Month: March 2001

I went to see a short film this evening. My flatmate, who works in the film industry, organised a screening for one of her directors and asked if I’d like to go. I decided that I should simply because it made me feel slightly worthwhile – which is possibly the wrong reason. The film was about cloning and loss of identity.

The strangest thing for me, though, was that in the credits (as well as thanking ‘Tilly the dog’), there was a URL mentioned: WITNESS.org. When I got back home and looked at it, I found it to be a site supported by Peter Gabriel which ‘uses video and technology to fight for Human Rights’. It’s an excellent idea, and well worth looking at further.

Terrifying though it is to admit, with a shave and some hair gel, the BBC’s reconstruction of the face of Jesus (via Link Machine Go) would look remarkably like my mate Toby.

I’d been planning to watch the Oscars with Nick last night. But at the last minute he and I decided that we weren’t feeling perky enough to justify staying up until four or five in the morning (my insomnia, of course, was not as evident at that point of the evening). So instead we watched advance episodes of Buffy, borrowed from my contact in the TV section of Time Out (thanks Noam).

From all accounts, it wasn’t a particularly sensational evening. The BBC’s list of winners contains very few actual surprises – although there are a few disappointments. Steven Soderbergh clearly deserved to win Best Director for Traffic. Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous deserved more than just Best Original Screenplay. The depressing part of the evening was clearly the Gladiator win for best picture and best actor. This was not a sensational film.

E-mail from Big arrived, much to my surprise. This man is either nicer than I expected or considerably more unpleasant. The banner and poster went down extremely well, it seems, and we have agreed to meet up again – in hopefully less tense circumstances – in two or three weeks time. That’s one less thing to worry about then.

Computer sold to Catherine for princely sum of £100. Printer and scanner remain unpurchased. This cannot, unfortunately, be allowed to continue.

Insomnia combines with British Summer Time in upsetting ways. Where some days last week I have been awake until four or five in the morning, I suddenly find myself considering being awake until possibly six. In addition, one of my flat-mates has invented a new early-morning fruit smoothie torture (involving liquidisers). I will snap within a week and join a drug-addled travelling street carnival. It’s the only answer.

There’s a wonderful quote on Derek’s log at the moment, linking through to Kvetch (interestingly enough the very first thing I ever linked to on what-was-then barbelith.com). It goes as follows: “It takes more energy to frown than it does to smile, but personally I think its worth the effort!” ñJames

So you have a conversation with someone about politics, and they declare that by divine right they should ascend to the throne, or at least to a position as benevolent dictator-for-life, and you make a joke about that and then you think about it for a week, because you thought that you were getting somewhere with them, but maybe you’re not. So you think about it a bit more, and decide that you’re not really in a fit state to think about this anyway, so you send them what you consider to be amusing banner-ads and poster mock-ups for a pseudo politic campaign complete with an e-mail that says that you’d love to meet up again sometime soon, but that you want to get a few things organised beforehand so you don’t feel quite so inadequate about your life. Is that a fun thing to do? Is it the kind of thing that a stalker would do? Do we think it was a good idea?

I went to a friend’s birthday party last night in this lovely flat near Angel. Almost the first thing that happened to me when I went into the kitchen was that this woman wandered up to me, said that she had met me before several years ago and that I had been extremely rude. I was, I’m afraid, slightly startled.