Women in Iraq TV Documentary and parrots that want to go to bed.

There was a documentary on TV I wanted to watch about Iraqi women. I saw it advertised but I can't remember what channel it was on, or when. I don't know if I have missed it or it is soon. Wednesday rings some bells.

Oh, how very annoying.

TBM has gone on holiday to Skye. TLB thought he was going 'up in the sky' until I showed him where Skye was on the map. For someone who thought his stepdad was going on holiday to some unknown space above him he was supremely unfased by the concept, and in fact I think he preferred the idea. TBM certainly did.

My back hurts. I spent some of the day driving home and then the rest of it gardening, sweeping clear the winter oomshka from the patio and generally rearranging pots and things. My broom is broken, snapped in half so I have to sweep like I am the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Now I'm on the sofa, mainly because I can't move to go upstairs. Since I gave up smoking I have put on a good few pounds and I don't think it helps my back.

My head hurts from reading Barbelith. When I read the word 'snark' what I picture in my head is a Cat in the Hat cartoon drawing. I don't know why. It's probably better not to try to find out.

I'm lonely. Even the parrot has had enough of me and is dropping hints, hopping from one leg to the other saying, "Night night Fawkes. Night night Fawkes."

'Bollocks to Rules' in tree speak.

Look at this lovely tree reclaiming itself, eating up this metal 'No Trespassing' sign.



How ace is that?

I'm so tired.

I'm tired of the in-fighting. The arguments. I'm tired of finding out that my family are doing things together days after eveyone else knows, and I'm tired of finding out online, in the way that people find out the weather.

I'm tired of having nowhere to call my own.

I'm weary that I have the task of making everyone happy, yet seem to be responsible for none of it.

I'd really like a really real cuddle. Not a "there, there" one. An "I adore you" one.

I know that everyone has their own problems, I'm under no illusion that I am the centre of the Universe but without me people appear to be happy.

With me? Well, I appear to be making everyone sad.

I wish I knew why.

Beware of the Orgs.

TLB's Step-Gran gave him fifteen quids worth of book vouchers for Christmas and on Wednesday we went to Borders to spend them. He bought four books, three of which he chose, and one I found for him, called 'The Secret of Platform 13'.

I told him that now that he was eight I trusted him to turn his own light off and that he could read for half an hour after going to bed. On the first night, TBM went upstairs an hour and a half after TLB had gone to bed and found him, still with his light on, engrossed in the book.

Officially I do not know this. Officially, I think that he turned his light off after half an hour and to be fair to TLB, apparently his clock had stopped so he had no idea how late it was.

It's hard to keep this secret.

Anyway. He's obsessed with this book. It's the first time he's really obviously got the reading bug and it makes me very happy. When I was a little girl my Mum used to remove my light bulb because I wouldn't stop reading.

So for about three days the book is all he's talked about, and specifically about the 'Org's' in it. This evening I decided I needed to know what an Org was, so I asked him.

"It's a monster," he says.
"It's a monster I've never heard of" I say. "How do you spell Org?"

"O-G-R-E." he says.

***

Oh how we maketh the child. This is the son of the woman who read too much Famous Five, too early. I still want to pronouce Quentin 'Queentin', Bureau 'Burroo' and Quay 'Kway' even though I am now thirty three. TLB is following in my footsteps.

I give you the boy who will forever want to pronouce OGRE as 'Org':

Doctoring Celebs

This site shows the retouching of tons of photographs of celebrities. Everyone knows about photoshop, but it's remarkable to see it so clearly delineated. There are a lot of images but I really recommend clicking through to see all the pictures.

first click on "portfolio," then "before/after", then click the before button for each image to see what the artists have done to change the image.


Everyone should see this. Send it to all your friends. Please. And all the teenage girls you know.

Honestly there are pictures on there where they have deleted almost half a woman to make her 'look better' and none of them were even vaguely overweight in the first place.

Animal Happy Slapping.

According to the BBC, yesterday some 'youths' dropped a cat repeatedly from a 5th floor window and filmed it on their mobile phone. A sort of animal happy-slap. News story here, if you want to read more.

I don't understand how doing this sort of thing could possibly make anyone feel good, but it must have been 'fun' for them else they wouldn't have done it. Which means what? That they are so evil causing another creature pain doesn't affect them?

I don't really know what I'm trying to say here, other than I can't get my head around what compells a person to do such a vile thing in the name of comedy.

People are horrible sometimes. They really are.

On the film Mr and Mrs Smith and why it is, in the main, not funny.

A funny thing about the film Mr and Mrs Smith:
'The Tank' (geeky guy that everyone is trying to assasinate) is wearing a fight club T-shirt in the scene where Brad Pitt (aka Mr Smith) is interrogating him in the hotel room.

Other things about the film Mr and Mrs Smith:
I'm not sure I feel entirely comfortable with the fighting-as-foreplay theme throughout the film and most especially when Mr and Mrs Smith are actively trying to kill each other, but then suddenly stop that and shag each others brains out instead.

"Hey, sorry about nearly breaking your arm."
"That's OK, Hon, grab my tit. I love you".

BBC Climate Change Experiment.

I've decided to stop running SETI for a short while and instead take part in the BBC distributed computing worldwide experiment to try and predict climate change. You can download the experiment which runs on BOINC software made by the University of California, Berkeley (responsible for SETI) here and run this experiment in the background whilst you go about your daily computing.

It can also run as your screensaver if you want, and it's very interesting to look at.

The experiment ends in May, so I shall go back to searching for aliens then.

World's largest digging machine.

Interesting fact number 285488292.

There is more computing power in a single speaking birthday card than there was in the whole world in 1956.

Courtesy of my ex-boss (the nice Stonehenge one).

What I look at when I plan to talk to you.

The Parrot can talk!

Fawkes can say Hello, and he can blow kisses - three in a row in quick succession; kiss-kiss-kiss.

He says 'Hello' like Terry Thomas, or maybe Leslie Phillips would, but with a lower voice. It's very funny. Now we're teaching him to say 'chip' when he wants a bit of boiled potato (chip is a bit easier to say than than boiled potato). I want him to learn the Archers theme tune. But he's only a baby still, nine months old now.

There's a parrot in America who, when you give him nuts says, 'No nut!' if he wants something else.

Fawkes comes to the shops with us now, he's allowed in Blockbuster, but not in Sainsbury's. One day when we have a shop I'm going to put a sign in the window saying 'PARROTS WELCOME.'

More Jewellery

I made this necklace for my sister.



Commissions taken gladly!

Revenge of James Lovelock?

I've just heard James Lovelock on Start the Week talking about his new book Revenge of Gaia.

He basically said that sinc we (the British) can't stop India, China and the United States from continuing their impact on global warming, our government would do better to concentrate on preparing flood defences for London and East Anglia than cutting down Britain's impact on climate change, since ours is minimal in the first place and we are past the point of no return.

He said that wind farms are utterly useless, that they only work for approximately half the time so we would need back up energy sources anyway, and until such time as we can adapt our attitude to energy useage Nuclear power is the way forward.

He also said that nature flocks to areas which have become radioactive because there are no people.

This goes against everything that I thought I believed in, which is flummoxing since it has come from someone whom I hugely admire. I don't want to have to consider Nuclear power as the way forward because I thought that I thought it was fundamentally wrong.

Now I am sitting here thinking about why I actually think that, and it pretty much stems from spending a lot of time on CND marches as a child. Not perhaps the ideal basis for considered opinion.

What not to post on Barbelith

In relation to posting on Barbelith and the rules behind what should and shouldn't appear, see the following diagram:

Beautiful Places I know Part 30405838.

This is Threecliff Bay, in Wales. We went there at the weekend. It's now officially my favourite beach.



And here is the silly dog, waiting for the beautiful man to throw the Frisbee.

On London's whale and why it's not in fact exciting but actually unutterably sad.

If the whale in the Thames doesn't find it's pod soon it's likely to become the equivalent of a Swedish tramp following your family around the park desperate to join you and shouting about it in a language you don't understand.

Whales live in family groups or pods, and for a whale to become separated from it's pod is really bad news. most whale pods have their own family dialect and a separated whale trying to join another pod is often not accepted because it speaks the wrong language.

That whale is probably really disorientated and frightened, and what's worse than anything else is the fact that there is another whale in Southend, and still another one in Aberdeen. I think these other whales are part of the same pod and they've become separated; Northern bottle-noses are almost never seen in UK waters, yet now we suddenly have three.

Everyone everywhere appears to be really excited about the one swimming up the Thames but I'm not. It's utterly awful. A whale has never been seen on the Thames since records began in 1913, and this is why:

1/It's shallow water and stranding is likely.
2/It's brackish water and whales hate that.
3/ It's very loud for a whale in London.

If that whale doesn't die trying to find it's way back to sea it's likely to end up a lonely whale, hunting for its pod for the rest of it's life.

Where's the excitement in that?

Test.

Self Fulfilling Prophecies.

They go like this:

You think you're bad, you're stupid, fundamentally flawed. You're too self indulgent. You think no-one likes you. You have a constant fear of rejection.

Therefore: You come across as sulky, self-indulgent, self-obsessed, mean.

Therefore: People tend not to like you very much, to find you difficult.

Therefore: You get rejected.

Therefore: You prove to yourself that you were right to think that you're bad and mean and no-one likes you in the first place.

Which makes you feel bad.

Therefore: You come across as sulky, self-indulgent, self-obsessed, mean.

Repeat to fade.

What a fascinatingly awful cycle of behaviour.

See, about two weeks ago I finally realised that most of my problems are entirely created by me. It's my fault there are arguments, because I create them. I create them because I feel unloveable. I take things the wrong way, assume people are being mean to me when they're not.

So I've been trying to stop it. I've been facing myself in the morning and trying to think of the good things about myself. I'm trying to stop starting rows and I'm trying to stop taking things the wrong way because not everything is my fault. I've stopped saying sorry so much. I say sorry so much I even say it to the directory enquiries lady when I ring up for a number. Which is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

I've been doing quite well. Two days ago I really quite liked myself. It was ace.

Then yesterday something happened which sent me reeling into the dark place.

And I dwell and dwell on it, on the injustice, the unfairness. Something more important happened for someone I dearly love at the same time yesterday but instead of being there for them, they ended up being there for me. They spent the evening trying to cheer me up and comfort me, all the while having to push their own far more real and considerable worry inward. Which is so wrong.

I know this, but somehow all the other things get pushed behind how bad I feel. But still I can see that what I am doing is only focussing on myself, (as usual) which is horrible because I hate myself for it but somehow can't stop it, and then before I know it I'm back in the downward slide.

I really, really want to fix it, and I don't know how. How do you fix a behavioural pattern like that?

My hungry neighbours.

The two Long-Eared Owl babies in my garden fledged a little while ago and now they're very noisy, playing and calling for food loudly in the trees. They don't go hoo-hooo, like you think owls do. They squeak. 'Eee-ip. Eee-ip'. Before I knew what kind of owl they were I thought they sounded like squeaky doors, and then when I looked them up in the book, it was easy to identify them. It says: 'juvenile begs for food with incessant high sharp squeaky-hinge calls'.

Mostly they sit in the trees right outside my window here, about fifteen feet away from me.

I've just been outside to look at them again. I was sitting in my pyjama's trying to make myself go to bed when I heard them shouting, so I put my army boots on and went to look. I can't stop doing it, I'm fascinated by them. As I went out they heard the door, so they flew over into the field and settled in the trees calling to each other. So I snuck around the house and over the lane and stood there a bit getting used to seeing in the moonlight.

They knew I was somewhere near because they went quiet, but after a minute or so I realised one of them wasn't in the trees because I could see it's outline in the moonlight, sitting on the telegraph pole. So I crept up really near and switched my torch on, and saw it properly, beautiful bird. It loooked at me for a few seconds, spread it wings, and then dive-bombed me, sweeping up over me at the last minute to land on my roof.

They're very, very noisy through most of the night at the moment, but I don't mind. They're only little, learning. And anyway, it's a priviledge to share their space.

I am secretly hoping that when they get big enough to move away from their mother they leave me a feather or two.

I think the Tooth Fairy might be overcharging.

The lovely boy has got two wobbly teeth at the front on the bottom. Behind the wobbly ones is a big tooth coming through. I ask him what the Tooth Fairy's going rate is and he tells me she pays one pound per tooth, one pound fifty for a big one. Since I used to get twenty pence, that's a very high rate of inflation.

In the bathroom this evening he is brushing his teeth in a really perculiar fashion, angling the head of the brush down behind his wobbly teeth. I ask him what he is doing.

"I'm brushing my special tooth," he says.

I am glad the tooth is loved.

'Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people.'

I don't think the 'Tard blog is funny.

I wish I hadn't seen it, I certainly don't think it should be in the 'lovely links' thread on Lith and quite apart from anything else the word 'Tard' is a bit too near the word 'Turd' for my liking.

This is not a snap judgement. I've just sat and read lots of the stories, read the hatemail and read the lovemail. I've tried to look at it from a balanced point of view, but it just isn't funny.

Call me super-sensitive if you like, but:

"...And then they shat in their pants. Ha ha ha."

Isn't very nice.

On not talking about the only thing I am capable of thinking about.

I'm tired of being unable to write here. I'm tired of the brief inanities that I can post. I'm tired of the lockdown, the impending showdown, the inevitable meltdown.

I want to write about what is happening to us all because writing it out helps to work through it. But it's no good writing it and keeping it; it's the sending it out into the ether that is the therapeutic bit. Because then my very big problem stops being mine and becomes a insignificant little page in the gargantuan internet book. The act of posting it feels like registering my feelings; 'I feel like this and it HURTS!' A simple record. And it's not to do with who notices, or if anyone reads it. It isn't to do with a desire for 'huggles', or online platitude, or even a need for the simple, gentle kindness of online friends (although that is of course lovely).

It's the simple act of it being there. That I've said it. That somebody completely uninvolved may stumble across it. It's the words, spoken, breathed out and unkeepable, the tears cried.

Oh.

I shall be so very, very glad when this is finally all over.

But it's like playing Grandma's footsteps. No matter how much it may appear otherwise, there is someone there and they are following.