Hopefully there won't be too much more of this going on..

It's WOTD time.

wellaway \WEL-uh-WEY\ , interjection: (Used to express sorrow.)
She entered under the dome weeping and wailing, “Wellaway!"
-- edited by Leonard Charles Smither, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night"Wellaway. My little son so dear!" So sad he was that no one could cheer up at all…
-- Marijane Osborn, Romancing the GoddessWellaway is related to the contemporary word woe. It came from the Old English phrase wā lā wā meaning "woe! lo! woe!"

So.. not the cheeriest word. More fitting to the earlier parts o the week than now, fortunately, and it is.. of course, the last day o Jan.. woo hoo! J is finally going to g.. thank goodness, in just under 5 hours, and in a bit I'll be going out to celebrate this momentous occasion by drinking with people I've never met before in a place I only vaguely know the whereabouts of.

See you in Feb.

And back to normal.

So life back from the early week pit of hell that these relatively on a world wide scale well off Westerners had to endure, to the typical dull humming of the mundane, but mostly comfortable. There was a moment when I thought they (the eternal THEY who are responsible for all these cockups, and everything really) had fucked my computer, but I got it working after a bit. After that I settled back into the usual.

And yes.. it's getting closer and closer to that haven that I've decided the end of jan.. ie February is, only one full day and this evening left. And seriously.. it better be an improvement.

Well.. on the 29th and 30th of this month.. the rest has just been.. nothing special but more of the same.. where have I heard that before? *scratches head*

2 days to go

Jan is nearly over, and though it doesn't promise and end to bullshit bullshit that's bullshit, and in fact historically has rarely been any improvement and some years crappier than Jan, it promises a start to something I to be perfectly honest I'm not sure I want to do but I'm gonna say it's a good thing. One must have something to look forward to, one has always said. Well one is saying it now anyway.

This day was barely if at all an improvement on the pit of despair that was yesterday. Much the same in many ways.. and had to dewal with annoying bureacratic stuff.. a lot of waiting etc etc. A
 new thing well not a new thing but something that was annoying me but I had a slight hope I'd be able to do something to make it less bad came up, and I can't make it less bad, it's official. Still no power, but at least it was sorted and now it's just to wait for it all to be fixed, so at least that, at least a potentially better day to look forward to.

Apart from that... once this has sorted out, apart from not being exactly richer, and probably even poorer than I'd like to be.. well, than i expected I'd be, well in the proxy way, if that means anything, then it will be much as it would hagvfe been the rest of this month of Jan, whcih is, meh.. nothing to write home about.

Oh and it rained today.

But still.. 2 days.

OFF*%FS!

Today is a shitty day. A really fucked up crappy, crummy day.

Here I was thinking.. Jan is coming to a close, it's warming up, had a lovely eve yesterday, ice skating (not well, and not even half well but after 10 minutes considerably better than first getting on the ice) for the first time in.. well, yonks, under the light snow, and though it was far from perfect, (arriving late because though it says online they close at 10, they closed at 7, and skating without Erik, and as I said not exactly getting on so well) it was quite nice. It even snowed, I may have mentioned. Oh and Erik found some spare batts, rechargables that worked really fine so I was able to take photos with my cam again just in time for a pretty snowy eve. We had a beer in a charming English style pub named after a koala and, well.. one of the more pleasant eves, in fact overall days of Jan so far.

Then came today. The last Monday o Jan. And they (the infamous They who are responsible for so much grief) weren't going to let us off easy.

Erik had some visa stuff to do in the morning. We were chatting back and forth in the morning, silly stuff, as he waited and waited, until they turned the electricity off. Yeah, they turned the electricity off. So he calls and sends messages to whoever after I manage to get him to call me, call, let him call back, but at first he answered and used up some precious few credits I had left, but whatev.. and then back and forth again. Here I am thinking he's already at work, but there's still 144 people until his number comes up at the whatever office ministry thingy he was waiting at. So, no answer from anyone. I try everything a layperson can do in this situation, knowing not if we'd been turned off or some muppet working on the flats int he building had turned off the power in the wrong flat or bumped into something or whatever, just waiting for someone to get back to him and for him to get back to me. He called a bunch of times, but to ask how I was doing, which was not at all. Finally, after a few hours, well many hours the maintenance dude guy from upstairs came by and tried all the boxes in the electricity cupboard thingy and none of them worked. Once again a mundane and pointless story of my life is getting very long and detailed, so basically what happened was, still don't have power, Erik was at the ministry thing all day, and then they gave him shit about stuff but at least he got the visa, and now he's at the dentist.

It's not as cold as it was, I suppose that's one good point.. but IT'S COLD ENOUGH IN A FLAT THAT HAS NO HEAT NO LIGHT NO HOT WATER AND OH YEAH.. NO ELECTRICITY TO RUN ANYTHING AT ALL!

Gotta sort this shit out tomorrow. Another day, another shitty day. JMG.

Nothing To Say

So of course, here I am, writing about it on the internet. Nothing new I've been doing this for a while, that is, posting while I have "literally" nothing to say, therefore nothing of note to write. If you bother to read you may have noticed.

I have reasons. I don't really like to share too much. This creates a lot of entries where I talk about something that's going on with someone that might turn into some sort of whatever.. and probably has little to none of what meaningless meaning the version in my head.. with all the details present has, you may have noticed posts like this as well. Sorry, I just, don't want to tell you that much.

It's not that I want the blog to be full of personal stuff.. updates on my (at present extremely) uneventful life, because.. well I don't want that, for the previously stated reason and well, because I don't really want that, nevertheless posts here seem to be either of that kind, minus details, or something about how cold it is.

It wasn't always like this, I used to have a wider scope of topics, once upon a time, but it's been very long now. I just can't do that anymore. I mean, I care about stuff, I'm interested in it, I read about it, sometimes get involved in a very small (post the occasional comment type of thing) way. Important stuff as well as like, funny stuff and stuff, but I can't write about it. I could, if I wanted to, but I don't want to. I don't know why I don't want to. I'm not qualified to, usually, but I could write that stuff, and it wouldn't be half bad. But I don't. And I won't. 

What it's like here..

It's cold, been snowing a bit sometimes, not too heavy, but staying cold enough so it doesn't melt. Not the best conditions really.. and not the most pretty.. this is already a few days old as my batteries completely died and I haven't gotten new ones yet, not much out there worth shooting though.

Happy Friday and all.

So.. 3 days.. 5 days, maybe 4.

I never drank again ever after the last time, and it lasted 5 whole days. Well about that, not sure I haven't counted them and I can't be bothered to figure out exactly how many days it is.

*thinks about it*

er... who cares.

In any case, I've done well. I would like another beer though. *wonders if it would be a good idea for about a second and then thinks nothing of it*

going to sleep now

Weren't they the ones with the radishes?

It's time for one of the many filler posts I'm doing in this relatively light posting season. It's word o' the day.

Gorgonize:
gorgonize \GAWR-guh-nahyz\ , verb:
To affect as a Gorgon; hypnotize; petrify.
Shorten it, then, to what is functional, direct and bluntly, derogatorily descriptive. Of his awful power to horrify, to gorgonize, to chill.
-- Christopher Rush, Last Lesson of the AfternoonMortimo Planno could gorgonize foes with a stony stare, but his deep baritone voice was seductive and unexpectedly disarming.
-- Colin Grant, The Natural MysticsGorgonize is the verbification of an ancient Greek mythological figure. The Gorgons were three sister monsters commonly represented as having snakes for hair, wings, and brazen claws. Their eyes turned anyone looking into them to stone. Thus togorgonize someone is to turn them into stone.

I remember the gorgons from the Fraggles.. you know, they got their radishes from their garden only they were giant for the fraggles and they used them for anything.. or was it not them? Whatever.

Eleven.

Days to go. Of this month. Nothing will change and if it does it won't be necessarily better, just cos it's not Jan anymore but.. it's good to have something to look forward to, no need to worry that there isn't actually such a thing until such time as it occurs. Or doesn't.

It's my way of coping and I'm sticking to it.

JMG!

Too hot too cold.

Would you rather it be too hot or too cold?

Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.. in any case, there's only one answer to that, Does't matter, if it's too anything it's rubbish. All other answers are wrong. 

Having said that, I'd prefer it be too cold. If it's too cold, you can rug up, heat up, do exercises. If it's too hot what can you do? If you're in the coolest place, and naked all you can do is get into water. That's it. 

Of course, it depends how much hotter or colder than the ideal it is, and if you have access to the necessary refreshments, so, it's kind of, well.. a rubbish argument. 

I speak of this because today in Sydney was the hottest day on record, apparently, 45.6° C. I would not enjoy that at all. And here it's like, cold, -7 and everything covered in snow and do you hear me complaining?

Well.. I don't have to go outside, at the moment anyway, and don't need to walk people around the city this evening, and well if it was like the last days of doing said job, I would be complaining. A lot.

If I lived somewhere that it gets regularly that cold and colder, and didn't well, live in a place that actually does have a few ridiculously hot days in summer, and visit a place sorta regularly that is quite hot, and come from a place that is known to be hot, and is currently stupidly, and certainly horribly uncomfortably hot, I might feel differently.

Oh and if it wasn't all covered in snow and pretty outside.. I might feel differently right now, being winter and all.

The fiddly details.

I really don't like starting new things. I mean, yeah, sometimes I do, and sometimes I want new things and can't wait for them to start but I also don't like it. Make of that what you will. One of the reasons is that I get nervous and feel like I'm going to screw up, and always envision a time in the future, when I'll be settled in, used to it all and won't have to worry about it anymore. I never seem to get to that stage, one reason being I don't stay with things so long, and the other being that I don't get to that stage.. maybe after years and years I might, but months and months doesn't do it. Maybe I'm just not made for those things.. and possibly this thing will be different. I am yet to see.

Another reason is.. that is, not liking to start new things, well the other reason is that you need to have details. You know, official stuff, the stuff that most regular grownups have all together and in some folder somewhere and accessible. I don't have those things, well I don't have all of them and I don't have them properly. It might not surprise anyone out there who ever manages to read any of these posts that I'm not the sort of person that has the proper papers that most grownups just have, but I don't. so then I have to get some, or have an alternative, and give reasons for not having them, and wondering how much I should tell anyone about my status or lack thereof of this thing that they need.

Anyway I'm dealing with that now or will be very soon. I'd give more details about all this but I don't want to.

A Big Change

A change is coming, which will again be significant in my life, which will be this year's or this part of this year's "what I'm doing now which is different from what I was doing another time" that is if everything turns out as it should which I can't be sure of and I really shouldn't be counting them chickens you know, but yeah, a big thing.

It's a good thing. I mean, it's something that is generally believed to be good, and it's certainly a necessary thing, something I have to do. I can't help feeling that.. I don't know, this thing might get int he way of other things that I haven't been doing much of if at all but I was totally going to do it big time now and now I won't have the time, not just because of the time this all takes but the particular times I'm required to be doing this, which takes so much time.

Well I'm not quite there yet, don't know 100% if it's going to happen, how long it will last, how it will effect things, etc etc, so I probably should wait and see. I'll let you know when I know more. Maybe.

Finally..

a change.

It snowed. Not a lot.. the light fluttery type that leaves a thin film on top of surfaces and is gone from all but grass, roofs and cars before too long, but it was something and it was pretty.

A bit of white instead of the usual grey. So that was nice for today.

I don't know why but I thought it might be worthwhile to mention that. There's some stuff going on but it's the kind of stuff I don't really feel the need to give details about just yet, so I won't give details about that just yet, if I get around to it.

It seems like what it is..

but it isn't.

I'm not speaking of anything in particular, just that sometimes this happens. Oh look.. it's word o' the day time.

pseudomorph:
\SOO-duh-mawrf\ , noun: 1. An irregular or unclassifiable form.
2. A mineral having the outward appearance of another mineral that it has replaced by chemical action.
It is clearly not maturation but a pseudomorph, yet it is a pseudomorph that claims a proximate relation to maturation by the intrinsic precariousness of maturation itself.
-- David L. Norton, Personal DestiniesHe blamed the sciences for reestablishing the mirage of truth, and still more thepseudomorph subjects like anthropology and economics whose adepts substituted inapplicable statistics for the ineptness of their insights.
-- Tom Sharpe, Porterhouse Blue

I like this word. It's quite long, got "pseudo" in it, and it means, I dunno.. something weird. Also googleable, I like that word too, although I'm not entirely convinced it's a word.. I mean, I know it's a word because I just said it, but it might not be really a real word, know what I mean? Maybe it's a pseudoword, if that's a thing. I think that should be a thing.

Just a picture..

cos it's been a while since I posted one



it's drizzle.. well me, and umbrella the street.. but mostly drizzle..

there's been a lot of that here.

Dear Weather Gods

I'm getting real tired of drizzly. Please do something about it.

Widen the scope please, and preferably.. actually most certainly wider than the overcast to heavy rain spectrum, that would not necessarily please me in fact it might just (in fact yes it will) piss me off. So not that, something nice, something pleasant. A little bit of cold (not below -6 please) with some pretty snow would be good, for a while. And an early spring.

Just stop the drizzling.. and all the other stuff I don't like, I know it's Jan but.. come on!

Updates schmupdates!

Just how often do you have to update a site? I'm not expecting an answer on that one, it probably "depends" and there isn't a clear cut time frame anyway, just.. "often" I suppose.. or "often enough" which is usually yearly, or bi-yearly or quarterly even depending on various things about the site which I can't figure out.

My personal answer is "too bloody often". I think that some of them update just because  you're like, supposed to, so they tweak things a tiny bit, they rearrange buttons, make it look slightly different so you have to get used to things all over again, sometimes put in a new feature which is useful for someone somewhere but I've never been able to figure out who, and they always, "literally" always get rid of some universally useful, nay necessary feature which it's a no brainer that you should have. Like being able to rearrange things by date for instance. This should be on everything! Everything that comes in lists anyway.. and it should automatically go to reverse chronological in fact that's how everything should by default be ordered always without exception but what do they do instead? They get rid of the possibility of arranging your list like that at all? While adding some other useless feature that no one will ever use or want to use for anything ever, and putting a border around the buttons which pretty much exclusively looks crap.

Oh and other stuff.. but that's the example I can think of now.. but they're always doing it, always!

*goes off and grumbles about facebook and youtube and whatever*

*blogger too, no, not getting off the hook*

A secure little bubble

It's day 5 o this year.. '13, yes.. I can write it, I'm coming to terms with having to look at it for a whole year.. and well.. been very quiet. It's generally quiet at this time, fewer people packing onto the trams, walking on the streets, in shops, in bars etc.. particularly in the center where the tourists were hanging out, but in general as well.

Very quiet for me, no surfers anymore, no pubbing or visiting well less than around the silly season which was after all invented for that sort of thing, but still some because I'm me and that's what I do. Pubbing that is, not visiting.

So last night was a momentary slice of a not exactly exiting, or interesting, or at all eventful life but a tiny bit of.. not something happening but going to a place that isn't here to do something other than read and stuff on the internet, so something. Just a quiet drink, in a quiet bar, then another drink in another not too busy bar, and a tram ride home, and another drink with a friend we ran into in the bar in this building.

That would have been quiet if it was not for the argument and the blood shed while we're enjoying a few beers and conversation. Only a few tiny drops really, I didn't notice until they were being mopped up. Still, an event. Not happening to me but on the peripheral of my existence, I suppose. It did't quite penetrate the bubble.

Today, it's been the usual. A phone call from someone who had an adventure last night.. to do with behaving deliberately foolish, cops, arrests, and a warm place for the night if not the most comfortable. Someone I know very well, who I see very often and indeed did just yesterday.. and still, outside of the bubble.

So things are happening. Despite the Janness of it all, the dull drizzly weather and lack of hustle and bustle and celebration, life continues, shit happens, even interesting, nay exiting shit.. and right up close to me.. sometimes almost bursting the bubble, but they don't.

Feelin really Jan.

Blurgh. It's Jan, it's drizzly and I'm feeling jan and drizzly myself. It just is.

I was going to mention something else, but I forgot what it was, it was so boring. Whatever it was is the most interesting thing that's happened today, judging by my original intention to mention it but.. can't think of it.. oh well, if it's important enough it'll come back. It isn't though.

Someone measured the windows today. don't know what it's for.. why would someone measure windows? What are they going to do? Am I gong to have to deal with more days of worker dudes coming by.. waiting all day for whenever they come, sitting here while they bang and clash with whatever they're doing with the windows, go out again because they need some part, come back, and then come back another day, whatever time they show up, to fix it? and then probably come back again at some unspecified I have to wait around all day time? That will suck. an it probably won't make any difference.

Happy Jan.

That's one down.

Well 2 for Jan, but the first official working back to normal all those shenanigans over and our guests have left too so.. it's kind of that.

Also one whole (working) day of the year of the year passed without me having achieved a whole lot of the long long list of difficult and time consuming things I need to do before it gets too far into the year ok nothing at all ok.. happy!

Tomorrow I swear I'll get things done. What tings, I don't know, just how exactly cos this getting stuff done thing is so vague because it's all so.. encompassing its difficult to be too specific about it. But I'll do something, honestly. Well I'll try. I'll think about it.

I'd like to turn this here blog into something worthwhile with interesting stories, articles, stuff about ideas.. big events and general stuff that isn't just stuff that I'm involved in.. but so far there's no evidence of that.

Well.. happy beginning of the regular sensible season and stuff. I spose.

And it's here again.

The bland, blurry, bleakness of Jan. Starting now and continuing unless the JMG project goes considerably better than it has managed in the past, for 31 days. We're only just beginning, it's a long road ahead.. January 20.. er.. that number, oh yeah another thing, the year is this not considered particularly lucky and aesthetically displeasing number which I'd ideally like to avoid most times, but now it's going to be at the end of EVERY FUCKING DATE FOR A YEAR! And we're right at the beginning of it, the Jan bit, which we're just starting now.

And you know, I kind of like that it's calming down after the silly season, even though we still have people here, but I don't particularly like that it's "back to work" so to speak, which means for me getting serious about a whole lot of things which I can't keep putting off forever and although I skipped the formal resolution making this year I am going to be fff.. well older by the end of the year and.. I'd like to have gotten stuff done by then, might make me feel better about turning.. oh fuck it's so old I can't really be but you know all the same, I really need to do stuff. Starting now. Well tomorrow but that's soon, and there's all too much of Jan left at this point, and there's all too much of '13 left at this point, and by the time that ends I will be that thing that I haven't actually mentioned but you know what I mean.

So.. JMG and all that. At least I'm feeling ok, with being kinda lightweights and not staying out so late (we aren't exactly kids anymore remember) and having gotten to the party kinda late due to being given the wrong address and having trouble getting through to the host for a while and having to Scooby gang it over to the actual address with some people we'd just met and only having a glass of champagne and a little bit of beer and 2 fernets with the guests before leaving there wasn't that much alcohol consumed, which I suppose is a good thing. I'm glad there's at least one.

JMG!