marcus_felix

Last stretch

2009-09-07T21:01:33Z

What happens when I fail?

What then?

Kittens go here.

Two-tone

2009-08-26T14:33:38Z

Two-tone, my beloved desktop, is getting steadily less reliable with every passing week. We are now, he and I, playing chicken with my deadline. Will he pack up before or after? WHO CAN SAY?!

Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar

2009-08-26T13:41:09Z

I feel like death.

Post funny things here. I don't care what kind.

This entry brought to you by the following concepts:

2009-08-12T15:06:24Z

This entry brought to you by darkebon, who gave me:

Monkeys have never been my favourite animal. They occupy some space in the uncanny valley that I find disconcerting, and no matter how hard I try I just can't get the hang of them. Maybe it's the simian visage of the President I spent my teenage years hating; maybe it's their proportions, like ours but not like ours; maybe it's just the way everyone seems to think they're just stupid humans with fur. Maybe it's blind prejudice.

Don't get me wrong, they are worthy of the same consideration as other animals capable of suffering, as far as I'm concerned. I will stand for their consideration as much as any other animal. I'm even glad they're there. They've given us the gifts of a demonstrable evolutionary pathway resulting in (not leading to) man, experimental subjects with certain relevant similarities to ourselves, and the dream that one day we will get our fucking tails back. I want my fucking tail back.

But whatever it is about them, I just can't get the hang of monkeys.

-----

Cohorts were a Roman military unit, six centurions commanding 80 men each to form a cohort of 480. 12 of them formed a Legion, which, as everyone knows, is the awesomest of units. This isn't to say that cohorts weren't awesome. 480 legionaries is not a number you fuck with. I wish I had 480 legionaries.

In the modern sense, however, this once-military word has come to refer to a variety of types of group. A cohort study is a scientific study limited to a certain (human) demographic population, and in the broader sense yet, it refers to a group who share some purpose, experience or characteristic.

At Event III, a chap I'd never met before asked me the price of something at a shop. It was late Thursday, we'd both had a beer (or a cider), and we laughed at the possibility of him handing money over to me for someone else's property when he realised I didn't work there. I asked him who he played; he asked me the same; we chatted while we browsed the weapons. Would we have had anything in common if we weren't cohorts, or part of the same cohort, depending on how you want to use the word? I don't know.

I like being a part of a cohort :D

-----

Magic is, in one sense, the practice of convincing someone that the trick you just pulled was a priori not explicable by the laws of the Universe, and as a result, I fundamentally don't like it. On the other hand, it's also the word you use to admit something is far beyond your understanding, and as a result, I fucking love it. It's a concept I'm greatly ambivalent about; we love seeing rabbits pulled from hats and bisected women made whole again, but we know, while we watch, that if we could be shown the rabbit appearing from a hole in the world we'd shit a wall, and if the woman screamed and bled and was put back together with a glowing ring around her midriff, we'd run in terror.

We like it because we know it's not real, but it feels like it might be; effectively, we like it because we like things that scare and confuse us but that we don't feel threatened by. In that, it's really quite sublime, and that I can appreciate. This is where the second sense comes in.

The same is true of the other sense, and of course, it's here that they come together. Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and so is much of the basis of modern physics. We type at little plastic boards, and the written word appears, disappears, appears again, stored in a second at a distance we could never have reached before we learned about how to displace water, or make the air push us into it. Every single one of us is standing on the shoulders of giants too numerous to name, and we understand only the tiniest fraction of the world around us. That is magic, as Pratchett puts it, as Dawkins should. Some say that looking at the world for its rules and its laws takes away the beauty from it, takes the magic away. Fuck that. Knowing how the inside of a star works is as magical a story as believing it to be the remnant of a dead God.

Traditionally, magic is the exceptions to the rules, because it impresses us with how we can't understand it. In the 20th century, we learned how mind-breakingly big the rules themselves really were, and they became magical too. That is the kind of magic I can like.

-----

Stripes are simply the best pattern for a wemic. They're pretty snazzy on a suit. They keep you safe if you're a herbivore, and ironically, they make you a whole lot less safe if they're on a carnivore. They're useful for disrupting a pattern, and they can play tricks with your eyes if done right. In a sense, they're quite fundamental to a lot of humanity; we work best in straight lines, and so we can do things well in stripes; farming, painting, filling in any space, really. We invariably write in stripes, albeit of differing orientations when we want things to be read easily, because we're factory-built to work well with the horizontal and the perpendicular. They're quite a fundamental pattern, and one we've learned to play with well.

I like stripes.

-----

Heroes get everyone else killed. That's one way of looking at it, an extraordinarily cynical one, one that my cohort jokes about, popularised by an author whose readership includes many who play games of conquest and war. A more truthful view might be that the ones who get out of massacres alive are called heroes, whether they earned it or not. A more truthful view might be that heroes are other things too, like firemen, doctors, inventors, activists, and those who give far beyond what is required or expected when it is what is needed.

I wouldn't be so arrogant as to demand that they succeed. There's a reason most VCs are awarded posthumously. But I would ask that they had the chance to flinch back from whatever duty was presented to them, and they did it regardless. Not without doubt, regret, or suffering. Not without dreading what lay ahead. And afterwards, not without bitterness.

Heroes are people who do what is urgently needed, even when some of the consequences are unacceptable. The difference between a hero and a monster can be one of consequence-analysis. As a virtue-ethicist, I shy away from this where possible and look to motivations. But even if it all went wrong, they're never the people who refused the responsibility. It's a notoriously difficult thing to define - some would call Maggie a hero, God forbid - and as a result, I don't think it should ever be considered unambiguous. "Hero" is not a natural kind. It's still a useful term, to express one's respect and admiration.

Five Words

2009-08-12T10:43:24Z

Please give me them. Words. Things to talk about. I can't promise they'll be done immediately. But I need to write. Always need to write.

Family Photographs

2009-08-03T22:42:19Z

Hey peeps.

So uncle Hasi heard I did the family history thing, gods, I wish my mum would just shut up about that already, and he sent this. it was on, get this, a fucking papyrus. Do you get any weirder?

Anyway that's like a great-great-great-great-great-great grandma or whatever. He goes on about this is one of the oldest photographs in the world or something like it matters. Great, put it on the fucking Antiques Roadshow, we got digital already didn't we, we don't need papyrus reminding us my great-great-whatever granddad probly beat the shit out of her when she did anything wrong.

My family is so shit.

Bradford

2009-03-31T17:45:03Z

About to set off for Bradford. If I don't post again by midnight, avenge my death.

ETA: Back from Bradford. Cuts and bruises, mostly defensive wounds, nothing broken.

marcus_felix @ 2009-03-29T11:45:00

2009-03-29T10:45:24Z

Last.fm educates.

That is all.

(See below).

A first!

2009-03-27T18:39:22Z

So! I just had my first electric shock from the mains. It feels like a hardware geek rite of passage. Simultaneously, it feels like a numb ache down the length of my right arm and along the right side of my head and face. In truth, as rites of passage go, it probably wasn't as dangerous as many, but it was a hell of a lot more dangerous than, say, your average Reformed bar mitzvah.

That was maybe half an hour ago. My arm still hurts to use.

According to my dad, present at the time of screaming, there is no delayed damage from this: you just lose the hit-points and then you're fine. Well, that or you die. Guess I made my Fort save.

RAM

2009-03-13T15:24:27Z

Hay guise:

I just impulse-bought a Gb of DDR2 for £13.17 (including p&p). I was going to ask around about how much RAM was, but frankly, my motherboard can only cope with 2Gb, and I have a Gb-card filling one slot already, so for £13, why not?

Just making sure: I checked first with the local parts shop, who told me it'd be £25 for a Gb of DDR2. Tech-types, which is more likely: have I missed a bullet, or is this new RAM going to catch fire when I plug it in?

(Eventual goal: Empire: Total War)

We have changed dogs

2009-03-12T02:48:10Z

We have changed dogs a lot.

Some people are being bastards

2009-03-11T13:42:33Z

Some people are being bastards. There is a link, here, to stop them being bastards.

Detail:

--------------------

1. In the UK, local healthcare authorities are capable of making certain decisions regarding treatment. In some cases, these may well be directly contradictory to those decisions of the next-door Primary Care Trusts. This is part of the so-called Postcode Lottery.
2. The kinds of thing they have discretion over include whether to make referrals for disorders for which there are multiple possible treatments, whether not to treat disorders which it's entirely possible to live with, or whether to withhold treatments which are unlikely to have any benefit (this last reason is the cause of the Herceptin row).
3. Untreated gender dysphoria leads to self-harm and suicidality. People with untreated gender dysphoria are extremely unlikely to be capable of contributing to society.
4. Oxfordshire PCT clearly believes that gender dysphoria is not a disorder that needs treatment. It has ruled that in order to have their treatment funded, a patient's gender dysphoria must have already caused other serious health problems, such as suicidality or self-harm. (This is done by a common argumentative bait-and-switch tactic; they conflate gender dysphoria with the less distressing, less dangerous gender disorders which do not cause harm, and thereby rule that the whole group is not worthy of treatment. This is a subtle type of straw-man argument, or, as we call it in philosophical circles, utter bastardry).
5. Self-harm and suicidality directly contraindicate treatment for gender dysphoria.

-----

C: In Oxfordshire, if your dissatisfaction with your biological sex makes you want to change it, you are only referred for treatment if it has caused you other serious psychiatric problems. These secondary psychiatric problems deny you treatment.

--------------------

It is illegal, on the grounds of unwarranted discrimination, to refuse to treat gender dysphoria. The situation that this PCT's heads have set up flat-out denies treatment to people with gender dysphoria; they are only referred for treatment when treatment is unsuitable. As such, this petition, to cast it in its most innocent light, is an attempt to redress a broken legal situation.

In the cold, grey light of a Southern dawn, however, this is a situation which some people, fully deserving of treatment both in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the rest of the country's healthcare authorities, have been fighting against for some years. In other words, some people are being bastards, and with nothing more than your name and email address on a petition, you can help to stop them.

Stop people being bastards. Follow this link for more information and this link to sign.

(If it's the xp you're after, I should point out that this does count towards your entry application into the Perfectly Ordinary Superhero prestige class).

The way you find out.

2009-03-06T17:26:32Z

I just saw this comic. Warning: surprisingly emotional, if very short, mention of domestic abuse.

Of course, it doesn't mean anything. Of course not. It's just something he saw on telly in the daytime. Must've been Doctors. Maybe Diagnosis Murder. His father's never done anything like that to him. I mean, you couldn't blame him, all the trouble he is, like the time he just wouldn't let go of his little sister's hair, but no, he's a saint. He'd never do anything like that.

God, the last panel of that brought the tears out.

Unsettling

2009-02-20T14:52:34Z

So I was trawling the intarwubs in my usual artfag style, and I found an interview with the actress Rhianna Shakur which... well...

See for yourself.

Warning for content: it talks about suicide, so don't read it if you think you might be upset by that. Beneath the cut, my own thoughts on the piece.

(Thanks to oxfordgirl and cassies_file both for referring me to the piece).

-----

Okay, so that was a lie. I wrote this. I built the webpage, using a template.

In truth, this was an idea that took a while to gestate. About two weeks ago, whilst waiting for my shorter half to come out of a doctor's appointment, I read an interview with Tilda Swinton in Bazaar. It was one of those long, detailed, Sunday newspaper-style interviews which give the reader a deep insight into the character in question. I came out of it with two things: firstly, that Tilda Swinton is awesome, and secondly, that I wanted to write a piece in that style. So Rhianna Shakur coalesced, mostly to give me someone to interview.

However, that wasn't enough. It wasn't an interesting enough article on its own, without the shared reference one has when interviewing an actor whom all the readers already know something of. So it didn't happen.

Then I read, in a textbook on Buddhism, the phrase "this post-mortal condition". Inspiration struck then, when I realised that 'post-mortal' sounded like a modern-day, politically correct euphemism for 'undead'. And that there might be a-list actors who'd do po-mo awareness-raising. And that maybe one of them might be post-mortal him- or herself. And then Rhianna, who had always been a beauty in the back of my mind, told me why she did it.

Well, my jaw dropped.

A week later, you have this. Formatted suitably. I believe I've caught every detail. Every OC reference that could be changed, twisted somehow, like the description of the dire real movie Hotel For Dogs, has been, and every OC reference that couldn't be, like the letters "UK" appearing everywhere, has been removed.

If I've missed anything, feel free to tell me.

Oh! And the images, most of them, aren't my doing. guardian.co.fl is made up myself, and Paper Tiger, Stranger In A Strange Land, Rhianna and Paula were all found by random Google Image Searches and then modded in Adobe Photoshop. If this technically isn't copyright-legit, I'm hoping the owners would forgive me on the grounds of awesomeness, if they knew. Carnival of Carnage is derived from one of Simon White's photos of the event, used without permission. I made the thumbnail images of the Adrian Tchaikovsky books from front covers found online. Some film titles mentioned are real. Some are parodies. Carreras Lathane is a real company, even if it looks like a name from a fantasy novel.

(Thanks to oxfordgirl and cassies_file both for helping me make the multitude of edits which needed making, and aquarionical for his techspertise).

Spandrels

2009-02-17T13:18:12Z

So the other day I bought a headset mic. I didn't want the headset, just the mic, but it was the cheapest thing in Tesco's and I really wanted the damn mic. For some time now, I've tolerated shit speakers. They do speech just fine - in fact, they do speech clearer than my last speakers - but they have NO bass whatsoever. These new headphones, these £8.99 piecesashit from Tesco, feel like they have a bloody WOOFER attached by comparison (and, if I'm any judge, they're not bad on the objective scale either).

I've never heard The Beginning is the End is the Beginning sound so fucking beautiful before, because before now, I've only heard it on laptop-quality speakers.

Purr.

Edit: And the live copy of Wish You Were Here I picked up a while back.

An Active Day

2009-02-16T13:17:05Z

Today, I feel, is an Active Day. Today, I will achieve Things. Today, inertia is my friend, for I am already speeding along.

Maelstrom: An Academic Paper

2009-01-15T12:21:47Z

If you thought it couldn't get more outlandish, you were wrong. Inspired by conversation with athenegenia and given form by this entry by bouteillebleu, it also involves themes relating to a previous character of newvani's in some way, for which I should say ta for starting me thinking.

If you want to read the full article, you'll need a subscription to the Seven Scrolls Journal of Medicine online archive. A lot of students should be able to get it through their Uni library websites; find someone in-channel and get them to download the .pdf if you can't access it. The Abstract (by which I mean, the piece) is available here.

(In real terms, this was an experiment in how convincing a format I could produce in a couple of hours. The majority of time was spent on the text; the interesting bit, I hope, is actually making it look (convincingly) like the front page of a journal article. Have I succeeded?)

Maelstrom: A Question Of Identity

2009-01-02T03:18:25Z

What you see is what you get. This one's an idea that's been rattling, semi-formed, around my head for much of the time I've been on this week-long recovery operation on my parents' computer - an operation which, now, seems to be finally coming to a close. As I've been unable to write more than the barest of sketches so far, and have had no computer to improvise the whole thing in one go (which is what I've spent the last two hours doing in the here and now, running Firefox from a live Ubuntu install just to get the idea out of my head), it's come out extremely streamofconsciousness. This was intentional, but while it was intentional, I fear it may nevertheless have come out a little off-target. This is a stylistic experiment using a combination of two of the best pre-prepared worlds I had available as reference points: as such, commentary and criticism are very much appreciated. The questions: do I have adolescent self-hatred correct, have I done shock convincingly, and the unsophisticated moral outrage of the rebellious teenager?

Finally, to ask people who have ever written a diary for ideas: how do you convey to yourself in your diary-writing how time has passed between one line and the next? If you come back to the same entry, but you feel differently about something, how do you portray this to yourself in a way you'll understand when you read it in the future? It can just look a bit odd, like you're in the midst of violent mood swings. You'll know what I mean when you read what's under the cut.

(Of course, when I say "experiment", I lie a little: the style is, in part, based on my own free-associative late-night rantings at a similar age, and if I fear anything it's that this has come out a parody of that, with too wide a vocabulary and too narrow a focus. Although I never did what he's doing for stress relief).

It is titled "A Question Of Identity", and while, perhaps, presumptuous, certainly no more so than much similar output. The writer is in his mid-teens - if you couldn't tell - very much a citizen of the modern world.

Finally, I probably should put a "potentially triggering" warning on this, as it contains mention of self-harm, and a great deal of self-loathing.

--------------------

January 1st, 2009

Dear Diary:

I've always known, in an untouched, dusty corner of my mind, that my blood and my heritage were tainted, one way or another. Don't get me wrong, Diary - I'm not about to fag it up, bleach my fur and grow claws and hang around the front of Five Corners with a skateboard and a Slipknot t-shirt - this isn't the kind of taint you advertise as darkness and evil. This is the real kind of evil, and of all people, it had to be my mom to give me the good news, didn't it? Fucking typical. She just loves ruining my life, and just because I care about people's rights, not like her, running Micro$oft Windoze and going to McDonald's, when she knows what they stand for because I've fucking told her!

Anyway, it's the stripes, y'know? Something Cake said ages ago, how I looked like some guy on the news talking about the Northern Frontier, some asshole terrorist with stripes just the same as me, and wasn't I religious too? And now my mom's been doing this family history thing, and now I get to know who I really am. And you're the first to know, but soon everyone will, because to her it's just a talking point, something she'll share with all the moms at all their twisted little hate-filled gossip-fests.

I'm a fucking Amusar.

Yeah, that's right. So she finds out all this shit, where our name's from, 'cos my great-great-(something) changed it when they started killing all the wemics in Antoniya, but I'd always figured I had to be a Lyzar all the way back or something, 'cos I just give a shit too much, y'know? Freedom and democracy, and Lyzanium has the fucking Internet, y'know? Not like Amun-Sa. I mean, how can I, how can I be from a place that tells women not to go out in public without the burka? How can this happen? Is she just fucking lying to piss me off? Is that what this is? My mom's brilliant New Year's resolution, to piss off Felix once a day? It wouldn't be the first time, would it, you evil bitch?

So she says before then we were from something called "Havukstan", there's a stupid name if I ever heard one. I mean, what, a country of anarchy? I love the idea, but hey, your country didn't last, Granddad, whatever the fuck "great" you are, and mine's still here. Because I'm not like you. He was in their army, a fucking murderer, and so was his dad, and so was his dad, and all the rest. And all their wives must have been good women who kept their heads down and didn't say anything until they were spoken to, right? Good Amusar women. Raped and beaten and abused and married to men their fathers made business deals with. That's just shitty! Why does the world have to be so unfair?! Why is this shit in my blood? And how do I get it out? How do I get it out?

...

Dear Diary,

It's midnight and I just did it again. Doesn't feel any better. Doesn't feel any better. Where I did it before, the fur's growing back silver, like those tat-brands Sally got on her back. I cried a bit, and y'know, that was all I could feel: what was the difference between the tears and the blood? It's all just keeping my soul in my body, and out of the Maelstrom. They say it's beautiful in there. Beautiful. Like you don't feel anything, but you don't care, 'cos you were suffering and now you're not anymore. That's what Johnny Lau said.

...hey, I'm gonna put on some G2BB. K-pop rules, yo! ~Cut ya like a bushi!~

And great. I try to put something on that'll make me feel better, and my Zune's broken. Fucking typical Micro$oft. So's everyone else's, say SNN. Great.

I can't stop thinking about the Amusar thing. She said she was stuck, she had been for ages, so she was giving up, but not before she made this shitty Powerpoint presentation (shitty 'cos she doesn't know shit about Powerpoint, so it's all star-wipes and flashing fucking clipart). Maybe I should make her one about how it hasn't changed since she can't find records about anything, or for a thousand years before that? She can't find anything before 1650-something, she says: I can find like a million books about what they do to women in Amun-Sa who dare to fall in love with the wrong man, and what they do to gays, and how they still have slaves and nobody in the world will step in and do something about it because most of it's a desert, and not worth the money in rebuilding contracts. A million. I don't care if my blood's Amusar, I'm not, and that's it.

So why does it still hurt?

It's 1am, and I don't want to sleep. All the way back, all the way to the Old World, there's hate and murder in my family, and it hurts, y'know? It hurts to have someone tell you, "You see that guy on the news? That fat old guy everyone pretends to like, who keeps bombing tiny fucking Flembic villages? He's family."

I wanted to know the truth about my name, so why does the truth have to be so hateful? Why does the truth have to be the one thing that can't be acceptable? I can't forget this now. I can't give it up. I can't somehow make it not true.

She can't find his first name. That's why she can't trace him back any further, to find the boat he came over on. She can't find him anywhere before he left Amun-Sa, and if she went to Amun-Sa to ask she'd be stoned to death for being a divorced woman. GODDAMN IT, THOSE RAGHEAD MOTHERFUCKERS WOULD KILL MY MOM FOR KICKING OUT MY ASSHOLE DAD!!!!! I HATE THIS! I HATE ALL OF THIS!

I can barely stop crying. I gotta write what I know, though, or it won't come out otherwise. If I scream, like I wanna, she'll hear me and come in and I can't take that row right now. She says there's just one thing, he was a sergeant in 1659, being paid about 40 shillings a month, and he called himself Abu Sahlah. That's what she picked up. Because there's a Sahlah mentioned later, getting married off, probably, to some fat 40-year-old bastard. And she's the last thing she can find of the old name, but it's there, like you see on telly, when it's him again, threatening all the New World what's gonna happen to it if it doesn't give in to the jihad of the Gods.

Her name was Sahlah al-Tora. So he was... something al-Tora. Just like the terrorists. Just like the bad guys. Osama al-Tora. Panahasi al-Tora. Names on the fucking news. My family's name on the fucking news. Terrorism in my blood, as far back as anyone can ever know.

I just don't know the shape of the world right now. And I've said all I can say, and I've cried all I can cry. My arm's stopped hurting, and I keep playing with the silver from the last time.

I have two sets of stripes now.

I'm not a terrorist, Gods damn it.

marcus_felix @ 2008-12-28T16:52:00

2008-12-28T22:52:13Z

So I'm writing this from my brother-in-law's iPod Touch. Only it turns out that there really does seem to be no way in XP to perform the system-restore operation without using the System Restore GUI at %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe - which is currently out of action along with IE, Firefox, Chrome and most of the other programs on this machine, a result of what looks like a problem rendering them. Or something.Please, if you know a way to perform that operation without using that program, text or call me. I'm not going to put my phone number on a public post but plenty of people at #maelfroth know it. Other bright ideas also accepted. If you can't reach me tomorrow it might be because I'm being dragged to the panto by my nieces; please post here so I know to get in touch with you back.

The Hollywood Lie

2008-12-16T13:47:02Z

I have been saying this for years. This idea, universally promoted by an endless rolling sequence of romantic comedies by the same gutless, desperately unimaginative studios, pervades the minds of the young and impressionable with the same story, repeated over and over and over so predictably I've begun to suspect it's a scientific experiment. Change one variable at a time - He's black, she's white; She's black, he's white; He's rich, she's poor; She's rich, he's poor; He's gay, he's gay; She's gay, she's gay; He's an asshole - but keep the rest of the story so similar to all the others that there's really very little point rewriting the script.

The rules which these films must adhere to are classic fairytale stuff, but somewhere along the way the word's meaning changed. It used to mean something unrealistic and unattainable, and this was understood. It was couched in unrealistic terms, to make the truth less biting when it came: you're not a princess, you're a commoner, and no knight knows your name, let alone admires your pockmarked beauty. But something changed. Somewhere along the line the promise of what was unreal became indistinguishable from the promise of the real. Because these unrealistic stories started being told about real people, people who worked day jobs and lived in houses and apartments like the ones their audience lived in. And so it couldn't be a fairytale. If it were a fairytale, surely this would be a tragedy, a catastrophe of earth-shattering proportions; surely this would be the end of True Love!

Because it's been told so often and so formulaically now that the rom-com formula is the only thing a certain proportion of idiots spread across (at least) the last two generations are capable of understanding:

You Will Meet Someone You Hate (But Secretly Fancy)
You Will Spend Time Together And Get To Know Them
You Will Come To Understand That Their Problems Can Be Fixed
You Are The One They Have Been Waiting For To Fix Their Problems
You Must Fix Their Problems
You Commit Eternity To Solving Their Problems
End

When you meet someone you hate, there's usually a good reason. I've had an awe-inspiring display of the power of self-delusion recently, as a close friend clings to the promise of Stage Three, having been made to believe in Stages Four and Five. But the end of the formula comes far too soon, like all happy endings: the end of the formula comes with the promise, not the work. Because the work cannot fill screen-time - at least until Channel 4 decide its latest jaunt into public schadenfreude will include televised marriage counselling. It's boring, it's repetitive, it's often over nonsencially small things. You know why people in romantic comedies have affairs? Because arguing over the fact that he always puts the football on even when she'd like EastEnders on is boring and trivial. You know why these films end at marriage? Because despite the horrific statistics, we're still led (by the nose) to believe that marriage should solve all the problems.

The image of love portrayed in these films is of trumpets blaring, the people in question just knowing that they have found The One Who Was Destined To Be Theirs, and no further thought being given to the grotesque incompatibilities of personality which appeared as the initial obstacle, and which, in real life, do not go away permanently because you're happy on your wedding day.

I've always phrased the existence of the Hollywood Lie as "There is no One", but this article has made me understand how much more dangerous it is than just that. Anything that prevents people in relationships communicating properly is a divorce sentence. And given how the story ends at the wedding in these films, we don't get to see the aftermath, when she can't fix his problems, but alcohol can; when he can't learn to love her foibles, but Mark from work can.

I'm not saying there's no hope, and I'm not saying there's no chance. I'm saying: use your brains. Of course there's such a thing as True Love, but it's neither effortless nor predestined. If nothing else, the sheer accidents of history that are our friendship and peer groups should point that out. What I'm saying is that they should never have become a model for what to expect out of a relationship. They're a vile, oversimplified parody, and taking advice from them is like asking Punch and Judy for child-rearing advice.

Just remember, as you watch Ben Stiller walk up the aisle again, this number: 40%. Because for every five rom-coms you leave feeling elated, two of them missed off an epilogue: the divorce.

Me! me!

2008-12-09T00:48:34Z

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumping
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favourite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chicken pox
89. Saved someone's life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

No surprises there, then

2008-12-06T00:33:39Z

Which creature of the night are you? Your Result: Werewolf You are a vicious fighter and a vicious lover, absolutely dedicated to your pack. You are pushed to anger by disloyalty and injustice and have a tendency toward sudden, periodic bursts of wild behavior.
Vampire
Cthulu Spawn
Demon
Sorceror
Incubus/Succubus
Ghost
Which creature of the night are you? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

--------------------

In other news, going to Glasgow tomorrow. Looking forward to it. Don't get to interact with the Glasgow lot enough, especially given the amount of off-the-clock IC interaction they seem to get done.

More to follow.

This meme has been making me laugh also

2008-11-29T15:24:38Z

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often or ever) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL memory of you and me.

It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

Step One

2008-11-11T19:43:12Z

It wasn't either of the fuses, neither the plug nor the PSU.

Next, to find a soldering iron and reattach the fuse to the PSU. I've performed this operation before, even though, in truth, I wish I hadn't had to (it's a long story).

Following this, to check the power wiring, which isn't as nicely organised as it once was. But having detached the fuse, and having, at present, no soldering iron with which to reattach it, I can't check the power wiring for functionality at this point. Khan, etc.

Following this, something on the motherboard having broken is a serious and worrying possibility, not one I want to have to consider. But I'd already poked at the wiring while the PSU was still in the machine, so I know that it's unlikely to be that. And with the machine not turning on at all, I'm not getting any information at all for diagnosis. This is less than helpful.

So...

2008-11-11T17:41:41Z

...my desktop has stopped working. Won't turn on. Mechanically won't turn on, as in, I press the power button and nothing actually happens at all.

This is not the best of times for this to happen. I'm still house-bound and still feeling dreadful. Will keep you updated on how the situation progresses. Step 1, to check the fuses in the plug and the PSU, may be doable tonight. Not sure.