I am 75% sure that the person sitting behind me is a transsexual.
S/he looks OK as a woman, but is tall and has large hands.
What's more, his/her voice sounds unusually deep, a bit like the aliens in 'V'.
Nice tits, mind.
IDgaf on 01.30.04 @ 02:41 PM GMT [link]
I’m not having a good day.
I had a tiring week and a tiring weekend. I’ve a wisdom tooth coming through and my face, neck, back and chest are covered in acne. A new drug my doctor prescribed causes acne, but I don’t know if what I have is caused by that or fatigue and stress.
Either way, I am in a reasonable amount of discomfort. I have blood-filled spots around the lobes of one ear, whiteheads in another, whiteheads around my nose, skin flaking from my nose, large spots on my forehead and spots around the crown and back of my head.
My chest is mottled with red spots ranging from in size from pin-pricks to size of a penny. There, too, the skin is flaking and whiteheads abound. My skin is so sensitive that even gentle scratching leaves florid, red, marks on my chest.
My sternum is most badly affected, consisting of a series of bumps and ridges where spots are filling with pus beneath my skin. My back is also covered with small mounds and topographical features. There, however, the primary discolouration is brown.
I have had flair-ups like this before, but I am unsually annoyed this day. All I want is a normal life and normal skin.
I’m tired of hiding from having my picture taken. I’m tired of being looked at. I’m tired of feeling that my spots put people off their food. I’m tired having the wrinkles of a middle-aged man and the acne of a teenager.
I’m tired of having to be so fucking placid and accepting. I’m tired of feeling like I’m being stared at. I’m tired of taking months and months to feel comfortable enough so that I think people are used to how I look.
Have you any idea what it’s like to wake up in the morning and not know what you’ll look like that day? If you face will be clear or acne-ridden? It’s OK in the morning – will it be OK by the afternoon? Have you any idea what it’s like to wake up for FOURTEEN YEARS and not know what you look like?
What shape is my face without the puffiness caused by my drugs? What size is my nose without being it being filled with puss and covered with spots? What’s my non-drugged skin like? How hairy am I naturally?
I want to get angry. I want to shout and rant and rage and become so hateful, vengeful, of my situation that my I snap in two and am left clawing at the ground with spittle hanging from my mouth and with fire in my eyes.
I can’t though, because it’s not worth it. It doesn’t accomplish anything. I can’t change shit. What am I going to do? Stop taking my drugs? Lose my kidney to get clear skin and confidence? I either put up with these side-effects and consider myself lucky, or I give in to desperation and vanity, stop taking my drugs and watch my face return to normal as my health withers away; I’m a human cost-benefit ratio.
I’m desperate to live something other than logic.
IDgaf on 01.27.04 @ 02:44 PM GMT [link]
House was broken into between 0230hrs and 0500hrs. My parents and I were asleep upstairs. This is the second time something like this has happened.
Thieves got a wallet, a purse - all including credit cards- a mobile phone and several watches, at least one of which belonged to my Grandfather. Others were mementos of my father's trips to Russia.
We think the cunts got in through the front door, but whether they used a credit card or by some other means (purse with key left on step, key left in door) we don't know.
What pisses me off most is that my father e has always been paranoid about security, but he decides to leave mobile phones in our hallway and my mother thinks the hall is a safe place to leave a purse - in view of anyone looking through our letterbox. Stupid fuckers.
My mother has only recently begun to check who's ringing the doorbell before opening the door. More often than not she just assumes it's me and opens it by intercom; she can be anywhere in the house letting strangers in. I told her again and again not to do it. Will she learn her lesson now? Or will I have to dress up as a burglar and threaten to beat the shit out of her to make her protect herself?
Burglars sicken me. The facts that the fuckers that did this probably live around the corner - and that we virtually invited them in - sickens me more.
IDgaf on 01.26.04 @ 08:13 PM GMT [link]
An American flight attendant who tried to get plane passengers to hurry to seats by singing "Eenie, meenie, minie moe; pick a seat, we gotta go." has sparked a lawsuit by two black, female, passengers.
They are suing Southwest Airlines for discrimination and physical and emotional distress. Apparently one of the women suffered a seisure on the plane and had a 'grand mal' seisure at home, being bed-ridden for three days. Why? Because of the poem's original form: "Eenie, meenie, minie moe, catch a nigger by the toe." One of plaintiffs supposedly hears the word 'nigger' whenever the poem is recited - she hears it in her head, though. The attendant didn't actually say it.
The attendant spoke the rhyme over the intercom. The article I got this from suggested several passengers looking for seats as she did. The plaintiffs say they were the only people standing.
I want to know: how many of the passengers on the plane were white; how many whites were standing and if the attendant could see the plaintiffs while she sang. If all the passengers had been black, one has to applaud the (allegedly racist or ignorant) attendent's audacity. If she had been staring pointedly at the black chicks whilst goose-stepping on-the-spot and alternatly drawing a finger across her throat and sieg heiling, there'd certainly be a case.
There's a slim chance the two chicks are ridiculously over-sensitive. There's a better chance they're just greedy and stupid Yanks playing a race-card to get a bit of cash.
If it turns out they'll donate any damages awarded to charity, I might change my opinion.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2781718/detail.html Article about the case.
http://www.attachemag.com/archives/11-03/features/story2.htm Page on origin of poems. (Eeenie Meenie not listed.)
If you can find the origins of the poem, post them.
IDgaf on 01.22.04 @ 10:06 PM GMT [link]
While in hospital I made notes about my biopsy. Events are listed in chronological order, running from the 17th-18th Of January. I attempted to edit the notes during and after my stay.
The saddest things in the hospital were the ‘Patientline’ units. Placed above each bed, they were comprised of a small LCD screen, a numberpad/control panel, a pair of headphones and a telephone reciever. Patients could watch TV for ‘just £3.50’ a day. Radio is free. If one wants to call out, one needs a Patientline card. Calling someone cost 20p per minute on-peak, 10p off. If someone calls a patient it costs the caller 49p on and 39p off-peak.
If one didn't want to pay there was still 'FREE 24-hour radio' and 'FREE one-hour of breakfast TV [daily]'. To get this FREE stuff, units have to be activated by Patientline's telephone operators. I suppose they'd try to sell callers the paid services.
One could buy top-up cards in the hospital shop or from ‘Patientline representatives’. My ward’s rep’ dressed to look like a nurse - as if she worked for the NHS. Stupid bitch's hawking of Patientline cards even woke me up. Selling shit to the sick; what kind of karma is she pulling in?
(Even if you don't buy a card, the unit's 'TV' button flashes on and off to remind you its there to fulfill your needs.)
The ward I was in once had a communal lounge/TV room. Not anymore. Once upon a time one could get TVs wheeled into a ward-rooms. Arguing about what to watch got patients talking, interacting, coping a bit better. Now there's no need to talk anymore. Just plug yourself in and shut yourself out.
See the notes by following the ‘More’ link. They're very long and confusing. Tenses change often.
My parents were in attendance at various times during my stay at the hospital.
http://www.patientline.co.uk/
IDgaf on 01.20.04 @ 05:51 PM GMT [link]
How's that for friendly fire? Apart from the bombs that ripped through the tail, there's one almost directly above the plane's fuselage. Do you think it missed?
I remember reading or hearing that laser bombs can still hit civilian areas due to human error, presumably the pilot or bombadier identifying incorrect targets.
Bearing this in mind, do modern weapons mean 'safer war'? If WWII was replayed with contemporary vehicles and armaments (minus nukes) would London and Dresden have retained their historic buildings? Is the ratio of civilian-military casualites, lost to bombing runs, less now than it's ever been? Or have we just improved the accuracy of our indiscrimination?
http://www.evidenceincamera.co.uk/ Supposedly hosts five million aerial recon photos of WWII. The site is down currently, but should be up by 26.01.04
http://bf1942.battleforeurope.com/ Free Battlefield 1942 tournament using the Forgotten Hope mod.
http://www.fhmod.com Forgotten Hope.
IDgaf on 01.20.04 @ 12:12 AM GMT [link]
Had my blopsy (sic) done. Have to go in for bloods and to see a consultant tomorrow. Not sure if news is positive yet.
Concurrently, my father might be admitted to the same hospital tonight for scans on one of his kidneys. Potential stone, apparently.
One of the IDgaf family leaves, another goes in. My father is grumpy, my is mother scared and I'm just trying to enjoy the ride.
IDgaf on 01.17.04 @ 06:07 PM GMT [link]
Have just been informed my biopsy isn't being done tonight. It's unlikely to be tomorrow. There are no beds available.
The admissions department at the hospital will speak to my consultant and book me in as soon as possible. I should be prepared to come in at short notice if there is a 'cancellation'.
This fucks everything up. I don't know how healthy I am (well, I know I am not in critical condition) and I don't know when I'll have to interrupt my job again.
I've also spent the entire day slacking off. How the hell am I going to explain to my boss that, even though I didn't go to the hospital, I wasn't able to work at home?
IDgaf on 01.15.04 @ 05:58 PM GMT [link]
Amdist the shit of daytime TV, I found a programme on poetry. Heard the following being read. It mentions the picture below.
Musée des Beaux Arts - by W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
You can see Icarus' legs sticking out of the water just behind the ship. Here is a bigger example of the picture Auden references. It will take around 30 seconds to load on a 56k modem.
The poem was written in '38; I don't know if it was before or after Germany were 'allowed' to invade Czechoslovakia.
http://www.worldwariihistory.info/on/Munich-Pact.html
IDgaf on 01.15.04 @ 02:27 PM GMT [link]
Waiting for the hospital to confirm there's a bed for me. Should get a call between 1500-1600hrs. Didn't expect to be at home this morning.
Renogram happened yesterday afternoon. Most difficult part of procedure was getting to and back from the hospital. Rode as pillion on 1970s motorbike. To hospital: left hand cramped up from cold, lost feeling in it. Leaving hospital: started to rain, windy, face became numb.
Renogram works and happened as follows:
Drink at least a litre of water an hour before test. Immediately before test, empty bladder. Escorted to a off-cream room with neon strip lights (one flickering). The room had a brass plaque commemorating its opening. Asked to lie down on equipment similar to that in opening credits of 'Hulk' TV series. The plaque says this is the 'gamma' room.
IDgaf on 01.15.04 @ 12:37 PM GMT [link]
15 minutes to get to the hospital. 15 minutes spent looking for a space in the carpark. Ended up wedged between a saloon and a concrete pillar. A tiny space when maneuvering in, but one that, as always, looked larger when out of the car. A bit like a fat bride and a wedding-night bodice, perhaps.
Handed blood forms into receptionist. Until this morning, I hadn't realised one was for a transfusion. Apparently some plasma is being set aside for me. Is the transfusion confirmed? Or willl juice be there if something goes tits-up when they're digging around inside me? Apparently it's the latter.
When I saw the form, I started thinking "BSE! BSE!”. I should have been thinking 'But in my first transfusion, they used the wrong needle and couldn't connect me to the IV”, yet somehow the thought of my brain melting was more of a concern than incompatible syringes .
(One thing's for sure, I won't get betting an Empire Strikes Back Snowspeeder after this hospital visit. I miss being a kid.)
IDgaf on 01.14.04 @ 12:37 AM GMT [link]
I was going to write a boisterous piece about a US man who's suing a cable TV company for not disconnecting their services to his house (even though he wasn't billed), claiming his addiction to cable contributed to his ruination.
I won't, though. Because that kind of piece is already all over the Internet. This is one of the reasons I stopped writing. Almost everything I'll write about you'll have already heard about - and on websites not dissimilar to mine. In news terms, the Internet isn’t a far-reaching multi-layered global community. It’s a tiny village full of local gossips, each adding peculiar – yet oddly familiar - spins to the tales they tell.
In the Cable TV case, the spin is probably along the lines of: What an idiot, what is our country coming to?, how can cable TV be addictive?, why didn't he just turn the damn thing off? All edgy and different, all subdued and similar.
Here's are a couple of paragraphs from an article about the case, extracts of a letter sent by the man to his cable TV company:
"I believe that the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years ...
“But the reason I am suing Charter is they did not let me make a decision as to what was best for myself and my family and (they have been) keeping cable (coming) into my home for four years after I asked them to turn it off."
My comment:
He should have deleted the first paragaph and altered the second. He might have a case for the Cable Company not complying with his request for cancellation, instructions they were (likely) to have been legally obliged to follow. The fact he didn't have to pay for it is irrelevant.
Cold, precise, indifferent. Corporate.
Now that should be different.
http://www.wisinfo.com/thereporter/news/archive/local_14044768.shtml
IDgaf on 01.12.04 @ 01:12 PM GMT [link]
Things my mother asks me on Sundays, #345.
"Do you know the phrase 'arse bandit' for a gay?"
http://shergoodforest.com/nonfiction/cook.html
Highlights include:
"Bear Cookin': The Original Guide to Bear Comfort ... Aimed at husky, hairy gay men—and their admirers—the book presents convenient and satisfying recipes for anyone who loves to cook—and eat!" and "Out of Our Kitchen Closets: San Francisco Gay Jewish Cooking".
What on earth? I realise minority communites sometimes have culture-specific tastes in music, literature and so forth, but gay food? I knew that smoking altered one's sense of taste, but smoking pole?
Do these books actually sell? If so, who to? People with an odd sense of humour? Or the homosexual equivalent of the nouveaux riche, recently out or actively experimenting, desperate to flaunt their sexuality and show they're part of the gang?
More royalist than the Queen, perhaps?
IDgaf on 01.11.04 @ 05:22 PM GMT [link]
First day back at work after Christmas holidays. Am unpleasantly full post a tuna and mayonaisse pasta salad. The mayo had the consistency of old cowgum. The pasta had fought off taste's advances.
I saw a good thing today, a series of posters on London Underground talking about money as a corrupting influence, how our possessions end up owning us and how we should spend time on our minds instead of our looks.
The posters were were comprised of black and white photos and red and white straplines. One quoted Malcom X. A banner quoted Edgar Allen Poe. The style was reminiscient of punk 'zines of the eighties and the Art of Noise.
I was surprised and pleased to see my beliefs writ large in the tube. Perhaps they were absorbed by some of the thousands of commuters that pass daily through Bond St. station. At the very least they made a stand against the lesser aspects of human society and nature.
Who had done this work? Which commonsense, anti-unconcious consumerism organisation had the guts and money to say all this? To bring these messages to the heart of London's over-priced and spiritually malnourished shopping district?
Selfridges. Advertising their January sales.
Bollocks.
IDgaf on 01.08.04 @ 12:56 PM GMT [link]
This link is probably winging its way around the world now. I'll replicate it here regardless.
Letters from US soldiers to Michael Moore.
I think Moore's importance is overstated, but the (apparent) ideals he stands for aren't.
I still think he should get a haircut and some decent clothes, the bloody hedgemonkey.
IDgaf on 01.07.04 @ 10:37 PM GMT [link]
I am a heterosexual man. When see pictures of scantily clad chicks, I get aroused. When I see a pretty woman, I want to ask her out.
I am able to appreciate a man's good looks in an aesthetic and evolutionary sense. I can tell why women would find him attractive - height, good cheekbones, looks strong etc. However good looking men arouse nothing in me but envy, because they get all the chicks.
As previously mentioned, I like chicks. I also like computer games that involve guns, heavy metal, burping and am an insufferable slob. Admittedly while not stereotypically heterosexual in all respects (I have a sense of romance, don't like football, can cook and don't understand cars), I am not so atypical as to appear anything but straight. Why, then, does this test http://www.burlyadventurer.com/quiz/index.tcl?gay say I'm gay and is 81.38% confident in its answer?
I did the test a second time, incase something went wrong. The results were a bit better - that time it was only 62% positive I was bent. How many times will I need to be tested before I get an accurate representation of my sexuality?
It isn't being thought of as gay that I'm peturbed about. It's just how massively inaccurate it is. If it had been 'You are Gay. We are 30% confident in our answer', that's fine. 81.38% though? How does that happen? Is there something I'm not admitting to myself? Am I unlucky with women because they think I fancy their brothers?
What have my parents not told me?
IDgaf on 01.06.04 @ 01:32 AM GMT [link]
Based on Real Life Events. Were that cartoon to be on Cable TV, it'd appear on 'When Speech Synthesisers Go Bad', hosted by a guy with a beard. Possibly wearing loafers.
IDgaf on 01.03.04 @ 04:14 AM GMT [link]
For what it's worth, I try to be non-commital or vague: "Perhaps I'll see you around" is a favourite of mine. I cringe if I say it "It's been nice meeting you."
At work, when asked how I am, I tell the truth. That catches people off-guard. If I phone the same person multiple times, I'll ask if s/he's sick of me (or I'll talk to them about superheroes). Anything to break up the accepted rules of regular, meaningless, conversation. I hate shit-chat.
IDgaf on 01.02.04 @ 10:43 PM GMT [link]
There is a wonderful collection of photos at this site:
http://oboylephoto.com/state_hospital/index.htm
The site is called 'Modern Ruins'. This link has photos of a 'State Hospital for the Insane'.
The pictures are intriguing to the mind and pleasing to the eye. They have aspects of beauty about them. I am fond of decay, finding in the decomposition of things an intrigue, sense of place and of history that cannot be found in the modern, the shiny, the untouched.
When one finds oneself in unfamiliar buildings, one can imagine people who had been before: their stories, arguments, jealousies and loves. This is easy to do in old buildings. Easier still in buildings lost to care and purpose.
IDgaf on 01.02.04 @ 06:29 PM GMT [link]
A 'MIRACLE baby' who became the youngest-ever person to have a heart valve transplant has died in a freak accident at the age of 11.
Katie Watson collapsed in front of her father and brother at a swimming pool. She was spinning around in the car park, made herself dizzy and fell, banging her head. The blow would have been a minor injury to most children, but it was enough to stop her heart.
She was just four weeks old when she survived a pioneering operation in which surgeons repaired two holes in her heart and replaced a valve. Katie's mother Jane, 39, from Newcastle, said: 'It seems so cruel for her to die in a stupid accident like this. Katie would have been 12 on Boxing Day. The hardest thing I have ever done was to say goodbye to her at the hospital.' Katie's parents split in August and she lived with her father Tony, 40, in Dunbar, East Lothian. - taken from 'Metro',18/12/03
Reading of a child's death, one is sometimes incredulous as to the illogical things parents say post-accident/murder/whatever. These utterances solve nothing, can hinder acceptance and to correctly-calibrated ears, have alternate, stupid, meanings.
For example:
'It seems so cruel to die in a stupid accident like this.': “if she'd been killed in something serious like a motorway pile-up, it would have been easier to accept”.
Death is eternally cruel and that wasn't a stupid accident. (Those involve banana skins and grand pianos). Serious or stupid, it's a moot point. The grass is always greener in other cemeteries.
'Katie would have been 12 on boxing day': “If she'd died on Boxing Day, she'd have had a long and fulfilling life.”
Dead a week-or-so before a birthday: she wasn't even 12! Dead on her birthday: she was only 12! What difference does it make? Were the presents she missed that great? Did birthdays assuage maternal guilt over heart-defects?
If the child dies before the parent, age is irrelevant. What's more, death is always inconvenient and untimely. Why torture oneself about it?
I don't see anything sad or cruel here. She was spinning around because she was could do, because she enjoyed it. People don't have operations to go to school or to get a job. We get mended so we can have fun. That's the point.
The kid died being a kid. Seems OK to me.
IDgaf on 01.01.04 @ 06:00 PM GMT [link]
