Sooooooo...the penultimate episode of s4...

( oh jesus yes there are spoilers )

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!! Cliffhanger much??!!

I genuinely cannot remember the last time I was sat WAITING FOR A TORRENT TO BE UPLOADED. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't about 4 hours until the frigging thing even airs.

This is what S4 of Dexter has done to me.

I am totally mainlining Christmas this weekend. This is the way it goes for me these days; not giving a toss about the fact it's approaching and then suddenly - KERBLAM!!!! - a week or so before I go crazy and turn the house into a freakin' grotto with tons of lights and sparkly stuff and an enormous tree covered with about a thousand baubles (which I also added to this year as the tree is 8ft to compete with our new super high ceilings and NEEDS MOAR BAUBLAGE).

( pictorial evidence under a cut for largeness )

But if I'm a bit festively crazy, then Faye is certifiable. She is almost permanently attached to the tree, with three or more ornaments almost always clutched in her hands, the favourites being a little nutcracker dolly and a fake gingerbread man. Conversations overheard between the two ornaments generally follow these lines:

"Where are going soldierman?"
"I's going to nursery"
"I is going to school"
"Ok, see you later"
"Ok, see you later choochoo man"

(She mispronounces "gingerbread man" as "choochoo man" but it's one of those dumb things which we've always just perpetuated instead of correcting because it's funny).

Christmas is going to be totally WORK FREE for me this year, as I'm in sole charge of the business since D (my longtime business partner) decided to jack it in for good last month as she began her maternity leave. Despite the initial panic of OMG I HAVE TO DO MY OWN ACCOUNTS NOW AND I SUCK AT MATHS!!! and the sudden massive increase in workload, I'm now pretty happy with the situation. OK, so I do need another designer I can outsource to sometimes, who is fast, accurate and extremely creative (not to mention slightly cheaper than me so I can still make a profit), but other than that...well...things are ok. I am in control of my workload and the income from it for the first time EVER, and it feels pretty bloody good. I told a woman I wasn't interested in her job the other day simply because she seemed flakey and was more than a little imperious and snotty with me on the phone, and I didn't even feel guilty. Go me. I am my own good boss and I may give myself a big bonus just to show me how I appreciate that fact.

Hoho. Here's to a relaxing Sunday doing NOTHING except maybe watching Medium and eating too many roast potatoes.

( I find this far less flattering than you might imagine )

OK, so he used to be a friend of mine (and an utterly useless business partner) but fucking really. The copy on our site was written, honed, carefully crafted by ME over a period of time, using the many years of experience I have in the art of writing self-aggrandizing bullshit and I do not appreciate my hard work being fucking hijacked by some flake who can't be bothered to spend the time it takes to write 200+ words of his own self-aggrandizing bullshit.

I am unreasonably irritated by this. And not just because he is who is is or because I have oestrogen surging around my body at roughly the speed of a stampeding yak.

Hello LJ. It's been a while.

First of all, I just need to get a few things off my chest. The reasons for my long absence are many and varied, but are not because:

a) I've 'outgrown you' or that

b) the role that you once played in my life has been filled with bimbo blogs like Facebook and Twitter or

c) even that I have less 'free time' these days for typing up endless screeds of rubbish or notating every freakish notion that pops into my head. I still do that, I just do it in emails.

The reason I lost interest in you for a while - LJ my long and trusted friend - is that I am a fickle and moody bitch who tends to go off things for period of time (like exercise and healthy eating) before realising that she actually liked that thing quite a bit and should probably get back to it before she forgets how.

(That's more about the exercise and the healthy eating, but you see where I'm going with this?)

Anyway, that's all it is. Admittedly I'm a bit of a Twitter and Facebook whore these days, but I realised this week that I genuinely miss writing stuff, and telling you about all the minutiae of my everyday life (that I don't even care if you read or not), so I am going to try and do this again. Although probably no fic will be forthcoming. I'm a bit over all that. Which is not to say I look down on all you guys who still love it. You go. I'll just stay here and man the sofa.

So just to bring you up to speed on all my news:

• I moved house in October which I sometimes feel ok about
• I have put on 5lbs BUT THAT IS ALL
• Faye is almost 3 now and almost permanently grumpy
• I am still doing the design thing BECAUSE IT'S MY ONLY MARKETABLE SKILL BESIDES FELLATIO
• I still watch ALL THE TV GOD MAKES
• I still swear too much

Let's see what else I can think to write...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/8295541.stm

I saw this item on the news today, and felt a strange mix of sadness and nostalgia.

Melanie Hall went missing from Bath in my second year of art college in that area. She was the same age as me at the time, 25 - a little too young too old for the excesses of student life but still young enough to act stupidly occasionally. She'd been at a nightclub that evening that I'd been to more than once with my friends, a nightclub I'd left drunk more than once, stumbling to the station to catch the train home or - more than once - into a taxi only to be woken by the driver when he reached my house.

I remember watching the news report on our little portable TV in the sitting room, surrounded by my 3 housemates (my girlfriends and classmates) and all looking at each other in - what? - surprise I suppose, concern, a little bit of alarm, but nothing more than that. No real feeling of connection.

I've driven down that stretch of the M5 maybe 30...40 times since then. Come off that slip-road, probably even eyed the overgrown verges, the long grass where all the rubbish collects that people have thrown from their cars. I may even have seen the black bin liner than contained her body for the last 13 years sticking out of the grass and thought to myself, fleetingly (like so many others will have): "there could be a body in there".

Thousands upon millions of people driving past her there, lying in the grass, cloaked in black plastic. Maybe even her own family and friends driving, never guessing they had just passed her, that the end they have longed for for over a decade was right there. Lying on the hard shoulder, 6 feet from the wheels of their car.

I don't know why that makes me feel so fucking sad and desolate, but it does.

Rest in peace, Melanie. I hope your family has some peace now too.

My friend C took this picture and...I don't hate it. Ok, my calves look a bit chunky and there is what looks like a hotdog in the foreground, but I actually kind of like the picture. Which is a big thing for me. I usually HATE pictures of me of any kind.

I wish I could laugh at the X-Factor auditions like I used to. I used to CRY with laughter. Sometimes my sides would be hurting afterwards. The combination of the 'before interview', the audition itself, the after-bit when they rant and their parents shout at the camera and march their weeping (hopelessly off-key) child off yelling obscenities re: Simon Cowell, the outfits, the duos, the awful awful acapella groups.

I can't laugh now though because, once an audience became involved, it just seemed mean.

OK strictly speaking, that's not true. I do laugh, I just feel it somehow cheapens it when 2500 people are laughing along with you.

Before, it just seemed more...select. Just me and the judges and sometimes a tube of Ben & Jerry's Frozen Yogurt, laughing it up at the poor sad freaks.

Why do they change stuff that was fine as it was?

Thought you guy might enjoy this little movie I made for Faye in which her beloved Pink Mouse (now more grey than pink) goes to the park...

( Pervert got sex kicks in slurry )

"At the time magistrates were told that the farmer first became suspicious that something odd was going on when he found a water trough filled with manure and tissues scattered around."

I am feeling very cold today.

I am feeling very Larry David today.

Also, I watched 'In The Loop' a few days ago and now can't stop swearing casually all the time.

We are one tiny step closer to moving house today. I finally have 3 quotes for the doors, the price of which I have to knock off the price of the house in order to end up with the final figure. With any luck our buyer will SIGN tomorrow and we can AT LAST set a date for moving into our new house. It now looks like it will probably be the last week of this month, as the owners of our new house have been gazumped and now have to move into rented accommodation.

Soon. The nightmare will be at an end very soon.

And you will be able to come and visit me.

:)

I think I want to weep.

Apparently our back doors, which we had installed in 2006 (by a builder I shall hitherto refer to as the useless c*nt) and which cost us in excess of £2k are 'non compliant' with building regulations and will either need to be replaced (at least another £2k) with double glazed ones in order to get the certificate from the Buildings Inspector that we need in order to sell the house. Alternatively - and here's what we will probably have to go for owing to the fact that we're supposed to complete next Friday week - he can issue us a certificate saying 'this is the only thing that is non-compliant' and we can - oh joy - drop the price of the house by the £2k it will cost to replace them, that is if the buyer still wants it.

I am just thrilled with this current turn of events, as you can well imagine.

I am seriously reaching the end of my tether as far as the whole sale of our house goes.

For the last four weeks all I've had from our buyer's solicitor is an endless stream of questions relating to the guarantee for our double glazing, the certification for the electrical work we had done, details of the central heating service record and then finally - 2 weeks before we are due to complete - they now decide that they need evidence of the fact that the changes we made to the house 3 years ago did not require planning permission.

I found out that we didn't need planning permission by going down to the planning office and asking them, so there really is no record of that.

So I ring the planning office and tell them all this and they say, again, no we didn't need permission, and no there are no certificates or any formal crap available to me to prove that I didn't need it. So I tell the solicitors this and supply them with the name and number of the planning office guy who advised me at the time and again now and - lo - today, here again, another letter on my mat;

"Please provide a copy of the relevant building regulation approval for the relocation of the bathroom..."

So I ring the planning office again, speak to the same guy again, and ask him again "why do they think I need building reg approval for this, when you tell me I don't??!" I was told on three separate occasions that if I didn't need planning permission for work, then building regs wouldn't get involved but - OMG FUCK ME!!! - now he totally backtracks on what he told me on Monday and says "Oh yes...apparently you did need permission for moving your bathroom, and - oh shit - now you'll have to apply retrospectively and we'll have to send an inspector out to look at the work that was done and make sure it's all ok"...

3 frigging years and I need to find this out now??!

So they're charging me £130 just to come out and say "no, that needs doing", and already told me that I needed to get an extractor fan fitted in the bathroom and the light switch changed and the light fitting changed and...holy crap anything else.

But what do I do? I just have to keep ploughing on and shelling out money to get everything up to spec so some fucker will buy the house. What other choice do I have. Seriously.

This whole thing has just turned into a world of bullshit and I frankly regret ever saying we wanted to move.

MOTHER.

FUCKER.

I had a dream last night that I was an assassin for MI5. They showed me a video of my first target - he was about 22, with dark hair, looked a bit like Paolo Nutini - then handed me my gun.

I've never felt happier.

:)

Just saw Andre Braugher in the promo for House season 6. Cheered me up a bit.

I am having a very bad day.

I feel so fucking angry and sad and useless today.

I know it's probably just hormones and that I should just eat some frigging seeds or something and just get over it, but I feel like a dog tied to really short bit of rope just snapping and snipping at everyone and everything I can reach.

I'm playing my second live gig at the local Picturehouse tonight and am really not looking forward to it as much as I did the last one, although ironically I have rehearsed a LOT more and have shedloads more original material than I had last time, and Rich actually knows all the double bass parts pretty well and is unlikely to fuck more than one of them up.

But today I hate all my songs and I suck at guitar and I can't sing for shit.

I am consumed with blah. If I had the ability and finance to purchase some mood altering drugs right now I so would, but none of my friends sell recreational narcotics and I have to pick Faye up from nursery at 1 and can't be bombed or they might notice.

This week I have begun collecting other people's shopping lists from my basket when I go to the supermarket. I'm not sure why I'm doing this, only that it brings me a degree of amusement to see what other people deem worthy of a shopping list and, more importantly, how they choose to note it down.

The list that started this was written on a blue notepad sheet headed with the words: "Be nice to your children, they pick the retirement home" and decorated with a drawing of a rocking chair. The list itself included a number of fairly standard items; milk, carrots, razor blades - but amongst those crossed off (having presumably been purchased without any kind of difficulty) was the item;

Hedgehog Food

Further down the list was a small additional list;

Pharmacist
Osteopath
Ears syringed.



Yesterday's basket brought the items*;

- tomatoes.
- Bread
- Pan?
- Pants?
- Stir-fry
- Beer?
- Wine
- herbs.

One of the things I find most fascinating here is the uncertainty about the pants. Also the wonderfully transparent flow of thought processes; Pan? Pants? [and once I'm in my pants, having cooked my stir-fry in my new pan, maybe some] Beer? [Or perhaps I'm far more likely to be in the mood for] Wine.


Today's basket is less rewarding, but nonetheless still fascinating. For example, why does the maker feel the need to prefix the words "T Bags" with the word "Nice". As opposed to appalling T bags or sub-standard T bags? And why the need for an entire ham and yet only a single carrot? 4 pints of milk, 2 loaves of bread and then...another whole ham. Apparently his or her diet consists entirely of different kinds of sandwich, with cereal and yogurt as the occasional supplemental blip in an otherwise entirely wheat+filling based menu. Luckily they still have time to apply "hair-gel" and "diodrant" though.

This is a most enjoyable hobby and I intend to continue posting this shit. Feel free to ignore me if this doesn't interest you.

* punctuation and capitalization has been faithfully reproduced.

Hello LJ my old friend. It's good to speak with you again.

I neglect LJ these days in much the same way that I neglect the two fish we got for Faye a while back. I mean I feed them and occasionally clean out their tank, but I stopped caring if they're swimming or floating on the surface a good while back now and I worry about what that says about me.

I both like and dislike Facebook. I've witnessed more and bloodier arguments on there in the last 12 months than I have in this place in the last 7 years. I can only put this down to the fact that the FB crowd have no online social skills, and do not understand the subtle and graceful use of language that the interweb requires. They do not understand that you cannot harangue people, insult them and generally abuse their personal tastes without carefully bracketing your statements in :) :P and o_O, so as to ensure that the reader understands that you are not actually apoplectic with rage and hell bent on venting your true feelings regarding their dubious taste in TV and life-partners and hairstyles.

The general public does not know this and yet the general public have been let loose on Facebook, rather like a blindfolded and jovial orangutan wielding a machete.

I like Twitter, but I suspect for all the wrong reasons. I like the fact that I can talk to people I would otherwise never dare to approach in public. I had a bizarre expletive-peppered conversation with Matt Berry of 'The Mighty Boosh' and 'Snuff Box' the other evening which left me a little bemused. I said to S "I just had this weird online conversation with Matt Berry", and he just rolled his eyes at me and went back to reading The Economist. I couldn't help thinking that if I'd approached Mr. Berry in a bar somewhere and had the same exchange, S would have been both amazed and impressed at my audacity. But the internet is not life and so therefore that was not a conversation I suppose. Merely an electronic exchange of obscenities. With an obscure British comedian.

I dislike Twitter because it's hard to be funny within 140 characters. But I like the challenge.

Mostly I feel as if Facebook is a odd blue and white kind of succubus, drawing the lifeforce out through my eyes and sapping my ability to do anything but click "home" over and over again and complete, overly long and poorly constructed quizzes by people who can neither spell, punctuate or poorly construct quizzes. I need to break its hold on me. I need to do more thinking and reading and moving around and move my neck occasionally. I need to stop clicking through stranger's photo albums on the off-chance that I'll see something odd or salacious they didn't mean a complete stranger to see. Life is too short, although sometimes Facebook makes it seem interminable.

If only my job didn't require me being online all day. If only my job was to tag newts or climb telegraph poles in obscure areas of Dartmoor or chase stray dogs with a long plastic loop on the end of a pole.

But it isn't. My job is difficult to describe to young children, which somehow makes it seem all the more pointless.