Friday, July 22, 2005
Pause. . .
Those are the headlines. Happy now?
Suspected suicide bomber shot in Stockwell. "He looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox."
New York cops show solidarity by commencing random bag searches on the subway.
Guy responds, not unreasonably, by designing and selling t-shirts saying 'I do not consent to being searched'. We'll have all our civil liberties back by Christmas, anyway.
One of yesterday's four suspects seen on CCTV wearing a sweatshirt with NEW YORK in big letters. (Presumably it said 'NOW YOU' underneath in reeeeeeally little letters?)
Meanwhile Lancaster Tonight reports all the comfortingly banal Local Stuff. Pull up a cuppa, luv.
Idiots dump double mattress in P's garden (hoiked it over from the college grounds) preventing postie access.
Other idiot measly landlord of empty student house allows thorny forest to grow rampant, preventing postie access.
Idiots across the alley leave sweet, terribly timid lurcher chained up in back yard where she whines and howls and gets stuck under the gate.
Dog stands with feet on windowsill watching intently as I feed one of his bacon-flavour rasher things to neglected lurcher.
Thing goes down a storm.
Certain Sweet Individuals (hereafter known as CSI, obviously) continue to astonish and delight me with their sweetness, patience and general conspicuous coolitude.
Coming up at 8.30: ah, who cares.
New York cops show solidarity by commencing random bag searches on the subway.
Guy responds, not unreasonably, by designing and selling t-shirts saying 'I do not consent to being searched'. We'll have all our civil liberties back by Christmas, anyway.
One of yesterday's four suspects seen on CCTV wearing a sweatshirt with NEW YORK in big letters. (Presumably it said 'NOW YOU' underneath in reeeeeeally little letters?)
Meanwhile Lancaster Tonight reports all the comfortingly banal Local Stuff. Pull up a cuppa, luv.
Idiots dump double mattress in P's garden (hoiked it over from the college grounds) preventing postie access.
Other idiot measly landlord of empty student house allows thorny forest to grow rampant, preventing postie access.
Idiots across the alley leave sweet, terribly timid lurcher chained up in back yard where she whines and howls and gets stuck under the gate.
Dog stands with feet on windowsill watching intently as I feed one of his bacon-flavour rasher things to neglected lurcher.
Thing goes down a storm.
Certain Sweet Individuals (hereafter known as CSI, obviously) continue to astonish and delight me with their sweetness, patience and general conspicuous coolitude.
Coming up at 8.30: ah, who cares.
Posturing berk
Alright, so I haven't heard the song yet, but. . .good grief.
Why do people, from all angles, persist and persist in shaking my belief in the essential good nature of people? A? I want to believe this journalist has done a protest song out of entirely altruistic motivations (if a bit wonky on the judgement), but I can't.
Can't.
Sorry.
It's good, at least, that the hideousness Londoners are suffering (latest: man shot dead at Stockwell - is this really happening here?) seems to be bringing them closer together. It seems people are talking to each other more. I can imagine glances are held for longer, smiles exchanged occasionally, maybe. Even if it's just reassuring "it's OK, I know you have a rucksack but I'm not suspicious of you - have a nice day" looks that might have started out in suspicion. (The Sun should start a new campaign - Smile At A Young Asian-Looking Man Between 18 And 35 Today! You could have badges and everything.)
I'm not sure they need a damn song about it, though. Unless it gives them a good laugh, without meaning to (sometimes those are the best laughs).
Meanwhile, may I draw your attention to Rachel's blog. A good example of human nature doing its valiant best under fucking rotten circumstances.
Why do people, from all angles, persist and persist in shaking my belief in the essential good nature of people? A? I want to believe this journalist has done a protest song out of entirely altruistic motivations (if a bit wonky on the judgement), but I can't.
Can't.
Sorry.
It's good, at least, that the hideousness Londoners are suffering (latest: man shot dead at Stockwell - is this really happening here?) seems to be bringing them closer together. It seems people are talking to each other more. I can imagine glances are held for longer, smiles exchanged occasionally, maybe. Even if it's just reassuring "it's OK, I know you have a rucksack but I'm not suspicious of you - have a nice day" looks that might have started out in suspicion. (The Sun should start a new campaign - Smile At A Young Asian-Looking Man Between 18 And 35 Today! You could have badges and everything.)
I'm not sure they need a damn song about it, though. Unless it gives them a good laugh, without meaning to (sometimes those are the best laughs).
Meanwhile, may I draw your attention to Rachel's blog. A good example of human nature doing its valiant best under fucking rotten circumstances.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
"I'm a hustler! I'm a warrior!"
"He was walking with a machete and a boom box."
Stampede of movie producers to buy the rights, twelve injured.
Another, strangely half-arsed London attack. Four simultaneous detonations, but apparently only of detonators, not bombs. Bags dumped, blokes legging it. Tubes closed. Stations evacuated. Bus windows blown out Man arrested near Downing Street. Blair gets to trot out more crap about how 'the people responsible are the people who did it'. Of course it all goes back years, but please acknowledge, even to your smug self, that at the very least we have not been made any safer by following the US into Iraq.
The tyranny of tedium. Or something. It is infuriating, and the fact that Londoners are going to have to live with this sort of threat is infuriating also. Friend's reaction - to the last one, but it'll still stand - is to embrace hedonism, which seems like a sound and logical instinct. A good time to turn a blind eye to the use of lovely, lovely ecstacy, methinks.
Stampede of movie producers to buy the rights, twelve injured.
Another, strangely half-arsed London attack. Four simultaneous detonations, but apparently only of detonators, not bombs. Bags dumped, blokes legging it. Tubes closed. Stations evacuated. Bus windows blown out Man arrested near Downing Street. Blair gets to trot out more crap about how 'the people responsible are the people who did it'. Of course it all goes back years, but please acknowledge, even to your smug self, that at the very least we have not been made any safer by following the US into Iraq.
The tyranny of tedium. Or something. It is infuriating, and the fact that Londoners are going to have to live with this sort of threat is infuriating also. Friend's reaction - to the last one, but it'll still stand - is to embrace hedonism, which seems like a sound and logical instinct. A good time to turn a blind eye to the use of lovely, lovely ecstacy, methinks.
Oh come on now
I really, honestly do not mind the small physical indications that I'm getting older (funny phrase, that, so emotive and yet three-year-olds and twelve-year-olds are doing exactly the same thing, the most basic of things). The lines aren't quite there yet but I can see the prelimary sketches. However, most things are holding up very well, I don't look much different than I did when I was 21 (not that 21 is anything to aspire to, I think, at least I don't miss it). I'm actually in better shape physically and mentally than I was at that age, when I was heavier and more depressed and awkward and hadn't yet had my visit from the cheekbone fairy - hopefully I'll be able to dangle from that blessed bit of facial scaffolding for some years to come. Yes, so I'm not grumbling at all, not a bit - it's all accidental, anyway, and very little to do with me, and while I think the point is (if there is one at all) to make your age look good and not to try to look younger (bizarre concept, that), I had a little smirk to myself the last time I bought booze in a shop and they asked me if I was over 21.
But - a grey eyelash? A grey eyelash? Come on, guys, don't fanny about. I can handle it. This way it's just vaguely insulting, frankly.
But - a grey eyelash? A grey eyelash? Come on, guys, don't fanny about. I can handle it. This way it's just vaguely insulting, frankly.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The secret of comedy
Just as I prepare to elbow my way into a corner of London again, Fellow Zombie decides to up and hie her away to Brighton with T. I'm happy for them, of course, but y'know, bugger. Nearly wept, especially since previousness dictates more than distance that we won't be able to see each other much and I certainly won't be able to go skipping down to the Hove Actually area, as I imagined for one foolish happy second I would.
I suppose you know you're not young anymore when you realise that you have a Past that involves actual meaningful relationship stuff, rather than university frivolity and ooh-what-madness-tee-hee giggle-fodder without reverberation. Previousness. I wouldn't swop any of mine (although the university years and the subsequent London-based lack of proper discrimination could benefit from some editing, I suppose) but it's sobering to have it sitting there, prodding at the present.
Nice though to be a real grown-up, out of the teenage creche. I'm not ten years away from my teens yet and I can't believe I actually got through them - it never suited me, whereas some people are at the absolute peak of themselves at 18 or 19. I'm much more comfortable without the pressure of being young. (Any minute now I'm going to start on how it's about time we got over the obsession with Youth that was spawned in the excitable 1950s and then someone will have to shut my head in a volume of Social Theory For Beginners. Although surely Oscar Wilde has to shoulder some of the blame, even if he didn't really mean it, which he never did.) Unless I'm over-estimating my maturity now. But I forget what age I am - it's just great to have another several decades' worth of people to play with who don't seem any older to me than myself. When you're in your late teens and early twenties you're more or less stuck with your own age group - regardless of opportunity, I think. I got to mix with older people when I was that age but I never felt quite up to it, wasn't quite on their level. Experience, see? It's what makes a person, innit. What connects you to others - not the content of the experience itself but just the volume of it, it can't help but contain lots of hard stuff and good stuff and unusual stuff that is made of the same stuff as everyone else's.
Saw Madagascar last night. That didn't add much to my experience. Self-consciously and indolently written, making the mistake of thinking that the animation would do all the work. David 'Schwimperer' Schwimmer did more or less the same thing, failing to even make a decent hypochondriac giraffe because he was too flat and aware that he was doing a voice-over rather than acting (you still need to act even if we can't see your dumb face, idiot). Dock that man's enormous pay-packet. And. . .it's ridiculous but the story was so far beyond daft, even within the acceptable boundaries of anthropormorphic animal stuff like this. Carnivore battles his instinct to eat best zebra friend, and finds redemption in learning to love sushi (fish aren't cute - oh wait, that whole Finding Nemo thing. . .never mind, it was a few years ago, just don't make it orange and white, OK?). So much for the Circle of Life. Really, though, I grew up watching lions rending asunder the delicate flesh of Thompson's gazelles and I turned out fi. . .oh.
Just looked at the (four - four!) writers' experience - Antz (good), Ren & Stimpy (smashing), 2DTV (um. . .well, occasionally), er, Murder Most Horrid. Right. Cheers.
Then we went driving. I can actually park, ish, although the steering on the Tanklet is so heavy that I'm going to resemble Popeye by the time I take my test. Managed to get some fat security oaf out of his chair and pelting towards the gates of the disused hospital - I was only turning round, you silly man, you should have been here at the weekend when I was taking pictures. Maybe it was the bullbars. I suppose at a pinch they could ram a rusty fence but. . .come on, jobsworth, your coffee's getting cold.
Given the success of that excursion (biggest mistake - misjudging turn onto pitch-dark country road and ending up on verge, but it was very funny and no rabbits were hurt) the next one is bound to be demoralising and horrid. But at some point I will no longer be a menace to myself and others, at least not without intending to.
I can absolutely understand how people get attached to their cars. I smile at mine fondly whenever it starts first time.
The new Stool Pigeon turned up - it's very, very beautiful, looks like a pristine new copy of a Melody Maker from 1975. Makes you want to get all soppy about the bygone days of good craftsmanship, but really, it is great to see someone putting in the effort to make something lovely. My copy isn't really up to the way it's presented, it's like putting an ornate balcony on a grotty council house, but fuck it, it's only in the funnies page and funnies in 'serious' music publications have always been a bit like the stories in porn mags.
Damn, I remember when I wrote the bits no one read in a top-shelf publication. That was a laugh. A lucrative laugh. But I'm not sure I'd want to do it now. It was pretty nasty. I don't have a problem with porn, although I keep tabs on how I feel about it, but I'm not sure I want to contribute to that form of it.
Meanwhile, there's editing to do, and doubtless a greater volume of work tactfully convincing writer of validity of edit. And chocolate. There must always be chocolate.
I suppose you know you're not young anymore when you realise that you have a Past that involves actual meaningful relationship stuff, rather than university frivolity and ooh-what-madness-tee-hee giggle-fodder without reverberation. Previousness. I wouldn't swop any of mine (although the university years and the subsequent London-based lack of proper discrimination could benefit from some editing, I suppose) but it's sobering to have it sitting there, prodding at the present.
Nice though to be a real grown-up, out of the teenage creche. I'm not ten years away from my teens yet and I can't believe I actually got through them - it never suited me, whereas some people are at the absolute peak of themselves at 18 or 19. I'm much more comfortable without the pressure of being young. (Any minute now I'm going to start on how it's about time we got over the obsession with Youth that was spawned in the excitable 1950s and then someone will have to shut my head in a volume of Social Theory For Beginners. Although surely Oscar Wilde has to shoulder some of the blame, even if he didn't really mean it, which he never did.) Unless I'm over-estimating my maturity now. But I forget what age I am - it's just great to have another several decades' worth of people to play with who don't seem any older to me than myself. When you're in your late teens and early twenties you're more or less stuck with your own age group - regardless of opportunity, I think. I got to mix with older people when I was that age but I never felt quite up to it, wasn't quite on their level. Experience, see? It's what makes a person, innit. What connects you to others - not the content of the experience itself but just the volume of it, it can't help but contain lots of hard stuff and good stuff and unusual stuff that is made of the same stuff as everyone else's.
Saw Madagascar last night. That didn't add much to my experience. Self-consciously and indolently written, making the mistake of thinking that the animation would do all the work. David 'Schwimperer' Schwimmer did more or less the same thing, failing to even make a decent hypochondriac giraffe because he was too flat and aware that he was doing a voice-over rather than acting (you still need to act even if we can't see your dumb face, idiot). Dock that man's enormous pay-packet. And. . .it's ridiculous but the story was so far beyond daft, even within the acceptable boundaries of anthropormorphic animal stuff like this. Carnivore battles his instinct to eat best zebra friend, and finds redemption in learning to love sushi (fish aren't cute - oh wait, that whole Finding Nemo thing. . .never mind, it was a few years ago, just don't make it orange and white, OK?). So much for the Circle of Life. Really, though, I grew up watching lions rending asunder the delicate flesh of Thompson's gazelles and I turned out fi. . .oh.
Just looked at the (four - four!) writers' experience - Antz (good), Ren & Stimpy (smashing), 2DTV (um. . .well, occasionally), er, Murder Most Horrid. Right. Cheers.
Then we went driving. I can actually park, ish, although the steering on the Tanklet is so heavy that I'm going to resemble Popeye by the time I take my test. Managed to get some fat security oaf out of his chair and pelting towards the gates of the disused hospital - I was only turning round, you silly man, you should have been here at the weekend when I was taking pictures. Maybe it was the bullbars. I suppose at a pinch they could ram a rusty fence but. . .come on, jobsworth, your coffee's getting cold.
Given the success of that excursion (biggest mistake - misjudging turn onto pitch-dark country road and ending up on verge, but it was very funny and no rabbits were hurt) the next one is bound to be demoralising and horrid. But at some point I will no longer be a menace to myself and others, at least not without intending to.
I can absolutely understand how people get attached to their cars. I smile at mine fondly whenever it starts first time.
The new Stool Pigeon turned up - it's very, very beautiful, looks like a pristine new copy of a Melody Maker from 1975. Makes you want to get all soppy about the bygone days of good craftsmanship, but really, it is great to see someone putting in the effort to make something lovely. My copy isn't really up to the way it's presented, it's like putting an ornate balcony on a grotty council house, but fuck it, it's only in the funnies page and funnies in 'serious' music publications have always been a bit like the stories in porn mags.
Damn, I remember when I wrote the bits no one read in a top-shelf publication. That was a laugh. A lucrative laugh. But I'm not sure I'd want to do it now. It was pretty nasty. I don't have a problem with porn, although I keep tabs on how I feel about it, but I'm not sure I want to contribute to that form of it.
Meanwhile, there's editing to do, and doubtless a greater volume of work tactfully convincing writer of validity of edit. And chocolate. There must always be chocolate.
Dear 19th person to email me asking how they can do my job
Thank you for your flattering comments about my 'impressive resume' and how I 'seem like a very talented and hardworking lady'. I'm actually quite a lazy lady, but I'll stir my stumps long enough to send you three or four links to larger organisations you can bother.
If only you were interested in my illustrious writing career, I'd take great pleasure in boring you senseless about the inequities of the moribund niche and the tyranny of evil editors. Alas, you just want to know how to make a quick buck out of excising errors. And it irritates me beyond reason that you pick on me to help you. I'm pretty amiable and helpful by nature so why it's this point at which I run out I don't know. I don't like knowing where my line is, and I don't like you reminding me. It's all a big coagulated mass of Don't Like.
Please stop it, the lot of you. You make me feel like a bad person. Go and start an ostrich farm, or something.
(NB I didn't actually send this. I'm posting it here in order to Let Off Steam. I just can't get the text up to normal size for some reason. Looks sorta cute, though.)
Monday, July 18, 2005
More by way of muttage
Just because Blogger has made it easier.
Camera is brilliant - it has a billion settings (including one specifically to take shots of fireworks with - what?), takes great video and my only real beef with it so far is that it doesn't seem to like doing close-ups (it says it does, but it lies). I shall tame it. Easier than dog, anyway.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
You, me and Doyle
This, folks, is the face of an idiot. (Yeah But He's So Cute Though.)
Note to dog owners in cemeteries: that quaint sign that says 'dogs must be led' means 'eh, dick'ead, keep yer fookin' Staffy on a lead'. At least six of them today alone misinterpreted it as 'ah, they're all dead anyway, them people in't graves'.
Bloody people.
It is not uncommon for a dog to behave defensively while on a lead, given that flight is no longer an option. So when some idiot woman's bonny bouncing nearest-thing-to-a-pit-bull-the-law-permits ran right in K's face in playful presumption, it was almost inevitable that Idiot Woman and I would end up refereeing a somewhat one-sided fight. Not even a fight, really, more of a dog head-lock (scruff of neck meet jaws rrr rrrr rrrrrr). Obviously it was my fault for not having my dog muzzled, not her fault for letting her dog run about like a happy fool when expressly forbidden to do so by a big fuck-off sign. Definite, depressing failures of communication, twixt local council and idiot, idiot and relatively responsible dog owner, dog and dog.
Staffy according to Staffy: "Ooh, new friend! Me play. Quick go say hello fast before friend go away (me sad friend go)."
Staffy, interpreted in split-second by K: "You bastard. I'm going to fucking knife you in the gut right now. Here I come. Raining death from around where your knees would be if you had knees. Fucker. You die."
K according to K: "OK. Instinct dictates I protect myself. Sorry. I know it looks like I'm quite enjoying having a mouthful of another of my species but you should know better than to ascribe human feelings to animals. Really, you should."
It was horrid and upsetting and ghastly, but the other dog was alright, which was all I was concerned about. I did resent being berated by someone who couldn't admit even a portion of fault and was hellbent on laying it all on me - evidence of that disturbing tendency to blame absolutely everything on someone or something else that millions live by as some kind of religion. I wish each of them a very painful ulcer of some type. Take some responsibility for your actions, you dull-minded fucks. Just a portion will do, some small concession, a brief moment of consideration as to what if anything you could have done differently. Really. You'll feel so much better, and I won't have to have someone gently disentangle all my guts from each other after they've got all knotty from me hoovering up all the spare responsibility that you have discarded like the fucking sociopathic literal and figurative litter-louts you are.
It's to the credit of both of us though that we didn't swear in front of the dead people. And I did admit that maybe my dog should be muzzled, before saying that be that as it may her dog absolutely should have been on a lead. And she had some inkling way down in her belligerent head that she was at least somewhat in the wrong, because I could tell she was holding back. She wasn't firing on all available cylinders, even though she was instinctively hiking towards the moral high ground and other hackneyed phrases. She shouted, she insisted, she took up a solid stance and glared down at me (I was crouching down hanging on to my mutt, who was by now lying down with tongue a-lollin' and looking happy as a whole regiment of sandboys), but somehow the volume of outrage had been turned down a bit, as if her conscience was on the telephone.
She had a little girl with her. The girl, naturally enough, was crying. I found myself saying "it's alright now, sweetheart", realising that I'd said this before the woman had made any attempt at reassurance, and half-expecting to get clobbered. I also asked if the dog was alright, trying to see from where I was if there was any blood, but the woman barely looked. Why are people like this? They care more about confrontation and winning than they do about the things they have confrontations over.
Maybe a muzzle is inevitable. I can bitch about her not factoring in the behaviour and fuck-ups of other dogs, but I'm not doing that myself - in the knowledge that if a dog runs at my dog the other dog will get bitten if it doesn't make a quick retreat, I went out hoping that that wouldn't happen. Which isn't really good enough, because while I can keep him away from other dogs I can't necessarily keep other dogs away from him. I shouldn't have to, but there you go. You have to assume everyone is an idiot, and protect yourself accordingly.
I wish I could tell him. I wish I could do something to enable him to mingle in polite (and even rude, stupid, irresponsible, cuntish) dog society. As it is I feel it's likely he'll only ever be able to live a facsimile of a dog's ideal life. But it's more than he might have got.
Got some nice pictures, anyway. Not of dogs fighting. Just of nice trees and stuff.
There are any number of ways I could spin this to myself to make it depressing. But it's just one of those things, in which I am somewhat culpable but don't have to thrash myself over. And much as I resent having to go the extra mile because stupid people can't be arsed to, I will, because I love my dog. Fucking idiot smiling dog.
Before all of that we did manage to have a run in an empty field for the first time in many months. It was great.
And other than that, I'm quite content, really. Work is coming in, including some from an eccentric Sudoku genius who wants a book preface and a testimonial (if I can complete Sudoku with his system then I will know anyone can, and will write gushing things accordingly). Weather is beautiful. Things is OK. The next time they're not, I should refrain from whinging about it on here, because whilst most drama is in conflict and misery I maintain it doesn't make for a good blog. Nooooo.
No.
Note to dog owners in cemeteries: that quaint sign that says 'dogs must be led' means 'eh, dick'ead, keep yer fookin' Staffy on a lead'. At least six of them today alone misinterpreted it as 'ah, they're all dead anyway, them people in't graves'.
Bloody people.
It is not uncommon for a dog to behave defensively while on a lead, given that flight is no longer an option. So when some idiot woman's bonny bouncing nearest-thing-to-a-pit-bull-the-law-permits ran right in K's face in playful presumption, it was almost inevitable that Idiot Woman and I would end up refereeing a somewhat one-sided fight. Not even a fight, really, more of a dog head-lock (scruff of neck meet jaws rrr rrrr rrrrrr). Obviously it was my fault for not having my dog muzzled, not her fault for letting her dog run about like a happy fool when expressly forbidden to do so by a big fuck-off sign. Definite, depressing failures of communication, twixt local council and idiot, idiot and relatively responsible dog owner, dog and dog.
Staffy according to Staffy: "Ooh, new friend! Me play. Quick go say hello fast before friend go away (me sad friend go)."
Staffy, interpreted in split-second by K: "You bastard. I'm going to fucking knife you in the gut right now. Here I come. Raining death from around where your knees would be if you had knees. Fucker. You die."
K according to K: "OK. Instinct dictates I protect myself. Sorry. I know it looks like I'm quite enjoying having a mouthful of another of my species but you should know better than to ascribe human feelings to animals. Really, you should."
It was horrid and upsetting and ghastly, but the other dog was alright, which was all I was concerned about. I did resent being berated by someone who couldn't admit even a portion of fault and was hellbent on laying it all on me - evidence of that disturbing tendency to blame absolutely everything on someone or something else that millions live by as some kind of religion. I wish each of them a very painful ulcer of some type. Take some responsibility for your actions, you dull-minded fucks. Just a portion will do, some small concession, a brief moment of consideration as to what if anything you could have done differently. Really. You'll feel so much better, and I won't have to have someone gently disentangle all my guts from each other after they've got all knotty from me hoovering up all the spare responsibility that you have discarded like the fucking sociopathic literal and figurative litter-louts you are.
It's to the credit of both of us though that we didn't swear in front of the dead people. And I did admit that maybe my dog should be muzzled, before saying that be that as it may her dog absolutely should have been on a lead. And she had some inkling way down in her belligerent head that she was at least somewhat in the wrong, because I could tell she was holding back. She wasn't firing on all available cylinders, even though she was instinctively hiking towards the moral high ground and other hackneyed phrases. She shouted, she insisted, she took up a solid stance and glared down at me (I was crouching down hanging on to my mutt, who was by now lying down with tongue a-lollin' and looking happy as a whole regiment of sandboys), but somehow the volume of outrage had been turned down a bit, as if her conscience was on the telephone.
She had a little girl with her. The girl, naturally enough, was crying. I found myself saying "it's alright now, sweetheart", realising that I'd said this before the woman had made any attempt at reassurance, and half-expecting to get clobbered. I also asked if the dog was alright, trying to see from where I was if there was any blood, but the woman barely looked. Why are people like this? They care more about confrontation and winning than they do about the things they have confrontations over.
Maybe a muzzle is inevitable. I can bitch about her not factoring in the behaviour and fuck-ups of other dogs, but I'm not doing that myself - in the knowledge that if a dog runs at my dog the other dog will get bitten if it doesn't make a quick retreat, I went out hoping that that wouldn't happen. Which isn't really good enough, because while I can keep him away from other dogs I can't necessarily keep other dogs away from him. I shouldn't have to, but there you go. You have to assume everyone is an idiot, and protect yourself accordingly.
I wish I could tell him. I wish I could do something to enable him to mingle in polite (and even rude, stupid, irresponsible, cuntish) dog society. As it is I feel it's likely he'll only ever be able to live a facsimile of a dog's ideal life. But it's more than he might have got.
Got some nice pictures, anyway. Not of dogs fighting. Just of nice trees and stuff.
There are any number of ways I could spin this to myself to make it depressing. But it's just one of those things, in which I am somewhat culpable but don't have to thrash myself over. And much as I resent having to go the extra mile because stupid people can't be arsed to, I will, because I love my dog. Fucking idiot smiling dog.
Before all of that we did manage to have a run in an empty field for the first time in many months. It was great.
And other than that, I'm quite content, really. Work is coming in, including some from an eccentric Sudoku genius who wants a book preface and a testimonial (if I can complete Sudoku with his system then I will know anyone can, and will write gushing things accordingly). Weather is beautiful. Things is OK. The next time they're not, I should refrain from whinging about it on here, because whilst most drama is in conflict and misery I maintain it doesn't make for a good blog. Nooooo.
No.
Chicken soup for people who are allergic to fucking chicken soup
The sun, little darlin'. That sort of spiky ball thing in the middle there.
This is not comforting. It is creepy. I love how unselfconscious graveyards are in that respect. They just don't realise.
A wee bitty angel on the side of a little chapel that hasn't seen any holy action for years. Doesn't she look fervent?
Some sheep. Good this, innit? Like visual muzak. Sheep are malevolent little fucks whose flesh I have no issues with feasting upon. But they look oddly fetching when they've just been shorn and are all plump and nudey.
