I'm going to Hell

The subject of Lego cropped up chez Patroclus. (Again. If Sitemeter counted the number of times a subject gets raised, the counter wouldn't be big enough.) One commenter mentioned the Brick Testament, so I high-tailed it over there, and found myself chuckling like a good'un.

I thought it might amuse some church-type friends, so emailed the link around. (I do this regularly - the Church of Aeth and Augustine are recent enjoyments.) One friend who is routinely on the distribution list is our rector's wife, an intelligent, beautiful woman, who bears a couple of crosses with humanity, and always has something interesting to say. However, our senses of humour don't often intersect. And this offering went hideously awry.

Initially, to judge by her email reply, she found the site very amusing, but in a subsequent phone conversation she had come to the view that it seemed to her blasphemous.

I spent half an hour googling 'Blasphemy for Dummies', looking for something with which either to fight my corner, or to understand her point of view, and came up with Irreverence. Ohh yesssiree Bob, that site sure is Irreverent. But do we still go to Hell for that? I know we used to, and if that's still the case, the rector's wife is going to have a lonely time of it in Heaven.

So there you have it. In my corner, half an hour's research on the Interweb, in hers, an adult lifetime's studying the Bible and a strong faith sorely tested. Is it possible to have a moral compass so compromised I don't even recognise that it is damaged?

Has this ever happened before? Not to me . . .

Here's a turn-up for the books - blogging as displacement activity. Usually it's sheets. I have the tidiest linen cupboard in the western hemisphere. Everything folded so that external folds are to hand, everything in its place, shelving all labelled, Single sheets, Double sheets, Big towels, Medium towels, Little towels and Comedy towels, Big duvets and Little duvets, all with their pillow cases tucked inside.

Occasionally SO takes something from a shelf, decides its the wrong thing and just shoves it back.

This makes me unnecessarily upset.

But then I realise that I really ought to post something, and am instantly drawn to the linen cupboard, soothing brows, righting wrongs, drawing order out of Chaos. (Should I pun on posting and 'writing' wrongs? Nah. Can't be arsed.)

This time, however, Chaos remains unresolved under my ministrations. This time, Noteworthy is defeating me, and of all the things I HATE, I hate the most feeling this stupid. Oh, and being STABBED IN THE BACK by a piece of software I loved and trusted.

I wanted the chords for 'Wide, wide as the ocean', and found them at The Cyber Hymnal. To my joy, not only did the site provide the chorded score, it was all done in Noteworthy, which I happen to have and love. Used to love. Used to think was a fabulous little piece of software, and cheap! Still cheap, mind.

So when I decided that the key was wrong for us, transposing the score from C to G was its usual doddle. Another easy set of chords, as well.

But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to change the chord letters on the score. They've not used a lyric line, but entered the letters as text expressions, I think. Short of recreating the whole thing, note for note, in a new file, and adding new chord letters, I decided to blog about it. That'll get the job done.

Whosis's Axe is still up there

I know, I know, the Tyrant of Syracuse, but buggered if I can remember his name. Damon? Pythias? It'll come to me.

ANYWAY. No mention of SO or leakage or other damaging info in the trades at the end of last week, so SO, who doesn't borrow trouble so much as has a permanent lend-lease arrangement on the stuff, now wonders if the next thing is to be a solicitor's letter on our doormat, and the reason it's not here yet is half term, and everyone is away.

Great. At least with the publication thing, we had a potential full stop to this sorry episode. Now we have to dread the postman. Every darn day.


A SWORD! Of Damocles! Yay! Honestly, call myself a fan of the Rocky Horror Show . . .

Valentine's Day for real

I know, I know, I'm clearly not snuggled up in the arms of my beloved this Valentine's Day night. Truth is, SO had a really crap day. Started with an early phone call from a client asking how come rumours about the sale of client's company, with SO's name attached, were doing the rounds. Seems SO had what turns out to be an extremely ill-judged conversation over a pub lunch with ex-colleagues, who took what SO said, spun it around a bit, and called a trade paper. Ugh. Especially as SO had signed a confidentiality agreement. I suggested a visit to a lawyer, and wondered how much our house would sell for.

Poor SO returned slightly heartened (better than shaky and heaving, I can tell you) and with just enough oomph to pour me a vodka and tonic (delicious!), open a very decent Pomerol and cook me the promised steak au poivre, which we savoured over L4yer Cake, neither of us having the heart for original conversation. I offered to wash up so SO could go straight to bed - poor thing is exhausted.

The trade paper is published on Friday.

NO CHOCOLATE

Please, please, there was supposed to be No Chocolate in the house. None. Nada. Zip. Every so often I get desperate, and truffle wild-eyed through the house, looking for some, anything that looks like it, anything at all I'M DESPERATE.


And I found the most unexpected stash. In the pantry there's a box, about a foot square, that you can tell doesn't see the light of day too often. It's full of cake making stuff - little bottles of coloured ink, a couple of syringy things, some little vials of vanilla essence (probably the real thing, as I sniffed and swooned) and this.



Four compartments, each filled with tiny bits of a different chocolatey treat. Snap the appropriate lid open, upend it into your waiting (and sweatily shaking, it has to be admitted) palm, and thence into your mouth. No, MY mouth. Get your mouth away, I found it, it's MINE.

*groan* I'm in bad shape.




Y'know, the fact that the sell-by date is Feb 2005 only adds to its savour.

Two compartments down, one to go. (The fourth one, for those of an unnecessarily pedantic turn of mind, is filled with something milk chocolatey. Ugh. I recently tried to persuade Jill Twiss of the virtues of a good plain chocolate, even going so far as to offer to send her some examples if she gave me an address, and she thought I was stalking her. Puh-lease. As if.)



UPDATE - My blogging skills are vestigial at best. Only on reading ILTVs comment did I realise that when I say 'chocolate', I mean top-end, 70% minimum cocoa solids, made with properly roasted beans. It's an definition so central to the way I live my life, that I utterly fail to appreciate that not everyone else does.

So when I say 'Weetos. Now I'm eating fucking WEETOS' you know how far I have fallen.

Sorted

Well, it was always going to be Connery, wasn't it? Scotland forever, and all that.

And here's the thing that decided me. I noticed that the Connery collection offered by Amazon lacked Never Say Never Again, so when I saw said movie on sale in Woolies for £4 (Four! Pounds!) I took it as a Sign.

*sigh* what is it about cheap DVDs? I can't stop myself. Unless what's on offer really is crap. And it's not even as if I watch the stuff, as I would rather spend the time surfing. It's no good for lending, as by the time it's got that cheap everyone has already seen it.

I found myself on the verge of buying another copy of Donnie Darko because is was on sale at £2, and the one I already had cost £6. For a brief moment it actually made sense. (And no, I haven't seen it yet.)

I did buy a duplicate once. I have two copies of that splendid movie Serial Mom. Luckily I had the presence of mind to leave one in its cellophane, in the event that I need an emergency present. Dunno for whom tho', as I'm the only person I know who rates John Waters.

Valentine's Day

Hoo-bloody-ray, more presents. Christmas, my birthday, Valentine's Day, SO's birthday early March and then we are DONE. Phew.

Thank goodness for Amazon wish-lists, eh? SO pretty much cleaned mine out for my birthday, bless, (though I remarked the absence of the 10 DVD+RWs - SO has no sense of priorities. Serves me right for not having categorised 'em myself) so I thought I might reciprocate.

Valentine's Day proved easy (Bringing Up Baby, a couple of Gervaise Phinns) but birthday is going to be a little trickier, not to say more expensive. Because SO has also not categorised either, I have to work out which James Bond SO fancies most. Oh, the pressure . . .

I thought I might slide a Firewire cable into the order for li'l ole me. What larks, eh Pip?

Bloggers from the Dawn of Time

Last night I finally got around to watching my recording of Victoria Wood's Housewife, 49. The play was moving, uplifting, informative, Threlfall excellent etc etc, and Nella Last was a very early blogger.

The Mass Observation project, started in 1937, wanted to record the daily lives of British citizens, largely in the form of diaries kept by volunteers and sent in to the central office. Nella Last started her blog - sorry, diary - in 1939, in response to an advert. I gather this was far less in response to the outbreak of war than to her own impending (at least second) breakdown. In a very closeted home life, dominated by husband and sons, she had no-one with which to share the details of her life, and so put them all into this diary, which she sent off to Mass Ob.

And blimey o'riley if it didn't turn her life right round. She found the courage to stand up to her husband, practically take over the WVS and bridge the class divide between those who had telephones and those who *gasp* didn't.

First Nations has talked eloquently about the difference between a diary and a blog, and how blogging has changed her life. Nella didn't have a 'comments' button, but just knowing she was going to be listened to made all the difference.

It's. oh. so quiet.

Bloody Nicodemus, tip-toeing around like that.

*sigh* Sunday School tomorrow later today. Being as how I 'teach' the three to four year olds (translate that as 'try to keep the lid on'), whatever the subject, the teaching involves a lot of running around and shrieking. It is, after all, their preferred mode of expression, and they are going to do it anyway. So - Solomon building a temple, 'And how did the people worship? YES! By dancing around wildly and yelling loudly! PRAISE THE LORD!' Elijah was a good couple of lessons - 'King Ahab was so angry with Elijah that Elijah had to run away really fast yelling! HELP ME GOD!' And the priests of Baal were a gift - 'How did they pray to their god? By dancing wildly around the altar and yelling! 'BAAL LIGHT THE FIRE!' Give 'em back to their parents good and knackered, say I.

But not this time, oh no. Yours and my favourite member of the Sanhedrin, more than his job's worth to be seen with flavour-of-the-month rabble-rouser JESUS, yes let's hear it for NICODEMUS! has to go visiting in the middle of the night, as quietly as poss., whisper a conversation with The Man, and then sneak back home to have a Good Think.

I'm doomed.

You can call the search off.

I haven't had a vodka and tonic for - ooh, about 12 years. Or a gin and tonic. Or anything and tonic. Ever since 'they' thought it was a good idea (why!) to put aspartame and saccharin into even regular tonic. I am one of those unfortunates for whom these additives don't taste sweet, they just taste chemical, and vilely so. Oh, feel my pain.

Over the years, the search for a drinkable tonic moved from diligent to desultory to dead. I never lost the habit of scanning ingredients lists of bottles which just happened to be there but habit it was, and at best provided me with an opportunity to go off on one. Again. Nothing I like better* than a bit of tssking. I might occasionally have treated myself to a slow, sad head-shake.

Until late last year, there dawned a day. Did you notice it? The one with the eclipse? And the comets, and the rains of blood, and every time you cut open a pigeon its entrails spilled out to form the word 'Ouch'? Not just once or twice, but every time? That was the day I discovered Waitrose Own Tonic, which is Free From Artificial Sweeteners. Look, it says so on the label. O frabjous day, callooh, callay!

So another hunt was on. Which vodka! It's been so long since I bought any, all I knew was not to buy anything that was advertised because it was crap. That still leaves a whole supermarket shelf's worth of labels I had never seen before.

Until my eye fell on this. Organic Vodka. See? Every so often, this sorry race of ours does something just because it's right.

*Soo-oooo-oo not true, but on reflection now is neither the time nor the place.

Beta

Ooooo-ooo--oo-kay - still here, so far, not having checked any comments on previous posts which by all accounts should have gone Anon, so, whoever you were, I Heart You, and it all looks the same, and hell is that the time? Gotta go . . .

Update - about 20 seconds later - posted, went to view and say hi to commenters, and got that bX-vjhbsj error that's been everywhere today. On My Own Blog. I hate Beta.