Symbolic Forest

This is not a sex blog. This is, in fact, almost the opposite of a sex blog. Sex is hardly ever mentioned, partly because, for one thing, most of the people who read this are (as far as I know) people who know me, and who would recoil in terror, looks of disgust on their faces, if they ever had to think about me having sex.

There are hundreds of thousands of sex blogs out there, though. I don’t read them very often, though; because generally they’re not that interesting. Reading other people’s fantasies, after all, generally isn’t. I find it more enjoyable to write my own sex stories. You’ll never find them here, and they’re not even my fantasies, but they’re fun to write.

Yesterday, though, idly browsing the web, I discovered a sex blog which is well-written, original, thoughtful, and witty. It’s called Bitchy Jones’s Diary, it’s passionate and dirty, in a sense political, and it’s a very good read.* It’s not about the flavour of sex I’m most interested in myself; but that doesn’t stop it being very enjoyable to read. Moreover, of all the sex blogs I’ve come across,** it’s the one most clearly written by someone who does what she wants because that’s her sexuality, and not because it’s someone else’s fantasy.

In other news: back in 2006 when the Ipswich prostitute murders were ongoing, people were very quick to circulate dead prostitute jokes that (presumably) they’d been keeping on ice since Peter Sutcliffe’s heyday. What surprises me, though: now there’s been a conviction, I haven’t seen any “dead prostitute meets unfunny daytime DJ” jokes. Where are they all?

* It’s also not really SFW, if you were tempted to click the link; but you probably guessed that.

** Pun definitely not intended, I assure you.

Another quick note, now I’m back from Riga.* Whilst I was away, one of my favourite websites - Nothing To See Here - posted an article by, er, me! It’s about Trinity Square Car Park in Gateshead, the car park which was made famous by the film Get Carter,** and is about to be knocked down to be replaced by another Tesco (even though Tesco already have a store that’s, literally, on the other side of the street). If you might be interested, go read the article. If you might want to see the car park, then run, don’t walk, to Gateshead.

* or Rīga, rather.

** The original, not the remake; although Stallone, who starred in the remake, has been campaigning for the building to be saved.

Keyword noise: Gateshead, car park, Get Carter, architecture

More things, around the interwebs, that people have been looking for…

the deirdres are a rather good band from Derby - see here, and also here.
photo enlargement 99p - it does sound like a bit of a bargain rate. Unless, of course, you want to enlarge a photo of 99p, which is possible too.
unexplained black moods aren’t very nice, but if they’re that unexplained I’m not sure there’s very much you can do.
emo kids handcuffs - I have a lovely picture in my head, now, of emo kids handcuffed to street furniture in all their hang-outs - outside the art gallery in Exchange Square in Glasgow; outside the Corn Exchange* in Leeds, and so on. I wholeheartedly endorse this idea. Come on, people, together we can make it a reality.
triangle sidings are the London Underground sidings in South Kensington, in the basement of the Cromwell Road Sainsburys, where the air terminal used to be. More information, and photos, here.
chocolate coins left at doorstep - I don’t remember ever mentioning this, or anything of the sort. But if anyone does want to leave some chocolate coins on my doorstep, then, please, feel free to!
cara page journalist. Cara Page was, the last I heard, writing for the Daily Record. She’s infamous - at least in certain circles - for writing “exposés” about the sex lives of fairly boring and ordinary people, such as a charity shop worker from Peebles. None of it is “newsworthy” in any conventional sense of the word, but tabloid editors still strongly believe that a bit of Carry On-style tame muckiness sells papers. Sadly, that’s all I know about her. And that, I think, is probably enough search requests for now.

* Now there’s a name that’s always puzzled me a little. “Hello, my dear sir, I’d like to swap this corn, if you may. For … erm … some different corn?”

Breaking bad news to people is always hard to do. Even if it’s something as mundane as a dead computer. I took a quick look at a machine one of the staff had brought in from home, in my lunch break; it’s vitally important she gets it working again, apparently, because it’s got all her daughter’s schoolwork on it, and they have to have a computer now to do all their assignments on.* It only needed a quick look to show that it’s not coming back to life. Its hard disk is almost certainly now a former hard disk, with no hope of getting her homework back.** But how do I tell her?

Latest addition to my RSS reader: Bad Archaeology. The navigation is a bit awkward, and their “latest news” page doesn’t seem to get archived, but there’s some very good stuff in there, if, like me, you would love to try poking members of the Erich von Däniken Fan Club with long pointy sticks. Their latest article is on King Arthur, as an example of what happens when you set out to prove a point, and try to use archaeology to do that. I’m tempted to write something longer about exactly that, soon.

In other news: I’ve been listening to Phoebe Kreutz lately. Her songs make me smile, and make me want to listen to more of her songs. So that has to be a good thing. Hurrah for good things!

* I’m not sure I believe that. This isn’t a rich town, and there must be many many children in the area whose parents don’t have a PC.

** A normal boot sequence halts with “Non-system disk or disk error”, which, if your other drives are all empty, is never a good sign. A Linux boot CD finds the hard disk, prints out lots of nasty disk hardware errors, and then says it can’t read the partition table. Not good, not at all.

It is, once again, International Copy DVDs Like A Pirate Talk Like A Pirate Day. As I haven’t seen any pirates for a year, though, you’ll have to make do with the same photo as last year. Or, alternatively, remind yourself why piracy is wrong. Don’t do it, kids. Arrrr!

According to Martijn, 47% of all blog posts consist of links to other blogs.*

Well, according to new research by the FP Militant Invective Laboratories, an entire 0.3% of current blog posts consist of links to blog posts about the proportion of blog posts which just consist of links to other blogs.

No, really. Honest. No, I didn’t just pull that number out of thin air. What sort of person do you think I am?**

* well, actually, he made it up. But it could be true.

** Oh, OK, I did really. But you never know.

I’ve not been too well again, hence the gap in posting. No energy, no get-up-and-go, no appetite.

I eventually dragged myself to the computer to check my RSS reader, thought, and my appetite came back. Because, courtesy of Informationally Overloaded, I read A Sketch Towards a Taxonomy of Meta-Desserts.* Hurrah! At last, someone has invented a systematic way to describe pudding. My appetite came back straight away, and I started raiding the freezer. Must read that blog more at some point - preferably just after I’ve eaten, not just before.

In other news: thanks to Feather Boa for solving my telly-related puzzle from the other day. I would have noticed sooner, but her comment was in the queue and I didn’t spot it until now. Bah. Thank you!

* I particularly like the URL, too

News story of the week (as of Wednesday)

News story of the week (as of today), including the Cerne Abbas local area.

Does anyone else think: sometimes an idea can work too well?

Keyword noise: flooding, weather, enchantment

Science news of the week: scientists have finally invented an odourless breed of durian, the tropical fruit which is popular in the East Indies, but entirely impossible to obtain in Britain. It smells like a potent mix of vomit and custard, and is banned from the cargo holds of every airline because of that. In Malaysia, several people are killed by durian every year* - my former Malaysian flatmate would send me news clippings. Note to European publishers: start getting those durian recipe books ready now!

* not because of the smell, but because they are large, spiky, and grow up in trees.

Keyword noise: durian, fruit

Google Maps has recently, it seems, spread its high-resolution satellite coverage over much more of the UK than before.* It now covers, for the first time, this part of the world.

I spent quite a while looking at various places around the area, seeing what I could spot; and it quickly became obvious that even though Google have only uploaded the pictures recently, they’re not new pictures. I asked around the office for advice, and as far as we can tell, the pictures are four or five years old. The new cinema next to the Boating Lake is, on Google, an empty field. My car isn’t anywhere to be seen, because I didn’t have a car back then. Wee Dave spotted his own car, outside his old house.** Various other buildings haven’t been built, or are still there on the pictures having been knocked down a few years ago. It’s intriguing; and I can’t help wondering just how Google picks its areas to upload, and if it’s been sitting on these tiles since Google Maps UK first started.

* Thanks to Martijn for mentioning it, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed

** actually, he spotted “the one that the missus wrote off a few years ago”

Keyword Noise: Google, maps, aerial photos