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Posted Jul 18, 2001
The only problem with Classic Goo is that longer journal entries mean having to scroll down half a mile before getting to the Guide entries at the foot of the page. I think I'm correct in saying that only the four or five most recent Journal pieces are actually displayed... so I think I'll just bung a couple of completely gratuitous blank postings here, until I get rid of the rather long one at the bottom from October 2000. Just to make a bit of space. (I'm going to need it in a little while, I reckon - got another big one brewing up here...)
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Latest reply: Jul 18, 2001
If it ain't broke...
Posted Jun 29, 2001
Just gone back to Classic Goo after an extended spell using the alabaster background. I now wonder why I stuck with the latter for so long - did I ever particularly like it in the first place? I suppose I was just trying to be up-to-date and modern, all that sort of thing. Nothing wrong with progress, of course, as long as it actually *is* progress. But the old adage springs to mind - 'If it ain't broke, etc'... Alabaster strains the eyes with its glaring background and small text; also, it has an impersonal, characterless feel - it could be pretty much anywhere on the Web. Goo, in contrast, seems warm and comfortable (not to mention easier on the eye), and has some of the engaging quirkiness that attracted me to h2g2 in the first place. It's a bit like making a friendly homecoming after a period in the wilderness. I might even stick around...
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Latest reply: Jun 29, 2001
Reflections on mortality and other related trivia
Posted Oct 28, 2000
Earlier this evening I suffered a harrowing experience at the hands of a London driver. No real harm done, fortunately - this time. The worst thing of all is that if anyone is to blame then, frankly, that person is me. Ok, there were extenuating circumstances - visibility was poor, for a start. But it's just the sort of careless thing that I've slipped into doing a fair bit of recently. One day, if I don't look out, this carelessness will be the end of me.
Early evening dusk, torrential rain, a high wind, awful visibility. Heavy traffic, of course. Me with my little umbrella trying to poke my way across a busy road near Finsbury Park station, north London. Look left, look right, look again, tentatively start walking across the road... straight into an oncoming car.
Which, luckily for me, was edging along at about 5 miles per hour, otherwise it could have been nasty. I suppose I'm fortunate to have got away with nothing worse than a twinge in my right leg, from the car bumper.
Funny, or perhaps not particularly funny, but strange at any rate, how the mind is continually obsessed by trivia. I remember the colour of the car - scarlet red. I also remember that somewhere on the other side of the road somebody screamed (presumably at the collision, although it could have been for something completely different - I suppose there will never be any way of knowing for certain)... I remember cursing the wind as my umbrella turned inside out - absurdly, I was at least as concerned about the brolly as about my own safety. Even more ridiculous was my annoyance on arriving home half an hour later and realising I had missed the second reading of the football results by about five minutes - minutes that would probably have been saved but for the incident. (I don't even really like football...)
I was carrying a rather confusing assortment of items, and in fact this may have contributed to my general detachment at the time of the near-disaster. Slung around my shoulder was a large black holdall, containing the fruits of my (actually rather successful) ventures around the north London public library system. The holdall contained eight books, including :- Thinking About Logic, an introductory guide to this branch of philosophy by Stephen Read; Kinds of Minds by the American philosopher Daniel C Dennett; Mind, Language and Society, a recent publication by another American philosopher, John Searle; Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter; The Evolution of Co-operation by Robert Axelrod; The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley. Plus two others of less importance, which I can't remember at present. Just a few minutes before the incident, I had purchased a small ceramic dish from a discount store near Finsbury Park, and this was neatly wrapped in soft paper in a separate plastic bag. I also had another bag from a nearby grocery store, containing :- 1 medium-sized packet of crushed black peppercorn flavour crisps (delicious!); 2 cans of Budweiser lager; a small packet of rather obnoxious-looking dried chick peas, which fortunately seem subsequently to have disappeared; a copy of the Saturday Guardian, purchased earlier from a news stand inside Manor House tube station.
Remarkable - and not a little dispiriting - to reflect that my last significant act in the world might have been the purchasing of a small flower-patterned bowl from a discount store, for the princely sum of £1.29.
Even as I was trudging up the road a few minutes later, shaken and whimpering slightly but essentially undamaged, I was turning my mind to the question of how I might fashion this incident into a reasonably interesting piece of writing. In fact, the event itself has subsequently become less important in my mind than the rendering of it in readable written form. One might even say that the actual event is now of little importance to me, in comparison with the simulated version of it recorded here.
And in spite of all the trivia - rather frustratingly - I hardly noticed a single relevant detail about the incident itself. I didn't get any glipse of the driver, then again neither did I particularly want to. I didn't stop to discuss the matter. I simply turned my brolly back in again, put my head down and, in old-fashioned stoical 'English' fashion, completed my passage across to the other side of the street - albeit paying rather closer attention this time to the oncoming traffic.
But who am I kidding? I know that, while we try to brush off events like this - count oursleves fortunate and then just go about our everyday business - they come back to haunt us later on. They do with me, anyway. This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night from time to time. Worrying about the fragility of one's existence, focusing at 3am on evidence to demonstrate this fragility. A deep-down dark feeling of dust and insignificance. Intimations of mortality...
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Latest reply: Oct 28, 2000
Some ridiculously optimistic resolutions
Posted Oct 1, 2000
Seeing as today is the first day of the rest of my life, here are some ridiculously optimistic resolutions off the top of my head...
- make a round tour of north London's public library systems and throw various heavy books on various dusty counters, paying off various rather large fines while I'm there of course, and then step out into the early autumn sunlight(?) sighing with a deep sense of release
- wave my arms in the air quite a lot, this being my preferred method of celebration
- go for a decent haircut
Ok, that lot should be fairly easy. But wait - this is where it starts to get complicated...
- start figuring out how I can earn a proper living with a Humanities Masters (ie, do some IT courses instead)
- become a competent chess player (long term project this one)
- one or two h2g2-related things to attend to (articles, etc)
- start planning my escape route from London (somewhere a bit less radioactive, a place with air that you can actually breathe)
- leave off reading novels for a little while (no, make that a long while...)
- have a go at writing one instead
- go for long solitary walks
- study lots of esoteric philosophy
- stop smoking those dreadful cigarillos
- stop taking sick days
- start being (fairly) nice to people again
Well, the Thing To Get Out Of The Way has been Got Out Of The Way, and now I can admit that the last two years have worn me down a little. So many things to do in life, and only one short time available to get any of it done. I hate the idea of being stuck down in any one particular area. Methinks I shall be exercising (or trying to) that capacity for self-renewal that I keep boasting about to people. I might even redesign my h2g2 homepage... 
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Latest reply: Oct 1, 2000
Where can I stick this dissertation...
Posted Sep 11, 2000
Mood swings ranging from complacency to absolute despair, but I reckon I'm on the home stretch now. Have to be, really, with less than three weeks to go before the deadline. Can't say I'll be sorry to get it out of the way, actually - so many other things I want to do, this has become a bit like Just One More Thing To Get Out Of The Way. Ah well, nearly done...
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Latest reply: Sep 11, 2000
Lear (the Unready)
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