I am a ghost

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Do you sometimes question if you exist in the way you’re supposed to? I sometimes wonder if I’ve died already and what’s wandering around as me doesn’t look completely human anymore.

Today I was feeling faded out anyway, still ill with some bizarre virus that gives me a low level fever and makes my face feel swollen up from the inside. I haven’t been outside my room except to get water and occasional snacks, but I needed more food, so I went out to the supermarket. And on the way people were staring at me oddly. They often do stare at me oddly, it’s true, not nastily, just curiously, but today they weren’t even trying to hide it.

Then I was in the supermarket, using the self-service screen and it wouldn’t recognise my finger. I was pressing and pressing different buttons on the screen, trying to get something, but nope. So I called the supermarket guy over, I know him, he’s usually really friendly, but he barely acknowledged me. He pressed the button, it worked first time. So I think it’s me, what have I turned into? Am I just waiting to fade away?

 

Word of the day (I think this one may be a joke): Gawdelpus – helpless person

 

Nah, screw you artificial negativity brain

Posted on by inkbiotic

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I refuse to be cowed by my robot masters of the future and the message they have chosen to bestow on me. While it wouldn’t be difficult to make a case for my huuuuuuuuge loserdom, I really like my life. I like its oddness, and all the green nature-y stuff in it. I like that I get enough time to let my mind wander to wherever it feels like going. And that the people I know make me laugh a lot and seem to like me. And today, I  have given the book I’ve just written to a friend to read. Of course, when he reads it I’ll find out it’s not finished at all and I have a shit-load of work to do again, but for now, I can revel in the delusion of believing it’s great. So on the other hand, maybe that’s the point, I’m a huge loser, but it makes me happy, so that IS my style 🙂

Note to self: I think we all function by keeping ourselves somewhat deluded, delusion is essential for survival, nothing wrong with it all. However, other people don’t think this and won’t react well if I tell them they’re deluded. As I discovered a few weeks ago at a party. Don’t do that again, me.

‘Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

Alice in Wonderland

Foxes again! But I am infected

Posted on by inkbiotic

 

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This is going to be short because I have some evil, life-force sapping virus. I think I’ve had it for a while, which probably explains why my blogs have been so crap recently (doesn’t explain their quality before that, but oh well).

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But anyway, the foxes came back, and had a sleep near their shoe, so I glad I kept it. My phone wouldn’t get a good enough picture, so this is from Hamoudi’s. Look at the little chaps!

 

Foxes’ playground

Posted on by inkbiotic

I get a lot of wildlife in my garden. South East London is greener than North London which entices nature to set up home, and then my garden is mostly left to its own devices so animals get to settle in. Parakeets swoop round in a gang every morning, drunken blackbirds sit on the lawn with their beaks in an apple, and I’ve had a family of foxes visiting for the last few years. What I like about our foxes is that so far they only visit, they don’t crap everywhere or dig holes. Aside from a few squashed plants (which might be the fault of cats) they only come to play or lounge around. Sometimes they bring toys.

This is the shoe they left in my garden last night. I don’t want to remove it in case they want to play with it later.

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And a picture from last spring, this is the baby fox who came all the way up the fire escape to sleep on the roof under the kitchen window.

 

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It’s raining it’s pouring, Inkbiotic is boring

Posted on by inkbiotic

Andrew Android 2

Andrew Android Jones

Today has been a day of rain, paranoia and headaches (I don’t fair well when I’m stuck inside). So this just going to be a hodgepodge of happy pictures, funny things and interesting words.

19C jobs

Several words of the day

Blague – humbug; pretentious nonsense

Xanthippe – ill-tempered woman

Chasmophile – lover of nooks and crannies

Wappend – tired, incontinent, unchaste

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Silverb’s The Icon of Hecate

The Trouble with Meeting Any Old Tom, Dick or Harry

Posted on by inkbiotic

This story is from one of my favourite bloggers, Colin McQueen and his site, Getting On. It made me chuckle!

via The Trouble with Meeting Any Old Tom, Dick or Harry

Note: this is just the first bit, cos the reblog didn’t provide an excerpt…

The Trouble with Meeting Any Old Tom, Dick or Harry

SpeedDating
There is, apparently, an epidemic of loneliness amongst the middle-aged and elderly. Opportunities to meet other single people in an ‘organic’ manner are vastly reduced as we get older and for some people, many of whom may have been in a stable relationship for many years, the whole business of meeting new people can be a bridge too far. It is with some surprise, therefore, that I learn that Speed Dating, the most synthetic and pressurised mode of social intercourse that humankind has yet devised, has, for an increasing proportion of ageing singletons, become the preferred manner of meeting people and, perhaps, finding a partner. I tried to imagine how this might work…

DING!
Mary: …Are you alright?
Tom: Yes, it’s these chairs. What’s the point of the arm rests? It’s a bugger of a job to get into them without popping the front of your shirt out of your trousers – not ideal when you’re trying to make an impression; especially when you’ve not really had time to change your vest since last Sunday’s gravy incident – also, could put your hip out; twist too far trying to get your knees under these tables…
Mary: Right… well… I see. Yes. Well, I’m told that the best thing to do, because we’re obviously time-limited, is to get the personal details out of the way first, so, I’m Mary, I’m a retired teacher. I like walking on the beach in the early morning. I love music and books – clichéd I know, but true – and I’m allergic to cats. You?
Tom: I’m… ooh, excuse me. I had beans for lunch. Always do that to me, beans, still, better out than in eh?
Mary: Well… I suppose…
Tom: Tom. I spend my time in the pub mainly. Don’t have many friends, that’s why I’m here: thought that I might be able to get a bit of… well, you know, woman of the world and all that. Teacher. Don’t just learn about such things, if you catch my drift, eh…
Mary: Er… well, I don’t really… Oh, there’s the bell.
Tom: Bell?
Mary: Yes, the bell. Time to move on I think.
Tom: I didn’t hear a bell.
Mary: Really. I definitely heard the bell.
Tom: Nobody’s moving.
Mary: I am…

DING!

To read on>>>>

via The Trouble with Meeting Any Old Tom, Dick or Harry

Surrender to your flaws!

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Is anyone else getting a Matrix computer vibe off these inspirational posters?

‘Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.’

Hal 9000 2001

Word of the day: Cybernate – to control by means of a computer

 

Complain! Complain! Complain!

Posted on by inkbiotic
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An allium

Any of you keeping track might know that I bought a new laptop a few days ago. And in many ways it is great – it doesn’t take half an hour to open Word, it doesn’t crash at the sight of WordPress and it’s not held together by elastic bands and bulldog clips.

However, there’s one small problem. When I was looking at the website, the size of the hard drive was listed as two different amounts: 1 terabyte (huge!) and 250 gigabytes (foolishly small). After reading the reviews and asking Hamoudi what he thought, we came to the conclusion that it had two hard drives and one was 250GB and the other was 1TB. We were both wrong.

So what turned up was a laptop that has only 250 GB of space, once I put photos and music on it, it was half full. So I wrote to the dealers, and said very sweetly, ‘YOU LIED TO ME’.

A nice woman wrote back asking for proof of the misleading website, which I sent, she said ‘Urrr, ok I’ll get back to you in a bit.’ I said ‘cool, btw I don’t want to return the laptop, I just want to be compensated for the external hard drive I’ll have to buy.’

Yesterday afternoon I checked my email, nothing. Then late last night the doorbell rang with a parcel for me. It was an external hard drive for 1 terabyte. No note, still no email, but exactly what I wanted. That they didn’t contact me to tell me it was coming made this an obvious shut up and go away gesture, which is fine by me, I love being paid off.

Complaining can work, my friends. Just don’t abuse it.

Word of the day: Gudgeon  – a person easily cheated

“there’s no defense except all the errors made”

― Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

I control nothing!

Posted on by inkbiotic

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So yesterday I believed I had the power of King Cnut and could control the cars. By merely strolling up to the side of the road, the stream of traffic would halt and wait for me to cross, UNTIL I got to the middle of the road, when cars coming in the other direction would speed towards me without a care. This was clearly an awesome, but mightily flawed power.

Well, shockingly, it turns out I don’t have this power at all. Actually, they have changed the traffic lights so that the lights on one side of the road change about twenty seconds sooner than the lights on the other side of the road (although for the pedestrians it’s only one crossing). This means that people blithely cross when the cars on the near side stop and then nearly get hit when somebody shoots round the bend on the other side.

There’s going to be an accident!

And for all those sick of hearing about hashtags (not from me, just in general):

Word of the day: Octothorpe – Another name for #