This is their website. It's 'under construction', forsooth. Their email address doesn't work and they don't have an answering machine, so I can't email them the pictures of the area as they asked me to yesterday afternoon, and I can't leave them a message asking them to get in touch with me when they're open. Can you see why I'm worried about how this is going to go?

I got up at half seven this morning (why do I keep getting up even earlier on weekends?) to drive Tom's boat to Southampton in order to deliver it to someone who was going to deliver it to the bloke who's actually bought it who lives in Paignton. It was cold, very wet in the brief squall that came over, and a long way to Southampton when towing a boat, what with all those roundabouts and other junctions. Towing, especially something that light, turned out to be fairly easy, and I did a bit of practice at reversing a trailer in a car park near Arundel. I think I could probably get my head round that with a bit of practice.

We drove back as quickly as was sensible to be back before 2, when a builder recommended by yesterday's plumbers was supposed to be coming round, but he rang me at quarter to two to say he wasn't. I've been trying to find other people who might be prepared to have a look at it ever since, but it's Saturday afternoon and I'm not going to get anyone before Monday.

Here is the hole in my wall:


You can see the viaduct through it, or you could before the plumbers stuffed it up with a dust sheet. But every time a squally shower comes over and drives straight onto that south west facing hole, I worry just a bit that the wall is going to fall down. And I'm getting sort of geared up to be combative about this, because I suspect the freeholder is responsible for paying for it, and that the managing agents who haven't managed to arrange external redecoration in the five years I've been asking them to, are also at least partly responsible given the cracks in the render on that south west facing wall, but I also suspect they're not going to own up to it unless I can prove they have to.

Also I have heard nothing back from ex-flatmates about their mountains of shit yet. I suspect that the one who's normally an active Facebook user will suddenly develop a radio silence now I've asked something that needs a proper answer.

i'm hurting. the next few weeks i'm sticking to my guns and not socialising. i don't want it anymore. i always have a huge list of things to do, i'll own up to that. somehow, though, i always end up doing these things with a bunch of people i don't really want to be around. a lot of the time i'd be happier to go out by myself. so in the weeks leading up to christmas, nobody tags along.

joining the gym that will also be hosting my boxing gym tomorrow. i've never worked out on machines before, so i'm going to give it a shot. looking kind of dough-y these days. starting to get a bit of love handles or something. never had anything like that before. weird. i am getting old.

In a few short hours, I will be at Dragonmeet, in Kensington Town Hall.

Who else can I expect to see there?

Today (Friday, that is, not actual today), I attempted to cheer myself up with a half-price new dress. It is stripy, and has a giant robot stomping on buildings. I think you can see why I bought it, yes? I may wear it tomorrow if the weather isn't too cold. See how awesome it is! Only £20 too, bargainacious.

Watched 'Cronos' (I <3 Del Toro) with alextiefling. This one made him cry! I hadn't seen it since about 1997, so it was lovely to revisit.

Tired now. Mm, curry and melon. Maybe not in the same mouthful, though.

The plumbers are here today to replace my long-broken boiler. Unfortunately, the wall the old one was fixed to is so rotten that the new one fell off it shortly after being attached. They're unsure exactly how much of my kitchen will have to be rebuilt, but it's certainly going to have to have something done to it before a new boiler can go on. Also, upgrading the gas main to a proper size has involved moving half my bedroom into the lounge, as well as shifting yet more of my ex-flatmates' piles of pointless shit about. Looks like this is all going to be a lot more expensive than I thought. At least it might give me an excuse to just throw out all the ex-flatmates' shit rather than trying to accommodate their curious ideas of who might want their second-hand pyjamas and suchlike.

Also, Tom has melted the plastic colander to the grill. Today's not going great so far.

When someone puts a lot of their time and effort into making something, it is bad to mock them for it. Still, though.

NB do not click the link if you are having any kind of issues with humanity in general.

(From puzzled_anwen)

bad news: two people died, separate incidents. got rained on, no umbrella, soaked to the bone. then more problems with the natives.
can't wait to go home and switch off for awhile.

good news: going into the studio very soon, probably immediately after the x-dress show. our friend dave's the engineer. i think we'll have to school him a bit ahead of time, give him some samples of what kind of sound we want (he's in his early 20's, kind of a nu-metal guy). very excited now.

Many thanks to everyone who gave such useful and practical advice yesterday. On my third attempt, I managed to get the Mooncup in at what seemed like an acceptable and not too painful a siting, so I left it in there overnight, hoping that removal would be easier than insertion.

Big. Mistake.

During the night, it seemed to have shifted up a bit. Quite a bit. As in, so high I couldn't reach it, and was thanking my lucky stars I hadn't cut the stalk off. I then discovered I couldn't shift it. At all. Not from any angle. My fingers are quite short and fat, which didn't help. The problem is that even Mooncup + 1 finger is really quite unpleasant. Mooncup + 1 finger + 1 thumb is absolute agony.

After nearly 10 minutes, getting a bit distressed (not good) because it was getting late, alextiefling pointed out I wasn't going to be able to do it on my own and offered to help (he has very long and slender fingers, which is a positive). It then took TWO PEOPLE HALF AN HOUR to get the vile thing out. 20 minutes of that was spent with me screaming continuously at almost full volume because of the utter, wrenching, shredding pain it was causing (my poor neighbours!). The final 10 minutes was spent coughing very hard (and inducing sore throat) to try and get it to shift downwards, and this was probably what finally got it to pop out. I really do mean "pop" - final removal caused the loudest scream of all, and I really did think for a few minutes that I'd done my usual smart trick of tearing the labial/perineal join (like tearing the corners of my mouth, this is something which happens far more than I'd like), but couldn't really check as I then had to shove a tampon straight back into the distressed area and leave, 40 FUCKING MINUTES LATE FOR WORK. I need to do that kind of now and yes, I'm putting it off. *shudder*

The journey into work was spent by both of us in a sort of shell-shocked silence (and not just cos of it having been one of the least sexy experiences in the history of the universe). I think I might actually have burst into tears if I hadn't been quaking inwardly with the horror, the horror. I've subsequently spent the day in a sort of post-traumatic edge-of-panic mood, similar to how I've felt on the rare occasions I've had really frightening experiences. And putting off peeing for as long as possible ftb THE BURN, which really did bring a couple of tears to my eyes come mid-afternoon.

This probably sounds a bit melodramatic, and no doubt it is (although my witness and fellow participant also seems to have been nearly as traumatised by the grimness of it all), but yes, it really was that bad. Am now genuinely quite frightened of the Mooncup. On the positive side, I suppose it *has* reduced my fear of the speculum. I spent quite a bit of my screaming time wishing for a nice, non-scratchy, professionally-wielded speculum instead of the nasty finger-poking which was going on, and which I was trying and spectacularly failing not to think about.

This is (probably) why I have never, ever been able to get on with fisting. And yeah, I'm looking back all those experiences with comparable calm, by contrast. The Mooncup was many, many times worse - at least putative fisters aren't usually *trying* to aim sharp flicks at your vaginal walls. Not if they want to live, anyway.

I haven't quite decided if I'm brave enough ever to attempt another go. One the one hand, I hate waste, and I want to collect my useful useful blood in a versatile and ethical way. On the other hand, I generally quite *like* my periods, or at the worst don't mind them, and I don't particularly want to turn an OK experience into a hellish one for several days a month. That's a poor trade.

One thing I really didn't need at this point was anything to reduce my current libido yet further. At present, I'm contemplating the possibility of NO MORE PENETRATION EVER AGAIN EVER with surprisingly positive feelings. That can't be healthy, especially not with side fantasies of permanent thigh bondage.

From now on, my crushes will all be pure and spiritual! Honest.

I have googlewave invites.
Comment with an email address, if you want one.

ETA: comments now screened.

***

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/32115 URL expander thingie for firefox, I think. Hover over the shortened URLs in twitter and such, and the little yellow box will say what the URL is.

Jesus.

This is possibly the most unpleasant thing I've done to my cunt in a very long time - which just goes to show how long it's been since I had my cervix scraped. Frankly, it's making STD tests, even that nasty urethral poking one, seem relatively pleasant in comparison.

I knew people say they "take a bit of getting used to", but I'm not sure I WANT to get used to this. I'm only doing it so I can keep the blood for gardening purposes!

(Wonder if I could just ask for donations instead...)

Urgh. Wishing it would dissolve right now. At least that would save me from another unexpected silicon-punch on the labia.

They no longer make Almond Kisses moisturiser! :-(

Yes, I have made one tub last almost 2 years...

As nice as Gorgeous is, I do think £35 for a tub of moisturiser is a *bit*much, even if it DOES last more than a year.

Me. A bit. Right now.

Oh, not terminally I'm sure. But I'm having a bunch of somewhat inter-related problems right now, and not making much progress with them. Help is sporadic. If I had the energy, I'd post about the rather cluefail-ridden discussion I had with my head of course who doesn't, I think, know what ADHD is, and kept politely but firmly trying to tell me that my problem is "stress". I don't have that much energy. So, er, I'm not wanking on about that, and also not posting about being ill AGAIN, or about nice thing like The Decemberists.

*waves hands in air madly*

I probably will post some soon, but I may also need to cut down my posting in toto, due to work panic (have also discovered one essay is due in a week before I expected it to be). I don't like the thought of being more isolated, but there it is.

I'm not doing well at keeping in touch, I'm afraid. However, I am hoping to replace my phone very soon, so hopefully this might help with that particular problem.

Don't let this worry you overmuch: I'm just not terribly useful at the moment, I'm afraid.

last night i dreamed that i was in some office building in 1930's new york. maybe like the bowery or something. anyway, i fell in love with a woman there. she was being stalked by this fat guy who had done some really bad stuff to her. he was a construction worker, making a building next door. i went over there and stole a steam roller and squashed him. there wasn't any blood or anything. it was strange. then i went back to the girl but she had fallen in love and run off with someone else. them's the breaks, i guess. anyway, i was really bummed because i still had to dispose of this flattened fat guy. i went into the office and found one of those tubes that you put blueprints in and i went over there and rolled the guy up and put him in the tube. then i put some rocks in and threw him in the ocean. then i woke up. even in my sleep i'm a weirdo.

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So...do we think this is a joke that was meant to go to print looking like that or not?

http://i49.tinypic.com/24xji88.jpg

Either way, I can't stop giggling at it. Grauniad in fine form.

Sound the trumpets, beat the drums, and unfurl the biggest, angriest Union flag you can find, for the first version of the soopersekrit database that is the National Identity Register is with us - comprising all of 538 names, one of which is not even a British national. Just 538 people after all the hype about launching them in Greater Manchester and to airside workers! I'm tempted to fire off an FOI request regarding how many of the 538 are civil servants working for either the Home Office or IPS. It's telling, too, that Sir Joseph Pilling, the senior civil servant who has drawn the poisoned chalice here, has been given a mere six-month contract. While we can't be too careful, especially not with a bristle-skulled, swivel-eyed loon like Chris Grayling set to take over as Home Secretary should the Tories win the election - and there's talk from well-informed sources that Grayling got the gig replacing Grieve as a proviso for Murdoch's support of Cameron - this news looks encouraging as regards the long-overdue administration of the last rites for the NIR.

Even Pakistan, a country with far more problems than the UK and with a similar-sized population, managed to implement their biometric database within six years, though I'm sure there was considerably more coercion involved, and NADRA, the agency that oversees such projects in that country, employs over 11,000 people. While I don't recommend the idea of outsourcing this Orwellian project to the Pakistani government - they appear halfway competent at building intrusive biometric databases, after all, and the only place the NIR should be outsourced to is the bin - imagine how that appointment would cause the collective brains of the unthinking nothingtohidenothingtofear knee-jerkers to short-circuit! Perhaps the Pakistani authorities have been taking a lead from the British police here, what with all this talk of arrests being made just to harvest DNA samples for their own database. Former ACPO president Chris Fox claims that it is not police practice to do so, but as ever in such cases, the words of Mandy Rice-Davies apply.

Nice to find a little parcel from HMV in the post just now; my fiver's worth of spare vouchers proving very handy in snagging a copy of Walerian Borowczyk's filthy nunsploitica classic Behind Convent Walls, which goes for more than three times as much on eBay. Hey, it's got subtitles and it's directed by a Polish bloke with a big consonant cluster in his name, so therefore it is ART and not pr0n, and doubtless I could back up that assertion with observations about the cinematography and the mise-en-scène and the fact that it's based on a story by Stendhal, but then again the audience in the old Studio 7 never noticed such things as a rule...

From today's Guardian: Most creationists in the UK are not religious.

Here are a couple mustelid videos for you to enjoy today. First, we have the ever-adorable Frettchen von Rättchen eating a banana at the office on Friday:

Next, a video several of my colleagues and friends were raving about after seeing it on television yesterday. It's a clip from a BBC nature documentary featuring a stoat hunting a rabbit. (Embedding is disabled so follow the picture link for the video.)

my boxing gym is not dead after all. in fact, it's alive and well and moving to (get this) the same building as the bowling alley. now i can feed both of my obsessions at the same time. yow.

nothing happening at work these days. that's good and bad. no lay-offs yet (pick me, pick me), but i have to assume some are coming.

went to the dentist for the first time in years. it was not as bad as i'd thought. i thought my teeth were rotting out, but it turned out to be just an old filling that needed replacing. only cost 200 for the cleaning and x-rays. next: the doctor. haven't been to see one of those guys since i broke my arm. oh, and to get tested for stds. time for a proper check-up, though.

started designing some shirts and stuff for Real Problems merch. i'll need help, but i know a lot of great designers. i think we should come up with some kind of symbol/coat-of-arms type thing. i've been inspired by my new boots (finally bought some daytons. oh my god, best purchase ever). i think we should make our stuff like old-fashioned motorcycle gang style. see if we can make it like some kind of club or something. turbonegro took that route with the "turbojugend" and it was a stroke of marketing genius. of course, our club will be canadian and not norwegian, and therefore inherently 10 times trashier.

supposed to work on a new song with den tonight. i don't know. not in a rockin' mood. was listening to nick drake on the bus today, watching the rain. feels more like a staring out the window kind of day. BUT have to be ready for the cross-dress show (sylvia donated some high heels that light up when you step. awesome.).

Has anybody heard of, or even seen, 'Talking to a stranger', a BBC drama from 1966? Somebody put several long clips up on youtube, and they're incredible. Seriously; watch them, then rewatch for all the nuances you missed first time round. I can't remember ever seeing a psychological drama half as good on television, or even on film or in the theatre.

It centres on 'Terri', played by Judi Dency with a rushing stream-of-consciousness performance that gives the complete tour of her mind within a few minutes. There's something of Sally Bowles in her (Dench performed in Cabaret a couple of years later). Both have the same vulnerable extraversion, fuelled by terror that everything will fall apart if they stop moving. For Terri that's intertwined with anger, despair, religion, paranoia and guilt. All this rushes out in perfectly-drawn conversations with her brother and flatmate. Terri selfishly oblivious to them, condescending of their quiet lives, almost unable to believe in them as real people -- but with envy constantly creeping in just below the surface.

Again, I can't quite believe how good it is. Watch it! And this is just from a few clips. I'd love to see the entire thing, but it only seems to be available as part of a massive, expensive box-set of the complete works of Judi Dench. Here is one review.

The internet is useful! I had never come across the works of Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin before, but now I have. They're quite pretty, especially her use of brilliant colour. She's obviously quite keen on religious (particularly, Catholic) and queer imagery. I like the 1998 series, "Ecce Homo", particularly the Jesus & leathermen image. I wonder if prints can be bought?

Must go ask the resident Swedish-speaker to translate.

EDIT: This is prob NSFW unless your work is OK with nakedness, sexual overtones, etc.