h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

C3PO, Craig, bloke with glasses on website modelling Gay Sharks = same person. He's a good mentor for me, although I do at times find him exasperating, only because he highlights my very real faults as a businessman. He wants the company to do well, and is giving the best advice he can, and it is good advice. We differ on our strategic views of how the company should operate this year, but this is good.

Poor Gaby. Just acting very young, really, on Saturday. She's a nice old stick, just had a very tough year so far. She could have timed things better, but, I dunno, perhaps that's the Texan way or something.

Yeah, poor Heather too. She has always struck me as an essentially nice person. Waiting for someone to understand you is never really going to work out. Maybe. I don't know. Yes, everyone has an essentially unsound way of dealing with the world, which I suppose is what you are saying. We all have a little Heather/Gaby running around in our heads. What does she actually do? At university somewhere? I do occasionally trawl your Friends list, but am none the wiser.

Watched Bowling for Columbine again last night. You are familiar with my views on Micheal Moore. Nonetheless, it is a good film, and he does make some excellent points, especially about America's gun crime being linked to a violent history. All the stuff about well, the English were at war with everything that moved for fifteen hundred years, and yet shootings are rare here. They are doubtless becoming more common, but it is still front page news when someone gets shot dead. Weird, the thing about feeling safer with a gun in the house. I would be terrified if I had a gun in my house. Like I wanna kill anyone. Anyway, you've seen the film.

...and yeah, of course you can rant randomly on here. I am, after all, your friend.

i just thought it was funny when michael moore bought the gun at the bank. and yeah, it is a good movie. there was a lot of stuff in there that needed to be said, i thought.
heather's just whittling down an anthropology degree at the moment. she needs a hobby that doesn't involve the internet, preferably one that distracts from self-inquiry... i think she'd feel better if she had a sense of contributing to something, or having something to contribute, instead of just sitting around thinking about how unfulfilled she is and how to find someone to fulfill her... but telling a depressed person to 'get a hobby'... well, she can be forgiven if she doesn't see the profound wisdom in that.
long day. i am tired as hell. spent the afternoon performing another damn ceramics test, and something about it wore me out. last one, though, thank god. now i have to write a paper.

oh. there's a little lizard running across my floor.

Yeah, Jesus, the net will fck you up if you let it.

A productive day for me. Just collecting quotes and such on the festival stock, working out what quantities of what, etc. Not interesting, but productive. Also sorted some paperwork out for the Social Security.

Been snowing here, on and off. Not much in the way of settling going on, but it looks quite pretty while it lasts. Quite heavy snowfall in London, I understand from Anne.

it's been raining here, on and on. yech. it's kind of pretty, in a soggy, silvery way. but i don't like being cold and wet. though interestingly it's only cold indoors, for now that winter is over here the Air Conditioning comes on. no one who actually inhabits the buildings on campus seems to have any control over how freezing it gets. and it's damp, being new orleans, land of 90-100% humidities. on the bright side, poetry workshop was cancelled today, due to flooding for all i know...(because literally every time it rains, it floods. the water table is 2 inches below the soil.) and i was well pleased not to have to sit through another 3 hour class today. just not in the mood. tomorrow i have to give a presentation on The Rainbow.. i'm just going to see how much of it i can get my partner to do. have to go back to campus tonight to confer with him. which is a pain in the *ss, as i pretty much expect to have to plan it all out myself anyway. but i could be misjudging this guy. meanwhile... i'm thinking of just blowing the whole afternoon with TV and/or a nap.
i think heather has weaned herself off the internet a little bit, after having been duly fcked up by it, so there is some hope. she still has the mind-warping effects of social isolation to deal with. being alone too much also fcks you up, for sure. i know being alone in a dorm room was no good for me. she has a nice apartment, in a less toxic if less interesting city, but it can't be much better psychologically. at least here i could occasionally find reasons to go out, even if i had no one to go with.

Yeah, social isolation. Jesus, I know all about that. It *will* fck you, I don't care how bloody enigmatic you wanna be. A few years back, when Jarvis Cocker was living in a townhouse in Islington, he had two lodgers living with him, just for the interaction. This was after Pulp were big, and everything. He'd just put an ad in the paper looking for lodgers. Living alone and isolated *is* bad for you. Fact.

Today, more figure gathering, on the mission to make the company healthily profitable. Thing with t's is, they are a logistical nightmare at this level, and simply do not make enough money to justify themselves. Sure, they are great billboards for the company and such, and I cannot imagine the company not selling them, but it *must* find other, more profitable revenue streams. Great if you are trading at major music festivals every week, but just not good enough for regular small scale retailing. Still, it's all part of the challenge of turning what is essentially a hobby into a genuine business, which is the major goal for this year. A quick example: in retail, the *lowest* markup (ie the revenue from sales minus the unit cost) which is acceptable is 300%. Sharks and Tanks, the two best selling lines, generate around 240%. We can either address this with massive investment in huge print runs abroad, where we can benefit from the strong £, or offset it with new lines which generate far larger markup - which is my preferred option, being that I am trying to establish a brand, not a t shirt company.

A nasty thing today: got a phone call from a distressed Gaby. Her sister au pairs in Texas, and one of the children she looks after drowned in the family swimming pool today. So God knows how that is going to pan out. Apparantly, the kid, who is 2, wandered out through a door which is usually locked and ended up under the netting which keeps the leaves out of the water. It seems that the family (who have known Gaby's family for years, being at the same church and such) aren't pressing any charges or anything at the moment, but I can't believe that the matter will rest at that.

having a child drown on your watch... talk about mental damage. that is awful.
i wish my landlord was jarvis cocker. i'd hang out with him. i hate to hear about cool people being lonely. well, maybe hate isn't the word. it breaks my heart is all, because i would be their companion if they would just find me and ask.
ok, food has been delivered to the house, i need to go get it.

Yep, dead kid, your responsibility - never going to be a easy ride.

Went out to dinner with Anne last night, it was nice. It was Thai, I think. Something Chinese, anyway. Then, this morning, I went for a long walk from Camden to Highgate Cemetry (where Karl Marx is buried) in the snow. Really nice, actually. I love London in the snow.

Not a lot today: picked up some t's from Reading, just about to get a bit of labelling done before heading back to Camden and Anne.

just waiting to hear from corrie... unless she, like me, ordered tickets early, she is probably not going to see interpol tonight. from the sounds of things on WTUL they're sold out. i might try to call in and win her a spot on the guest list...this dj is totally on a power trip right now with all these despertate people trying to get tickets. 'it hurts my feelings that you are just exploiting me for something you should have taken care of awhile back.' he's right, you know. still a bstrd. i wouldn't have been like dat. i would have been annoyed as hell...but that's it.
so anyway, I'M going to see interpol tonight.
last night went to see Hitch finally. that is, the new will smith movie where he helps men look cool for ladies. i thought it was sweet. not quite as offensive, patronizing and obvious as it looked. AND i got to go out and have popcorn, and best of all, dane drove. god i love it when someone else drives.
thai food is good. so is chinese. wish i had some right now...

Yeah, Interpol, good night out I should imagine.

So, pretty usual weekend. Kate has arm trauma (cf LJ) but it was a great weekend nonetheless. Sales for last week were 35 - the best non Christmas week ever. So, it continues to be encouraging, especially as I also sold all of the trial run of a baby grow I am doing. It'll all be on the site soon enough, the week after next I should think.

Meanwhile, the usual Hawley Arms-related boozerama after school. Today, have wasted the day somewhat by getting up very late, but can salvage productivity by writing a load of stuff for the site this evening and just generally doing work stuff.

The weekend was given a bit of extra spice by Leeds (Auntie Martin's team) beating West Ham 2-1. To limit the damage, I told him we had won 3-0. But the truth came out.

well, worked on ceramics all day then watched the Oscars. Charlie Kaufmann (my hero) won best screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which pleased me greatly. after that i lay awake in bed til about 4 in the morning, presumably because i got too much sleep over the weekend... and today i spent the afternoon reading, finished a whole entire book. now i'm going to just watch tv and/or a movie or two and then go to bed. if only i wasn't out of food. but sloth beats gluttony today.

Well, ceramics-based accomplishment is good.

I know nothing about the Oscars and nothing about films or actors, but glad your hero won a Grammy or whatever.

God, boring day. Just been loafing about trying to work out how the company can make a workable profit. Harder than you think. It's the old thing about speculating to accumulate. I have little to speculate with, so accumulating anything is going to be difficult. If you could see your way clear to buying another eight hundred shirts from the website, that would be very helpful. I'd do the same for you.

well, if it's harder than i think it is then it must be pretty damn hard. and getting exponentially harder the more i try to grasp how hard it is. i did wear Riot to the interpol show, AND i wore my hair up, so maybe one or two of the right kind of people saw the url. so in a way i am sort of doing my part for the cause.
i just kicked my lizard out of the house. poor thing. shooed it out onto my windowsill, from whence it leaped and plummetted to the ground and scurried away. a 3-inch lizard falling 2 storeys, that would be like a person falling..well, a long way. i just thought it might be better off in the wild(the backyard). there are more bugs in my room than i know about, but possibly not enough. it *was* warmer in here, though, and safe from predators. did i do the right thing?
well, it had been spending all its time in my bathroom, and that might have inconvenienced my roommates since now my landlord is selling the house and has deemed it necessary to tear up the floor in the boys' bathroom. that means now everyone is going to have to like, take showers and stuff in my room this week. if they had waited another week it would have been spring break and we wouldn't be here, but oh well.
today i was promised that good things will come my way because i played a song by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.

Well, I'm sure something will work itself out with pgj. Que sera sera. Anne is a massive support. And Kate, and, in his way, 3PO. Anne and I are in the same boat really, as she is walking out of her job in September to be a theatrical make up artist. It's just something she has always wanted to do, and is at the late-20's dangerous age when you realise that actually, the career you trained for because it seemed like a good idea is not only evil, it is actually destroying you. You might want to remember that. It happened to Michelle, too, walking out of a very highly paid job after six weeks, having trained for it all the time I knew her, to go and make pottery.

Anyway, I have nowhere else to go but griefjunkie now. It has become all I want to do, and I count myself lucky that I found it. Most people go through their entire lives not knowing why they are living the lives that they are. Life just happens to them. I just couldn't do that anymore. Well, you know how it used to be for me in the real world. That stuff *is* out there, so, if nothing else, I have left a mark on the universe. And, although it seems a long way away at the moment, I do feel that *something* will come of it, sometime.

I reckon your lizard was probably fine. Things like that always survive stuff. They aren't designed to live indoors, even if they like it, so I would imagine it has hooked up with all its lizard mates now and is happier as a result. I have never seen a lizard that big, except on the telly. I used to see tiny ones in Alabama. We aren't big on lizards here. In fact, we don't think we have any. We have two types of snakes, grass snakes which live in forests and are very shy and harmless, and adders, which are poisonous, but you would have to go some to die from it. I saw one once, on a school trip, swimming across a pond. They are tiny, and as I recall, quite endearing.

3 inches long is a pretty standard chameleon size...well, i may be overestimating the size, it seemed pretty little to me. when i was younger i had a few as pets, but here they grow wild. we had some pretty tiny pink ones hanging around too. but it turns out mohammad (my roommate) has a lizard phobia, so it's just as well i turned it out of the house when i did.
the idea of making a solvent living on something personal/artistic, i.e. something that *wouldn't* destroy you and that you *wouldn't* hate... general wisdom says that's only for the very lucky and/or independently wealthy. general wisdom tends to be pessimistic like that, but also generally correct. it's cool that michelle is a potter, i never gathered that she was. i have obviously come to respect and enjoy the ceramic arts, however much i may complain about the training i am receiving. and i have little desire to have a regular job except that it will allow me to stop worrying about the eventuality. then again i will probably need something tedious to do, since it's not like i actually have the guts or the inclination to carpe diem. the closest thing i have to an idea of the perfect life was last summer, which i often mention because i pretty much spent all my time writing and eating and drinking coffee. that's my field of expertise.
22 today. going out with some people, for mexican food and margaritas. can't beat that.

Ah kewl. Happy birthday!

Michelle was a fully qualified chartered accountant, for six weeks. Is now pretty much up to finishing a ceramics design course at Cardiff University, by my calculations. She was well on the way to buying a little shop in Yorkshire, the last I heard. Jon sees her now and then, and keeps me posted.

Yeah, fck general wisdom.

Have today found out that I have very much less money left than I thought I did. Oh dear. Really need to get moving to London and saving some cash.

...some bloke called John Verano from Tulane is on the telly. He's a forensics expert.

woo hoo. likely the busiest day of my quiet little year has ended. i.e. the day where i rush around putting in my 6 hours for the WTUL fundraiser known as Marathon. it was actually kind of fun, as much as i was dreading it. spent a couple hours running errands and stuff on campus, then spent a further 6 hours or so at a bar called Polynesian Joe's, putting up decorations and then waiting around interminably for some entertainment to start. finally, duties long since discharged, i got bored and came back to campus to do laundry & watch star wars. i'm used to having maybe 1/6 that much activity in any given day. it is so rare that i manage to get this righteously exhausted.
my birthday went ok. corrie, dane & mohammad were nice enough to go out to that burrito place with me, so even though it wasn't the classic greasy cheese-smothered mexican food that i truly love, i still ended the night with a full stomach. then chatted on IM with you and then Joe til about 2 AM. which was interesting. see, he and i both have tragic, sentimental, unresolved feelings for each other's friends... namely my Lenna and his Brett, as i've probably delineated before... well, it was kind of satisfying to hash it out with him for awhile, though kind of depressing too... that certain effect Joe has.
so...there's my account of the past 2 days. meanwhile, the bathroom-repair situation is getting even more annoying. we were told that the water would be shut off today, but instead the workmen didn't come at all. so we're left with an indeterminate warning of there being no water for the better part of a day, sometime, whenever they *do* do it, which would be anytime except obviously the time they told us they would. we'll be lucky to have that bathroom back at all...

Every tradesman I have ever had to deal with has been a complete nightmare. I wish you the best of luck in your bathroom crisis.

So. The last few days where pretty much the standard Camden weekend. Slow but steady sales, much booze in the Hawley Arms, an evening out with Anne. However, there is some rather awful news: it appears that, for reasons as yet fully to be explained, we have lost Glastonbury. We had it, then we didn't. I'm pretty pssed off, as you may imagine. But we are planning an assault on Reading Festival later in the year, and are petitioning every major festival in the UK, and Roskilde in Sweden, to see where we can get in. You have to take what you can from reverses like these: I have completely overhauled the way the company operates as a result of budgeting for Glasto, and it is a stronger company as a result. It will also actually make some money by taking print in house, as has proved conclusively to be the best way of doing things. And the only thing to do from a knock back is to bounce back, so we will. We'll get the fckers next time round.

Ah yes, the WTUL Marathon. Glad it went ok for you.