“Not necessarily stoned..but beautiful” - Jimi Hendrix

My toothache is no better, but I have got some better painkillers. Therefore I was floating around last night, pain free but in a giggly haze. Heaven knows what would happen to me if I had to be admitted to hospital and had to have some opiates!

I do hope I didn't say anything I might regret! - Chuckle!!!

I haven't bought any DVD's this week - So I'm getting the "I haven't bought any DVD's this week" withdrawal shakes! Jings, Crivvens! Help ma Boab!

This week I have been watching "The Lone Gunmen", listening to lots of music, and daydreaming about blonde Canadians.

“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” - Jimi Hendrix

“Loves conquers all things except poverty and toothache.” - Mae West

I'm a little woozy thanks to not eating very much today, and taking lot's of pain killers. You see I have tooth-ache!!! I broke a tooth a couple of months ago, but the filling was still in place, but a little loose. Last week it fell out, and now it is PAIN! - PAIN! - PAIN! Like most Men I am rubbish with pain! My Dentist cannot fit me in for nearly three weeks! At least I might lose some weight from not eating (although all those pain killers might make me a little constipated!!!)

“He that sleeps feels not the toothache.” - Billy Shakespeare

"I intend to live forever. So far, so good!"

Happy Birthday Shirley!

41! incredible!

“I want to hang out in Edinburgh with my friends and eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.” - Shirley Manson
(which is why I suppose she now lives in Los Angeles, and hangs around with Gwen Stefani! - who obviously eats a lot of chips!)

"Tonight, from a room only Dickens could love!" - Sparks

I don't really have anything to say , I just really loved that line above.
My cryptic countdown begins - ten weeks to go!

This week I am still amused by : the self importance of blue tooth headset wearers, four wheel drive owners, the British mentality.

Today I am mostly listening to Sparks, and mash-ups. The good mash-up is a sublime creation, taking two good songs, or more often than not one classic and one forgettable , and crafting something new. A 21st century creation.

Speaking of which, despite my recent rant on the absence of food pills, jet packs, and silver jumpsuits in the Britain of 2007, I realised today just how much impact technology has on my everyday life. I can find out information almost instantly, make pristine digital images and sounds, not to mention the entertainment options available to me.
Above all it has allowed me to discover an intelligent, beautiful and witty Woman, half a world away. Thank you LastFm.com !

This is my favourite sparks song, plus a fabulous, fabulous video!!!

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.” - Charles Dickens

“If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.” - Lewis Carroll

Long time no see.
For some reason I'm extremely unhappy today. However I can't really put my finger on exactly why. I've been snappy at my daughter, just a little mind, and that's not like me. The weather is unexpectedly sunny today (so she's gone out to play for a while) and that usually cheers me up. However all it seems to have done is reveal the mess (both figuratively and literally) that is my day to day life in greater detail.

I am such a procrastinator, if it where not for my daughter, I really don't know what sort of mess I'd be in! Enough of the self pity already!

At least my life has a second ray of sunshine now, the fabulous Barbara Hultberg.

Okay today I am a little maudlin, I promise next time sarcastic observations aplenty!

This week I am enjoying : thinking of Vancouver, Heroes on the BBC, and Pan's Labyrinth.

“One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others” - Lewis Carrol

"I am not young enough to know everything" - Oscar Wilde

Billy is unwell. Billy is also very well.

My new computer is working. Until this week I used a 26" LCD tv as a monitor, consequently this site now looks tiny to me (maybe you should just reconnect to the TV eh genius? - well no actually, it hasn't got the resolution or refresh rate of this lovely Dell monitor - so there!). My point is that I've never bought a TV or gadget and NOT found something to nitpick about, maybe I'm growing up.

I'd forgotten how labourious it is to transform a new PC into a version of your old one. Furthermore I'm not too enamoured with Microsoft Vista, it wants permission for every bloody thing, and everything seems to take longer despite my snazzy new quad core processor!

I had the worst day ever at work yesterday (well maybe not ever). One patient is threatening to sue me! (I didn't do anything wrong really, just kept him waiting, we were so busy, and there was only three of us on - damn it this is starting to sound like an excuse!), there were accidents, blood , vomit, diarrhoea, no staff, and one hilarious incident that I'd be sacked if I discussed.

Welcome back Barbara! How I wish I could have spent the day in Disneyland with you!

"Too much of a good thing is wonderful." - Mae West

Barbara

Barbara,
Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara.

Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara.

Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara.

Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara.

"Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara, Barbara." - Barbara

“I'm just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon.” - Bob Dylan

Another mini rant I'm afraid.

I called the Indian call centre, at a reasonable 25p per minute. They insisted an engineer call again, today, so once again I sit and wait. You can guess what happened next. Rather like toothache vanishing on the way to the Dentist, my Internet connection has re-appeared and whilst not blistering, seems reasonably solid.

It was amazing how wretched a lack of a connection made me feel. Alright it wasn't life threatening, in a world of war and famine. But I live a relatively solitary life, and to hear my daughter crying on my voice mail because she couldn't get through to say goodnight to me, was, well rather upsetting. Plus not being able to track Barbara's amazing California adventures was making me feel so alone.

I seem to have picked up a chest infection. Being a typical man, I feel wretched.

How did Elvis align his drug use and womanising, with his strong religious views? It only occurred to me as I'm listening to his gospel album at the moment. Don't get me wrong I love Elvis, especially the 68 Comeback Special version!

(I have the three disc DVD set - it's fantastic)

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” - Bob Dylan

“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.” - Goethe

No posts recently? Why I wonder? Could it be the fault of Virgin "So Called" Media? my "so called" service provider? (although the only service they provide is absolute S*!@ )
I have a "vonage" phone (i.e. no land line) so I've been cut off from the world completely, not even able to speak to my daughter. I know it must seem strange, but I don't have a mobile phone. Why haven't I called Virgin - duh! no phone!
Furthermore, they now charge 25p a minute to call an Indian call centre where everyone reads from scripts, and won't actually listen, or use a bit of common sense. I've rang them about 15 times recently regarding speed issues (oh how I long for the days when speed was the only issue!) and the average call length was about an hour!

So I've been waiting for the brief window in the day when my modem lights come on and stay on.

(with perfect timing there was a huge gap between me typing this and posting, as my broadband connection was lost for almost a day, and now it's gone again, this sentence has taken around 12 hours to complete!)

Sorry, not much content today, just complaints. More fun soon.

“It's very dangerous to wave to people you don't know because what if they don't have hands? They'll think you're cocky.” - Mitch Hedburg

“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do”

Whatever happened to the future? I remember being a young lad and wondering, as everyone does, what the future held for me , and the world. This was the late seventies, the time of punk and Star Wars. The mood of the nation was glum. Like any young fool, I was optimistic, despite having the usual working class existence of the time. I had a second hand bike, one pair of jeans, and usually kept my school uniform on until bedtime. I never went anywhere on holiday (never even flew until I was 27!) but the future was where it would all get better for me! I vividly recall thinking that a VCR would be the ultimate consumer item (remember they were still almost science fiction back then). The 21st century would have wonders aplenty. Flying cars, 3D TV, impossible high skyscrapers, computer controlled motorways, social equality, calorie free food, genetic engineering, and so on and so on!

What brought on this wave of retro nostalgia? Well I was looking at the cars around me. They are bland, boring and boxy. I pictured cars in the now, as having gull-wing doors, silent gas turbine or electric engines, automatic pilot, be designed around the passengers, and above all look bloody futuristic!! (OK even a ten year old Billy realised that flying cars were way way off!) Unfortunately there are very few cars that look like they belong in the now (maybe the new Honda Civic?) concept cars at auto shows often look the biz, but profits, and a fear of radical design mean we get yet another slightly different Golf.

My future never arrived, change sort of creeps up on you, bit by bit, until one day you go;

"Oh! things are slightly different"

I watched "Children of Men" earlier this week, and the future Britain it presents is all too real a possibility. We are already spiralling into a militaristic paranoid present. I recommend you watch it, if you forget the main infertility storyline, it's frighteningly plausible!

...a little light relief:

“A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband, while a man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.”

“I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out.” - Bill Hicks

Tattoos - I just don't get it! How can you commit to one image , permanently? Moods change, blimey the "me" of say 10 years ago is one I'm glad to shrug off. How can one piece of iconography mean so much to you that you want it to stay with you forever? We are creatures of change, constantly evolving, to stagnate is to die. And surely a tattoo is a symbol of stagnation, of wanting to stay in one moment so much that you make it literally indelible.
I can understand the ethnographic history of tattoos, to mark oneself as a tribe member, visible in battle . To some extent this has not changed (!), but pale imitations of once proud tribal markings, and once revered pagan symbolism, reduced to copies of copies of copies, and usually boiling down to dolphins, roses and abstract art with no intrinsic roots or spiritual starting point is crass, calculated and ultimately sad. Nuff said!

I broke a tooth! I tried to get an appointment with my dentist, he can fit me in at the end of September - wow!

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen” - Mark Twain

“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

The flip side of insomnia.
The past week or so I have been so so tired.
What happened to those days, which in reality were only a few months ago, when I wouldn't go to bed at all?
Where even wine, women and song wouldn't help (OK, maybe two out of three!)
Not that I miss the bleakness, and feeling of being absolutely alone in the world (which usually hit me between 4 and 5am!), but boy there seemed like a lot more hours in the day (duh! really?).

Time for bed.

“Heaven's ebon vault, studded with stars unutterably bright, through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, seems like a canopy which love has spread to curtain her sleeping world” - Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it”

Hello, remember me? Really! How kind.

I bought a new computer from Dell! I've been saving for about a year, and they had a good deal last week, so I thought "what the hell!" I check my online bank balance the next day , and voila! I see they are about to bill me for THREE computers! needless to say , this would make me seriously overdrawn, and I had to wait all weekend before it was sorted, but sorted it is. However, the problems of one little person don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world! (if you'll forgive the misquote).

Looking forward to seeing my daughter soon, she's been in Spain, and I've missed her terribly.


“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” - Buddha

(Buddha and Gandhi eh?)

“Do not speak unless you can improve the silence”