The Things Delkaetre Warns Us Against

Because I am not working and don't have all that much by way of savings, I have just applied for job seeker's allowance online. May as well, really. Every bit helps, and I've paid all my taxes and NICS in full for as long as I've worked.

Not sure how it all goes when you're getting pay in lieu of notice, but there's nothing about it on the site. Or if there is, I can't see it because half their links are broken.

Because I'm a single person and not yet 24, even though I am living alone without parental support, I only qualify for the lesser payment of £50.95 instead of £64.30. I'm not quite sure why I'm worth nearly £60 a month less than an older person in the same situation as me. Surely once you're legally adult, you're legally adult?

Ah well. They'll call in the next two working days, apparently. Just hope my phone lasts out, as I left the charger at the Gent's.
 

BBC News is, once again, providing me with up to an hour's worth of information.
There's a new directory to opt out of- for mobile numbers this time. I don't seem to be on it, but you may wish to get yourselves off it as well, just in case.
You can now check whether it'll save you any money to fit a wind turbine to your home.
A remarkably large majority of an Austrialian town has voted to ban bottled water in order to save resources and avoid pollution.
Danone are trying a social rather than capitalist business plan in India, and it looks like it's working quite well.
Nick Griffin of the BNP is now demanding we sink immigrants' boats before they get near the coast.
Another anti-aging development- this one might actually work! But it needs a lot of refinement, as it crushes the immune system.
A teacher took a novel but very effective approach to getting her class to read, and seems to be in a lot of trouble for it.
The 11+ tests have been scrapped in Northern Ireland, but there's nothing to replace them. Lesson- never scrap something you don't have a replacement ready for.
The oldest surviving complete bible is in the process of being posted online, a full translation is due next year.

I haven't checked the papers yet, so there may be a second post later for the Independent, Guardian and Times Online.

Meantime, I'm going to listen to Nick Cave, and possibly start comparing bibles.

Over the past couple of days, I've applied to nearly 35 jobs independently and through various jobsites. I've made sure that Monster, Reed, Office Angels and JobSearch all have a copy of my CV. I've polished my CV quite a lot.
I've bought two new trouser suits including blouses and a black sheath dress for the interviews I hope to get, and now I'm buggering off to a mate's place for the evening. There will be food and drink and movies. And I think he wants me to help him with some paperwork.
And tomorrow, I'll see if I can find more things to apply to.

And I am going to keep doing this until people start asking me to work for them.

This may get a bit dull after a while.

I'm still at the Gent's, and currently listening to the fantastically heavy sound of the rain on the roof of the little office extension where I'm borrowing the computer for my job-hunting. I didn't expect the weather to take such a turn after the weekend, and don't have adequate clothing provisions for rain or cold. I have a lovely, fluttery, gauzy, THIN jacket, a sleeveless top with jeans, or a linen/cotton summer dress. Not suitable for rain or even a chilly breeze.
Oh dear.

Job hunting- have signed up with Monster and Jobsearch, updating my Reed profile, and have applied to a couple places and bookmarked several more. I should step it up, but it's hard to find jobs that don't require two or more years' experience in the relevant field when I only have one year.

Unrelated, I really hope this gets through- Bill Of Truth - yeah, they can get out of it by claiming its for National Security, but they can do that with anything anyway. Might still give us politicians legislated into an approximation of honesty.

I'm going to apply for a job as caseworker for Siobhan McDonagh, Labour MP for Morden.
She's challenged Gordon Brown on his leadership and even lost her position as whip for it. She seems to be pretty actively involved in actual work for her constituency, and she hasn't claimed her mortgage or her food or her home furnishings etc on expenses- just travel and office costs, which actually seems reasonable given the travel costs work out at about £2k/year - heck, I think I spend nearly that much on my personal travel each year.

There doesn't seem to be too much against her.

I'll be sending in the application email with CV and cover sheet tomorrow. I'm aware that since I'm not a party member I may not get the job *anyway*, but I'm cheap and qualified and don't have agency rates tacked on. If you can find any reasons that I shouldn't apply, please give them here. I'm a bit wary of working for politicians, you see, even the ones that look quite nice and don't have any serious immediate conflicts with my general morality.

Tomorrow is my last day at work.

Tonight, I am making biscuits. The first batch on Monday went quite well, so now I am making a second and slightly less carefully measured batch. Being the curious thing I am, I thought I would see what happens when you add a drop of red colouring. The mixture now looks like I butchered something and mixed its shattered bones with its entrails. But since these are almond bones and cherry and mixed peel entrails, I'm totally okay with eating that. I will see in about three minutes how the colour lasts after being baked.
If it goes well, I may experiment with blue or green at a later point, and maybe even yellow so that pictures can be made if I can cut them into pixel shaped bits.
 

Posting from a friend's computer.
Had The Meeting today, and it seems that I'm being given pay in lieu of notice so I only have to work till Friday then I get four weeks' pay beyond that.
I can go to interviews and accept anything you throw at me from Monday onwards, so I may be around in London to spam recruitment agencies and any kind of remotely respectable looking cause and company.
And if I'm going to be about in London, I may as well actually say hello to some of you for the first time in a while. Leave me a message here or look back a few posts for my mobile number if you want to meet up for lunch or a drink or something.

I cannot imagine what goes through the stockist's brains.
Six types of spatula? Sure. Even so much as one type of brush for butter etc? Nope.
Five different styles of chopping board? Oh yeah. Any type of wire cooling rack, such as one uses for biscuits and cakes and pies? God, no.
"Professional" steel baking sheets? Yep. Actual greased paper or other useful *removable* non stick sheets? Hahahahaha.... no.
More than twenty types of specialist flour? Yeah, baby! Semolina? Sod that.

I want to actually cook. I want to start this by making things I like, such as biscuits. Tesco appear to be actively standing against this by having everything in multiple types... except the stuff I want. And I don't know enough about cooking to just substitute things and wing it.

A note, as I am reminded by a current conversation. I don't mean to offend, but please don't link me to your damn audio/video.
If you want to link me to something with audio/video in it, give me a description of what it is so that I can balance whether it's worth pausing my current activity for, or better to set aside and look at in a minute.
I spend most of my time online listening to music, reading bits of the news, and talking to people via MSN and Skype, so when I seek out information I seek it in the form of the written word. The written word allows me to chat to someone while skimming down the article to check if it's interesting or useful. I don't have to pause it, I don't have to wait for it to buffer and skip, and I don't have to rewind if someone's accent's a bit thick for me.
Videos, however, mean putting everything on hold because there is a voice getting very slowly to the point when I could instead have just glanced down an equivalent article and followed the video link if it looked interesting. Suddenly having some heavy American or Australian or Birmingham accent rear up in the middle of my listening to music and talking to a friend will not earn you any kind of brownie points at all.

I do apologise, and I don't mean to snarl, but I just don't like watching videos on my own. Television and cinema are communal experiences, things I watch in the company of others. If I want news or stories or thrilling things when I'm on my own, I'll read the news or pick up a book or comic.

It's fine to link me to music, providing the stuff doesn't auto play or you give me warning in the message if it does. I like music, I enjoy listening to new music. But... when on my own, even if talking to others, my time and my space and the things I hear are mine, and I don't like random blaring interrupting me. I know how picky and pissy it sounds and probably is, but they're my ears and if I'm having my own time in my own space on my own evenings, I'd like to choose what I hear.

I don't like following links that are just handed to me without explanation, and this is why.

Even just a message like "I've just seen such and video about such and such subject if you want the link, it does auto play, though" would really really help. Because I'm sure the video about the Large Hadron Collider, Big Dog robot project, new art project or whatever really is interesting. But not when it suddenly blares out in the middle of a conversation with someone else.

Saw Boondock Saints for the first time on Friday, and merrily giggled my way through much of the violence. I didn't realise how funny it was going to be! Damn good film.
We did get to the Wellcome Collection on Saturday, but had to abandon further plans due to headache- possibly the air pressure, as it was just before that massive cloudburst that apparently closed some tube stations. Quiet pint of iced and blacked cider in a pub didn't help, and nor did a nice cold bottle of weak lemon drink and some paracetemol, so we just ended up heading back to the Gent's for pizza and ice lollies and televisual entertainments.
I played Portal for the first time today instead of merely watching someone else play. It is important not to play with someone who's already played it in the same room as you, as I think it's probably more fun working out how to do it yourself. Also, I can't seem to get enough momentum going in one of the later levels, so we just left it there and had dinner. And now I'm home, and my weekend's all gone, and apparently we're all going to die a heatwavey death this week.

A quick post just while the washing up downstairs soaks a bit.

I got to go home early because my manager decided that I really had done everything useful that I could, and there was no point keeping me the extra hour on a Friday afternoon.
The mochi dough was too thick, especially now that it's had time to chill, and I think I may try using a different recipe next time. Tastes fine, but the texture's not quite right. Also, use drier filling.
Tonight's movie night is off, so I'm just going to do the washing up and head to the Gent's place. Hopefully tomorrow will see me at the Wellcome Collection and later at Vagabonds, because I haven't been to it in ages.

See you around.

Success with the mochi, sort of.
I will admit, I ate about half the dough because it smelled nice and I couldn't think of any other way to get it off my hands without using a knife, as it sticks to *everything* except its own filling, which provides just enough of a slick layer to prevent the dough from sticking to itself when you try to seal the little balls.
So the bits that actually made it into filled balls rolled in coconut are now in the fridge to solidify that last little bit over night.

This is the first time I've made something actually from scratch using flour, sugar- the actual basic ingredients- since I had to cook things in Home Ec before I was allowed to drop it at GCSE level. Since then it's been soups or beans heated up in a microwave or saucepan, pasta with sauce from a jar poured over, boiled eggs, readymeals, pre-packaged pizza, cereal... things like that. I'm really surprised that this actually worked as well as it did.

I might even continue learning to make things for myself.

There was a BBC Magazine article today about a young woman wearing relatively minor piercings and vaguely alternative hair and no makeup, and whether this made her unfit for an office job or not.

I feel like I'm missing something. I'm sure there has to be some kind of genuine reason beyond "well, it's not what everyone else does" to stop people looking how they wish so long as it doesn't directly endanger health and safety. Some people find that boy's long hair to be unusual, or that girl's piercings to be strange. Well, bully for them. Some people also find the hijab pretty damn freaky, yet that's protected by law even though religion is a free choice of one's lifestyle and enshrined in law as such. Piercings are also an element of choice in one's lifestyle, just not mandated by one's pot luck of religious upbringing or choice of conversion.

Also, how come it's okay to hire someone who's had obvious breast surgery to create gravity-defying knockers, but not to hire someone who's had their eyebrows tattooed in the pattern of pretty, delicate flowers? They're both choosing to use surgical(ish) means to alter their flesh and appearance, and they're both going to attract potentially negative attention from people who make judgements about appearance instead of talent. It's okay to have a typist with inch long nails painted with little zebra stripes, but not a typist who wears two-week wash out blue hair dye? The long nails are more likely to interfere with the typing than the blue hair is. Why is a grandmother's blue or violet rinse in her hair okay, but not a twenty year old's blue or violet hair?
The hair and the eyebrows have no effect whatsoever on someone's skill at their job.

I'm not trying to say that being a goth or punk or whatever is as important and brave as taking a stand against the Big Evils that there are now legal protections against, like racism or sectarianism or homophobia. Hell no, it's not nearly that serious, it's not even remotely approaching that. But if society is able to accept the big differences that it would have balked at years ago, why can't it accept the tiny ones, too?

Though technically formless themselves, cuckoos take the shape of the dominant species on the planet- generally taking a host at the point of conception and living within that form, growing up as one and living normally as one with the cuckoo side dormant until it reaches maturity. Upon the point of maturity, the cuckoo within the native shell awakens along with its instinct to shapeshift and even transcend the physical entirely so that it may travel between inhabited planets unhindered by problems such as vacuum, gravity, temperature, radiation and debris. The cuckoos, a species without any particularly definable sexual characteristics, reproduce by a form of division, each leaving a part of itself within the new host and travelling onwards. As the cuckoo does not use an actual body during reproduction, it is a splinter of its own sentience that is left instead. Though the cuckoo may regrow some of the lost splinters over time, the most prolific will divide over and over until using the final splinter to be reborn.

The cuckoos are a warlike and expansionist species, with splinters from an aggressive individual or group generally maturing to reproduce on a single planet until the original dominant species is wiped out or subjugated. There are few known methods of killing the cuckoo once they reach maturity, but detection during immature stages of life and destruction of the immature, corporeal and thus limited corporeal form is possible.

It has been noted that the cuckoos experience an unusual difficulty in mimicking carbon based life forms. Amongst humans, the dominant species of planet Earth, a mature cuckoo is able to take its incorporeal form for only brief periods if at all, though may have some access to related abilities. Mature cuckoos usually retain their immature 'native' personality only for the purposes of blending in, the cuckoo's nature now fully developed and the appearance of normality only useful as an occasional tool. However, possibly due to their uniquely high predisposition to mental complaint combined with their carbon-based bodies, humans again present a difficulty to the cuckoos. The initial 'human' personality does not fade or become subservient to the cuckoo nature, but retains an equal or dominant standing. It has as much access to the cuckoo's ability as the cuckoo itself, and makes as much claim to the body. It is thought that stories of magicians, witches, sorcerors and magical heroes are all results of individual human personalities which have gained control over their cuckoos, and that stories of demonic possession are related to cuckoos fighting for dominance with the human shell. Tales of wrathful deities given flesh may relate to cuckoos which have won the battle, but still find themselves confined to the human form. Some unflattering commenters have suggested that particularly sociopathic or unsympathetic politicians may in fact be cuckoo-dominant. Unlike other species, there does not seem to be an accurate test to see if a human is a cuckoo shell or merely suffering moodwings or a mental disorder.


I hadn't intended them to be a parasite, but it's the only sensible way to have a polymorphic species that moves between physical and nonexistent bodies to travel through space without the need for technology and excuses the fact that they have evolved a use for dual personalities. Otherwise they'd just be magical alien shapeshifters, and there's too much sci-fi technology to allow that already.

If I do try making any, it seems they can best be made in batches of 12 and that they won't keep long. Should I get the hang of them and get the consistency right, would anyone be interested in trying them? I've found a supplier of the azuki beans online, so I can make them with the proper filling.
There are a few different recipes, and they're all vegan friendly, and they all look simple enough that even I shouldn't have too much difficulty.

If anyone has experience with these, could they suggest which recipe will give the best result?
(with coconut milk and rolled in desiccated coconut, which could be nice)
(longer recipe, somehow making similar things sound more complicated)
(supposedly, microwave friendly, though would just dissolve sugar in hot water from kettle)

They also seem very cheap to make- asian markets online have the rice flour at £2.50 a 500g bag, the azuki beans at 99p for 500g, and the (optional) coconut milk is the most expensive thing there.

This weekend, I have watched Waltz With Bashir, discovered the true name of a hyperactive false mute, and made a decent first impression on new people- including some I would normally have every possible disagreement with.

News and links I have found interesting-
A remarkably promising treatment for prostate cancer
A remarkably useful technology that may help the totally paralysed and even coma patients communicate (pardon my morbidity, but this also means that such people will finally be able to say 'yes, I wish to die' or 'no, keep me alive' instead of having family or hospitals do it for them)
A woman speaks about having a 'designer baby' to save her first son's life, and how it's not at all like the plot of My Sister's Keeper

Unrelated to the above, I really like these and I'm very pleased that the recipe seems so easy. I might finally start cooking! It does suggest elsewhere that mango is an acceptable alternative to azuki bean paste, and might be what I end up using- I have no idea where to get azuki bean paste, but mango is everywhere.

They miss a few points, these anti-piracy people.
We don't download because we hate the industry. We don't download because we're thieves who place no value on other people's work and skill.
But if we download, we can try before we buy. We can see if something's worth our money before we give someone our money. God knows I'd never pay to own a Saw movie now that I've seen two of them. But now that I've seen other things, I might be more interested in buying them when I've got the time and a decent screen to view them on. Iron Man, maybe. Wolverine. Same goes for music. I can try some artists before I buy their stuff. In many cases, it's very hard to find their stuff unless you know just where to look. If I like them, I can go to their gigs and buy their merch and get them to sign a CD for me right there.
Of course, when the time comes that I actually own a television set, they better have stopped inserting anti-pirate ads at the start of everything after we've been honest and good enough to not be pirates.

BBC Magazine: Getting Inside a Downloader's Head (and no, it's not talking about the music festival)

Finished the clearing of the fridge freezer. Shall scrub it out thoroughly at some point, now it's actually empty.
There was beer in there. I think that may be given to whoever is kind enough to mow the damn lawn in the back garden, my general allergy to outdoor labour preventing me from mowing it myself.
Update to Fridge- have donned mask for second time, have cleared ice and given quick scrub to fridge and freezer. Kitchen does not smell good, but mask helps. Ice chunk that was causing the whole bastard problem was very big and very solid, and judicious use of a spatula (not mine) heated with warm water allowed me to remove the whole thing in one go. Just hope the smell's not worse tomorrow, else all openable non-ground-front windows will have to be left open. Christ, I wish I knew why it smelt like that.

Now, unrelated, I'm not sure if ever I have mentioned the stuff below the cut on LJ before. And I confess, I'm not entirely certain how to phrase it, for anything I say will likely sound the product of a mind that could have used a bit more fresh air and human contact as a kid.
But here we go, I shall try it.

( The shapes of the inside of the mind )


And I've said all of that before on this journal, let me know and tell me to shush about the dratted things, and I shall amend/ remove this entry accordingly or else try to remember that I've said it all before.

The fridge-freezer has thrown a bit of a fit. It's currently meeping plaintively at me, refusing to let me close the freezer door even though it closed just fine on Monday, defrosting itself in both fridge and freezer.
While this means that my lone bottle of San Helier and my remaining ten or so ice lollies are no longer refreshingly cold (or, in the case of the lollies, even refreshingly frozen), it means much worse for my vanished housemates. I haven't seen any of them in a while, and don't have their contact details. So all their food is going to be thrown out- it's starting to smell, as it's been a hot day and I suspect the machine has been busy defrosting since last night. This is what they get for buggering off and not bothering to clear their stuff out first.

I shall put my cider in my cupboard, regretfully throw away the squishy bags of syrup and stick that once were lollies, put on my rubber gloves and start clearing. And here, aha, is where my habit of rarely throwing away unwanted clothing comes in useful. I have a few pairs of underwear in undesirable colours that were part of multipacks including better colours, and have not worn these. But now, I'm going to cut up one of the pairs and wear it as a face mask so the smell of the food doesn't make me gag. And if this is effective, I now know just where to get a handy little cloth mask for nose and mouth.

There's a storm going on. Lots of lightning and plenty of rain. The sky's a sort of four-day-old-bruise shade of yellow. The corners of my vision keep flickering with that blue-white strobe light effect, and I always look up too late to catch the actual lightning.
Nice to watch from in here, all the same.