I would rather live on a train

Thanks – I’m fine,
But I’ve nothing to give,
But I just have to leave,
Enough – I would rather live on a train,
And now – I’m dying,
Cause I don’t want to be here,
I don’t want to be seen,
Enough – I would rather live on a train,

— On a Train, Yuksek

If you’re wondering why I haven’t been posting of late it’s because I’ve been feeling wretched, wrung out and on the edge of total burnout for the last few weeks. I really need some time to curl up into myself and completey ignore the world – happily I’ve arranged to take some leave in August, so I only have to hold out till then, which I think is just about doable. Just don’t expect me to be presentable, amicable or even sociable until then.

In the meantime there are a few things that need mentioning…

1: The Wyrmlog has, for some reason, stopped emailing me when people comment. So, if you’ve made some wildly witty and intelligent comment and are miffed that I’ve completely ignored it, that’s why. I only see your comments when I log in to make a post, and I haven’t been doing that lately. I’ll see if I can fix the problem when I have a minute (maybe September some time).

2: Went to Supanova with Bek and Paula. Quite fun, despite my current fairly desperate state of mind. Saw Rose McGowan and John Barrowman who were charming (see what I did there?) and hilarious respectively. The story about the understudy and the laxatives, oh my god! And Mel Brooks screaming “GET INSIDE! THEY’RE GONNA DO SOMETHING CRAZY!”. Great stuff!

3: It’s nice that Heron are trying to make their paracetamol tablets more palatable, but making them taste like a caramel vanilla milkshake seems somewhat misguided. Even I, who am fully aware of what a paracetamol overdose does to your liver (to wit, kills it, with negative subsequent consequences for your general wellbeing) am tempted to chow down on a big pile of them just because they taste so damn good. I can’t imagine how the uneducated hoi-poloi react to such temptation!

4: I may well be completely out of the loop, but I was listening to the radio on Sunday when a song came on that from the very first bar completely grabbed my attention. I thought at first – based on the vocals of the first verse – that it might be a new Megan Washington track, but was disavowed of this theory when the chorus cut in, and so hastily transcribed some lyrics into Google to determine exactly what I was listening to. It turned out to be 24 Hours by Sky Ferreira – an artist that I was peripherally aware of but had never paid much attention to. Well, I’m paying attention now. The song is a great electro-pop track that I’ve listened to so often over the last three days that it’s now stuck in my head to the point of nausea, but I’m still looking forwards to listening to it on a more moderated schedule once the neural burn-in repairs itself. Here it is anyway, so you can laugh at how execrable my musical tastes have become…

5: Saw The Double on Sunday with Rebecca. A very strange, but very stylish and enjoyable movie. Directed by Moss from The IT Crowd you know. If you like thought provoking sci-fi, urban dystopias and crazed, shovel wielding priests then definitely go check it out.

Hmmm, I think that’s about it for now. There was probably some other stuff I wanted to mention, but I’m too scatter brained from stress and fatigue to think of it. Go and make your own damn entertainment.

How to Greet a Scotsman

Should one spy a Scotsman and wish to extend the fellow a friendly greeting, utilise the following procedure…

1: Gain his attention with a loud cry of “Och Aye!”
2: Make eye contact. Maintain steady eye contact throughout the following steps.
3: After a pause of a few seconds, make a fist with one’s left hand and raise the corresponding arm up until it is level, pointing straight at the Scotsman’s face.
4: Stride forward purposefully and boldly with stiff legs until one’s fist is just short of the Scotsman’s face.
5: Announce loudly “Can’t see ye Jimmy!” in one’s best Scotch accent, and await the response of “Och Aye the Noo!” at which point polite conversation may commence.

In carrying out this time honoured tradition one will show oneself to be a ‘true highlander’ and gain the respect of all Scotch folk in the vicinity.

Musical Whenever – Angels and Beads

Yesterday morning Doc Neeson of the Angels finally lost his battle against brain cancer. I can’t really add anything to the outpouring of tributes except to say he was a true great of Australian music and post one of his best songs. No, not Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again (NO WAY GET… ahem), but the equally wonderful No Secrets from 1980. Get a load of that riff!

Thanks Doc!

On and off for many years now I’ve been hoping onto the net and trying to find any evidence that Perth’s own Rosemary Beads were anything but a figment of my RTR addled 90’s imagination. They got played all the time, and I even had the privilege of seeing two thirds of them live at a lunch break concert during my short lived university career (they were great, even if I seemed to be the only person there who was actually paying any attention), but they seemed to be completely invisible on the web. Today they popped back into my mind, so I decided to search again, and bang! Up popped their biggest hit, 1994’s beautiful Breath.

I also happened upon a site where you can download all three of their albums, which I shall be doing as soon as I have the opportunity.

Well, back to work…

There But For the Grace of God

If you’ve got a strong stomach, have a look at this Jezebel article concerning the ‘community’ that produced UCSB shooter Elliot Rodger.

Lessons From a Day Spent With the UCSB Shooter’s Awful Friends

Reading it over is actually pretty terrifying for me, because I can see how easily I could have ended up as one of those sociopaths. I’m an aspie – an aspie who wasn’t diagnosed until in my late 20s – and as a consequence have always had massive problems with relationships, socialising and sex. I can see the kind of thought processes these guys are operating, and in a lot of ways they’re startlingly similar to the way I thought as a teenager and young adult.

The big difference is that where these individuals turn their rejection and rage outwards against society and women (mostly at women, 99% at women) I turned mine inwards. I reached the conclusion that there was something horribly wrong, not with society, but with me, and that I deserved to be shunned and neglected (as I saw it). I was the deformed monster lurking beneath the Opera House, the misbegotten construct fleeing to the Old Mill, or the cancer hiding amongst the healthy cells and it was right and just that society try to destroy me, for the crime of being broken.

It was a pretty horrible way to exist. It’s little short of a miracle that I didn’t end up self harming. I think my (at the time) strong religious faith went a long way to helping me hold it together. I found Isaiah 53 (“a man of sorrows acquainted with grief”) comforting – if not necessarily in a spiritual way then in the way it framed the idea of suffering and rejection as something grand, poetic and meaningful.

Nowdays – years later – I’m slowly getting better. It’s a long term job, you don’t just snap out of years of delusional, destructive thinking overnight. I still have plenty of issues, but on reading the kind of sick thought that can result from my kind of social dysfunction I can only be thankful that I *did* turn my anger and confusion inwards. I’d rather suffer a lifetime of pain and self loathing that burn out in a short lived blaze of hatred and violence, anyday.

Here’s some otters playing with a keyboard…

Atlantis

I’m trying to blog a bit more often, so you’re all going to have to put up with some real filler material.

Like how last night I dreamt that I was being driven up to Yanchep by a racist to attend a wedding that I really didn’t want to attend. Once at Yanchep however I realised that I could take the opportunity to photograph the old Atlantis Marine Park. Unfortunately I hadn’t bought my camera with me. So I slipped out of the reception and headed down the breakwater to a tourist shop where I paid far too much to purchase a couple of disposables. My plan was to show my face back at the reception then slip out again, but I couldn’t find it!

Please send your analysis and interpretations to wherever the heck you feel like.

Insomniac

Was lying awake at 3:00am this morning completely unable to remember the first verse of Jingle Bells. I have no idea why I needed to remember this in the wee hours of late May, but it was driving me nuts. Second verse, fine. Part of the third verse, also fine. First verse? Complete mental blank. My brain didn’t drag it up until I was brushing my teeth, hours later with fitful sleep at best in between.

Was waiting for the bus across to Morley this morning when someone got out of a car stopped at the lights. Not terribly unusual, except for the fact that they violently hurled the contents of a large takeaway cup at the car behind them, then jumped back in before driving away. Completing this little tableau was the police car (apparently unseen by the perpetrator) waiting at the other side of the intersection, which turned on its lights and casually took of in pursuit. Nice to see a little bit of instant karma.

Last Tango in Halifax ain’t bad is it? If I’d realised Nicola Walker was in it I would have started watching ages back.

Spiderman, Spiderman…

Many, many years ago my Dad happened to get a copy of The SAS Survival Handbook out of the local library. I found it fascinating – page upon page of advice on navigation, first aid, locating and trapping food, building shelter, signalling, and everything else a body could need in the aftermath of a plane crash, earthquake or other assorted apocalypse. I spent hours poring over it, and ended up getting my own copy to spend even more hours poring over without having to worry about late fees.

There was one thing that confused me though. Among the suggested equipment that you should carry with you at all times (which included knives, razor blades and a flexible wire saw – not really so great for air travel nowdays) was something called a ‘beta-light’. This was described as a ‘crystal’ that glows – glows forever in fact – providing enough light to read a map by or to tie to a hook and line as a fishing lure.

This puzzled the hell out of me. A glowing crystal? That’s the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a Charles Berlizt book about the mystery of Atlantis, not a hard nosed book about how to snare and skin badgers. Yet there it was, listed between the iodine crystals and waterproof matches (which you should split in half lengthways to save space). “Beta-Light”. Was that a brand name? Like it’s a “better” light? I couldn’t tell. I asked my parents what this magical item might be, but they were no help and didn’t seem to comprehend how unlikely and science-fictional such an item seemed. I tried looking up “beta-light” in the encyclopedias down at the library, but there was no such entry, and those in those now far gone days before the web that was pretty much the limit of research. So the concept of perpetually glowing crystals settled down into a quiet corner of my brain to await further developments, none of which were to occur for decades.

A few weeks back Spiderman 2 was on TV. I saw Spiderman when it came out in the cinemas and quite enjoyed it, but had never actually seen the sequel, and since I had nothing on the next morning decided to stay up and watch. I thought it was pretty good – Alfred Molina in particular did a great job of making Doctor Octopus a sympathetic villain, and Toby Macquire continued to be excellent at portraying a scrawny nerd from Queens. The one thing I did find amusing about the who thing however was the plot’s insistence on the importance of tritium – a substance so common that the oceans are full of it, yet a few grams is apparently enough to destroy the whole of Manhattan. Oh how I laughed!

Just out of idle curiosity, during an ad break, I decided to look up tritium on Wikipedia. Oops. Turns out I had been confusing it with deuterium. I don’t know if a few grams of tritium would be enough to destroy Manhattan, but I wouldn’t want to risk it. Continuing through the article I stumbled over the following…

The emitted electrons from the radioactive decay of small amounts of tritium cause phosphors to glow so as to make self-powered lighting devices called betalights…

Holy crap! I clicked on the link, and there it was, all laid out for me!

Turns out a beta-light is not a “crystal”. It’s a sealed container of glass or plastic filled with gaseous tritium and lined with a phosphor. As the gas undergoes radioactive decay the beta particles emitted cause the phosphor to fluoresce, producing light. It won’t of course last forever, but it will provide light for many years, and although increasingly replaced with less radioactive light sources, it’s still pretty safe and would be a handy thing to have in a survival situation. Case closed!

In light of this surprising development, I now plan to watch Spiderman 3 to see if it can answer my questions about three body gravitational problems.

 

 

Kidding. There is no force on Earth that could make me watch Spiderman 3.