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2008.05.16 12.03 Funz ? I am now officially looking forward to the weekend. Actually I have been really really really looking forward to it for approximately three weeks, as the last one was terrific. I can't work out whether it was so great because I was different, or because it was different. I've definitely been a lot more outgoing recently, and that worked so well being there, surrounded by people I know and have.... been through stuff with. In the past I really haven't fully taken advantage of what a great environment it is. And recent years have been clouded by my generalised anxieties, when I obviously wasn't well enough to be there, but was also not well enough to make the decision not to be there. But it was also an extra-intimate gathering; much tho I love the little n00bs flapping about, there is something seriously special about looking round a crowded room full of people and pretty much every single person being someone you know and care about on some level. This weekend, however, promises building a fire and telling stories. I am very impressed that this has been planned by C. I thought his special skill was being terribly cute and making ladies of a certain age squeee (although dangerously I think I may be sliding into the 'ladies of a certain age category' - his squee-ing powers seem to be cumulative...) (and to limit it to the ladies is also very closed-minded of me. One of the most laugh-out-loud trying-to-look-supportive moments I've ever experienced was a very heterosexual, very unreflexive 50-yr old man thinking he was feeding back to me about C's work, but actually just telling me over and over again how beautiful he is). Anyway, looks like he's also turning out to be hippie-tastic. Which is definitely all good. I'm hoping there will be puppets, too... Although saying that, I am major stressing over work. This is because I know I have to leave here at a specific time, and have done some tidying (i.e. and additional task besides the big one I'm doing right not) before I go. That's how terribly terribly bad I am at having Plans. Mood:  bouncy
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2008.05.14 13.13 Gold Farming... Whatcha Reckon ? Just went to an interesting talk by my supervisor where she mentioned MMOs and gold farmers. I've heard the story before a few times. She's talking about the exploitation of low-paid workers to support the play of richer players in the west. So that the fantasy of mastery can be purchased, while somebody else's labour is obscured. Suddenly, this made a connection for me with some stuff I've been thinking about gaming and work. Two other examples I've been rolling around in my head for a while gained new meaning. There are: 1) T.L. Taylor, who is fucking cool, has done some ethnographic-y work with Powerlevellers. Basically d00ds who are playing super-efficiently, putting in a lot of hours, to get hold of the best stuff and effectively beat the game. Traditionally researchers found this hard to make sense of because it looks like work. TL just accepts that this is another form of play that people like, and hangs out with them acting impressed about their groovy items. 2) A guy I did some research with about internet use. He gave me some audio-diary stuff of him playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, which I am looking at for how playing is accomplished through emotion. And it boils down to him having no fun while he plays, and experiencing the game a lot like work. He's pissed off that he/his character is spending a lot of resources he can't really afford, pissed off that the people he's teamed with are playing badly, and have designed their characters badly/selfishly, and his main motivation to play is the XP. All he wants to do is drag his character to the next level. So his play resembles work, but unlike TL's, where they are go-getting professional-types, he's doing some kind of not-fun alienating work. So basically I'm struggling with the idea that play can look and feel like work. And then yesterday it struck me, it can also have an exchange value like work. Grinding for gold to pay for your mount, or XP to get out of a slump level into a shiny, fun level, becomes almost a money-saving exercise (like doing your own DIY, or mending your jacket, or whatever), in a world where you could pay £20 for someone else to do it for you. And does this then impact on the warm-shiny feeling you get to have accomplished it, the knowledge that you could have, and some people definitely will have, bought it? So now there really isn't a terrible lot of difference between play and labour. TL's latest work is with professional Counter-Strike players, where the difference becomes even more crazy-blurred. So is play work ? Or, more accurately, in what ways can playing an MMO be work? Mood:  geeky
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2008.04.02 19.11 There'll be No. Butter. In. Hell !!! Finally saw Cold Comfort Farm last night, after almost a year of expectations. There were fantastic moments, like realising that Stephen Fry was playing Mr Mybug, and essentially is him in real life. But overall I was a bit disappointed. The humour wasn't relentless enough, and a lot of the low-key charm was pushed a bit, too. Even the no butter in hell line, possibly one of the funniest in the entire universe, was a bit too Made For TV :( This is a bit of a limp entry. All the cool entries in my head require a bit too much commitment for my current, failing-to-get-any-work-done mode of operation. PS: Donna Haraway rocks my socks. Mood:  Obsessed with Derren Brown
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2008.03.25 13.41 Just settling down to my lunch and am assaulted by the horror of no crisps. A terrible oversight on my part. I pop downstairs to the cafe to make good my mistake. And no cafe. Fuckin Baby Jesus. But of course he's not a baby by this feast day. He's a grown man. A grown man of the kind of potency that can keep my from my crisps !!! YEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRGGHHHH !!! I am chuckling in satisfation about this conversation, taking place on a virtual plane not far from here: On first looking into... Grass Jelly with Milk
Largely estranged father wrote Largely estranged father wrote
Mood:  chipper
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2008.03.24 20.37 The other green drink...  While in Glasgow I pottered to the supermarket to purchase something to sip genteely on during the evening. I thought a warming ginger wine would be ideal for my purposes, and so I set out to look for some. Undeterred by it's placement on the shelves directly next to the Buckfast tonic, and the price slightly higher than the Tesco's-own I am in the habit of drinking, I purchased a bottle of Crabbies Ginger Wine. It was am-a-zing. Far far better than the skanky Green's that is available outside Scotland. I am dreaming of it's comforting layers of spiciness, and authentically green hue still.Mood: calm
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2008.03.19 17.46 I'm off to Dublin in the green, in the green... Btw, martincutbill, Ulysses 31 is just as fuckin badass as I remember it. The opening credits alone poo all over Transformers.He angers Posiedon !! He lives in a Space Ship !! He's got an expansive, hippy beard !! He is accompanied by A ROBOTIC COMPANION !! What is not to like? |
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2008.03.16 21.18 Of telephones and wikipediaz... Was having a luvverly chat with my little bro on the phone, while sitting in front of the computer. On a barely conscious level I was fiddling about online, and before I knew what was happening I / we had dug up a few gems from our childhood. Which no one else in the universe will have heard of. My personal fav is good old fortycoats: Check his absolutely lush supplies of sweets... But Bosco also deserves a word. He lived in a little tiny house that was... inside a table? |
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2008.03.11 15.48 Comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb While I'm in the posting mood, a self-help-tastic exercise I stumbled across this morning, that actually does sound pretty helpful. It's part of a series, so concepts like 'The Trusting Universe' and 'Law of Attraction' are defined elsewhere... Exercises 1. In the center of a page, draw a circle and within it write down one life dream that you would love to achieve--the bigger and more "unrealistic" this one seems, the better! Then surround it with all the reasons why it "probably won't happen," why it's too big or all those little voices that shoot down the idea. Empty your brain and fill the page with all the beliefs you have that stop this dream from becoming a reality. b. Now it's time to play "The Trusting Universe's Advocate." At the center of another sheet draw another circle and insert the same life dream. Answer, from the perspective of a Universe that totally trusts you to achieve this goal, why this dream "probably will happen," why it's completely attainable and all the beliefs that make this dream possible, do-able and even easy--imagine you are really a voice of the Trusting Universe, trying to convince a human being why something is in fact a possibility. As you do this, cross out each limiting belief on the first page. If you get really stuck, flip the original statement into the positive. c. Read each page of beliefs aloud, starting with the first one. After you have finished, take notice for a moment how you are feeling--how you feel in your body, in your mind, in your life. Then do the same with the second. How do you feel after you read the trust-based beliefs? Remember from the Law of Attraction, the more you can live into the feeling that the universe supports you, the more you'll attract this way of being into your living reality. d. Pin the second page up somewhere where you can see it often. Read these trust-based beliefs aloud at least once per day. |
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2008.03.11 14.53 So difficult in the thinking about, so easy in the doing Over the past couple of weeks, I have often been in a situation where I think "There's no way I can do that. I know what's going on, and my completely knowledgeable assessment is that it's never gonna happen." But then in the end it does. I noticed it this afternoon, when I was in a Yogalates class. (For those who are following my adventures - yes, I've found another good teacher! W00t!). We were doing some quite simple postures, and deepening each one five separate times. One particular pose I thought "I'm crap at this one, it's already starting to hurt and I know I'm not going to get any more stretch out of this". But, inevitably, after a few minutes I could. After a few seconds I probably could. Not tons of course - I do know something about which bits of me are tight. So although my judgment had some relation to what did happen, I was actually completely surprised. Surprised by how, with almost no effort, something that seems impossible one minute, can be not only possible, but even easy-breezey the next. I've felt the same way recently about some teaching I did last week. Teaching stats, which I can bluff pretty good, but don't know that well. Once you get into bluffing stats... you notice that everyone else is, too. HMm... perhaps I'm selling myself short when I say I 'bluff' it. I know a lot more than most people do, but not as much as I do about social constructionism. Not as much as someone who was living the stuff. And, of course, I don't believe a fuckin word of it, so that will always hold me back somewhere down the line. So I was given some handouts and bits from last year. Obviously written by someone who knows nothing about stats. And I didn't have time to rewrite them, but they were dreadful. My heart sank as I looked through them and knew that I could never teach this with a straight face, and that it would take hours to rewrite the whole thing - probably longer than doing it from scratch. But I read through these shit materials every day for about three days, and didn't do much other work on it. And by the final day, I had planned the sessions, and all I had to do was copy them out onto the overheads. And actually the experience of revising some stats, and then teaching them, was all rather cool and a post for another day. A similar thing has happened in recent developments with the Imaginary Girlfriend, which have been quite transformative for me. At first I thought that I couldn't let go of her and that to do so would be impossibly painful, but it got easier almost straight away - just like the yoga posture. In fact a tremendous amount better, because tons of other things in my life have become much more together in a catalysing effect. But what I find scary about this, is that I wasn't able to predict it would happen. I really really believed that it would be a hard hard slog. Part of this positive effect, is that I feel better in myself than I have for years. Regular readers of this journal will know I've had some hard times recently, and that I've often written about small amounts of progress towards getting better. But at the moment things are changing in leaps and bounds, and I feel like my old self. One of the effects of this is that I think I am way better than all of you - something I distinctly remember feeling in the distant past, but I thought would never return. Of course I had the decency to keep quiet about it in those days, so you probably didn't realise. As I become re-acquainted with this different me, I notice that she's not exactly the same as Old Me. There has been some progress, notably I think I take myself less seriously now than I used to. I am sure Old Me was a lot more perceptive and had better judgement than the Crap Me of recent times. So I wonder if she knew about this effect with the not-knowing how you'll feel later, and if I've forgotten it in the meantime. She certainly used to bandy about the corrupted Robert Pirsig quote above quite a bit. Mood: calm
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2008.03.03 12.37 "An embroiderer can become a sociologist, but usually she keeps quiet about it" This morning I am feeling strangely serene, perhaps too serene to do any proper work. This might be because the picturesque flurry of hail that accompanied me on my journey into college is making it very dark in here. With an enormous, useless window from floor to ceiling in the corner of this office, it feels a bit like a cave. I often feel like I could scurry up to the window, hang out of it for a moment, and then lightly jump down to the quiet side-road a floor below and get on with my business. The light right now, far more appropriate for going-home-time than mid-day increases the effect. Or maybe I'm feeling serene because this weekend is The Big One, and even though I've felt quite efficient in organising it, filling in nicely arranged spreadsheets, making good use of my pen-drive, and delegating wildly, I still haven't actually had a sense of the big picture. Only this morning I'm remembering a big slew of jobs that I haven't yet thought about. So the serenity might be more accurately described as a quiet, cheerful numbness enveloping me to protect me from The Truth. The weekend just gone was also terribly lovely, and full of those 'HMm... I really should write about this in my LJ moments'. But one thing I heartily promised to write about was a pleasing Rite Of Passage. My little brother giving me, in quick succession, two excellent and life-enhancing pieces of advice. One of them was about managing my relationship, and the second one was about cooking fried eggs. Both terribly important and sweeping areas of knowledge, so you can imagine how proud I am of his progress into being a Proper Human Being. This reminds me, in character and import, of The Day I Had More Physical Stamina Than My Mother. Rather upsetting for both of us at the time. But kind of in a good way, I suppose. Which only leaves me to say: angstoutlet, I'm still kind of sorry to hear your news. Am thinkin about you, and don't forget you are under orders to call me the moment you feel any less okay about it all.Mood: Myself again
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2008.02.20 19.03 I don't see what anyone can see... in anyone else. On a related note, when I am asking someone to do something I often say: Would you like to..., when I mean I would like you to.... Of course this is more of a problem in I'm In Charge contexts, where it's really my call to decide what people do and hand out the jobs, and if anyone defies me it will end up being tons more work for me and everyone else. Very recently, I've been experimenting with Would you be up fer..., but that works better in contexts where it's something in the future: "Would you be up fer doing this presentation next month", rather than "Would you be up fer filling this large container with water and carrying it up that hill right now." Hmm... (1) Would you like to fill this large container with water and carry it up that hill? (2) I would like you to fill this large container with water and carry it up that hill! (1) is literally never going to be true, is it.... Am I the only person who concerns myself with such issues? On a largely unrelated note, I saw Juno last night. It did an excellent job of being alright. But is definitely a better film for those who are a bit obsessed with the Moldy Peaches. The bit where two awkward teens start to sing me and dickymint's 'our song' to each other brought a, quite literal, tear to my eye. |
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2008.02.14 21.17 Welcome... In other news, I have been trying to replace the phrase 'feel free', as in 'feel free to pop round later if you change your mind', with 'you're welcome' as in 'you're welcome to pop round later if you change your mind'. I fear 'feel free' might be a terrible Americanism I've picked up somewhere, and that even if it isn't it's strangely lacking in the creation of freedom, and definitely not the encouraging warmth of a 'welcome'. |
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2008.02.14 16.47 Pea Shoots This week, I have been working my way through a bag of Pea Shoots. They just looked like a cop-out bag of salad, which I often buy, but I was attracted by the unknown in their name. And they are very very tasty. Just like lovely nearly-ripe peas. The flavour takes me back to being a small child, with little Roo at my side, standing in someone else's garden eating all their peas before they were ready. I was so impressed that I had thought of writing a post just about how great they are. So I did a quick search and found this - Pea Shoots are "a brand new vegetable". Solving that age old problem, of how tremendously difficult peas are to eat. And I'm not sure I know how to feel about that... Mood:  Pea Tears
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2008.01.23 22.06 I just spent the evening drinking and talking philosophy. Literally talking philosophy, with people saying things like "I think Heidegger's overall project was...", as a leisure activity. Have I finally become a real student? After all this time? |
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2007.12.20 19.30 It's like being at the zoo, isn't it ? Work Christmas party, which I haven't been to all the way through in years. And again I'm struck by how incredibly squalid our works do is. It's a room full of people who all consider themselves to be extraordinarily sophisticated and urbane, but strangely have consented to pay money to come to a school disco. Disappointingly, as a result of endless complaints the Misogynist Santa was toned down considerably, and quiet-lad-from-finances, he's-more-scared-of-you-than-you-are-of-h But I still got to watch a fat, balding, middle-aged international expert on money-laundering and organised crime do his signature dance to Sex Bomb in an adoring circle of secretaries... Life through a lens. |
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2007.12.18 15.11 Fairy Cakes. As per. I had a really vivid dream last night. I was in an aerobics class setting, with about twenty people, being led on a meditation on baking a cake. We were all lying out in mats on the floor, visualising in details the steps of making a cake. It seemed really really important to imagine it immaculately. After I woke up from the dream, I had trouble sleeping, but was convinced that the best way to get to sleep was to visualise mixing a cake, and find peace. I found it very very difficult to do. My usual strategy, when it comes down to visualising stuff to get to sleep, is to think of yoga moves and count my breathing. Both of which are inherently peaceful activities. I think maybe baking a cake is an inherently restless and rather stressful activity. Also, I kept doubting the recipe for victoria sponge in my head, and not being able to remember exactly how different ingredients behave. My imagined butter wouldn't act as recalcitrant as real butter... Mood:  not very well
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2007.12.12 12.47 I don't know where my monayz goes. Probably buying antiquated children's nature books. Life is in that Christmas run-down as everything I go to is The Last One Before Xmas. Went to The Last Weightlifting Class Before Xmas. And felt a genuine sense of loss. I know that by the time they start up again in January I'll be feeling a bit crappy and less fit for the missed out classes. And also I've got into the habit of eating a lot more terrible crap over the past few weeks. M is partially to blame for this... But I am still on a trajectory of wanting to lose a little weight, and I'll be cross after Christmas when it inevitably turns out I have gained a little weight. And then there's the knowledge it'll take me a couple of weeks to get my arse in gear to start going back to class... Think Club last night, was the Last One Before Xmas. Positively I think they will run some more next year, when at first there was over-optimistic talk about giving it back to the community and somebody else organising it. It was a Christmas special, and some rather magical things happened. My favourite probably being a spontaneous sing-along of Puff the Magic Dragon. But also notable was watching people deliver their own poetry. Something I have always felt I should do, but never much looked forward to. Actually it was very enjoyable, and quite unlike I was really anticipating, or anything else, really. One of the poems was about hoarding stuff. It was also about someone's nan.I had been thinking a bit already about my own hoarding practices, so it struck me to notice how hoarding is associated with the old and batty. I've been thinking about throwing out large amounts of things, from the mass of stuff I've recently been reunited with. I can see it will be a slow emotional journey, but I'm pretty sure at the end of it I will chuck a lot. I've seen I can live without it, and it's also been emotional and fabulous to see it again. And also quite surprising to realise how significant to my identity it is. That bits of me, who I am, are distributed out into these many many objects. Sometimes I've unearthed, from a dusty battered box, bits of me that I had forgotten about, and would have lost if it wasn't inscribed on this object. But still... I think appreciating some golden items throws into sharper focus the uselessness of a lot of the rest of it. Thinking about the association with old people reminds me again about my own impulse to hold onto time, by holding onto things. As if all of the mes that have existed at different times in my life, in different contexts, can be preserved and kept. Or at least reused in a way that maintains their dignity. I think this impulse appears in lots of other places in my personality - my attitude to time, relationships, and other things - wanting to hold on to what's gone before. But now that I look over the stuff that is that impulse made material, I feel somewhat disgusted by it, in spite of its comforting qualities. Mood: Clean
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2007.12.02 19.06 He was an amusing bloke, but I wouldn't introduce him to my sister. The title of this entry refers to the main protagonist in the anecdote most associated with angstoutlet. At the weekend I was privileged to hear the story from K's perspective. Fa-sci-na-ting... Heading down there I had one of the most wretched train journeys I have ever had. For awhile I feared all train journeys are like that, but coming home was magical in comparison. The seats were skanky, the volume of people were skanky, my boring book was skanky, the parade of different groups of girly-girls on a night out who occupied the table next to me were skanky. I had a dream that night about writing a long entry where I described each of these groups in turn, the tightness of their jeans, the quality of light as it passed through the cheap plastic cups they drank rose wine out of, and the glitter of their oversized jewellery. But, luckily for you, dear reader, I don't think I can bring myself to do it. I also dreamed a lot about jelly made out of evaporated milk. Mmmmm.... |
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2007.11.29 15.26 Embodiment and Affect Today I have been the gym for my usual Thursday lunchtime weightlifting class. Yes, I did say usual, as since the beginning of term I have been a terribly good girl, and have been doing the weightlifting class about twice a week. And even staying for an extra hour afterwards to do a yoga or pilates one. This level of goodness is totally inexplicable, as I have been quite naughty about settling back into PhD work. But I mustn't call it 'naughty', I must call it - 'This is fuckin hard !!!', because it is. The second month is nearly over, and I'm finally getting into some kind of decent routine. Which takes me to the real point of todays Going To The Gym story, which is that I've slowly noticed, for the past few weeks, that as I stare into the long, mirrored wall to make sure I'm lifting my barbell evenly or not letting my back curve, I have been thinking I look pretty hot stuff. Again 'hot stuff' is not the right word. Maybe 'nice' is. But I think this represents a settling and improvement in my general mood. A few weeks ago I was having a really bad patch, and I noticed that when I looked in the mirror I looked 'bad'. Can't get any more specific than that, just 'un-good'. But recently I've caught glimpses of myself and been genuinely distracted by how pleased I am to see me. So maybe one day I will finally shake off the funk of the last few years and do a sensible PhD.... In other news, I managed to get a henna tattoo done by a very cute girl from the Cardiff uni Islam society as I walked through the student union. Not really the weather for it, but I think it will take for tonight, at least. And check these lovely pictures that knifecollector dug up, showing loads of families with the food they eat in a week. This works for me on so many levels. For one thing, it's Gillian McKeith-tastic (I will not hear a word said against her...), and then it's heart-warming how you see their kitchens, and how they've all chosen to lay out the food to display it, and then arrange their family round it, and just look at all that lovely food... |
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2007.10.08 18.13 Buccaneer! Walked in to college for the First Time Ever from my lovely new flat. Although I was supposed to be all efficient and forward-looking, I couldn't resist meandering into a few tasty charity shops on the way up Canton's lovely Old Skool high street.  And as I did so, I was overtaken by a horrifying and unavoidable force... the clear knowledge that I have enough space to store as much crap as I want. For nearly a year there has been a little brightly coloured bulldog clip in my brain keeping in check the part of me that wants to amass random crap, or should I say Interesting Stuff, because I know I have no space to store it, or even enough space to properly play with it, and move it around pleasurably in relation to other lovely Interesting Stuff that I already own.Feeling the scales fall from my Desire To Purchase centres left me in a strange ecstasy, and the Interesting Stuff that did this to me was a lovely old copy of Buccaneers. This is a game my aunt used to own when I was a small child. It involves pirates! And pirate ships! And chests full of treasure! And most importantly, utterly charming little diamonds, rubies and pearls that you can hold in your hand and are all sparkly! Also, the current ownership of my aunt's version of the game is the topic of heated family politics and recriminations, because me and my brother infamously loved it so, but it was eventually given to someone that mistreated it. Something like that. But with a lot more venom on all sides. And now I have one of my very own, and can play with the jewels any time I like. And I picked up a book by satisfyingly barking Susie Orbach that I've never heard of. Called Hunger Strike and about Anorexia. I enjoyed Fat is a Feminist Issue far more than I thought, and with a lot less irony, so this one promises to be diamond stuff... |
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2007.09.27 16.38 95% of all Britain's blackcurrants make it...  Am I the only person who is just really angry about this? How can this be a slogan to make us like Ribena more? They are owning up to a terrible crime against us all. Those delicious blackcurrants should be distributed more equitably throughout our lives. Moderation in all things, Mr. Ribenaberry, get some lagom on your arse ! When these adverts first appeared on the telly, my mum became a bit misty-eyed and spoke of memories of her childhood, where blackcurrants were as cheap as chips and everyone was excellent to each other. And we all spent a moment deep in sadness for our shared blackcurrant loss. On a lighter note, I don't like blackcurrants, but Ribena is pretty hot stuff. Mood:  confused
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2007.09.26 21.50 More Chocolate... You know something? I hate straight legged trousers. It pains me that now they're all you can buy and I'll have to wait wait wait for them to be gone again. It's no coincidence that I'm realising this just as every pair of trousers I own has died all at the same time. The ordeal of this shopping trip was sweetened by the comfort that there are many, many soft, green jumpers that want to make me happy and live in my house. For the record, I ended up buying chocolate-coloured trousers with lots of pockets. But if you know me at all you already knew that... Something else I can't get enough of? Oatcakes. Why do I love them so much? Mood: chipper
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2007.09.21 17.39 Keill Randor in dead, dead, dead shocker. I walked into my sister's house, and spotted a newspaper cutting on the kitchen table. "Oooh, Douglas Hill" "Dead" "No..." "Hit by a car on a zebra crossing" "That would totally not have stopped Keill Randor, last legionary of Moros". I was a bit sad. I read those books relentlessly during some unidentifiable portion of my teenage years. The kind of time when I used to read a book over and over and over and over and over and over again. And there were millions of them. But the main thing I remember was the sexual dimension. No mention made in any obituary of how weirdly sexy those books were. Because they were totally boy's books. Why was I reading them ? Somewhere in the intersection of the screech of tortured metal and carelessness of flesh tearing over titanium skeleton I experienced, at the hand of librarian-championing, friendly-uncle smiling Douglas Hill, a sexual awakening that Judy Bloom just couldn't manage. Hmm.... Hill's loyal following among young adults... enjoyed his action-packed stories with themes of man's overwhelming desire for freedom, which can usually only be achieved by heroism underpinned by violence. What a great passage. And you can find that in the dictionary under wrong-wrong-diddly wrong. Mood: iron willed
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2007.05.14 15.39 French & Saunders - Lord of the Rings |
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2007.04.28 23.41 Snip Snap Snorem Alas, I couldn't find Fidgety Phil anywhere. |
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