Don’t let yourself destroy yourself

13 08 2008

At 5:30 this evening, the sunlight was a curious amber.  The clouds were a peach colour, yet the sky behind them was a rich blue.  At the fluffier edges, it blurred into purple, and the stubby yet brightly coloured rainbows in the east.  Slightly surreal, with colours normally associated with HDRI photos.

The overall effect was a mormon propaganda piece. Why the mormons? Well, I notice that their website is quite attractive.

It didn’t rain today.

I went for a walk after dark last night, with no phone or wallet.  Mainly because it was completely spontaneous.  I went through two parks, up a road even bendier than the one I recently discovered (they’d be the same if they were properly lined up), and discovered where my bus turns around.

It’s always muddy in the long thin park with olive trees.

I’ve recently gotten into a pile of new music, and approve of the vastly improved automatic recommendation system on last.fm.

Wow, this was a short one.





The goose in the night

26 06 2008

See how complex this is? Let’s pretend every reference – especially the obscure ones – is intentional.
Adding to the convolution is the fact that I begin this post with something that happened before the contents of the previous post.  Oh my.

On the subject of the disjointed nature of my posts, I realise that they are just microblogs, arbitrarily grouped by when I write them.  And yes, conversations with me are actually like this, to a degree.  It depends on whether the other participants moderate or amplify the rambling nature of the discussion.  With the people I choose to associate with most, they tend to make it stranger.

So, down to the goose.

On Sunday night, I got three hours of sleep, because of last-minute summative essay writing for Modern History.  I leave the Russian Revolutions to the last moment, just like Lenin.  “Summative” is a word invented by the people responsible for our state’s high school diploma thing.  It means “for assessment”, rather than formative.
There is still no coffee in this house.  I had already had my weekly cup, that morning, but it’s not like it effects me strongly.  So I finished my nutella (I will assume that this is available everywhere in the world), and drank a lot of cordial, which I do not actually like.  I was really peppy the next day, and the assignment was done.  Screw it – Nutella is a chocolate hazelnut spread, which I keep in my drawer and eat with a spoon.

When I got home, I did what I normally did for a few hours – squandered my time on the internet.  Then I took a “nap” for four hours.  This was followed by a very conveniently much delayed dinner, after which I returned to the internet.  At 2 AM, I decided to sleep.

Yes, I turn my computer at the PSU – because there is a blue LED under the on button which would otherwise stay on all night, keeping me awake.  I must sleep in complete darkness and silence.

Naturally, I could not sleep.  Those missing hours, I do not think I reclaimed.  I guess I did not need them.

Just before 3:00, this rhythmic hissing started.  Of course, I assumed it was a goose outside my window, the type of red-faced white goose that headbangs when angry and sounds like a bicycle pump.  The type my parents have or had, depending on whether they reproduced.  I think they are down to two ducks and five chickens, actually.

The throaty hacking continued, and I would occasionally, from my bed, reach behind the blind to tap on the window to make it shut up.  “STFU, goose”, was the message a tapped.  It later occurred to me that it was a cat coughing up hairballs, because cats are quite common in the city.

The end.  Oh, I bet you were expecting a punch line.  It went away at some point, and I got a few hours of sleep.  It has not returned on any night since, which is something I hope continues.

On unrelated matters, I made $20 earlier today for dicking about in a tricky bastard of a real estate program.  Once I have got my head around how fiddly it is, it will be “data entry” and not a “learning session”.  Property valuers have quite a workload.  The information is confidential, and I am technically not doing it, so there is no tax.

I’m liking the sound of this.  Also, this is really near where I live.

And I am totally getting my kicks from writing self-referential posts.  I’m the Ouroboros of the blagosphere.

Oh, those black men are fighting the system.