Category: Random

Mr. Big rears his head once more. After much deliberation, and with a guessed e-mail address, I decided that I should drop a ‘thank you’ note for an entertaining evening. In the e-mail, I thought to myself, I would explicate my apparent teenage gawkiness from the previous day as the consequence of being mortifyingly embarrassed and hapless. It occurred to me that I would probably be more able to present myself through the written word. As I wrote it I found myself smiling – I was striking an elegant balance between professionalism and lust, between being aloof and being a prat. As I finally sent the e-mail, I felt finally satisfied. For good or ill it was over.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang. When I picked up the phone I didn’t know the number on caller-id. Just a vague number that looked vaguely corporate. A voice leapt in with ‘Hello’, but didn’t say a name – just a firmly worded, confident, ‘how are you’. For a moment I thought it was Will, who I had lost contact with a while back (semi-purposefully) after a particularly annoying weekend. My voice steeled itself for a moment, before suddenly recognising that I was completely off track. Big had rung.

Oh my god. He wasn’t supposed to do that. Caught offguard, I reached back into the depths of wit and opened my mouth, only for nothing to emerge. Words pounce from the phone, “What are you doing today? I’m blowing off work today to go for lunch and hang around.” My replies, in turn, stumble from my mouth as if unfamiliar with walking, shielding their eyes from the harsh light of day. Some crap excuse or other: “I’ve got a list. Things to do. Learn SMIL. Have a haircut. I can’t do anything but those things. That would be … er … bad.” There’s some kind of distraction at the end of the phone. He’s trying to make conversation, but I’m behaving like a chimp trapped in a cage. Noises emerge but they make no sense. Ten minutes. We agree to a vague drink sometime next week and the phone goes dead. I sit in absolute silence for five minutes, drool oozing from a corner of my mouth. Then I howl with glee. Then my eyes widen and I have to have a lie down. What the fuck have I done…

I have a conundrum about my Mr. Big – the guy of last-night’s long foretold lip-collision. The conundrum is, having been deserted by a man who won’t take your phone number, but who looks on while his companion asks you to leave a message with your contact details at his office (ostensibly regarding a job opportunity), and then leans forward and kisses you, should you: a) debase yourself by ringing and leaving a message or b) feel strangely affronted, as if it were being implied that the attachments (power discrepancy, financial discrepancy, office, power … whatever) were generating the interest, or that they were generating a divide, or that because of it one’s life was somehow shabbier and less interesting and pointless and for that reason, why on earth would he really have any interest in you when he could have anyone he wanted? Your thoughts?

I’ve just finished reading Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell [Salon Article]. It’s a savage and at times difficult to read book about the people involved in the Jack the Ripper Whitechapel Murders in London. I recommend it.

Last night was possibly the strangest night of my entire life. A completely bizarre, unattainable and unfathomable crush from years back suddenly appeared in front of me in a bar I haven’t visited for months. A few hours later, brief lip contact is established, and I am left feeling strangely cheap and unhappy. I don’t really know why. Combine said encounter (literally) with Meg‘s birthday bash and you have an evening to remember – albeit remember weirdly.

This is why we love Cal.

####################################
#!/usr/bin/perl
@a = qw(c i k e);
@b = qw(o d u r a s);
@c = qw(n h);
@d = qw(a b f g j l m p q t v w x y z);
$dict = "/usr/dict/words";
foreach $a(@a){
foreach $b(@b){
foreach $c(@c){
foreach $d(@d){
$word  = "$a$b$c$d";
push(@words,$word);
}
}
}
}
print "done combinations!\n";
open(FILEONE,$dict) or die "can't open dict: $!";
while($w = ){
chomp($w);
foreach $word(@words){
if ($w eq $word){
print "match: $word\n";
}
}
}
close(FILEONE);
print "done matching!\n";
####################################

My first is in chicken, but not in Honduras. My second is not in chicken, but is in Honduras. My third is in both chicken and in Honduras. And my fourth is in neither chicken nor Honduras. What am I?

It’s become a matter of some amusement to my friends and online compatriots that I have started to say that I really want to be with someone who knows HTML. They find it strange that something so unconnected to sex should impact on my desires. They think I’m joking, but I’m not.

More and more over the last few months this has been on my mind. The only conclusion I can come to is that I find my magic in a world of geeks. Not geeks in the sense of hapless individuals with no social graces – but geeks who are slightly nervous, sometimes quiet people, filled with fire and thought and insight and intelligence, people with a sense of a calling, a craft, even if it’s one that they can’t always articulate effectively, even while it informs everything they do.

I was talking about this with Meg today and I’m going to include an edited portion of our conversation (which her permission), because I think that the process of editing it down will make it clearer in my mind. And I also think it might help explain some of my stranger object choices of recent months to people who know me…

Meg: You know like you said the other day? About wanting to have someone who knew HTML? I have to agree.
Tom: I just think it would be wonderful to have some kind of relationship with someone who kind of understood the strange dark lusts we have within. Someone who understood the allure. It would be like you had some kind of common goal. Like you were fucking in the presence of god. I keep wanting to write about this on plasticbag.org but I can’t find the words.
Meg: Let’s say I was a chef. I loved cooking, and creating and understanding food and taste was my life. It would make sense to want to find someone who wasn’t just happy to settle for chips with everything – someone who understood flavour, or was at least willing to explore.
Tom: Absolutely. I think it feels something like a higher purpose that you need to share.
Meg: No-one would even question that.
Tom: You feel a connection with the stuff you create, and feel part of a larger network of creative people. Like a huge network of interconnected computers stretching across the planet, perhaps..! Or like layered words joining and conjoining in endless spiralling files. You’re a part of that – of that confluence of language and energy (which is all it all is really). And it feels special – luminous even. And I want to be with someone who can see that magic.
Meg: Yes – everything you do and are is layered with your understanding of web and html and code and design and language and and and and … and you can’t switch it off. Someone else has to be able to understand that.
Tom: So completely. You become changed by it, like you would by any passion. Your self comes to resemble your passion. And comes to respect and love people who can evidence the same feeling and insight. People you can teach and learn from. People – essentially – that you connect with.

We are practitioners of a magical craft of arcane words and structures that swirl around one another to produce pages that resemble nothing so much as illuminated manuscripts – words and images, structure and beauty. And behind them all is the vast formless expanse of other pages and people and worlds and experience. I want someone I can share that with. Someone who can explore with me.

I’m in the middle of writing a couple of proposal articles for the BBC’s film site at the moment, and I’m thinking of writing about aspects of the Oscars that aren’t normally touched on. An article about foreign cinema and the Oscars might be interesting, I’m thinking. Which led me to this piece about the DGA Awards and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

According to the Budget Reckoner over at the BBC, my income will increase as a result of Gordon Brown’s actions by £2.35 a week. Which, you know, is nice. I guess. Well it’s not bad anyway. Not much of anything really. Certainly doesn’t hurt. Erm. God. What a boring budget.