The Things Delkaetre Warns Us Against

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-07-09T18:15:00

2009-07-09T17:25:29Z

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.

Newsburst for the day

2009-07-09T10:22:06Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-07-08T20:15:00

2009-07-08T19:22:51Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-07-07T13:35:00

2009-07-07T12:40:29Z

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.

Oh, the jobs we apply for....

2009-07-06T10:55:15Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-07-02T22:28:00

2009-07-02T21:32:28Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-07-01T18:57:00

2009-07-01T18:02:09Z

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.

Sod you, Tesco.

2009-06-29T20:13:38Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-06-29T01:31:00

2009-06-29T00:57:10Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-06-28T23:32:00

2009-06-28T22:43:02Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-06-26T17:07:00

2009-06-26T16:12:38Z

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.

Food.

2009-06-25T23:54:47Z

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.

On Appearance, a post which may just miss the point entirely.

2009-06-25T18:22:37Z

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?

Alien cuckoos, of possible use in science fiction.

2009-06-25T01:38:33Z

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.

Daifuku/mochi

2009-06-21T23:38:16Z

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.

Things

2009-06-21T21:24:44Z

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.

Yarr.

2009-06-18T23:50:46Z

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)

The faces of structures

2009-06-16T20:46:41Z

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.

I keep, in various bits of my mind, a small collection of demons. Not the faceless 'demon of past regrets, like that time I did such and such a silly thing', nor any other such demons which are simply an easy word for 'collected fear, discomfort, or horror of various elements of one's life'. No, mine are beautiful. My demons have faces and names, and individual personalities, and I've had them since I was perhaps eleven, maybe younger.
Some kids have invisible friends, and have them up till maybe eight or nine, and in some cases longer. I didn't have any back then, but collected some clear imaginings that I knew to be imaginings when I got older. And they're damn useful. They've been handy as different facets of my mind, so that when I wanted to look at something and had mixed feelings, I could talk about it with them instead, and put my difficulties through them to find ideas that I might have missed otherwise. Great company when bored or lonely as a teenager, too.
They're a way to work things through when I haven't know who to talk to, a way of looking at things from a different perspective, and giving them clear names and appearances means that these facets of my mind are never mixed up. Good sense and immediate desires will not be mixed up- as individual demons they look, sound, act too differently. When not using the demons, good sense and immediate desire can become very confused by flimsy justifications for immediate desires.
I wish to make it clear that I don't view these as real people in the way that you and I are real people. They are characters, like something from a book or game, that I can interact with. They have no true flesh and blood, only images that my imagination is kind enough to grant them. They're a filing system, and help me arrange and understand things. They're a very decorative way of thinking.

There are five of them, though more like four by now.

"Elf" is a simple creature. Average skin tone of a healthy light tan, mousy hair, soft blue-grey eyes, and a slight stoop to hide his height. He's very quiet, very gentle, very timid. He doesn't like to argue, he's scared of fights, and if attacked he'll do no more than defend- not even to see off an attacker. He likes animals, and enjoys things like hillwalking and picnics and nature documentaries. He is a useful voice of restraint, a suggestion to just go somewhere quiet for a bit and read instead of trying to have it out with high school bullies or drunken idiots.

"Luce" is very tall, very thin, and very pale. He's clearly and distinctly inhuman despite his humanoid shape, with eyes as pale as his skin, and a glow like the blue-white of a computer screen late at night. Very, very long thin fingers, very, very long sharp nails, very, very strong white teeth. He smiles, sometimes, with predatory and faintly reptilian grace, and his white eyes flicker with avian intensity. He's vicious, a sadist and hedonist, devoted only to his own pleasures and those best enjoyed at the expense of others. He has the patience of a tectonic plate, and would wait for years for a vengeance if it entertained him to do so. He is a wonderful facet to indulge on certain occasions, and has a certain sort of charm that no living thing is likely to possess, but his advice would see me destroyed if it was followed for more than very occasional and very specific things. He could get an entry all to himself, an elegantly presented monster.

"Amminadab" is a right bastard. He's unhealthy, uncharismatic, short-tempered. His skin often looks burned, his hair is flaming red, worn short to look as if it really is aflame. He is impulsive. He would hit people for pushing past him in a queue, simmer about a little slight for ages, bicker and bitch and snarl and whine and moan, and take petty little things far further than they should. He is not liked by the others, and generally his view is diplomatically or forcefully silenced. As you may guess, Amminadab gets to be the parts of myself that I should greatly like to hide and possibly expel entirely.

"Alphaeus" is... well, he's nice. He's not as clear a concept as the others. He's got long dark blue hair, braided to his waist, and prefers to look after others. He is more aggressive than Elf, less charming than Luce, and only sometimes as short tempered as Amminadab. He's not balanced, viewing things with an odd logic that would not work for a real person and having some peculiar habits. He's much harder to describe. I'm really not entirely which parts my mind he is, but for a simple conversation about something, he's more useful than any individual one of the other three.

The last has since faded from existence into something more useful. It was called "Delkaetre", and was an androgyne creature. It was very sensual, it wanted to explore the worlds of physical feeling and lust and desire. It wanted to drink and eat fine foods. It wanted to socialise, to dance, to admire people and be admired. It is foolish quite often, but doesn't mind. It's slowly fallen apart as a demon construct, and is instead absorbed into me as a proper element of personality. When I was barely into high school, all these things were strange and distant and alien. The people around me were generally horrible, the ideas of physical intimacy were still firmly branded 'ick' despite other girls rushing out to get their first boyfriend. "Delkaetre" was a way of looking at all these new desires from a safe distance instead of being overwhelmed by them. The Delkaetre demon has faded from use as I've become more comfortable and confident in my body and self.
I don't want the others to fade in like that just yet, though. Luce is simply dangerous, a beautiful monster- to let that thing fade into my constant and normal self would be unpleasant for everyone. Amminadab is simply an asshole, and Elf would result in my suddenly becoming very wholesome and vanilla- no late nights, no drinking, no kinky stuff, no clubs, no short skirts, no latex... They're more useful as occasional reference points, and a way of getting a second opinion without having to ask outside my own brain.

Yes, aside from the last one they are all males. At the time I was first starting to use them, I didn't get along with girls at all, and barely got along with boys. And they've always had ageless adult shapes, not matched to whatever age I am.

And regardless of all common sense, all familiarity with them from ten years of using them as visual references for mental debates, if some magic were give them form in the flesh, I'd still buy Luce a drink and take him out for an evening instead of any of the others. That would mean loosing him upon an innocent London, but he'd have more style than Saucy Jack ever dreamed of.

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-06-16T18:27:00

2009-06-16T17:39:12Z

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.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-06-15T18:16:00

2009-06-15T17:19:03Z

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.

rollercoaster! rollercoaster! cough rollercoaster!

2009-06-14T23:05:11Z

Okay, maybe I am still a bit unwell. My throat's not feeling great, it's pretty stiff and sore. But I found the cure!

We arrived a bit late to Thorpe Park because googlemaps are not based on accurate or useful directions, and when we did we joined the seventy-eighty minute queue for Stealth. This is in the open, with no trees or even corrugated tin for shelter. It was pretty damn hot and I was not feeling terribly healthy, so by the time we'd been queuing for thirty minutes and they announced that they'd closed the ride because of a medical issue, and that they hoped to reopen it 'soon', I'd had quite enough. The Gent and I left the queue, and were halfway back to the end of it when they announced that it was open again. You're not allowed to return to your place in queue once you've left it. So, well, sod that.

We made our way to one of the eateries, hoping for a cold drink and a hearty snack to buoy our spirits. With a forty five minute waiting time for all food orders, that idea was scuppered quite quickly. We had our cold drinks and went to get cash so we could just buy food from the vendors and risk food poisoning for the sake of a quick snack. On the way back in, it was generally agreed that the day had not started at all well. But because he is awesome, unspeakably generous, possibly insane, really nice, and wanted to actually enjoy his day, he bought an Ultimate fast track pass each for himself and myself. No more queues for the rest of the day.

With the rest of the suddenly queue free day, we got to go on Saw. We got to go on Nemesis Inferno. We got to go on Colossus. We got to go on X: No Way Out, and on Tidal Wave, and on Stealth. And we had lunch, and we went on Saw, Nemesis and Colossus *again*. It was truly wondrous. My clothing was still damp from Tidal Wave by the time we got home, some time around 7pm.
Saw is actually very good. I'm not sure it would have been as good with a wait of between an hour and an hour and a half, because by then I'd be tired, overheated, miserable, and sick of the people queuing either side of us. But it's a good ride, definitely. We've got keyrings from it. The drop's pretty impressive, but the general flow of it's well put together, and it just feels like a really good rollercoaster. There's also a nice lead up to it, with plenty of models and bits of ~~rusted antique agricultural~~ torture equipment.
Colossus has ten inversions, which is a very odd and quite impressive thing indeed. It has some sneaky little corkscrews built in to get four little loops in as well as six big ones, and the corkscrews feel much stranger than the big loops. I am, of course, a big fan of this thing.
Nemesis Inferno is... well, it feels a little short. It goes damn fast, it moves wonderfully, it puts you through plenty of twists and loops and sudden dips, but at the end you kind of want more from it- another ten seconds of it, though I realise that's quite a lot more track to have to fit in somewhere. Wear shoes that don't fall off easily, and it does tend to disorient a little more than the others. A good ride all the same.
X goes backwards, in the dark, and keeps stop-starting. Not quite my thing, though reasonably enjoyable. If it moved smoothly instead of stop-starting, I think it could be an excellent ride.
Tidal Wave will soak you through quite thoroughly, it really will. Don't bring stuff on this ride, that would be a very foolish thing to do. The only dry bit of me at the end of it was my chest, because I'd kept my arms hugged in front of it. I'm not much of a water ride fan- if you like big water rides that have quite large drops and a really, really, really big splash, you'll like this.
Stealth is one I'm fond of. 0-80mph in 3 seconds is enough to make me quite happy, and the sheer vertical drop of something like 200ft is definitely very good fun. Not so much the Gent's thing, but we didn't have time for a second go anyway.

And at some point in the day, I noticed that my cough actually settled down after a good rollercoaster. The cure for my ills is to go really really fast and upside down and generally be thrown about in a manner that would *cause* other people's illness. Unfortunately, it is temporary. Thorpe Park was wonderfully good fun, lots of fast things and being upside down and all such nice things. Bouncebouncebounce.

And we watched Full Metal Jacket that night. It's the first time I've seen it all the way through, and I now realise just how badly the guys at my bus stop back in high school missed the point when they saw it. There's a hell of a lot more to that movie than fat jokes and 'this is my rifle, this is my gun'. I know that at sixteen/seventeen people still have a fair bit of developing to do, and I'm sure that I've got plenty left to do at twenty one, but it's like they didn't even notice the massive and horrible human toll that the war was having.

Now, to work out whether I am okay for work in the morning, or whether my occasional outbursts of coughing will scare them again.

I wish to call a certain degree of bullshit on dietweightbodyshape

2009-06-10T22:14:54Z

Or, I shall have my cake, and my vegetables too.

Have noticed something a few times before, and now been reminded of it by a comment on a jezebel article about a daily mail piece which was linked from a different feminist blog.
It's really kind of hard to avoid the fuss about diet and weight.
I mean, really.
Everything has calorie counts on the back of it, many items carefully pointing out that women get less treats than men because we need less daily calories (which is, I suggest, bullshit, as diet varies massively according to the individual person's metabolism, level of exercise, form of calories taken in, etc). And even I, who watch no television and read no glossy magazines, am finding it a bit hard to avoid all the dietweightbodyshape advice that seems to be thrown around online and on the side of buses and in tube stations and on billboards.
If you have curves, or wibbly bits, or tiny little dents in your bum or thighs (as I do), then you are told you are too fat and must desperately lose weight through diet or surgery or expensive gym memberships.
However.
If you are thin, or angular, or have pointy wrists/ knees/ collarbones (as I do), then you may be in danger of being too thin and must eat more and enjoy your pies and puddings and not be one of the increasingly vilified skeletons.
In answer to all of this, I have pointy angular wrists with long thin fingers and a soft and wibbly bottom. I like them both, I'm having them both, and I'm somehow managing to do all of this without cutting huge swathes of food out of my intake or exercising madly or anything like that.
I get to eat real, unprocessed, named red meats in several meals each week. I have things like gravy, occasional generous slices of cake, tea with milk and sugar, roast potatoes, bolognese, carbonara (not all at once, of course, that would taste a bit odd)... but I also have things like sensible soups with real chunks of identifiable vegetables, fresh fruit, lots of fruit juice, tasty carrots and peas.

So perhaps we really don't have to worry so constantly and so much. Perhaps we just need some common sense in general education while young people are forming their views on themselves. It's okay to not have an airbrushed body, it really is. Bodies can be different shapes. If you have a wibbly bum, by most viewpoints that's actually much nicer than an arse you could break rocks on. If the TV is telling you that you're ugly when your friends and lover are saying you're delectable, turn the TV off for a while. Of course it's not a solution to the whole big problem of dietweightbodyshape, but perhaps little individual things like turning off the TV can help on a little individual basis.
And perhaps I've misunderstood everything in a spectacular way. But... well, I've managed to end up with a body I really like without controlled diets or workouts or panics. It is entirely possible to do. It should be possible for others, too, because I cannot be that unique.

And if the above really bothers anyone, I can hide it under an lj cut. If you have some kind of advice or information on me to help me out some kind of spectacular misunderstanding, please do share- I really do actually like to have more knowledge on things.

"You just look and you just know"

2009-06-09T21:46:38Z

Nick Griffin's own words on how to tell if someone is British or not: "you just look and you just know".

He says he's okay with caucasians. So what would he make of people with a mixed heritage including a great deal of blood from outside Europe, despite pale skin and looking entirely the British part?
What does he make of non-whites whose families have been in the UK since before 1945?

And just in general-
Do the independence craving Scots count as British to him even if they want to distance themselves from the English nationalist sentiment he appeals to? (Because, let's face it- he's not appealing to Britain, he's appealing to England. All about St George, not St Andrew)
What about the Welsh, who use their own non-English language and are holding tight to a heritage of their own?
Does he prefer to keep violent child rapists who happen to be white over generous charity workers who happen to be Asian?
What does he think of the neo-Nazis in his party, who make idols of the Austrian and Italian dictators of the second world war rather than any English/British politicians?

I would love to know how his head works. It seems to be quite a unique sort of place.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/08/bnp-racist-membership-policy

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-06-09T16:29:00

2009-06-09T15:36:29Z

Something has actually managed to do real battle with my immune system. This is rare- nearly unheard of. When all others have horrible colds and flu, I have a slight sniffle at worst.
But somehow I have contracted some sort of nasty coldish thing. Last night it was so unpleasant that I actually turned the computer off around 11.30pm instead of 2am, in the hope of getting some sleep. And when I woke up this morning, it was still here. I don't know why. But it means I'm not at work- my head, various bones and joints and most of my back really aches, I can't turn my head because my throat hurts too much, I keep coughing and moving quickly is really unpleasant.
This is really quite odd. It's very rare for this kind of bleh to carry over from one evening into the next day with me. Maybe it'll be gone tomorrow.
Time for more orange juice.

delkaetre_ni @ 2009-06-08T01:59:00

2009-06-08T01:03:13Z

This weekend I
-failed to actually go to the club I intended to
-voted instead to stay at the Gent's home and cuddle up and have a very, very, very lazy weekend
-had a weekend with nothing but cuddling, movies, and ice lollies
-feel that I, therefore, have won something or other.

Now I think I may sleep. And work out when I'm going to get time to go to Thorpe Park for their new rollercoaster- the weekends just keep filling up, and there's no way I'm going in July/August when the screaming brats are out in force.
Goodnight. Sleep well. See you all at some point.