Yesterday was a definite day of downswing. Mood, luck, Stuff, all rock bottom. Today? Is less than halfway through and already feels like that moment on the way up to the top on a swing, when your insides go over with the force of the lift and the iron frame around you shudders and lurches as your weight and momentum tug on its anchoring, and the wind and sun hit you in the face and it's all too exhilarating to be frightening even if it does feel like you're about to fall off. Today, so far, is good.

And this news article on measuring quantum effects without them realising that you're looking is just the icing on the possibly-existent cake. Apparently, if you can manage to observe reality without changing it, you discover that it is EVEN WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT. Somewhere in the back of the universe, I can hear laughter. ^_^

In other more local news, it's so good to be awake and alive and not half dead with exhaustion for a change. ^_^ I even have a story blocked out in my head, which is great as I've been utterly useless at getting anything into pennable form lately. And today there will be pub food, and useful work, and friends, and also Judgement Day pay-per-view over at Mark's... yep, stuff is good. Life++.

Laters,
The Navigator

PS Also, new best thing ever: Body Shop's brazil nut body butter. I have no idea how it goes from smelling of warm and creamy and, well, brazil nuts in the jar, to smelling like WKD-Iron-Brew-over-hot-charcoal[1] on me, but the fact that it does is frankly just fantastic. Win!

[1] You will learn strange things from pouring alcoholic libations over a disposable barbeque. You may also discover the most unimaginably wonderful caramelised-sugar smell in the world, seriously... ^_^

Six things that have made me happy in the last few days!

1) Realising, albeit rather painfully, that I Have A Problem(TM) regarding my distressing lack of ability to tell people "no", "fuck off", or "I don't like this situation" - and also realising that I can fix this problem and will not automatically get killed and dumped in a field next to the A14 just because I happen to cross someone else's whims. I mean, really, Aleister Crowley would be ashamed of me. But I honestly think I've figured out how to stand up for myself a bit more now, so that makes me very very happy indeed.

2) The fact that we have a new President of the USA and I actually managed to watch him take the oath of office on the BBC live feed, even though I was in work at the time. The headlines this morning are full of honest-to-gods good news for the first time in who knows how long: Guantanamo, the Middle East peace process, and a whole sheaf of suspiciously fairytale-esque Inauguration Ball photos. Congratulations Mr President and GOOD LUCK! ^_^

3) Connected to (2) above, eating vast quantities of celebratory donuts on Tuesday. They were really good donuts, and everything. Also, relatedly, having finally had enough spare cash to put in an order for some Stuff from americansweets.co.uk. Real cream soda! 3 Musketeers bars! Hell yeah. ^_^

4) Getting to steal Mikki for a day so that we could rehearse and then audition with Fire & Forget (the audition itself was very good fun though I have no idea if we got the gig!) I miss him a lot and it was really lovely to see him and sit watching Mortal Kombat: Conquest and generally goof off. ♥

5) This morning, on the way to work, finding and following a mysterious trail of... WWE trading cards! Seriously, someone had scattered a good twenty or more of them along the verge on Ditton Lane, so I followed the trail and picked them all up. They're a bit mangled from having been out in the rain (but salvageable), and none of them are what I'd consider A-grade trophies, but there are a couple of definite B-pluses in there (Stone Cold Steve Austin, yay!) and hey, so what? It's still FREE WWE TRADING CARDS, wtf. (I think Slaanesh has a hole in his pocket. The number of times I find random pretty things that are perfectly me, simply lying in the street, is truly uncanny. ^_^)

6) The world in general, just by being fucking beautiful. The wind in my hair, the rain skittering on the window. The blackwork delicacy of bare trees against the glory of the sky, early on a clear morning when everything is just starting to spin up and come alive for the day. Cold winter sky, and the stars - I mean, gods dammit, all I did was open the back door to put something in the recycling the other night, and I looked up to find myself standing under a sky so spectacular that kings and emperors couldn't afford something half as glorious. And it was just there, for free, and all I had to do to have it was tip my head back as I dropped the dustbin lid.

How is this not awesome? I mean, really? ^______^

Laters,
Rath

Tuesday's post. Today started out with a certain degree of fail, but has improved along the way. So:

1. As I was walking to work, passing a guy who was just starting his car. As he turned the key, the stereo came on along with the engine, sending a huge deep thumping blast of bass and guitars echoing into the hitherto silent street. It was just... exhilarating. Thanks, unknown guy!
2. Crossing Parker's Piece after dark, and seeing the ice rink had purple light-pollution glare above it instead of the eerie orange that I'm more used to. The big bright blue-white lights that illumine the rink must have been scattering really brightly off the ice to make that effect happen and it was gorgeous. The entire world needs to switch to blue-violet streetlighting now please!
3. The German Market, again on Parker's Piece. It's a whole lot of little faux-log-cabin things strung with lights, selling wooden toys and reindeer hides (which are all stroky and soft!) and strange candy and honey and who knows what else. Absolutely magic, especially after dark when the lights make it look like fairyland or something.
4. Getting #2 of Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch. Which was apparently written by someone who was aiming to make me, personally, fall over and die. That perfectly matched to one of my emotional hot buttons. Hell yeah!
5. On my way home, seeing A Car. I don't know what it was, though my brain is saying Dodge or Mustang (I am not as hot on IDing muscle cars as I should be, and it was dark) but anyway. Big, matt-black with no badging or decals of any kind, those beautiful hard brutal lines that you just don't get since they invented wind-tunnel design, jacked up painfully high at the back end. Massive bulge in the hood for the air intakes (this is the car equivalent of a roll of socks down the front of a pair of very tight pants), old silver-and-black license plates (which I adore) and an engine that sounded even at near-idle like something monstrous snarling for blood. Guh. I'm fairly sure the driver saw me drooling and I honestly don't mind if he did. Best part? Really heavy traffic on Newmarket Road so I got a good long stare at it instead of just a quick one-eighty and a "whoa!" as is so often the case with cars like that. Yay!
6. Getting chatted to at the Calling by someone I actually really quite liked. He was a nice guy, older than me AND still has long hair which is an automatic several point bonus, and danced to almost all the same stuff as me. Cool! ^_^

Oh, and a bonus 6a for Oliver's Calling set which was awesome and included Harsh Generation, Raising Cain, All Along the Crooked Way...

Right, sleep. NOW. Goodnight everyone!

Laters,
Rath

PS Bonus #6b, also, for the WWE After The Bell video of Matt and Jeff from Armageddon (warning - spoilers, obviously). Triple H hugging Jeff! And Edge doing the ZOMG-wide-eyes face over the announce table! (Yes, I admit it, I love the fights but I'm a total sucker for the fluff. *g*)

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20081016/tuk-what-does-outer-space-smell-like-dba1618.html

Apparently, out there in the void between the worlds, it smells of frying steak and welding - or at least, that's the rather prosaic description provided by astronauts sniffing things that have been out there.

I have to admit, the idea that the sensory bottom line of our universe is flesh, fire and hot metal makes me very, very happy.

I really hope that the attempts to duplicate this scent are successful and that it's somehow made commercially available. I'm not sure I'd ever wear anything else again.

Laters,
The Navigator

Can I get an OH MY FUCKING GODS from all the Lovecraft fans and giant tentaclefishoggoths on my flist, please?

Link, for clickyphobes, is to an article about an expedition to the buried, ice-covered, and geologically-shouldn't-be-there Gamburtsevs, the "ghost peaks" of Antarctica. Umm... yep.

Incidentally At The Mountains of Madness was written years before the Gamburtsevs were even discovered (in the fifties, for the record), for anyone who's counting. Hang on to your hats, believers. O_O

Laters,
Rath

sternenstaub, you won't believe this one - look at it! Clearly the subversive street art campaigns of late have gone all the way to the top. *stares* And it works by grasshopperbeast power! Lookit!

And less dramatic, but so perfectly Me in its nature that I can't resist posting it, is this: my favourite Motörhead ballad complete with various art of the Grim Reaper. Yes, I did say Motörhead ballad, there is such a thing. I know you're amazed and most people apparently hate this song anyway, but... whatever. I love it. Lemmy's vocals sound all the more emotive for the fact that he's really struggling to make his voice do what he wants, and those soaring, mourning, achingly cold guitar leads feel like they're being raked down my very soul. So beautiful.

Aaaand... that is all. Now I go back to copy-editing. Laters!

Rath

The world is so amazing.

I got caught in a magnificent, flash-flood rainstorm on my way from Downing to Kynesim HQ earlier today. That in itself would have been fine, only I was wearing heavy jeans and boots that are no longer watertight, and consequently I'm soaked and taking ages to dry.

I'm sitting on the sofa in KHQ, with the laptop on my soggy lap. The fronts of my kneejoints are cold, where a draught from the open windows is blowing across the wet denim clinging to them. I can feel the heat from the laptop soaking into my thighs in weird patterns depending on exactly how much pressure it's exerting on different bits of musculature. I can smell warm, damp canvas.

And when you think about it in terms of detailing, that's just incredible. I mean, an author who remembered to put in that level of accuracy about exactly what it feels like to be drying out in the office after a storm when you can't change your clothes, would be considered a great writer. A game designer who programs their worlds with that much passing, plot-irrelevant detail without sacrificing gameplay is deemed a star. And yet the universe just naturally has that much random gratuitous data in it and more, and when you think about it, isn't that awesome?

I love the world. I even quite like the smell of wet denim. ^_^

Laters,
The Navigator

I usually don't have much (any) time for Christian metal, but even I have to sit up at the idea of a Capuchin friar, aged 62, fronting a metal band.

This is fantastic. The guy's not even preaching from the stage, or at least he alleges not to be. He's just a former missionary and member of a holy order who caught heavy metal and decided he had to be part of it. There are no words for how much glee I feel at this - it certainly provides good evidence for my belief that if you have metal in your blood you will find your way to it, no matter how long or circuitous or downright bizarre the route. ^_^

And, this? The fact that I'm amazed to hear something so open-minded from a Christian is probably a damning reflection on Christianity's spokespeople in general, but:

"I never did it to preach, I did it because music is beautiful ... If I want to convert people, I simply want to convert them to life, to welcome life, to enjoy life ... I am religious and I am a priest but I am not doing this to convert people to Christ, to faith or the Church, but for them to try to understand life, to be able to enjoy it. Nothing more." - Friar Cesare Bonizzi

Yes. YES. Because what the hell else are you supposed to be doing up on that stage? Amen, brother!

Incredulously but frankly delightedly,
Rath

For the benefit of those who stood by me and of those who had to go to bed - I'm not dead. Hello people. *s* Thank you so much (lj)fluffymormegil, (lj)oml404 (hope you're feeling better mate!), (lj)lonescorpion raisedbymoogles, deepbluesquee, lookingforsigns and sternenstaub for all being there for me in one capacity and another.

So yeah, I got out of work at two thirty yesterday. That is, two thirty IN THE MORNING. It's quite bizarre, my IJ posts show off the descent of my brain quite neatly. First post is a simple "oh bugger, have to work late," unlocked. Second is a panicked plea for help, locked down to a few close friends. Third, completely private, is the draft of a very ill-advised email that I'm really glad I didn't send, from sometime around midnight. Oh dear.

This is your brain on copy-editing...

Laters,
Rath

I wanted to write this review last night, ie before I'd actually had a break in the thirty-seven-hour period of not sleeping that formed most of my weekend. It would have been much more deranged and fun reading than the slightly (only slightly...) more coherent review you're about to get instead. However, by the time I got in last night I was so dead that (lj)lonescorpion had to force me to go to bed rather than do anything else. So.

( How it happened was like this. )

So yeah. How was everyone else's weekend and please can I go to bed now? ^_^

Lots of love and cybernetic bats to all,
Rath x


[1] To everyone who knows that one: yes, I know you will now be hearing it on loop ALL WEEK. I'm just evil like that.

...dude. WE PLAYED OUR FIRST FESTIVAL. ^_____________^

I walked into work this morning, and suddenly I'm a minor celebrity. I was over in the galley kitchen that we have for the offices on my staircase, and one of the senior staff from another office popped up at my elbow and was telling me how great Fire & Forget were at Strawberry Fair and how much her kids loved us, and I was standing there grinning like a total idiot. This is what this shit is for, this rock'n'roll business. It's for the moments when people come up to you and look at you with this new, bright-eyed, admiring respect, and tell you that you spoke to them, inspired them, showed them a good time... whatever. I went up there on the Strawberry Fair stage knowing that there were probably people in the crowd who only knew me as my boring, carefully restrained office self, and I put my heart and soul out there, and suddenly people are looking at me like they've never seen me before - but in a good way. And it feels fantastic, both from a personal self-esteem perspective and from a more selfless stance of "whoa, we made people happy!" It's the pay-it-forward factor of having been able to do for others, even on the tiniest of scales, what the bands I love have been doing for me all these years. And let me tell you, it's awesome.

( The actual gig. )

I also stewarded afterwards, for what wound up being about five hours total, and caught a couple of other good bands in the process (names that stick in my head are Caimbo, The Alice Band (not my usual thing but good at a festival) and Talulah). Working front-of-house is a weird job, because being security staff of any sort gives you an automatic -4 to all Charisma checks. Everyone assumes you're there to stop them having fun. My take on it is that if I'm wearing that vest I'm there to make sure that everyone is having fun and no jackass spoils it for anyone else, and that nobody gets hurt - so I try to keep my manner friendly, be helpful, and explain the reason if I ask people to do something. This paid off this year, as I got plenty of grins and waves and laughter and thumbs-up from the barrier warriors down the front and I didn't have to yell at anyone even once. Tiring work, but not so bad. ^_^

...there was going to be other stuff in this post but you know what, I'm running off at the keyboard here. I'll stop and do another post later on.

Laters,
The Navigator

PS And lest we forget, (lj)blackmetalbaz texted me on Sunday to say we'd achieved the unthinkable... he had a Fire & Forget earworm. This aggravated accolade may, actually, be my favourite piece of feedback from the whole event. ^_^ Cheers Baz!

This is my favourite news story of the year so far.

Man flies. On turbine-powered personal wings. It's the Rocketeer for real.

I want to do that so much that it makes my heart bump up against my throat trying to get airborne. I almost certainly can't, not for another twenty years or so until the tech becomes mass market anyway, but I am so happy that someone else can and is.

Monsieur Yves Rossy, I salute you. From all the way down here. May your name go down - and indeed up - in history.

Laters,
The Navigator