My mind is going.

Since relocating to the void, my brain is for...

1. Mindless production-line pseudo-programming at work (replacing the creative stuff I used to do in my own time).
2. Otherwise vegging to the hypnotic spell of a cathode ray tube of one sort or another. I used to read, but you see my brain gets so tired and bored from work and must have rest or it won't work tomorrow. Pah! Now it barely works anyway.
3. Abstract/surreal nonsence of zero practical use (see other blog entries, past and future). OK not so harmful but it's pretty useless.

On the plus side I'm coping fine and fairly happy with my life. I can't get it together to study to improve my skills or learn anything, but my social life is OK, money isn't a worry, and I don't hate Mondays anymore. Maybe it's contentment is the killer of invention.

What would the old me suggest? Don't be f***ing stupid. Just read more, think more, dip into some of those mindhack tips, stop vegging so much, and quit eating so much crap. Now go do it. And don't obsess over intellect, effectiveness beats it every time.

End of dreams

World cold. Sky crying. It's all twisted and wrong. It shouldn't be like this. My town is dead. My house is shrunk. The home grew up a prison. walls are closing in. I'm suffocating. The thirst for escape. Thinking of work again tomorrow makes me want to hide in darkness.

Yeah, I'm just back from holiday.

Italy was great. Venice is cute, Florence is interesting, Rome is fantastic. I'll spare you streams of details, but whatever else you do be sure to see St Peter's Basilica before you die.

By day 2 in Rome I was already so used to all the breathtaking surroundings that things I'd normally stare at in awe got hardly a second glance. I had profound beauty overdose. If I'd seen even the Sistene Chapel after the Basilica, it would've spolied it. Just how much do I measure based on how rare or common it seems at the time? How apparently unattainable or how taken for granted things are? Is it just me?

"The care of the nation's cultural heritage is not, it must be said, Italy's strong suit. The county spends... a year on maintenance and restoration... less than the cost of a dozen new miles of highway. There are so many treasures lying around that theives can just walk off with them... Eighty per cent of all the art thefts in Europe take place in Italy... This casual attitude... is something of a tradition in Rome. For a thousand years (they) looked upon the city's ancient baths, temples and other timeless monuments as quarries. The Colosseum isn't the hulking ruin it is today because of the ravages of time, but because for hundreds of years people knocked chunks from it... to turn into cement. When Bernini needed a load of bronze to build his sumptuous baldacchino in St Peter's, it was stripped from the roof of the Pantheon." - Bill Bryson

Exotic cat meets

When a lion and a tiger love each-other very much...


Here's more from Snopes, the great confirmers of reality.

Before you say "aww, what a cute little pussy" here's a girl being eaten alive by one of those...

(Warning NSFW - may disturb sleep - you click it, you deserve it!)


Before whining about that go read it again, then calm down with...
Cat fighting
Cat reproduction

[addition...] Morgan Stanley v. Meow, Baroness Penelope Cat "if Respondent is a cat from outer space, then it may have something to hide, and this is indicative of bad faith behavior..."

What am I doing here?

So... a while back Andrew tried to talk me into blogging. I was lazy, but intrigued. Can't even remember his reasons now, but that just intrigues me more.

Only a few mates will ever read this, but it'll be interesting for me having never even kept a proper diary to see if this thing does anything to me.

As for you, the first two readers to find the secrets of existence hidden in these pages will win a free bowl of cherry ice cream. No cheating!

[addition...] See also this.

You Are Here

What are YOU doing here?!

All the other eggs and sperm that could have made it. Same for every branch on that family tree. The fluke of you existing, let alone reading this right now, is just plain silly. You're a unique and wonderous creation, dear reader.

Just like everyone else.

The snowflake is a symbol of uniqueness; miraculous and precious. But in abundance, the symbol is different.

And as a billion bloggers bare their soulds before the avalanche of ones and zeros, what might mean everything to me means nothing to the next soul lost in the snowstorm.

Just as well for me I still love snow. There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.