!) But anyway.

"America, it turns out, is full of smart, clever, creative people who happen to have no interest in working and whose employers have unwisely given them Internet access."

Quite.

"I find that my own blogging is increasingly mechanical and formulaic. As an artist, my normal impulse is to write things that people don't care about and, ideally, can't even understand. Gibberish."

Exactly.

You know, it's a funny thing. I've noticed a trend (admittedly tiny): the Second Blog. People start a blog, have fun with it, then find that they've developed some kind of blog persona and even (gasp!) a readership. And what started out formless has become more defined; unfortunately, that de facto definition excludes certain aspects of themselves, certain interests that they want to write about. But The Readers Don't Care. So the Second Blog is born to contain those... other things.

It seems to me that the Second Blog - usually less frequently tended, less widely read - often contains the stuff that the blogger actually cares about the most. In my case, knitting*. I'm sure you can all fill in your own examples. And I suspect the main blog is poorer as a result.

Funny that when I started the Scrivenings, and filled it with whatever took my fancy, knitting featured fairly regularly. My exclusively knitting blog, though, is withering away through neglect. I got that hit of readerly attention, and I found it harder to devote energy to blogging elsewhere because, well, there was no feedback**.

And at the same time, my main blog experienced a shift in tone. More chatty. I found myself talking directly to certain, vocal readers/commenters, posting things with just one or two people in mind. The comments are fun, but take on a life of their own - well, that's the fun part. I'm sometimes reminded of extemporanea's comment on a particular roleplaying game: "I don't know why I bother to come up with stories, I should just sit you all in a room together, you'd create plenty of action."***

But it's odd, really, to think that if there were any posts I was actually proud of (not sure if there are, but hypothetically), they would have been back in the early days. Once upon a time I was actually writing, a bit. Much to my surprise and confusion, I was actually included in another blogger's list of "People who have something to say". I felt rather guilty when I discovered that; you'd think if it were true, I myself would know what I had to say, and I haven't a clue. I suspect myself of conning the internet public with Big Words. I think I'm still on that list, but I'm more certain than ever that I shouldn't be.

There are too many "buts" in this post. A stylistic failure that I think is rather revealing.

I love all you commenters dearly. I do.

But:

I reserve the right to post things that are not funny. Or even interesting to anybody but me. And to keep doing so in the face of yawning silence. I think there's a tiny chance that if I do so, I'll actually find that Something to Say.

So there.

_____
* And cats.
** Then again it could have something to do with my lack of knitting progress lately. Different story.
*** Except far more beautifully and wittily expressed.

Think I'll check in for the weekend

You know how people jokingly describe full-service luxury in terms of "they'll even wipe your bottom for you"*? I think I've found just such a place.

I went to visit a friend in hospital this weekend. No, nothing to worry about, and no, you're not to feel sorry for her, because this was a real 5-star hospital, with a minibar in her private room. Admittedly, it was empty, but you could easily remedy that by calling room service. Room service! And not the kind that brings bedpans. Proper room service, with a two-page wine list and selection of sandwiches.

What really got me, though, was the en-suite bathroom - bidet included - with Molton Brown toiletries!

You know, in my day, they strapped you to a table, hacked out your appendix with a rusty spoon**, stacked you in bunk beds and spooned cold soup down your throat till you were strong enough to stagger out of there.

____
* Or maybe not. Maybe it's just my family that has such toilet humour. In that case, do us all a favour, erase from memory and skip to the next paragraph, okay?
** Yes, always the appendix! Even if you'd come in with a broken leg! Don't know what they had against appendices!

Fear and loathing

Is it possible to take out a hit on a software program, do you suppose? You see, I'm reluctantly forced to conclude that the world would be a far, far better place without HP Image Zone and Document Viewer.

No, let's not mince words. I hate that thing with a consuming passion. I'm fairly certain that Image Zone is the Antichrist. It's definitely doing the devil's work wherever it goes - spreading chaos and confusion, whipping users into an impotent frenzy. It must go, right? I'm reliving that episode of Buffy season 4 here, where she wants to murder her college roommate. Her friends tell her she's overreacting, but Buffy measures her toenail clippings - which keep growing, after being detached from her body! - and knows the girl's evil. And must be stopped. It's exactly the same. But without the toenails.

I won't go into the grisly details of exactly why it makes me so angry. I'll pretend that I'm holding back for fear of boring you, but in fact, it's more that I know I'll just end up blinking helplessly and whining, "It doesn't WOOOORRK..."

Which is enough information for anybody, right?

Wetness

It has been raining gently, but steadily, all day. I might whine about how it was gorgeous all week, then when my weekend starts, it's wet. But no. I'm delighted for two reasons.

One, the garden loves it*.

Two, I have a cast-iron excuse not to go running.

Update: it has now, of course, stopped raining.

I got up this morning, put on my running gear and thought, "I'll just wait till the rain stops." By the time I wrote this post (4pm-ish originally), I was resigned to the fact that it wasn't going to stop, and quite sick of sitting around in leggings. So I had a shower and got dressed. And saw that the rain had stopped.

It won't last, right? The second I step outside, it'll rain, right? So I'd better just stay in. Right. That's the thing to do.
_____
* Yeah, gardening again, I know. But you shouldn't be surprised any more by my granny tendencies. I mean, you've seen Omar's portrait of me, right?

Don't ask why, just enjoy

Look what Tayster found!

They're Taking The Hobbits To Isengard

Needs sound. And Flash.

Sorry Gersh

I know I promised no cats. But I think Jemima just swallowed a Shetland pony and is having trouble digesting. I felt I should record and share this scientific peculiarity. You know, citizen journalism.

Or, we could make it a caption contest... Prize: the admiration of your peers.

Changing change for change's sake (for a change)

Ooh, completely pointless rebranding that may need to be redone at any time, what a brilliant idea.

Really, the queen may well hang in for another 20 years or so, fair enough. (So it could be ages before the next "natural" redesign.) But will Britain be able to fend off the euro for that long?

And - obviously, I'm speaking as a marketing cynic here - is it really necessary for coin designs to "reflect modern Britain"? What's wrong with the thistle, anyway? They're not extinct or anything. How are thistles so terribly dated?

They must be very bored, over at HM Treasury. Inflation threat, looming housing crisis and consumer slump* aren't enough to keep them busy.

_____
* I admit, this is the Daily Mail** version of the state of the economy. Despite the headlines, most of us haven't noticed any big problems. Yet.
** Not literally for heavens' sake. I don't read the bloody Mail. Are we quite clear?

I bet if we kept the names and lost the bugs, most people would be fine with that

New government planning policy aimed at protecting biodiversity includes a list of creepy crawlies that are to be protected.

I apologise for that opening. I realise it was exceptionally soporific. I just needed to give the background so I could get on with naming (some of) the beasties:

The gilkicker weevil
The shining ramshorn snail
Tooth fungus
The depressed river mussel
The dark bordered beauty
The hornet robberfly
Lindenberg’s leafy liverwort
Wart-biter grasshopper
The six-spotted pot beetle

So if you’re feeling a bit down, remember, things could be worse. You might be a depressed river mussel. I bet they find it much harder to get therapy.

For that special fleapit experience

Last night I finally got to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory*, which is good, but I saw it at the scuzziest cinema I have ever been in. Which, obviously, is bad.

Scuzzier than the Golden Acre. Scuzzier than the Hillbrow Mini-Cine***. A lot scuzzier than the Prince Charles - which I happen to love, but I know people who refuse to go there because it’s “sticky”. Never noticed that myself. And at least they remember to switch the lights off.

A number of seats were broken. The upholstery was not just frayed, it was actually falling off. It was permeated with a suspicious, unidentifiable, though not overpowering, odour. In the toilets, the one cubicle with a working light had a broken lock.

It’s an odd day when the bus ride is better than the cinema.

____
* And of course I loved it. Although I’m not sure I approve of psychoanalysing Wonka. Or him channelling Michael Jackson. But Tim Burton is still My Man**.
** And I finally saw the Corpse Bride trailer! I’m in heaven! It’s got Johnny, and puppets. It’s dark and romantic and beautiful and it rhymes. I cannot wait.
*** Although I admit that I haven’t been there since about 1989. It’s entirely possible that it’s deteriorated since then. If it’s still running, which I doubt, the Mini-Cine – located in the gangland war zone that is inner Joburg - may in fact now be scuzzier than the Hammersmith UGC. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Just a question

What the hell does "hollaback girl" mean? Anybody?

Update: Apparently it's "a girl who is all talk but ain't about no action". Idiomatic usage derived from cheerleading, forsooth.

Having this great puzzle of the ages solved, however, should not deter you from checking out the great link provided by the Radioactive One, in which dauntless social scientists try to find meaning in Gwen Stefani's rather odd little ditty. (Though somehow they missed the personality-driven back story that it's all about kicking Courtney Love's ass. Holla!)

Well this is depressing

So let's be clear:

No suspiciously bulky coat. No running from cops. No likelihood of an imminent explosion, then. And, oh yes, they were already holding him, so no reason at all to shoot at all, much less eight times in the head.

What the hell were those cops on? Pure panic? Way to set an example, guys.

Notes from the culture divide: The silly season

In SA, December is "the silly season". It's Christmas. Everyone's on holiday. Nothing much happens at work, unless you're in the hospitality industry. Employees yawn and stare out the window and take long lunch breaks to do their Christmas shopping. Newspapers and magazines are thinner than usual, and full of "human interest" stories (usually about animals), because nothing's happening and no one's around to read them anyway. It's Christmas, after all.

In the UK, August is "the silly season". It's summer. Everyone's on holiday. Nothing much happens at work, unless you're in the hospitality industry. Employees yawn and stare out the window and take long lunch breaks to do their summer sales shopping. Newspapers and magazines are thinner than usual, and full of "human interest" stories (usually about animals), because nothing's happening and no one's around to read them anyway. It's summer, after all.

Oh but wait, Christmas still comes in December. People take holidays then too. And long lunches. And meedja types still fret over how to fill their column inches or broadcast minutes when no one's doing anything but choosing the best colour nailpolish to set off their beaded sandals on that midwinter beach break in Morocco.

SA may have more public holidays, but the whole country only really shuts down once a year. In the UK, it happens twice. Because here, Christmas isn't sensibly stuck in the middle of summer, where it doesn't interfere with anything much. It's cunningly placed at the end of the year, giving us a well deserved break after, ooh... three whole months of slog, at least!

Time travel

I just happened to come across this lovely bit of travel writing from 1782 - a German tourist's description of the journey from London to Richmond, and his impression of "the rich expanse of this charming vale", "sweet Richmond" itself, "Elysium" indeed, where he "forgot all sublunary cares".

So he quite liked it, then.

It's only a few paragraphs that get so florid, when he's quite overcome with delight at "ye copsy hills, ye green meadows, and ye rich streams in this blessed country". Give it a read if you're interested in what a foreigner thought of English stage coaches, anti-Semitism and slugabed habits. (He was up at three to watch the sunrise, and there was no one to let him out of the house till six o'clock! Appalling laziness!) Or if you're looking for delightful new words. Personally, I'm quite taken with "circumjacent".

Dof, pronounced - oh never mind*

Rumour has it I'm a fairly smart person. That is, people say so, but I'm not so sure because (a) I regularly miss my mouth with whatever liquid I'm trying to drink**, and (b) I Do Not Understand the basic stuff that smart people are supposed to know***.

Every so often I decide right, I really ought to make an effort, and I pick up a Clever Book that has sold millions of copies over the past few decades because of how lucidly it explains science (or maths, or logic) for dummies. I usually don't make it past about chapter 2, if that. Dancing Wu Li Masters waltzed right on by. Godel, Escher, Bach shook their grey heads in despair****.

My latest attempt (triggered largely by the publication of the third book in the series; nothing like an attack of completism to motivate) is The Science of Discworld. Now, after a rocky start, I did make it right to the end, so yay me. I don't feel enormously enlightened about most of the bits that really confuse me, like relativity*****, but some things make a bit better sense now. Like Schrodinger's Cat. Apparently Schrodinger meant for it to be wholly ridiculous. I get it now******.

Still, though, I suspect the authors of taking the piss out of their poor struggling readers somewhat. I present the following quote (p115) as evidence:

"Once the process has started, it is surprisingly rapid, taking about ten million years from start to finish."

Cheek!
_____
* See comments here, if you really must know.
** Purely an illustrative example, which may or may not be fictitious.
*** Actually I don't think that even the smartest scientists truly understand, however well they describe the processes, but that's another issue.
**** And when you consider the prominence of Carrollian nonsense in that book, it's even more shaming that I couldn't stick with it.
***** Please don't try to explain it to me. It'll only end in tears.
****** Again, if you disagree, be kind enough to keep it to yourself. I'm clinging to straws, here.

The trouble with moblogging

Runcible duncible
Scroobious Scrivener
got a new cameraphone,
wanted to blog.

Turns out the process is -
technocompatibly -
not quite as easy as
falling off log.

Dammit.

Oh, the pictures are great. But Blogger is ignoring my messages. I have no idea whether the problem is with my method, my phone, my network or Blogger*. Ah well. At least I have the pics, and once I get the requisite doojigger**, I'll be able to upload them the good olfashioned way.

In the meantime I'm getting enough amusement merely from contemplating my conversion to the Dark Side. From a mobile-phobic, basics-only, contracts-are-deals-with-the-devil kind of girl, to "Ooh! I can record video! ...How long is it till I can upgrade to more megapixels?"

_____
* Update: It's Blogger. Doesn't like UK phones. Double dammit.
** Woulda had it already if the dude in the shop hadn't lied to me. "Oh yeah, a regular USB cable, whatever you have, that'll be fine. Don't worry about a Bluetooth dongle." Sure, dude.

TV treats

So, Lost. I think I get it. It's full of ridiculously sexy men. (And very pretty girls, although I do detect the Hollywood Clone Syndrome.) On a telegenic jungle island, with lush verdancy and white sands, torrential rain to ensure that clothes cling revealingly, hot sun to ensure that people show a decent amount of flesh. Sheer programming genius. Plus there's a dog.

Oh yes, and a bit of mystery and stuff. I gather there's a big scary monster. And they really are lost. And all have big secrets. And you have a few assholes to be annoying and generate conflict. And a hobbit on drugs, to be Unpredictable and possibly Put Them All At Risk at some point. Also, I like the presence of an Iraqi soldier. Topical, we are.

But mostly it's about the ogling. Am I right?