Heels To Boot

Stuart:
i am about to embark on the wonder that is windows 7

Me:
good luck.  i’ll tell your family you died a hero

Stuart:
thanks, i think

Me:
a stupid, stupid, overly morbidly curious hero

Stuart:
just for that you wont get my projector

Me:
Yes I will. you want your projector to go to some one who will appreciate it, fulfill it’s needs, play red vs blue on it, paint pictures of hot women naked and project them over it. it’ll come to me, when it needs me most, and i will be ready. with hot women, geek movies, and porn.

Stuart:
yes, for that exact reason

Me:
and then, the speakers will follow.

Stuart:
ahh porn good old porn

Me:
and we’ll be one happy family

Stuart:
i promised the stereo to my mum

Me:
…without you, of course. but we’ll miss you.

Stuart:
you can have my pc with all my porn

Me:
well, we’ll probably think of you

Stuart:
it needs the projector

Me:
in the middle of lesbians gone wild #56 - hot rubber. well, not in the middle. maybe before - a moment of silence

Stuart:
i dont have that one

Me:
while we make the popcorn.

but you’ll be there in spirit

Stuart:
ill be watching from the heavens

Me:
in the spirit of hallowed spanking collections everywhere

Me:
sorry, was out with the horses - trying a new supplement for nick, he seemed to like the taste of it. the tub was near impossible to get open.

First I had to pull this big long strip of plastic off from below the lid and then i had to lever it up all the way round with a knife, then it took me another five minutes to actually get the lid off.

>.<

for 60 bucks i’d like to be able to get at the stuff a bit more easily

Friend:
do the old seagull trick

Me:
?

Friend:
take it in your claws fly up around 30 metres and drop it. im sure that will work no prob at all. or if that somehow fails the old other trick

Me:
I thought that was birds of prey with tortoises? and i have a nasty feeling it’d survive that

Friend:
bummer. ok last resort, american style. fire a nuke at it

Me:
if the tub was big enough i could probably shelter from a nuclear holocaust in there

whoa… creepy

Friend:
totally

Me:
i was typing that when you sent that message. O.o (Note: It was in sync too O.o)

Friend:
in sync

Me:
whoever made that tub will survive the zombie invasion if their house is anything like it and appropriately stocked.

it’ll probably catch zombies in the doors, like fingers under the lid and cut them in half

Friend:
hmm half zombies delicious

im just checking my work email and i get this as an important email - Todays soup is PUMPKIN SOUP

Me:
lovely. i’m sick

Friend:
swine origin?

Me:
my work email gets more porn and spam than my personal one. And not to my knowledge.

i’m in contact with basically every other common animal though. could get bird flu, horse flu, cat scratch fever

Friend:
man you get pron so not fair

Me:
i’m sure rabbits can give you something too.

eh, it’s not good porn

Friend:
ahh

Me:
otherwise they wouldn’t need to message me about it. they like telling me to increase my manhood a lot too.  i’m getting a complex

Friend:
man i gotta go to kmart. i never go to kmart

Me:
any particular reason in either instance?

Friend:
your man hood prob is smaller than it should be

games sale lol

Me:
my manhood is FINE

Friend:
lol

Me:
it’s a good manhood, it would satisfy any woman. leave my manhood alone, what did it ever do to you?

Friend:
i didnt want to touch it anyway so your in luck

Me:
so stop putting it down.

Friend:
it was a mild observation

Me:
you’re just jealous of my manhood.

Friend:
as i never get manhood related emails

Me:
well you obviously don’t have as noteworthy a  manhood as me.

Friend:
or the more obvious reason, no need to worry about mine lol

Me:
me thinks the lady doth protest too much.  or man.

I think everybody does sometimes. But I dream about it a LOT. It’s usually intertwined with complex stories, often about worlds within worlds, all of them expressing a deep desire that somehow this world is just the veneer for something far more powerful and magical.

I dream about different kinds of flying, sometimes hanging on to things that can inexplicably float,

Another kind of flying I sometimes dream about is the kind where you need a run-up. In one dream I was doing something close to sledding in this strange glacial bowl with water at the bottom and odd cliffs all round one side. The trick was to find the perfect slope and get enough speed, and you’d sort of float up a few feet. Everybody wanted to do it. I dream about something similar with normal ground, you just sort of run and float off of hills. I think it reflects a very limited knowledge of physics. Another kind of flying I dream about is being suspended, like an umbrella or even a jacket helps you sort of sail on the wind, never much higher than a few feet.

In the case of last night it was two kinds of flying, the first this circle of foil with a solid edge that inflated a bit like a hot air balloon, except that it didn’t require any hot air. And it floated, and I hung onto it in my dream. And in my dream I showed my sister, and I had four of these things. I kept testing them to make sure it was real and it was actually happening.

The dream also included magic, lots of magic, first it was a lot like dungeons and dragons where you had to know spells and have them prepared and it was some kind of school thing, I think. I was falling with some one else and we were shouting out air spells to slow our descent. Then it melted into just me, and somehow being able to access spells and wishes that I shouldn’t be able to. I wished for fairy wings, and flew places. then it kinda melted into the whole foil circles thing.

Then somewhere along the line it got to something close to dnd again, only there was another world or place somehow where more powerful beings aligned to the elements were fighting and all the excess magic meant people could access it, but  I was the only one who figured it out. There were books for each element too, almost alive, crackling with power.

Then it kinda melted into these powerful beings including dragons and gods and all kinds of crazy stuff. And then for some reason I was loading up hay onto the back of a truck and the guy driving it was a total asshole. And I was doing everything wrong, and a couple of bales of hay fell off the truck. We got the hay to it’s proper place in the end but I was supposed to do something else to fix the truck. I think I gathered up some stray hay and tried it to the tow bar or something. For some reason I didn’t need him anymore - and the hay started to float at one point - so did I.

And then I was one of the gods, or close to it, and I’d found this other world of power, and me and several others were given some powers with blessings and curses attached. I ended up shooting another guy with his own bow for which there were also magic arrows, and he only had the magic arrows, I had a magic arrow AND his bow. It was meant to kill him for some reason,  I remember praying to Zeus for help.

And I escaped through the roof when the guy I shot came after me, and I was floating around the place, controlling my flight by a mixture of body movements and will power. That’s the most common type of flying I dream about - it’s never EASY to do, and I often don’t get it right, but it feels so real. I feel that sort of tension in my stomach and gravity pulling at me and somehow being able to elude it. I feel the speed of a dive and that horrible, awful fear that I’ll wake up and it won’t all be real. Most of my dreams include some kind of frantic testing to make sure it ISN’T a dream.

Right at the end of the dream, I was yelling back to the guy I’d shot, about how there were countless worlds out there, everywhere, I rose up through a world of creatures of air, and on my fingertip was a world so tiny that to leave the ridge of my fingerprint was to embark into space. The air creatures were beautiful, they spiraled and twirled with long plummage that was made more of cloud and light than anything else.

When I was down in the previous worlds it was like a very old forest, but it periodically slipped into being my parents house as well, sometimes an odd combination of the two.

I wish I could fly.

I should say right off the bat that I’m an Atheist, as many should know already. Now, I said in my last post about atheism that the idea of an afterlife has never been a hard one for me to grasp and actually the idea of NO afterlife is harder for me. The idea that we die and then suddenly this rich mental life that we’ve had just stops altogether. The amount of energy required to run the mind is huge and surely, my semi scientific and semi religious brain say, it has to go SOMEWHERE. I mean, the heat from our bodies dissipates, the chemicals in our body break down to nothing, everything is recycled. What about our minds though? Surely that energy doesn’t instantly degrade into heat or any suddenly dead person’s head would probably catch fire.

I suppose this is some odd rationalization for a soul, or possibly mental re-incarnation. Still, even if we allow that some sort of soul exists it seems odd to think about what we’d be like, I mean, we’d be completely bodiless and brainless, and as anyone who has lived with a teenager will tell you, humans are immensely ruled by their hormones, and anyone whose seen someone after any kind of brain damage, the brain affects the personality greatly. So much so that tinkering about with it even a little can cause us to see and hear things that aren’t there, greatly change the personality and temperament of the person and so on. The mind is so ruled by the brain it’s strange to think of what it must be like without it, it’d be like imagining how on earth shoes would walk about without feet in them.

But still there’s a bit of my brain convinced that there must be an afterlife, that we must go somewhere with our minds in tact and stay. I realize that without the grace of a god who most definitely does not exist this seems completely improbable. I suppose I like the idea of something like this occurring: http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_019.htm 

I’d like to imagine that I’d die and then a light from above would pull me upwards and I would be coaxed back into my new ethereal consciousness by the soothing knowledgeable voice of Stephen Fry (or not, maybe I’ve just been watching too much QI and playing too much little big planet). I’d be introduced to a world where everyone who has ever lived is here, good and bad, after all any afterlife where people are segregated by a deity implies some forced ethical code, an idea that I strongly detest.

I’d love to do some sort of nerdy celebrity tour of the afterlife, I’d go ask Einstein about science, I’d go shake Marie Curie’s slightly glowing hand and congratulate her on bringing women into science so elegantly, I’d go give Nietzsche a hug and ask him what he feels about the fact that we’re no closer to the wonderful death of god moment than we were when he was alive, and also tell him his sister was a crazy bitch. I’d go tell Socrates that he should never have died for his state although the idea was noble, I’d go sit and listen to Lewis Carroll reading Alice in Wonderland. I’d love to go find a library of every book ever written and every book to be written and just spend an eternity reading, learning and debating.

Man, an atheist heaven would be awesome.

Walking through the ground floor of the library today, I discovered I had a pocket that I didn’t know about.

It has become my habit to keep and wear as many of Grandfather’s possessions as possible, these include a pocket watch with no chain that I always forget to wind, his old 486 computer, running windows 3.11facebook, all his old business shirts (which now accompany me to the horses and almost anywhere I go when not dressed up), some of his books, and most recently, a jacket.

It’s the kind of jacket you’d expect a farmer to wear in the middle of autumn, when he’s going to town. It’s forest green with tartan flannel lining around the body and satin lining along the arms. Granddad was over six foot tall, so it’s rather large on me, but I like that. It makes me feel safe, and a more vain part of me likes the idea that an obviously too-big jacket makes me look smaller within it. It usually does the opposite, which serves to keep people from bothering me, so it’s a win-win.

Anyway, this jacket has great big pockets with flaps over the top that button down. I like these pockets because they can contain my keys, wallet and cellphone, even books and envelopes without the need for a bag, mostly though they contain a hoofpick and hay. I don’t want to ruin the jacket, but I’m almost invariable near to a horse at some stage during the day, and with winter approaching, this means hay, I don’t mind really, I like the smell of it.

When I was walking to the stairs at the library, I noticed another pocket, it sits behind the initial pockets with the opening from the side rather than a top, so one pocket sits atop another. How cunning.

I like pockets, mostly because the pockets of old or lost clothes are treasure troves for interesting items. Pockets almost always contain something interesting, or else serve as a place to put interesting things. They’re like little treasure chests, where you find things long forgotten, either by you or by others. They’re hiding places, secret little stashes of mystery.

And they’re good for holding a drink bottle. I like pockets. ^__^

Whilst perusing facebook - as I like to deny that I do to everyone else - I came across an invite to an app called ‘Save the Planet’. I first thought it was a superhero thing, much like those ‘join my mob’, or ‘are YOU the next popstar?’. Instead, it turned out to basically be a scheme where you earn ‘lunch money’ in the hundreds of thousands and then you choose charities for it to go to. It’s something like $900 in lunch money for a grain of rice, but when you have that much it adds up fast.

You make the money by playing games, that’s right. You sit around and play those addictive little in-browser games. We all have at least one that we secretly pride ourselves on being unbeatable at. I have about fifty - of course, I’m not unbeatable per se… I’m just unbeatable so long as nobody tries to beat me.

In any case, I love the idea because it gives people who might not have a lot of spare cash a way to donate through what they’d probably be doing anyway.

www.facebook.com - the app is “Save the Planet”

I wish people would stop telling me to increase my manhood. I mean, what exactly is wrong with the size of my manhood? I like the size of my manhood, it’s a perfectly fine manhood. It would satisfy any woman, maybe even more than one, at the same time. It’s a decent manhood.

Why do they want to change it? What have they got against my manhood?

I’ve been thinking lately about what Rave’s said about magic and storytelling and also a few things that bunny has said in her blog http://www.thebunnyblog.com/archives/why_i_am_crazy.phtml and i think that i agree that. Rave’s spoken to me before about how as children we have this sense of magic in the world and the sense that those other worlds and those magic things are just a glance away, they’re what dance in the corner of your eyes just out of view and you feel like you could just fall in there. But like bunny i guess i’ve never grown out of it. I’ve still got that magic brain as she puts it.

For me those things still ARE just at the corner of my eye, I wonder sometimes if it’s paranoia or OCD but i like the idea of my still having that magic brain still. Things terrify me because i can’t just say ‘it’s not real’, the scientist in my brain tells me that we don’t know everything about the world and just because no one’s tested it doesn’t mean it’s not there, the science part of me rationalises. However when you combine that with the creative part of my brain that’s never been short of an explanation, a creation, an answer or an idea then you get a bad combo.

I’m afraid of a lot of things, my biggest traditonal magical fear is zombies i suppose, mainly because i’ve thought of them the most. i’ve planned out where i’d go if there were to be an outbreak, i know who i’d take, i know where my weapons are, i know the routes, i know my vehicles for getting there. I once read a book about zombies that was supposed to be a semi serious book, it tried to take the monster and apply science and rationality to it. They proposed that it was a virus like rabies that essentially killed all nonessential funcations of the host, the nervous system for example was shot so you can’t hurt them, they don’t respond to pain and thus they injure themselves and lurch about. This made sense to me, but then it claimed that they don’t bleed. Now, this didn’t make sense, either it’s a fluid borne virus or it’s magic, you can’t have both. So my brain went the magic way because quite frankly the virus thing didn’t fit, a virus cannot survive by cutting off such essential systems and certainly not to the length that zombies can. And magic is far scarier than science.

I’m afraid of the things in the dark, i’m afraid of loud noises, i’m afraid of mirrors (because in all horror films there’s someone looking in a mirror and suddenly there’s something behind them in it), i’m afraid of the noises my house makes at night,  I’m afraid that something is chasing me, i’m afraid that if i open my eyes in the dark the dark will look back at me. Because with my mind the way it is, nothing is unbeleivable. When i stand behind the locked door in the bathroom afraid to open it again because as my hand sits on the handle my brain magics up what could be on the other side and nothing i can do gets rid of it, despite how hard the science part of my brain tries, my reasoning goes like this.
magic brain: There’s something on the other side of the door

science brain: No there’s not! Be reasonable!

magic brain: there could be, you’ve no way of knowing!

science brain: I can’t hear anything, there’s nothing there.

magic brain: So it’s super silent, like the aliens, or maybe it’s one of the weeping angels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPR_37NsXW8

science brain: that’s silly. Look, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing waiting for you. You’d know if something had come into the house.

magic brain: oh really? then how come the boys can sneak up on you? If they can think what other nastier stealthy things can.

science brain: THERE’S NOTHING THERE! OPEN THE DOOR AND SEE!

me: *opens the door* (there’s nothing there, there never is)

magic brain: …it’s behind you.

See? I’m my own worst enemy. I know my magic brain helps me write, helps me draw, helps me make wonderful stories for my comics and fiction, but sometimes i really hate it.

There are stories I want to write. Hundreds of them. I seem to have developed my own personal version of WWJD - What would Pratchett do?. The thing is, Pratchett is everything I could ever imagine wanting to be in an author, and more. And while that is utterly inspiring. It means that I find myself almost uninspired in trying to find something that I could write to the extent of actually being proud of it, because it seems like the best way to do anything is the way that Pratchett did it or would do it. And that isn’t original. I want to be original because Pratchett is original, however it feels almost like he got to this goldmine first and now he’s made of solid gold so I could never even begin to pick up a nugget when there’s something so perfect there. He made this perfect universe (discworld), which covers… everything, not because he focused on covering everything, but rather, he acknowledges the precence of it, while focusing individual stories on a number of concepts and themes, all of which are funny, thoughtful, meaningful and utterly brilliant.

This guy is my god, but I have to keep checking myself from doing something in a way that fits into his world. I want one of my own but I want it to be something that I could at least be proud of.

Terry Pratchett is… amazing. I don’t know much about the guy personally, but his work has had such a huge impact on me that it’s like having a central reference point for writing, kinda like gravity, only what you’re drawn toward is awesome, not painful and likely to squish you onto the pavement.

The story I want to write has changed shape and purpose and meaning over the years so that now all it really is is a name loosely attached to a face, nothing else really holds. I run through ideas all the time, wondering if they’ll fit and none of them quite seem to. This particular story is so important to me because it’s the one that I originally put my heart and soul into writing, and now it’s faded to almost nothing. It needs a purpose, a force, something to make it different, original. And… I worry that I don’t have that.

Most stories begin with a beginning. There are many fine stories that begin with a middle. It is more rare that stories begin with an ending, yet somehow, it is fitting. Stories exist to fill a need, be it for inspiration, for hope, for entertainment, for joy, for memory, for history, or even for sadness. Stories, like any living, growing thing, need to be fed and cared for, raised and molded. This is why the best stories, the ones that last forever, are never the same twice. They are recognisable as the same story, but with each retelling they grow and branch out, the same way that a long tree will always be itself, but each season new branches grow, new leaves sprout and then fall, flowers bloom, and seeds spread, creating new stories from the same roots. Even stories written down are somehow different with every new read, because they grow according to the changes in those reading them. Stories change and grow as we need them too. Stories give us heroes, remind us of better times, teach us lessons we could never remember if we were simply told them. Stories bring us together, taking the magic of adventure, of everyday living, distill and age into a dizzying concentration that seeps out of words and into the heart, into the soul, that dances off the firelight and sears over pages and lips, leaving marks that we often do not notice, but that shape us none the less.

There are ideas, superstititions, that sometimes, stores can do more, that they can shape reality. So that everyday people, ordinary events, become more, and that as the stories grow over time, they can reshape history, and that those within a story, are immortal as long as the story is told.