I'm trying to buy a bike ... I'm so confused ... so totally confused ( Read more... )

When I was a kid I used to listen to songs, or read books, about adult romantic behaviour, and find it so mysterious, so bewitching. I couldn't feel the feelings myself, but I would listen to the songs, or read Hemingway novels, and think about adults, like my Dad, and think about the sadness and blind devotion they must be feeling, and I guess I ( Read more... )

I'm reading "Just Kids" by Patti Smith. I'm enjoying it, but her idea of art is totally alien to me. She thinks of Art as something separate to her life -- "Art". You speak in a special voice if you're artistic, wear special clothes, go to galleries and buy certain books in bookshops. To me, that sort of art isn't even really art -- in the same ( Read more... )

Things are a bit better now. My Dad's residential care is sorted out. That's really weird -- driving around and looking at retirement villages and rest homes and hospitals. They're a lot more horrible than you'd probably think. The rooms are small and kind of dirty and run down, everywhere, except in maybe one place, and that place is owned by ( Read more... )

My Dad's really sick at the moment. He was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer a year ago but he was sort of okay until a couple of weeks ago. Now it's a total blur of looking after him, dealing with a million types of bureaucracy, talking to my family ... we all kind of screwed up his care a little bit and now my sister and I have to try to ( Read more... )

It's been raining most of the afternoon, stayed inside reading 'Homicide' by David Simon, walked up to the dairy in the mist, thought about 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' by Poison. Went to St Lukes shopping earlier, helped a woman lift her 20 kilogram daughter out of her shopping trolley (she told me the girl weighed 20 kg). This girl didn't want to ( Read more... )

I'm reading Paul Theroux's 'The Happy Isles of Oceania'. All the descriptions of the things I know about -- New Zealand, Fijian Indians, Australia -- seem wrong, or at best, an exaggeration of a small part of something so that it takes over the whole; and sometimes, they just feel totally off base; but even so, I find myself believing everything ( Read more... )

The internet should be accessible using a pentium one with hardly any ram (I don't know much about ram), or maybe even a 386 or 486. Everything should be text. Images are ugly and messy. If people want pictures, they can have things made of simple lines or dots. It would be aesthetically and psychologically more appealing. There should at ( Read more... )

I was in the library this morning and I had to look at a map. I couldn't find one so I went to the reference desk. I stood there for about one minute, but there was no-one behind the desk, so I turned and walked away towards the front counter. Then I heard heavy, running footsteps behind me and 'Excuse me! Excuse me!' The librarian who never ( Read more... )

Cash Nexus: the reduction (under capitalism ) of all human relationships, but especially relations of production, to monetary exchange

-- > Facebook -- though it goes maybe a bit beyond that! Facebook is something in itself!!