Journal Entries
Household Gods
Posted Jun 7, 2004
I've been alluding to my having a set of Household Gods.
So here's the basic list, which is variable and subject to additions and promotions.
Keith Richards: the most elegantly wasted man in the world. Cannot be killed by conventional weapons, as Wayne's World 2 tells us. And a not at all bad guitarist either.
Danny, the dealer from 'Withnail and I': because sometimes I wish I could talk like that.
David Brin: author. Once said to me "I knew a (Gradient's real name). Worked at JPL and NASA. Genius. Died of Parkinson's disease. There's a lesson in that."
Christopher Morris: if you need to ask you don't deserve to be told.
Anthony Ainley: recently deceased, alas.
Tom Baker: not recently deceased. Hurrah!
Alice Cooper: for the lyrics to the song 'Cold Ethyl' which I shall not be reproducing here.
The H2G2 Italics: As a sort of composite entity. Yes, of course it's for the suckup value.
Sho: In her aspect as Kali, because she keeps hitting me.
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Jun 7, 2004
That was a week, that was...
Posted Jun 4, 2004
It's been a week since I was last online.
In that time, I have read the following books:
A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, From a Buick 8, The Silmarillion, The Gunslinger, The Genesis Wave books 1 to 3 inclusive, Star trek: Cloak, The Running Man, The Stand, Dracula and Area 51: Legend.
I was house sitting for a week. I was restricted to the bookshelves of the houseowners. I was moderately annoyed that they had A Clockwork Orange and Brave New World and I don't. I shall rectify this mistake, O my brothers, as soon as I can.
They had a pool. When I was not reading, chasing around after the Gradientlings or cooking, I was swimming. I managed to get a Third Degree sunburn, having forgotten that the Sun's Kung Fu is strong in the desert, and am now behaving much more sensibly and using boshky amounts of sunblock especially on me litso.
Did I mention I'd read Clockwork Orange? For the first time?
A pool. The New House has a pool too. I am looking forward to that.
House news: we're approved for the loan, the pool gets reinspected this weekend and we're looking for homeowner insurance because the company that insures the car are bing a pain in the rear about it. They have invited us to apply and need our details. Details that they, in theory, already have because they insure the car. But no. So we're shopping around.
Our Realtor is heaping treasures upon us. If anyone out there wants a good realtor for the Phoenix area, let me know. I'll put you in touch with the genius who is working for us. Anyhow, she's managed to source us some cheap to free furniture including a shot at an antique oak dining table. How cool is that?
I'm back in the little metal box of a trailer for about 2 weeks and then, with luck and a following wind, we are OUT of here and off to somewhere better, at which point there will be a break of a week or so while we sort out internet connections etc etc etc.
In case anyone cares...Arizona today: 110 degrees F.
Hot.
Now you see why the pool is not just a luxury but a necessity. It's real flip horrorshow stuff, O my brothers, and I think I shall itty off to viddy that book again.
Discuss this Journal entry [14]
Latest reply: Jun 4, 2004
Eh? Errr...we did WHAT now?
Posted May 17, 2004
America is the land of consumerism and the home of the impulse purchase.
I know this because of what happened on Sunday.
It's been a bad week.
Mrs G and I have been trying to get our act together and get the HECK out of the hellhole trailer park we live in (one comment about trailer trash and you're off the Christmas Card list, get me?)
We rebuilt Mrs G's credit score.
We found a motivated broker who was interested in getting us a mortgage (or possibly just interested in Mrs G's unique financial abilities).
We got ourselves a realtor who thinks we are a 'cute' couple.
...you know...I'm a Brit. I'm over six feet tall and weigh about the same as the average family car and I have a face that only a mother could truely love. One thing I am not is cute. And yet American women seem determined to call me that. Never mind.
But then we discovered that there was no way we can buy any kind of a house and continue to make the payments on the cruddy awful trailer and shell out the Lot Rent for the park. Well 
.
So, having discovered this we went off in a deep depression and bought the kids clothes to cheer ourselves up. I got a 'Diamondbacks' t-shirt. I have no idea who they are.
So that was Friday. On Saturday we went scooting off house-hunting because we had an appointment with said Realtor on Sunday. We blazed off to scout out where in the heck we were going the next day. Whilst we were in the area we noticed a couple of things.
First, a lot of houses for sale. And a Deer Farm. Now I would think that you'd find it unusual for a smallholding in an otherwise residential area to be farming anything. Not so. There's a goat farm half a mile away. But this farm is Deer. And not just any deer. Reindeer. Traditionally associated with snow and ice and Santa. Reindeer. The strangeness of this event should have been a warning that, somewhere up there, someone...or something...had his/her/its hand on the irony overdrive.
We got up early Sunday.
Let me clarify. I got up at 5am to sort out the puppy. Then he and I stayed awake some, and then I went to sleep and he woke everyone else up.
Then they woke me. Being awake and in dire need of coffee, I insisted we leave early to get to the location and have a nose around. I wanted to make sure the Deer were still there. Reindeer. In a desert. Surely not?
There they were. Yep.
And there, nestled away in a cul-de-sac (posh for 'Dead End') we stumbled over a for sale sign and nabbed some information.
To cut a long story short, we bought a house.
Quite the impulse purchase.
It's smaller than we wanted, but twice the size of where we are now. It's one floor - not uncommon out here - but it has a pool.
It's in the right neighbourhood, and handy for the Reindeer farm.
And it was cheap. So cheap that with the mortgage we can carry the monthly payments AND still keep the lot rent going on this tin box while we fix it up, pay down the hideous equity trap we're in and sell the damn thing.
So it looks like we're moving in June.
To a real house. With real walls. And a pool.
And air conditioning.
I'll keep you all posted - we have a long way to go yet.
Discuss this Journal entry [5]
Latest reply: May 17, 2004
Counting, Politics and Stuff.
Posted May 10, 2004
Counting: In binary, on my fingers. It's rather easy when you know how.
On the right hand:
Thumb=1
Index=2
Middle=4
Ring=8
Pinkie=16.
Left hand:
thumb=32
index=64
middle=128
ring=256
pinkie= lots.
So being as Binary is 1s and 0s, you just hold up the appropriate fingers.
I've taught this to the youngest Gradientling to confuse her teacher with.
Politics: I don't think even my explanations can save the Bush government now, so I have decided to stop trying. Debate is one thing but the regime is well past its sell by date. I wish Kerry was a better proposition, but I am staying OUT of politics until I can vote. 'nuff said.
Stuff: Yeah., Had some when I started. Don't now.
Discuss this Journal entry [8]
Latest reply: May 10, 2004
R.I.P. Bels
Posted May 9, 2004
I don't do grief.
Well, I do, but generally I don't do grief for people I don't know.
Except that in this case, I sort of do know Bels.
He wrote about what he was going through, in one of those outbursts of courage you sometimes find in places like this. Or maybe it was honesty.
Whatever the reason, Bels (a fellow Sub-Editor) put this place to another of those uses that the designers didn't forsee.
The Bels I knew I knew only through his writing. He was one hell of a writer, as you will find out when you read the things he wrote. The best memorial I can give him is not a link to his personal space, or links to the things he wrote because Bels was a writer, not just a cancer sufferer. He put something of himself into the Guide. If you seek his memorial, browse the guide. Look through what others have written. Chances are you'll come across something he wrote, or something he sub-edited. Write a Guide Entry yourself. Take something of yourself and turn it into a Guide entry, even if you're just happy to hang out in the Community at large, because you never know when it will inspire, or comfort, someone else who comes to this site.
And don't take forever about doing it. One thing life demonstrates to us over and over is that it stops, often before the full business of our lives is complete.
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: May 9, 2004
Dark Side of the Goon
Researcher U181676
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."