The Extra Clever Mongoose

I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you’d faint, you’d be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!

Picked up a copy of J.K.Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them the other day, and I really have to ask, was Gef a Jarvey?

That is all.

Sir, have you no Latin?

It’s “Cuss-toe-dez” and “A-star-tez” thank you very much!

I was listening to a couple of 40k podcasts over the weekend (it’s kind of taken over my brain at the moment – don’t panic, it’ll burn itself out after a while), specifically 40k Radio and the Independent Characters. Both were very informative and entertaining and I’ll probably be adding them to my podcast-roll permanently – however there was just one little thing that got my teeth on edge…

Someone (I can’t ever remember which podcast they were on, let alone which of the participants) mentioned that they were considering building an Adeptus Custodes army. This is a fine idea and would look damned awesome on the table top, the problem was that they kept calling the Custodes “Cus-toads”. CUS-TOADS!!

Emperor on a Mobility-Scooter! What next? Calling the Space Marines “Ass-tarts”?

This is what happens when an entire nation takes perfectly serviceable words like “colour” and “realise” and spells them the way they’re actually pronounced! LINGUISTIC ANARCHY!!! 😉

The Head of Emily Kaye

The Dead Eyes Opened. The Dead Eyes Opened. The Dead Eyes Opened. The Dead Eyes Opened.

Ever since I first encountered the Severed Head’s classic proto-techno track Dead Eyes Opened as a teenager I’ve wondered if the narration was cut from the whole cloth or if it referred to a real murder…

Today, after many attempts over the years, I finally figured it out.

The spoken work component is from a radio broadcast of crime writer Edgar Lustgarten reading his account of what was known as the Crumbles Murder in which one Patrick Mahon murdered his mistress Emily Kaye in a beach cabin near Eastbourne, Sussex in 1924.

So there we go. One mystery down, so many to go…

Me China Mel Dancin’

My good friend Mel is dancing…

Doo-doo-doo-doo,
Yeah yeah yeah yeah-eah,

Yemen and his Igor photo me,
I’m on the phone, yous can each foresee,
Cool me down,
Rinse a mouse in front of me,
(front of me)
So that’s the way I felt then wa-ah-ah,
So we can eat a Hilton, la la la,
You’re so mean,
See there the melody,

Oh-wow-o-wow-ow,

Dance on the oars,
Cat fight in a handbag,
Yours, only yours,
A walrus tickle dance bed,
It’s no lie,
Lisa in the crown said,
Meh, anyhow,
Me china Mel dancin’

Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow,
Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow-ow-ow,
Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow,
Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow-ow-ow,

Me I’m flocking home giving up for stoats,
As I’m coming down I slip the ropes,
Cool me down,
The TARDIS taking over yeah,
(oh-wow-ow-wow-ow)
So that’s the way I felt then, wa-ah-ah,
So we can eat a Hilton, la-la-la,
You’re so mean,
See there the melody,

So come on,
Dance on the oars,
Cat fight in a handbag,
Yours, only yours,
A walrus tickle dance bed,
It’s no lie,
Lisa in the crown said,
Meh, anyhow,
Me china Mel dancin’

Dance on the oars,
Cat fight in a handbag,
Yours, only yours,
A walrus tickle dance bed,
It’s no lie,
Lisa in the crown said,
Meh, anyhow,
Me china Mel dancin’

Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow,
Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow-ow-ow,
Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow,
Oo-oo-oo-wow-o-wow-ow-ow,

So come on,
Dance on the oars,
Cat fight in a handbag,
Yours, only yours,
A walrus tickle dance bed,
It’s no lie,
Lisa in the crown said,
Meh, anyhow,
Me china Mel dancin’

Dance on the oars,
Cat fight in a handbag,
Yours, only yours,
A walrus tickle dance bed,
It’s no lie,
Lisa in the crown said,
Meh, anyhow,
Me china Mel dancin’

Apathy

Apathy is sad.

I have a list of things to do as long as my arm, but can’t seem to get motivated to do any of them.

I just sit around surfing the net and watching TV.

I think it’s some kind of psychological hangover from my failed holiday – the brutal come down from all excitement and anticipation, combined with anxiety about the amount of money I’ve lost.

I hope I’ll snap out of it soon, but in the meantime you’ll all have to forgive me for being a dull, inactive, inattentive bastard.

Sarah, Say it Ain’t So

Currently there’s a thread up on a board I frequent where people are sharing music via the wonder of YouTube. While perusing said thread I came across this piece by Nick Drake (who’s Nick Drake? Shame on you!)

While listening to it I couldn’t help thinking it sounded familiar. Then I realised why…

Now, maybe it’s just my tin ear. And maybe it’s difficult to construct a melancholy song around a descending scale without sounding like every other melancholy song constructed around a descending scale. And maybe it’s a tribute from Sarah Blasko to Nick Drake. But it really does seem a bit too close to me.

Say it ain’t so Sarah!

Mock My Taste!

Every song marked with five stars in my iTunes…

3 A.M. Eternal (Live At The S.S.L.) – The KLF
All Along the Watchtower – Bear McCreary
America, What Time is Love? – The KLF
Ana Ng – They Might Be Giants
And God Created Brixton – Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
Angel of Harlem – U2
Annie Waits – Ben Folds
Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (Solomon) – Handel
At the Bottom of Everthing – Bright Eyes
Bomb the World (Armageddon Version) – Michael Franti and Spearhead
Bus to Beelzebub – Soul Coughing
Canon – Funtwo
Carribean Blue – Enya
Copperhead Road – Steve Earl
Dancing Queen – ABBA
Det Snurrar I Min Skalle – Familjen
Experimental Film – They Might Be Giants
Gimme Sympathy – Metric
Girl Anachronism – The Dresdon Dolls
Girl From Mars – Ash
Gloria in Excelsis Deo – Vivaldi
Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac
Goodnight Moon – Shivaree
Heaven – DJ Sammy
Hold On – Tom Waits
How Soon is Now – The Smiths
Hymn to Her (7″) – Pretenders
Janie’s Got a Gun – Aerosmith
Last Train to Trancentral (LP Mix) – The KLF
Lock It (I Really Like You) – Falling Joys
Man it’s so Loud in Here – They Might Be Giants
Palaces of Montezuma – Grinderman
Read to Me – B(if)tek
Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) – Kate Bush
Santa Monica – Everclear
Scrub – Shivaree
Serenity – David Newman
Shining Light – Ash
Something Dark is Coming – Bear McCreary
Stone Me Into the Groove – Atomic Swing
Summer Rain – Belinda Carlisle
Sweet Child o’ Mine – Guns N’ Roses
Take on Me – A-Ha
Temple of Love (Touched by the Hand of Orfa Hazra) – Sisters of Mercy
Tender is the Night (The Long Fidelity) – The Triffids
The Jeep Song – The Dresden Dolls
The Shape of Things to Come  – Bear McCreary
The Winner Takes it All – The Black Sweden
This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home – Murray Gold
Throw Your Arms Around Me – Hunters and Collectors
Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper
True Dreams of Wichita (Live, Boston, 10-15-1996) – Soul Coughing
Walk Like a Man – Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
Waterloo – ABBA
What’s He Building in There – Tom Waits
What Time is Love? (LP Mix) – The KLF
Wichita Lineman Was a Song I Once Heard – The KLF
Wickerman – Pulp
Wide Open Road – The Triffids
Winter (Second Movement) – Vivaldi

There’s still about 90% of my music collection to be ranked…

Single by No Choice

Forever alone!

So, the other day I was talking to a friend (you know who you are 😉 ) and the subject of valentines day came up. They mentioned they were having a rough time with it because they were single, then backtracked and acknowledged that I was single too, but that I’m “single by choice” and so it’s not quite the same thing…

Well. The thing is I’m not single by choice, I’m single by no choice.

I’m austistic. Now, being autistic has about as many different effects on people’s lives as there are autistic people, but the major debilitary effect it has on my life is a near complete lack of social instincts and a general inability to pick up on those mysterious channels of non-verbal communication that all you neurotypicals take for granted.

This is not terribly unusual for us autistics, and there are ways around it. Intensive study, social counseling and general life experience can help. Hell, the last one is the sole reason I can fit into society at all. But I wasn’t diagnosed with aspergers syndrome (my particular flavour of autism) until my late 20’s, by which point it’s hard – not to mention expensive – to try and undo years of damage from living in a society that’s essentially completely alien to you (and not realising why everything is so damn hard).

So, as a result of both my neurological state and years of unintentional abuse from a world that makes no sense I just don’t know how to do the whole relationship thing (and please note: in the term ‘relationship’ I include everything from living happily ever after with one’s soul mate to a quickie in a nightclub toilet stall). I don’t know how to approach someone, I don’t know how to talk to them, I don’t know how to indicate interest, I don’t know how to recognise any interest that may be being directed at me and, if I did somehow manage to recognise it, I have no idea how to reciprocate it. That kind of thing is just not in my skillset – and it would have to be in my skillset, because it’s not in my instinct-set either.

Now at this point some may scoff and make noises about how I’m overthinking things and I should just relax and let things happen naturally. Well, I’ve been doing that for over twenty years and no dice. The thing one has to realise is that the autistic brain just doesn’t work the way a neurotypical one does. The automatic systems that do all the heavy-social lifting stuff, quietly and in the background, are either unreliable or missing entirely. So social stuff is work. Hard work. And work that you need to be shown how to do, because you’ve got absolutely no idea where to start. The vast savannah of all possible behaviours is laid out before you, and you don’t have even the most rudimentary map to show you what path leads to the tourist lodge and how to avoid the lions.

There’s also the fact that not only am I congenitally socially incompetent, I’m also massively underexperienced. By your mid-thirties you should have basic social interaction – let alone social interaction of a more intimate nature – pretty much sorted out. You can make judgements on what to do and what not to do based both on your inbuilt social instincts and your years of experience. Well I don’t have those years of experience. Social interaction is hard enough without the added pressure of making some kind of rookie mistake that everyone else has been avoiding since their teens.

Add it all up and the stress and difficulty is just overwhelming. As a result I’ve more or less resigned myself to not experiencing the relationship component of life, and given up trying.

So, I’m single by no choice. Does this mean I sit around at home in the dark wailing in loneliness? No (mostly). I may not have a choice about being single, but I do have a choice about how I can deal with being single. I can wallow in self-pity and complain about how unfair it all is, or I can pull myself together and focus on the good stuff in my life. Good friends, good food, good music, a stable society, a safe place to sleep at night, socialised health care, access to funny cat videos on the internet, etcetera. It’s not always easy, when work or life or the state of the world are stressing me out it can be soul-wrenchingly hard to come home to an dark apartment and an empty bed, but on the whole it ain’t so bad. I can at least laugh about it and spend my valentines day’s considering how much money I’m saving not having to spend $20 per stem on hothouse roses and overpriced chocolates 🙂

Forever alone!

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