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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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

Brennan is alive and, well…

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Just throwing this piece of Artificial Inspiration out there, because it may very well be right.

So I saw Brennan! He’s alive! He wasn’t even walking with his head down!

(For anyone passing by who doesn’t know, Brennan is a man who walks slowly up and down my street with his head hanging so low it’s as if his neck is elastic.)

He was still walking slowly, but head up. I was probably staring trying to work out if it was him or not (I’ve never properly seen his face) and then I realised it was. And he was now looking at me, so I smiled shyly.

And he leered in response. And I don’t mean a nervous smile gone wrong, or a slight sneer, I mean a full-throttle, Bela-Lugosi-vampire, lip-twisting leer. I don’t think I’ve even see that face live on a human before. It reminded me of this Uno Morales cartoon (if you don’t know the rest of the cartoon, you don’t want to). Except that Brennan’s eyes were more hollowed out, looked almost bruised.

If I assume that Brennan hasn’t been possessed by demons, then he is a deeply troubled man, at least when he’s looking at me. Think I need to steer clear of him and accept that I’m terrible at making friends. I may be cursed.

Word of the day: weirdward – bordering upon the supernatural

Wise words for a sorry world

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Well here’s some inspiration I actually agree with!

Then today the scaffolding was down and the painters had gone. I was wondering yesterday how they would paint underneath where the scaffolding was against the wall/step. The answer is: they wouldn’t, they’d leave it unpainted. UWnpainted squares all over the walls and ground.

 

 

At least there’s no way the landlady can pin this on us.

A wise aspiration for us ALL

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Quite a few politicians at the moment seem to be making the leap from self-interested-and-incompetent to fucking-despotic. So AI has come up with a great ambition to aim for.

Word of the day: Barbarocracy – government by barbarians

I’ve been a bit confused about how our painters have been painting the house. They’ve got scaffolding up which is attached to the wall, covering small sections of it. It also rests on the steps that they’re painting a nice cheery red. But how can they paint under/behind the scaffolding? Will they do those bits after?

No sign of Brennan, the sad walking man. It’s been days now.

The unexpected dangers of painting

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Artificial Inspiration gave me nice poster today! I feel all validated.

A couple of friendly painters put up scaffolding outside my house yesterday. It’s odd, because my house isn’t big, I’m sure a ladder would have been fine, but maybe it’s safer this way. I offered tea, but they didn’t want it.

Then today they were burning off the old paint from the side of the house with a blow torch. I’ve not heard of this method before, is it normal? Anyway, I’d been in about an hour when the doorbell rang. One of the friendly painters was at the door with a sheepish grin hiding behind his curly beard.

‘Hello, I’m sorry to bother you, but I just need to have a look at your window from the inside. You see, I think it’s on fire.’ He didn’t seem in a huge rush, so we trundled up to my flat chatting about the patchy weather.

He was right, it was on fire. Wisps of smoke were wafting across the lounge. Apparently a bit of fluff inside the window had caught alight. I got him a glass of water to put it out. He poured the water over the sill, thanked me politely and went back outside to pick up his blow torch. He still didn’t want a cup of tea.

Word of the day (one of the finest ever): ucalegon – neighbour whose house is on fire.

I’ve never been able to use this word in real life, but today I’m proud to have given my neighbour the opportunity.

 

Mini paradise

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Sub Tropical land. I need a short flower interlude from inspirational posters. So I decided to share with you some photos from our sub-tropical border, cos it’s beautiful.

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I also thought I should let you know the bloke I see every day, who walks slowly up and down with his head hanging, I haven’t seen him since I wrote about him. I’ve decided for simplicity to call him Brennan, since that name means sorrow and he looks like the most desolate man I’ve seen. I’ll let you know when he comes back. I last saw him on his knees facing a house at seven in the morning so I’m a bit worried.

Word of the day: nullibicity – state of being nowhere